Deirdre’s declaration had been unexpected, to say the least. Lux’s reaction, though, managed to be even more bizarre. It was a feat Tobia would have regarded as impressive, hadn’t he been too busy trying to make sense of the information that had been so casually thrown at him.
“So it really was her, huh,” Lux had said, as if that was a normal remark to make in the face of everything Deirdre’s words entailed. People didn’t just see the Apostate. They could use her as a vague, indistinct threat for their children when they refused to go to bed, or curse her name if they cut their fingers while mincing onions; she wasn’t someone meant to be tangible. Unperturbed by the bewildered atmosphere hanging around them, Lux continued with their questioning. “How did it feel? Do you remember any details?”
Deirdre shook her head. “Sorry, it’s all kind of fuzzy in my head,” she said with an equal amount of inexplicable calmness. “I think I was burning, but it wasn’t scary, or painful? Just very warm, like someone was wrapping me in blankets.”
Maybe it was watching Lux nod along to such an outlandish statement that gave Tobia enough frustration to find his voice again. He certainly felt that way. “Wait. Wait a second,” he said, trying to rein in the irritation in his voice. “You’re telling me the one who caused the ley line at the temple was the Heretic Flame?”
It had sounded like a reasonable question in his head, moreso when compared to the brazen way Deirdre and Lux were discussing experiencing a memory from the woman who was responsible for dooming the world to its current state. Nevertheless, Lux had the nerve of making a face at him. “Sweet Mother, your city boy lingo needs an intervention,” they said, pressing their hands to their face as if trying to squish the second-hand embarrassment out. It was utterly uncalled for, in Tobia’s opinion, not to mention quite rich coming from them. “No one outside of Whitewick calls her the Heretic Flame.”
Tobia had half an idea of telling them where they could shove their intervention. Someone had to be the bigger person, though, so he settled for a dignified huff instead. He’d been born and raised in Whitewick, of course it would show in the way he spoke. “Whatever,” he said, “that’s not what’s important right now, is it?”
He had to admit Lux did glance at him with something that looked almost like shame in their eyes. Then they quickly ducked their head; Tobia thought they were just avoiding his glare at first, which made him feel far less triumphant than he expected.
Unease tingled on his tongue, spoiled and acidic. He was about to speak, if anything to break the silence, when he noticed Lux had turned toward Marion: the two of them were having one of their conversations made up of no words and an array of different microexpressions impossible to parse for a clueless outsider. That, too, made Tobia feel a certain way, but he didn’t feel the slightest bit inclined to examine any of it. One more thing for him to shove down and ignore, hoping it wouldn’t put roots anywhere while he wasn’t looking.
After a stretch of silent wrangling, Marion sighed. She fished the pen and ink back out of Lux’s bag, along with more paper, and she started scribbling with enough force Tobia worried she might tear the page. “I’m nineteen,” she said, “I’m not singing that thing out loud. We’ll burn the paper later if you’re that worried about someone finding it.”
Lux nodded, but they looked unwell. Their fingers twitched and their eyes darted to what Marion was writing with a strange film of fear clouding them, as if they wanted to grab the page and rip it before anyone else could read it. It made the unease in Tobia’s mouth taste sharper, rotten. Like a reminder of how far away Lux stood from him, no matter how hard he tried to find common ground.
He itched to ask just what was going on when Marion shoved the piece of paper in the middle of the battered table for the rest of them to see. Written on it in elegant, looping letters, were the verses of a song.
The Liar Wolf
one, two, three
o good children, hear my plea
four, five, six,
do be wary of his tricks
seven seasons passed through
when his hunger and fear grew
eight times over he asked me
i could only disagree
nine hot tears it made me shed
as my loved ones, they bled
ten wide trees you will sure heed
if the book you want to read
“Is this some kind of nursery rhyme?” Deirdre asked. She was eyeing the paper curiously, while Wynn regarded it with unfiltered contempt.
“This reads quite amateurish,” they told Lux. “Did you write it?”
Tobia would have laughed at the jab, but his mind was stuck on the very top of the page. Again, he remembered how quickly, how easily he’d resorted to drawing the blade back in the temple, as if everything about it, from its carefully balanced weight to the shape of the hilt, had been forged just for him. He remembered the frantic sorrow in his father’s goodbye on the night the King had come for him and he remembered the blood haloing Drust’s body in the control room. He’d told himself it was merely his survival instinct taking over him back then. Now, he was starting to think of it as something else, something etched deep into him.
“Is that the title?” he forced himself to ask. His voice sounded flat, but at least it didn’t quiver.
Marion made an affirmative noise, either unaware of or unconcerned by the nausea mounting inside of Tobia. “It’s been passed down in the village for hundreds of years,” she said, “so it might be a mistranslation or something, but this one…” She pointed to Lux. “Thinks it’s a song about the King. Written by the Apostate herself, in all her lyrical glory.”
Lux, who had kept quiet up until then, straightened their shoulders. “Sorry,” they said in Tobia’s general direction, eyes fixed on the table. “I knew you’d probably want to know about something like this for your father’s research, and I kept it from you.”
Their voice had a stiffness to it, as if they were only saying half of what they truly wanted to say. Tobia made a mental note of asking them about it later, away from the others. For now, he set his own queasiness aside and asked, “What makes you believe the Apostate wrote it, anyway?” He gestured around. “Isn’t she the one to blame for all of this?”
If Lux was taken aback by the way Tobia had bypassed their apology, it didn’t show on their face. Instead, they launched themself into what, judging from the look of exasperation on Marion’s face, was a carefully rehearsed speech. “You see where it says ‘nine hot tears it made me shed’?” they asked. “Doesn’t that ring any bells for you?”
Without waiting for an actual answer from anyone at the table, they said, “It’s the feathers! There are nine feathers total in the world, and you could argue they do look sort of like hot tears—if you squint. It has to mean something. What I saw when I touched that ley line only confirmed it for me.”
With the kind of voice that signaled she dreaded an answer, Marion asked, “How so?”
“Well,” Lux said, then they paused. Tobia guessed they were trying to wrangle their thoughts into coherent form, if the scrunched arcs of their eyebrows and the rhythmic tap-tap of their fingers on the wood were of any indication. He wondered if they had decided to push down their unease too, or if this was their way of dealing with it. Tobia bet on the latter. Just because he preferred running from his own problems, it didn’t mean Lux would too.
“We’ve always been told the Apostate lost those feathers when the King defeated her, right?” Lux said in the end. “That’s the official version of how it went down.”
Again, Tobia remembered his father; the expression he’d made after the King had denied his request to study the ley lines at any of the temples and the ashen, clammy look twisting his face after he’d done it anyway. Tobia had tried to pry something out of him once he’d come back from that trip, but his father had refused to tell him anything. A few months later, he’d thrusted a blade in Tobia’s hands and told him to run.
A heady mix of terror and longing was tearing at him from the inside out, as if the grief inside of him had sprouted into something alive and vine-like, ensnaring any tender spots Tobia had left in its grip. Still, he couldn’t but lean forward, drinking in the words Lux had to say. The words his father hadn’t had a chance to tell him.
“In the memory I saw, the Apostate took a feather out of her own cape,” Lux said, and the words felt luminous and sickening. It was fitting, for an unwanted revelation. “She did it because she knew we would need a shadow of her presence to keep us warm if she died. They’ve been lying to us about her, all this time.”
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