Rowan Switched's Arc

Chapter 25 of 25

Rowan slept two hours and woke with the note still in their pocket. Tomorrow. The hollow. Alone. The crowned woman had chosen the word alone on purpose. If Rowan met her with no one watching, she could say later that no meeting happened. She could deny any bargain, any surrender, any name given. Rowan needed a witness. A witness who could not be sent away, could not be bought, and could not be caught by the folk at the hollow's edge. Rowan walked to Gloamkeep before noon. The broken towers threw long shadows across the yard. The reflecting pool sat where Rowan had left it, its surface still. Rowan knelt at the rim and spoke Lady Moon's name into the water. She rose in the pool without ripple, gray dress, bare feet, eyes level with Rowan's. "She wants me alone," Rowan said. "I need someone to see it. Someone she can't touch." "The dead can see," Lady Moon said. "The dead can't testify. Not to her kind." "Then who can?" Lady Moon was quiet a moment. "One who holds a deed the folk erased. Her word binds them. They took her name off stone. She kept the paper." She named the ghost then: Selene Nightshade. "Find her at the laboratory past the low field. She walks between moonrise and dawn. Ask her to mark the meeting. She'll want something." The pool went flat. Lady Moon was gone. Rowan reached the Moonshade Laboratory at dusk. The stone house sat behind a patch of pale flowers that leaned toward Rowan as they passed. Rowan waited by the door until the light went blue. Selene Nightshade stepped out of the wall. White hair, black torn dress, small bare feet on the packed dirt. She looked at Rowan without blinking. "You brought a question." "The crowned woman summons me to the hollow tomorrow. Alone. I need a witness she can't deny. Lady Moon said your word holds against her kind." "It does." Selene tilted her head. "What do you offer?" Rowan had thought about this on the walk. "When I have my name back, I'll speak yours at your grave. Out loud. Three times. Where they ground it off." Selene went still. Then she nodded once. "Done. I'll stand at the hollow's edge from moonrise. She'll see me. She'll know what I am. She won't be able to say the meeting didn't happen." She stepped back into the wall and was gone. Rowan walked home in the dark with the note still folded in their pocket. They had a witness now, one the crowned woman could not send away or unsee. The meeting would be marked. Whatever passed at the hollow would hold. Rowan owed a debt of three spoken words at a scraped stone, and they meant to pay it.