Music curled up fromthe instrument, profound and alive, intertwining melodies and counter melodies, with harmonies so intricate they made her ache. Layers of sound washed over her and crept into her. She’d never heard anything more beautiful, more haunting, in all her life, and she felt like she was glimpsing Wen’s true self. Her guilt about kissing Caiden twisted deeper.
The music stopped, abruptly, Wen frowningand grabbing the pen from a little table at his left elbow and scribbling furiously all over the page he’d been playing. For several long moments he crossed out notes and wrote new ones, until the music was absolutely incomprehensible—at least to Talia—and then he sighed, and laid the pen down again.
“Why did youchangethat?” she said. “It was—it was perfect.”
Wen glanced up at her with a farawayexpression in his eyes. “It’s not the same as it is in my head.”
She thought of the music whispering from the sea and wondered what that would sound like to him. Wondered if he ever heard it, too. “It was still beautiful,” she said softly. She wanted him to play more, but she didn’t feel like she had the right to ask.
He looked away from her, studying the raina’s keys, the table with his penand inkwells. “Miss Dahl-Saida, did you want something?”
His sudden distant formality made the guilt gnaw sharper. “I wondered if you knew where Caiden was. He said I could take Avial out any day I liked, but he’s not in the stable, and—”
“He’s gone to settle a dispute between two of my father’s tenants. Some difficulty over a cow.”
“Oh.” She tried not to feel the disappointment crashing throughher like a black wave.
A hard line came into Wen’s face. “Was there anything else, Miss Dahl-Saida?”
She wanted to ask him how long Caiden would be gone and why he hadn’t said goodbye. But she didn’t. “Thank you for playing,” she told him, and left the room.
She penned a letter to Ayah in the garden, sitting on the stone bench by the ruined pool and the drooping willow. She’d left the lettersshe’d written aboard ship with Hanid, who had promised to see them posted back to Enduena as quick as may be, though they wouldn’t reach Ayah until the spring at least. She’d already given Ahned several new ones to post, and he’d frowned deeply but hadn’t refused her.
She dipped her pen in the inkwell.You’d probably love it here, it’s dreary and dreadful and awful. Rains nearly every day.
She scowled at the willow.
But I know you don’t want to hear about the weather.
Ro says there’s no telling how long Caiden will be gone—could be a day, could be three weeks. It’s absolutely maddening. What if he forgets about me? What if yesterday didn’t mean anything to him? What if he kisses every girl who turns up on his doorstep?
You always were the romantic, Ayah. If you were here, you’d convince me that I’m madly in love with Caiden and come up with some elaborate scheme to get me out of my betrothal to Wen. But I’m too sensible to imagine myself in love with a man I met five days ago.
At least I think I am.
But what do I owe Wen, anyway? What do I owe Eda? What’s to keep me from leaving this wretched house, stowing away on a ship, and finding my way back to you?
Raindropsfell suddenly on her paper, smearing the ink. She didn’t know the answer.
Chapter Nineteen
THE HOUSE SEEMED QUIETER WITHOUTCAIDEN. THEBaron stayed upstairs for meals. Wen spent hours in the music room. Talia tried not to let the boredom drive her mad.
And she tried not to listen to the constant, whispering music of the sea, drawing her toward something she didn’t want to understand.
But the hours stretched on as relentlessly as the ocean, and on the third day ofthis insanity she went back up to the library.
It was just how she’d left it—in rampant disarray, smelling of books and smoke and long-dead flowers, a moment of time frozen in a drop of amber. She still caught that sensation of power, sparking somewhere just beyond her vision.
She didn’t want to read, not really. Her eyes scanned the shelves and she felt the stories call to her, whispering inher mind to crack their spines and turn their pages and let the myths play out before her eyes. Wasn’t that why she’d come up here?
She decided to clean the place, instead.
She picked up all the books and returned them to the shelves. She collected the pieces of broken teacups and shattered inkwells into a little pile on the hearth. Then she swept up the ashes and dumped them in the dustbin.
With nothing else to do she paced around the chamber, wanting and yet not wanting to read more myths, to understand the extent of her mother’s madness and why she chose to take her own life. Why her mother left her to face the ghosts in this drafty old house all alone. Why the sea was now calling to her.
She grabbed a book at random off the shelf and dragged one of the armchairs over to the window,clouds still knotted gray above the sea. She sat down, and examined the book she’d chosen:Song of the Sea: Of Rahn’s Betrayal and the Doom of the Billow Maidens.
