Torin frowned. He had no inkling what Hap was trying to express. And roaming the hills did nothing for his thinking either.
He decided to go to Sloane, a place he had been avoiding for fear of seeing Sidra. If Torin beheld her, he thought he might go mad. He might find himself unable to leave her side, unable to think critically about the riddle. And yet he needed Sidra’s knowledge again to move forward.
“Would you have chosen my wife to assist you here if she hadn’t been infected?” Torin asked Hap, who remained by his side, deep into the winding city streets.
Hap bit his lip before saying, “Yes.”
Torin snorted. “I knew it.”
“Sidra’s faith in us is profound. She gives us strength, as we give her ours.”
“And don’t forget to add your blight. You gave her that as well.”
Hap came to a halt. Torin took a few more steps before he felt shame, scalding the back of his throat. He paused, glancing at the hill spirit, who suddenly looked like he might crumble.
“The wind,” Hap said, the grass withering in his hair. “It was the wind. He blew the fruit to her. He put it in her path, and I . . . I couldn’t do anything about it.”
Torin opened his mouth, but Hap had gone, turning into the moss that rested between cobblestones.
Alone and full of bitterness, Torin continued to the castle.
When he approached Sidra’s chambers, he hesitated. He longed to see her, and he knew such longings were slowly undoing him, breath by breath. And yet he couldn’t bear watching the blight creep across her skin.
Daring to pass through the door, Torin was relieved to find the room empty. He approached her desk, where the tomes of her healing records sat. It took a few tries before the book would permit him to touch its pages, but soon Torin was leafing through it, examining Sidra’s entries, as well as the notes her grandmother had recorded before her.
If three of the riddle ingredients were plants, should there be a fourth one? An even number, reminiscent of the four points on a compass? The four powers of the wind? The four elements of the spirits? Thinking that perhaps the blood or salt or fire in the riddle was supposed to come from another flower, Torin searched the pages for it.
Balance, complements, contrast.
He mulled over Hap’s cryptic words, but he still couldn’t find meaning in them.
Sighing, Torin shelved one volume and withdrew another. These were recent recordings, all made in Sidra’s tidy handwriting, and his eyes were blurry by the time one account snagged his attention.
Torin’s treatment for an enchanted silencing wound, Sidra had written. What followed was recipe after recipe that had failed to heal him—until Sidra tried fire spurge.
His breath caught. He shut the book, his fingers absently tracing the scar on his forearm. He remembered now. The enchanted wound that stole his voice had been so cold. He remembered how the fire spurge burned through the discharge, bringing him back together slowly but steadily.
He ran through the castle, through the crowded streets. He reached the hills again and cried, “Hap? Hap!”
The spirit didn’t answer. Torin sagged, his loneliness keen. But his blood was humming, and he began to comb the fells for fire spurge. Sidra had described it in her ledger—she had found it in a shifting glen, and it grew in the cleft of the rocks.
Torin searched fruitlessly. Eventually, Whin appeared, watching him crawl on his hands and knees.
“What do you seek, mortal laird?” she asked, but her voice had turned cold, like frost on the grass.
Torin sat on his heels, gazing up at her. “I apologize for my careless words. I don’t hold the earth at fault for what’s happened, for Sidra’s illness. I spoke to Hap in anger.”
Whin sighed and repeated, “What do you seek?”
“Fire spurge,” Torin said. “It grows in one of the glens that shift. Can you guide me to it?”
Whin stared at him for a long, piercing moment. He thought she wouldn’t reply, but then she turned and began to walk toward a southern hill, wildflowers blooming in her footsteps. Torin followed. Down they went into a mist-laden valley. Whin came to a slow halt at the mouth of the glen, furrowed in the valley like a wound.
Torin would have never found it on his own.
He thanked Whin, but she remained quiet as she watched him step into the glen. The stone walls, beaded from the mist, rose high on either side of him. His breath echoed in this place, and he shivered, staring up at the rocks that embraced him. The fire spurge’s red blooms burned through the fog, drawing his eyes to a cleft.