A ghost of laughter echoed in my ears, and I thought I heard an amused whisper of “such beastly girls . . .” trail off at the very edges of my hearing.
Even having met the founder in the flesh—or in the spirit, as it were—once before, without Talia here as a buffer between us, it unnerved me enough that I suddenly and powerfully wanted to be gone.
I’d already figured out the last clue, the soul at the center of what the founders had made; it was Lady’s Lake, it had to be. But I wanted to leave that one for last. It felt like a closing of the circle, the culmination of the challenge, like something that should necessarily be done at the very end. But Caelia’s dream remained elusive, no matter how I racked my brain over what it might mean. Gareth had said something to me once, something quirky about his ancestor that had to do with sleep, or a pillow, or maybe a bed . . .
But whatever it was, he’d told me about it a decade ago, and now I just couldn’t quite put my finger on the memory.
Goose bumps still bunching my skin, I sat on the edge of Talia’s bed, dropping my head into my hands and I struggled to remember. Dream, sleep, rest, bed . . . with every passing moment in which I failed to piece it together, my panic grew. Gareth would’ve gotten it already; “Caelia’s dream” had been the clue he muttered to himself before he vanished from Castle Camelot. And though Harlows were technically the bookish ones, the history keepers best versed in the town’s secrets and lore, I knew better than to underestimate Rowan—who’d demonstrated strength, wit, and a bullish tenacity a lot like my own. If he ended up winning, I couldn’t really have any problem with it. It would be, in a way, Linden’s victory, too, which I could only be happy about.
But I couldn’t stomach the idea of another Blackmoore Victor, yet again; especially not Gareth Blackmoore, the Prince of Bastards himself.
And more than that, now that I’d committed to being her champion, I badly wanted to win this for Talia, wanted it down to my marrow.
“Where the hell are you, Caelia’s dream?” I muttered into my palms, pressing my hands into my eyes until muddy colors roiled like silt behind my lids. “And how the fuck am I supposed to find you?”
Then there was that same sudden shift of vision that had come over me the last time I’d been here, sitting with Talia on the windowsill—and I could feel Thistle Grove once again, as a natural extension of myself. This time it was even more shocking and inexplicable—I wasn’t even the Arbiter anymore—but I could still feel everything, with barely any expended effort. Every dip and ridge of its terrain, all of its hidden nooks and crannies.
And the shape of the magic that wound like connective tissue, or a river, through it all.
I was Thistle Grove, and Thistle Grove was me—and we were, the both of us, thrumming and alive.
It had grown late in my town, already well past midnight; the tourist crowds had mostly dispersed, withdrawn to their warm beds in hotels and the many charming B and Bs. But my awareness seeped outward to find the stragglers still wandering out from bars, their heels clicking on my cobblestones, their laughter and cigarette smoke floating on my chilled air. There were the shades drifting through my haunted woods, the cats perched on fences and slinking through the streets beneath my moon, the profusion of little animals scrabbling over the velvet green expanse of my common at the center of town.
And there was the tremendous boil of magic over Castle Camelot—where, in the courtyard, the Avramovs had formed a chanting circle around Talia, who was hovering suspended with her head thrown back and mouth wide open, darkness pouring out of her on a drawn-out scream like a banshee’s wail.
With an effort, I averted my awareness from that scene. I couldn’t do anything to help over there, and the pain it caused to witness it interfered with my equanimity, my colossal sense of town-self.
And there was something else I needed to see, a smaller disturbance in the graveyard. Another patch of magical irregularity, much more benign but still distinctive.
Caelia Blackmoore’s aboveground crypt in the Thistle Grove cemetery.
In an instant, I was there—standing inside the tomb, breathing in cold, stale air that had not been disturbed for centuries. There should have been nothing but darkness to see, but Caelia’s crypt was aglow with blue. In the middle of the space sat an enormous bed, canopied and opulent and fit for a queen, obviously bespelled to keep away the encroaching creep of rot. I could smell the white and yellow rose petals scattered across its pillows, fresh as the day the Blackmoores who’d buried their matriarch had strewn them there.