The Girl at Midnight (30 page)

When she pulled away from Caius, slipping out from under the jacket he’d wrapped around her in the night, the brisk morning chill came as a shock. Echo walked away from Caius without a backward glance even though something deep inside her screamed at her to turn around, to crawl back into his arms and nestle into his warmth. She trampled through the underbrush, heading back to where the others had camped for the night. It took a herculean effort, putting one foot in front of the other, keeping her eyes locked forward, but it was the right thing to do. It had to be. Yet with every step she took closer to the Oracle, to the firebird, to whatever great and unknowable destiny loomed before her, she was beginning to feel more and more as if she had no idea what was right anymore.

The walk was longer than Caius remembered. They’d spent the entire day and the better part of the night navigating the forest’s increasingly uneven terrain, and it was nearly midnight by the time they reached the waterfall hiding the path to the Oracle’s cave. It was modest, at least when compared with the Triberg Falls on the other side of the Black Forest. Unlike Triberg, this waterfall wasn’t crawling with tourists and their cameras. No human or Avicen had heard of it, and few Drakharin knew of its existence. The location was a secret, albeit a poorly guarded one. It was meant to be passed down from one Dragon Prince to the next, but most of the nobles of the court knew where to find it. Curiosity motivated many a Drakharin to seek out the Oracle’s services, though officially, they were limited to the elected prince.

Caius tried to imagine Tanith here, in all her golden glory, glittering among the soft green willows still lush despite the frost tickling at their leaves. He couldn’t. This was no place
for fire and steel. He glanced back at the rest of their party. For all her big-city charm, Echo carved out a place for herself in the forest as if she belonged, taking to it as naturally as a bird to air.

He’d woken alone with the faint scent of her shampoo clinging to his shirt. As much as he ached to close the distance between them, he couldn’t. For every step he took toward her, she took one farther away. For hours, they’d marched on in relative silence, though every now and then, Caius overheard Jasper’s quiet voice attempting to needle Dorian into conversation. It had taken them longer to reach the falls than he had anticipated. Dorian’s injury had been aggravated by their journey, slowing their progress, though his captain would never admit it. The sun had set hours earlier, and the moon was high in the sky. The words on the map, scrawled in Rose’s hand, echoed in Caius’s mind.

The bird that sings at midnight
, he thought, remembering the familiar sight of Rose’s handwriting on the crinkled page,
from within its cage of bones, will rise from blood and ashes to greet the truth unknown
.

It was a lovely rhyme, if more than a little ominous. It told Caius nothing useful, but then he’d never had much of an ear for poetry. With a sigh, he climbed the mossy stone steps leading to the falls, the others clambering behind him with less grace.

“Ugh.” Jasper retched. “Water.”

“That does tend to accompany waterfalls.” Dorian’s smile flashed, brilliantly. Dorian, of all people, joking with an Avicen. Caius could hardly believe it. Perhaps he and Echo weren’t the only ones to have been changed, irreparably, by their journey.

Jasper returned Dorian’s smile with one of his own. “And here I was, thinking that was just a vicious rumor.”

“Toughen up, Jasper,” Echo said, holding out a steadying hand to Ivy as her friend slipped on cold stone. Echo’s eyes flicked up to Caius’s, but she didn’t hold his gaze for long. “This our stop?”

“Yes,” Caius said.

Echo breezed past him to duck beneath the falls, her arm brushing against his sleeve. His heart thudded in his chest as if it were trying to pound its way out.

Jasper sidled up next to Caius, still hopelessly pretty despite his grimace. “We have to go under that?”

Caius answered by doing just that, bowing his head against the falling water. Jasper’s plaintive protest—“But my plumage!”—was swallowed by the damp, dark silence of the cave tucked away behind the falls. Loose pebbles and crumbling moist earth bordered an underground lake. The water refracted scraps of moonlight that fell between the gaps in the stone overheard, sending light skittering across the lake’s surface like stars.

Echo stood on a long, narrow dock, near where a small boat bobbed in the water. Brows knitted in concentration, she stared across the lake that separated the falls from the rocky shore that led to the Oracle’s cave. The rotting wooden slats groaned under Caius’s feet, but Echo didn’t turn as he approached. He moved to stand beside her, not close enough to touch, but close enough that he could feel the hum of her presence across the inches that divided them.

“We’re close, aren’t we?” She didn’t face him as she spoke, arms crossed and eyes searching. Caius studied her profile, her features half in shadow.

“The entrance to the Oracle’s sanctum is right across the lake,” he said. “The boat will take us there. It’ll only hold two, so I’ll ask Dorian to stay behind with Jasper and Ivy.”

Echo frowned, shaking her head slightly. “No, not like that. It’s something else. I can feel it, like a balloon that’s been blown up too much and is about to burst.” She looked at him then, eyes shiny with the reflection of light off the lake’s surface. “What did she tell you when you came here? The Oracle, I mean.”

With a little puff of laughter, Caius said, “To follow my heart.”

Echo arched a single eyebrow. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Wow. Useful.”

“Hardly.”

She held his gaze for a moment longer, silent, contemplating. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking, what she feared, what she wanted, but Jasper’s grumbling and Ivy’s soft voice drifted to the end of the dock, reminding Caius that they weren’t alone.

In the blink of an eye, the spell was broken.

“Great.” Echo started toward the boat. “Let’s hope she’s got something better than fortune-cookie wisdom for us this time around.”

“Wait.” Caius grabbed her arm before she could go any farther. She snatched it back as if his hand had burned her. It was the first time they’d touched since that morning. Echo glowered at him but stayed put. “Before we go,” he said, “there’s something you need to know.”

She nodded slowly, as if she was ready to dislike what he was about to say.

Smart girl
, he thought. So much of Echo reminded him of Rose. She was intelligent and brave and fiercely protective of the people she loved. And like Rose, she burned so brightly it was hardly a surprise that he was drawn to her flame. He hoped her story had a happier ending, that he could give her the peace he hadn’t been able to give Rose. If war had taught him anything, it was that it took the people who deserved long and happy lives and gave them short, brutal ones instead.

Caius pushed the thought away. “The Oracle doesn’t impart her wisdom for free,” he said, peering across the lake. He could just barely make out the entrance to the Oracle’s cave. “We have to pay for it.”

“Yeah, well, I left my euros in my other pants,” she said.

He huffed out a laugh. He was glad she hadn’t lost her sense of humor. “If only it were that easy. The Oracle doesn’t want money. She’ll want a sacrifice, a gift that has special meaning to you. Something that you part with at great cost.”

Her hand rose to wrap around the locket. “This is the only thing I have with me. I’m guessing it’s more valuable than the dagger and the key, but I don’t know.”

He placed a hand over hers. “No,” he said. “You keep that.”

She looked up at him. “Why? You said it was yours, a long time ago.”

“Because I want you to have it.” He unsheathed one of his blades. Tanith had given them to him years ago, before their relationship had begun to sour after his election to Dragon Prince. He loved the delicate carvings on the blades, the fine craftsmanship that had gone into their making. He’d never been in a fight without them.

“I’ll give her these. That should suffice.” He traced the figures carved into the steel. “They’re not something I part with easily. Assuming the Oracle decides they’re a worthy sacrifice on my part.”

Echo raised an eyebrow. “And if she decides they’re not?”

Caius slid the blade back into its sheath. “Then she chooses something that is.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” Echo said. “So we let her pick what she wants. What’s the big deal?”

He studied her, taking in the delicate angle of her chin, the hair that fought its way out of her ponytail, the wary set of her eyes. He’d thought he was willing to give anything up to find the firebird, but he was starting to realize that there were some things he’d rather not lose.

“The big deal,” Caius said, “is that it might not be something you’re willing to sacrifice.”

Echo was silent as they traveled across the lake, their boat propelled by an unseen force. Every now and then, she looked back at the shore. Ivy, Dorian, and Jasper grew smaller and smaller as she and Caius approached the other side. The sense of unease that had been growing in the forest swelled, suffocating her with its immensity. As she was carried farther away, she quashed the fear that she would never see their faces again. When the boat bumped against the shore, she was jolted back to reality. Ominous melancholy could wait. She had an Oracle to see and a firebird to find.

Echo stepped out of the boat, and her boots slipped on the loose pebbles of a shore that was hardly worthy of the name. They stood on a tiny spit of land, about twenty feet across, covered in rocks, with the occasional weed stubbornly growing between the cracks, facing a wall made of
large stones. Caius reached out a hand to steady her, and even through the leather of her jacket, his touch was warm. Warmer than it had any right to be. Echo shrugged out of his grip, pretending not to see the hurt that flashed across his face. She looked around, taking note of the complete and utter lack of an entrance to the Oracle’s sanctum. Moss crawled along the boulder before them, though a space about three feet wide was left bare, with a series of runes etched into the stone. Echo couldn’t read them, but she’d seen them before. She touched the key that hung around her neck, fingers brushing cool silver.

“Well,” Caius said, “this is where the entrance
should
be.” He leaned forward to read the inscription aloud. “ ‘To know the truth, you must first want the truth.’ Just like the key.” He pressed a hand against the boulder, running his palm over its surface. “This wasn’t here before. The runes were, but they weren’t carved on a giant wall of stone.”

Echo stood close to him, their arms just barely brushing. “How did you get in last time?”

“There was a door. I knocked.” Caius’s fist hovered over the stone as if he were considering doing just that before dropping back to his side. “I’m fairly certain this wall is designed to keep people out, not let them in.”

“To keep people out, huh?” Echo pulled the dagger from her boot. “I have an idea.” As the danger of her situation had increased with each passing day, she tried not to imagine home. The thought of never seeing her library again, never smelling its stale books or seeing her fairy lights dangling from her stolen shelves was too much to bear. But home was where she had designed her own door meant to keep people
out, not let them in. With Caius’s gaze on her, she pricked her index finger with the tip of the blade. She pressed her finger to the wall and whispered, “By my blood.”

The familiar feel of magic crackled in the air, and with a loud rumble, the boulder slid to the side, revealing a room lit by candles. The walls were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, packed with the most unusual assortment of objects Echo had ever seen. Crowns, signet rings, and loose jewels were strewn about like debris. A medieval harpsichord collected dust in the corner beside a broken violin and a crate full of rusting handbells. There was an entire shelf devoted to porcelain cat figurines and another lined with skulls, some human, some animal. One wall was covered with clocks of varying shapes and sizes, all surrounding a grandfather clock that listed slightly to the side. Candles blazed on every available surface, wax dripping freely onto the floor. The only other exit was a wooden door, reinforced with a dark metal latticed frame, on the opposite side of the room.

“Fascinating,” Caius said.

“
Creepy
is the word I’d go with.” Echo set a cautious foot across the threshold. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”

He followed her in, and the boulder slid back into place behind him. “I don’t think our visit is as unexpected as we thought it was.”

Caius walked around the room, investigating the Oracle’s collection, and paused in front of the wall of clocks. There must have been dozens of them, but they were all set to the same time. A quarter to midnight.

The bird that sings at midnight
, Echo thought.
Whatever that means
.

“What
is
all this stuff?” she asked. She poked at one of
the skulls on the shelf in front of her. It looked as if it had belonged to a cat, but it was hard to tell.

“Gifts,” Caius replied. “The Oracle trades her wisdom for them.” He waved a hand at the hoard of objects around them. “She’s been at it for a while, as you can see.”

“And what did you give her when you came here?” Echo asked.

He walked over to a pile of weaponry in the corner opposite the harpsichord. He sorted through the items, sending a few helmets clattering to the ground, along with a shield and about half a dozen throwing stars. After a minute of rummaging, he pulled out a dented broadsword. “This. It was my first sword. My father gave it to me when I was just a boy. I was too small to handle it then, but I grew into it.” He ran a reverent hand down the dull blade. “I never thought I’d see it again.”

The skin on the back of Echo’s neck prickled with gooseflesh, and she had the uncanny feeling that they weren’t alone. Just then, a new voice spoke, coming from everywhere and nowhere.