Blythe did not blink. Did not breathe or even twitch her lips. The only sign that she’d heard Signa was in the shaking hand she wound around her stomach, as if holding herself in. And when Blythe finally did speak, exhaling unsteadily, she became winter incarnate, each word raging with the force of a tempest.
“I want you gone from Thorn Grove by morning.”
Nine words, Blythe had whispered. Nine words, and Signa felt any remaining happiness she had slip from her grasp.
Without leaving any room for rebuttal, Blythe gathered her skirts and fled the stables. All Signa could do was sit, numb and hollow, as she watched the foal bend to eat its hay.
TWENTY-THREE
SIGNA GAVE LITTLE THOUGHT TO WHAT SHE DID NEXT. THINKING would require feeling, and she had no desire to suffer through anything of the sort. Not yet.
Moments after Blythe had fled, William returned in a panic to find Signa hugging her knees, unblinking as she watched the foal.
“Miss Farrow?” Fear edged his voice.
Had she been able to see herself, Signa might have understood why he drew a step back as she stood to face him. She would have seen the wildness in her eyes and the straw in her hair. Would have seen the way she flexed her fingers as though her nails were claws, and the pain that cracked her expression like a porcelain cup. One wrong word, one wrong move, and she would shatter.
“Leave me alone.”
“It’s getting late,” William whispered. “I’ve come to accompany you back to the manor.”
She cut him a look so scathing that his mouth snapped closed. Only after a long moment of staring down at the foal did he step inside and scoop it into his arms. “Stay as long as you’d like, then. But I’m putting the foal with his mother.” William said it like a question, so Signa nodded. It would be better that way, if she didn’t have to look at the foal—at proof of what she was, and the impossibility of what she’d done.
She waited for William to disappear. For the noise around her to settle into swishing tails and softly stamping hooves before she tilted her head up at the ceiling, shut her eyes, and asked, “You’re still here, aren’t you?”
Signa was met by a wave of icy air, and a voice that slipped through her mind like the finest velvet. Of course I am.
“I brought a foal back to life.”
You brought a foal back to life, Death repeated without a hint of emotion to betray his thoughts. The silver in your hair is gone, as well. How are you feeling?
The question was so ridiculous that she couldn’t contain her bitter laughter. How was she feeling? God, she couldn’t even begin to process it.
Tell me how I can help, Little Bird. Signa knew he pressed closer when her fingertips numbed from the chill of his body. Tell me how to make this better.
That was just it—there was no making it better, and the reality of that was sinking in too quickly to process.
“I feel like I’m being pulled in a thousand directions.” The admission was quiet, whispered from her most fragile depths. “I’m tired of people being afraid of me. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not enough. No matter what I do, I’m disappointing someone. But the one I truly feel most disappointed in is myself, because I hate feeling like this, Death. I thought I was done.”
Death’s voice came as easy as the autumn breeze, sweeping in and lulling her into its comfort. If people are afraid, he said, then let them be afraid. Your shoulders were not meant to bear the weight of their expectations, Signa. You were not made to please others.
He was right. Despite the result, Signa did not regret telling her cousin the truth and unburdening herself of this secret.
Signa had tried to please Blythe; she had made herself feel as though she were burning from the inside out to bring the foal back to life. Yet doing so hadn’t mattered at all. None of it mattered. Signa had made her choices, and now it was time for her to own them.
Still, she would mourn all that she would miss, like sneaking into Blythe’s room for gossip at all hours of the night, listening to ridiculous family banter over dinner, laughing with her about whatever ridiculous thing Diana said or did at tea. There would be no more rides with Mitra, or seeing Lillian’s garden once it healed from the fire and managed to bloom again. She wouldn’t even have Death’s voice in her head to help ease the transition if Fate continued to keep him from her.
Signa would be fully and utterly alone.
“You asked me what I want,” Signa said at last, fingertips curling in the hay, “and it’s to know that you’re not going to leave me, too. No matter what I am or am not. No matter what your brother tries; tell me that you’ll be by my side.”