“And this crux business—have you found yours?”
Petra’s lips quirked in a movement that could have been a smile or a grimace. “I’m working on it.” She leaned back. “When I first got here, I tried studying with Marta, learning the Selentium Vox, memorizing spells, understanding the history of magic. Marta says study takes her to a place where her soul feels whole, like her eyes are open for the first time, and that with those open eyes, she was able to see her potential cruxes in the subjects she studies, and that’s how she discovered hers.” Petra puffed a lock of hair out of her face. “But all I saw were dull old textbooks filled with dull old history lessons.” She glanced at the window. “The Duke encouraged me to look for it in physical ways. Exercise in the courtyard, he said. Spar with Frederika, he said. Ha! I can tell you one thing—I know myself well enough to realize that I’m not going to discover my crux by sweating in the snow.” She leaned forward with a smirk, a strawberry lock falling in her eyes, highlighting that fire that blazed there. “Mada Zola studied here six hundred years ago. She didn’t find her crux through any of the usual ways either. She was the first Pretty to find a crux through a creative path. Every morning that she was here, she climbed down the ravine and gathered clay from the riverbed, then began sculpting it. She let her mind go blank and allowed her hands to take control. For months she shaped nothing but meaningless lumps, and the other acolytes laughed at her. But the night before the Baths, after the Eve Feast had concluded, she stayed up late and her hands worked the clay into an etching of flowers. Lavender. She found dried lavender in the Duke’s storerooms and carried it into the flames with her. She was the only acolyte who didn’t burn. Guess who was laughing then.” She pushed back more loose strands of hair that had escaped her messy bun.
“So your plan is to experiment with mud?”
Petra’s grin vanished. “No. But Mada Zola was my mother, even if not biologically. I know I’ll discover my crux while doing something creative too. So while the other girls stay up all night with their noses in books or praying until their knees have bruises, I’ve been doing artwork . . . of a sort.” She hitched up the hem of her dress, exposing her calf and thigh.
Anouk’s eyes went wide.
Tattoos ran up Petra’s leg all the way from her ankle to her thigh. They weren’t like any tattoos Anouk had ever seen. Goblins adored tattoos, but theirs tended to be colorful and bizarre, things like squid tentacles holding teaspoons, and they changed them with a whisper every few weeks anyway. Petra’s tattoos were abstract, bands of indigo and black, some thin as a strand of hair and some as thick as Anouk’s thumb, with concentric circles at the curve of her calf.
“They’re beautiful,” she breathed, mesmerized. “Did you ink them into your skin yourself?”
Petra lowered her dress hem. Something prideful flashed in her eyes. “They aren’t done with ink,” she said. “It’s an ash I made myself. After a few weeks here, I started dreaming of the battle at Montélimar. The flames destroying the lavender fields. I realized that was a sign: something charred and transformed. I etched these tattoos with a sharpened chicken bone and all kinds of burned life-essence, but the answer was so obvious. Mada Zola’s crux was lavender. Mine is lavender ash—well, I think. I need a few more weeks to finish the tattoo I have in mind, see if a new dream comes to me.”
A bird cawed overhead and Anouk tipped her head up and studied the ceiling.
“It’s the falconry mews,” Petra explained. “They’re directly above our bedroom, in the abbey tower. It’s where the Duke keeps his birds and maintains communication with the Royals. It’s forbidden to the acolytes, except for Marta, who’s in charge of cleaning all the animal cages.”
Anouk’s hand drifted to her neck. “Does he keep it locked?”
Petra narrowed her eyes. “What are you scheming?”
Anouk leaned forward. “When he took my magic, he enchanted it into a ball of light that he trapped in a bell around Saint’s neck. You said yourself that it’s crazy to come here with only six weeks before the Baths. But it wouldn’t be crazy if I had my magic. Then I could whisper a spell in the library that would show me my crux.”
Petra didn’t look convinced. “Saint doesn’t live in the mews with the other falcons. He has a stand in the Duke’s chambers. They’re never apart, not even when the Duke is sleeping.” She tapped her chin. “If he sleeps. He’s always up roaming the halls with a book in his hand, even in the early hours of the morning.”
Anouk fiddled with her sweater sleeves, thinking.
Petra nudged Anouk’s knee with her toe. “Where’s that gorgeous jacket of yours? The Faustine.”
“I left it with Beau down in the cellar so he’d at least have a familiar scent. Would it really be so dangerous for him to be loose? The Duke assured me he’d be eaten.”
“Hmm. Maybe; these woods are mysterious. Mada Zola told me she thought she’d met her own double there, but it turned out to be some kind of mirror creature. And there are boys and girls made of snow—”
Anouk raised her eyebrows. “I met Jak.”
“You’re lucky. Jak is the most tenderhearted of them.” She reached out and squeezed Anouk’s foot. “The Duke put me in charge of his filing—it’s a nightmare of paperwork—but I have more free time than the others. I’ll go down and visit Beau when I can.” She yawned. “Dieu, it must be one in the morning. You’d better sleep if you have to be up at dawn to make breakfast. Actually, thank God you’re here. It’s been gruel for weeks.”
Anouk gave her a smile, not sure how to convey how glad she was that Petra was here. She peeled off the sweater and her layers of warm clothes, folded them, put them in the trunk at the foot of her bed, and changed into the loose cotton shift that Esme had included in the stack of clean clothes. She closed the trunk. Her heart ached for her old room, the townhouse full of books, the closets full of beautiful clothes. She was about to climb into bed, but marks on the lid of the trunk caught her eye. Girls’ names. There must have been hundreds, most of them so faded they were illegible. She grazed her fingers over the carvings.
“All the girls who have been here before us,” Petra explained quietly, lying down in her own bed and pulling a blanket up to her chin. “Most—if not all—of them dead now.”
A chill ruffled the hem of Anouk’s nightgown. Viggo had warned her about the Cottage. She pictured him at Castle Ides, playing checkers with Goblins while drinking brandy, and something pulled taut in her chest.
She considered opening the trunk again and taking out her mirror. Checking one more time to see whether Luc was still a mouse or if Rennar had kept his promise. But in such a small room, it would be impossible to hide the mirror from Petra. And though she trusted Petra, she didn’t trust the Cottage. Who knew what spy holes might be in the walls of their room, what girls or falcons might be listening outside the door? She couldn’t risk the Duke thinking that that she still had the use of magic. She sat on the trunk, frowning.
“Anouk,” Petra said in a serious tone, “how are you going to find your crux with just a few weeks left?”