The road to the Lower Banks wove south down the coast, the ocean waves lapping cozily against the shoreline, a reminder that wherever Sabine traveled, the sea was the same. This was the farthest she had ever been from Harborside, but the salt air that floated through the carriage window settled her anxious stomach.
Trees grew in strange, spindly directions, larger than anything even in the Garden District. Some trunks were ashy and burnt, others deep brown and full of flaky bark. The leaves spun and shifted in the wind, floating slowly down to litter the shoreline.
On the bench opposite Sabine, Katrynn and Brianne chatted quietly. The carriage jostled, sending Genevar’s shoulder into Sabine’s sternum. She squeezed her eyes shut, processing the pain.
“You’ve got the right idea,” the Archivist said. “It’s rather late. Might rest my eyes. I recommend you girls do the same.”
She was snoring softly in seconds. Sabine, who had never known sleep to come so easily, didn’t bother to try. Instead, as the conversation between Katrynn and Brianne finally tapered off into silence, the rhythm of the coach lulling them both to sleep, Sabine pulled the New Maiden’s journal from where it rested against her hip.
The book was soothing beneath her fingers, the leather as soft as Elodie’s sheets. Already, Sabine missed Velle’s queen, craved their easy connection and the girl’s tender touch. It hurt to leave, but in order to take on Tal, Sabine needed the ability to harness the New Maiden’s full power. She would find that magic only by venturing to the Lower Banks.
She leaned her head against the window, reveling in the comfort of the cool glass against her skin. The landscape blurred in her peripheral vision as she flipped through a handful of pages, past musings about destruction and the concept of home, pausing on a passage that detailed Her relationship with Petra and Hera.
The sisters are loyal in both heart and help, the New Maiden had written, in ways that I do not deserve. When first our leader turned away, plotting his venture to the world beyond, that voice within me—that guiding light—set to screaming. I knew I could not go, though I did not know why. Now, I understand its message. I had work to do.
The sisters could have gone. Should have gone. Yet when I turned to Petra, her hand wrapped carefully in mine, she had only to meet my eyes for me to know. “You’re staying.” It wasn’t a question, but then, Petra has never questioned me. While I may not deserve her steadfast devotion, I am grateful for it. And wherever Petra goes, Hera follows. Three is a powerful number.
Three makes a beginning.
The carriage jerked as they barreled through a rut in the road. Katrynn readjusted her cheek on the top of Brianne’s head. The thirteen-year-old was slumped against Katrynn’s shoulder, her breathing steady and slow. The two of them were just as dedicated to Sabine as the pair of Favored sisters had been to the New Maiden.
It is strange, the way love changes, slowly, then all at once. There was a time when Hera grasped at our skirts, showing up with little treasures, trying to sneak into our good graces. Now she never tries, she only does. She tends the fire, boils water, takes first watch without being asked.
She has turned her trinkets into offerings, has left so many on the hearth that we had to move the cooking fire. The stones are now littered with dried petals and gnarled sticks, tiny clay cups of wine.
“For you,” she says, each time she adds to the collection. What she feels for me is no longer love alone. It’s devotion.
Petra, too, has changed. Once my equal, the balance has been thrown. Her admiration frightens me, for it is unearned. There is no reason I should be the one to shape our new world from these ashes. I am simply a girl who refused to leave home. Who held enough emotion inside her to weep a thousand tears. I do not feel different than I used to be. It is only the response of others that has altered.
Sabine glanced up at Katrynn, who was snoring softly. Like Petra, her sister had changed. When Sabine had struggled with her sadness alone in their Harborside apartment, Katrynn had not always been so kind. But now that her emotionality held some greater purpose, she had the full deference of her patently ungovernable older sister. Sabine had done nothing new to earn that adoration. But then, was faith earned? She was not so sure.
Where the sisters offer me consistent comfort, the New Maiden had continued, he is instrumental to my growth.
Sabine’s breath hitched. This could be only one person—the final member of the Lower Banks’ strange quartet. Sebastien.
He questions me so intimately it treads close to invasiveness, yet there is something about him that will not leave me be, a curious pull that unmoors me and bids me to answer.
We were not meant to be enemies, Tal had told Sabine in the training room. The New Maiden’s words seemed to imply the same. She had written of Sebastien favorably, captured the strange, tangible draw Sabine had felt toward Tal, who harbored within him the spirit of the Second Son. The two of them were tangled in an intricate web woven by their forebearers.
“Where did your goodness come from?” he asks, gold eyes white in the firelight. “What does it feel like when you weep?”
Sebastien tries so desperately to hide his pain, but it radiates from him. Each time he searches for a crack in my foundation, he exposes his own impossible hurts.
To him, I think I began as a convenient savior, a pertinent escape from a terrible situation. But the more time we spend together, the more profoundly I understand his heart, the more I truly wish to offer him salvation.
Sabine had known that the Maiden had risen to power at seventeen, the same age she was now. But seeing Her life laid out in Her own hand was the first time she truly understood: The New Maiden was not just a portrait hung above an altar. The girl who had brought back the water to the Lower Banks—who had promised good for generations, who had the power to heal and hope—had been human once, was a person with a heart and a soul. She had felt and feared, just like Sabine.
It was the closest she had ever felt to Her.
Sabine continued to read until the road thinned, the coach creaking with every bump. When her traveling companions began to wake, she slipped the New Maiden’s journal back into her pocket.
They were deposited in a tiny port town, the entire village composed of fewer buildings than lined Harborside’s main thoroughfare. They were directed toward the docks, where they found Skyr, a middle-aged man with ruddy cheeks and a large smile, who would ferry them to their final destination. At mention of the Lower Banks, he brightened.
“They’ll be glad for fresh faces.”
His boat was more of a small dinghy, which swayed at the hint of a whisper. As they crossed the water to a peninsula, he asked about their business in the Banks. They all looked to Sabine, who shook her head slightly. There was an easiness to anonymity, something she was no longer privy to in Velle.
“A pilgrimage, of sorts,” she finally said.
Skyr’s smile showcased a small gap in his front teeth. “Used to be plenty of those. Do you know that this was the site of the New Maiden’s first miracle?”
“I do,” Sabine said, reveling in the simplicity of it all. “I suppose I just wanted to see it for myself.”
When the boat hit shore, Sabine let the others disembark first. She did not want to rush. As she stepped foot in the Lower Banks for the first time, something within her shuddered and sparked.
She stumbled. Brianne and Katrynn hurried to help, but Sabine waved them away. She was not weakened, nor was she in pain. She was moved by the power in the sand and the silt. By the rush of the water and the breeze on her tongue. There was magic everywhere, ancient and bright.
Sabine sank to her knees, and the Lower Banks embraced her.
The New Maiden was finally home.
18
Elodie’s hair posed a problem.
Instead of sleeping, the Queen of Velle had spent the night fretting, unwilling to close her eyes for fear she would doze off and miss the Second Son’s early morning gathering. As the final, fragile hours of night gave way to dawn, she scrutinized her appearance. Her attire was nothing like her usual flowing skirts and corset tops—her pants were perfectly tailored, her crisp shirt was buttoned all the way up to her chin—but her unmissable starlight hair still threatened to give her away. If Elodie stepped foot outside the walls of Castle Warnou looking like this, she would be instantly recognized.