“I’m about to pass my own wind if they don’t wrap this up,” the gargoyle muttered.

“For it is the Omens who rule Traum,” all five nobles said at once. “Omens who scrawl the signs. We are but witnesses to their wonders. Pupils of their portents.” They looked out over the knighthood. “Ever but visitors to their greatness.”

“Ever but visitors,” Benji said.

“Ever but visitors,” the knighthood echoed.

I said nothing.

A flint sparked and more idleweed was lit. Orange light perforated the trees, painting the entire glen a hungry orange hue.

Helena Eichel came onto the dais. In her hands was a velvet cushion with a gray object upon it. When she lifted it, my body seized.

It was a chime. Not like the others in the glen, fashioned of wood or metal—this chime was stone. Old, and strange. I’d seen it thousands of times before.

But only ever in my dreams.

“Take it in,” Helena Eichel said, scouring the crowd. “Listen to the wind. To the voice of the Faithful Forester, sounding between the trees.” She lifted her hand. Struck the chime. “And feel.”

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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE THE CHIME

The ring of the chime was beautiful. Steady, melodic.

But it split into me like a chisel. Suddenly I was fissuring, my mind cracking open. The glen of tightly woven birch trees became a blurred visage, and my thoughts became unmoored. I was everywhere and everything at once. Foundling, Diviner. Sybil, Six. I danced around a pyre in Coulson Faire, climbed a mountainous path in Fervent Peaks, rushed through bustling streets of the Seacht.

Then—familiar noises, echoing in the walls of my mind. Footsteps on the stairs in the Diviner’s cottage. A young Three and Five, laughing. A comb, tugging through Four’s dark hair. One, breathing long and low in her sleep. The batlike gargoyle, humming to me as I worked the wall.

The chime stopped ringing, and I was jolted back to the sacred glen, my mind righting. But then—gods, it rang again. Only this time the notes were not melodic. They were ugly, discordant—a horrible knell. Once again, my mind felt struck open, only now it hurt, disorienting agony radiating from my temples.

I heard the slosh of spring water. The abbess’s voice. “Strange, special… and new.”

When I looked down at my body, my shiny new armor was covered in pale, fluttering moths.

The chime stopped, and everything went quiet. My armor held no moths, just the reflection of licking flames. When I looked around for the gargoyle or Rory or Maude, the knighthood was not standing in a line as they had been. They were scattered among the trees, swaying on their feet. Some had their hands to their ears, others had their eyes shut—but all looked to be in a stupor.

It was the chime. The Faithful Forester’s chime.

The magical stone objects. Their abilities. Transportive, and destructive. The coin, the inkwell, the oar—those were all physical. But this, the chime, the sound of it, wasn’t a flickering of my corporeal self. It was as if my thoughts had been transported. When the chime had rung harmoniously, my thoughts had gone with it, taking me to the joyous corners of my mind. But when it had rung discordantly—

There was pain. Fear.

Strange, special… and new.

I coughed, smoke stinging my eyes.

Meanwhile, upon the dais, the ceremony continued. Helena Eichel, bleary-eyed, had set down the stone chime, and was holding a smoldering branch of idleweed out like a torch. All the nobles were. They turned in predatory circles around Benji, wielding the branches, stirring the air, smoke ghosting behind them.

The glen became blanketed by smoke. It put a lid over me, sedating my senses, burned my eyes. I faltered back a step.

My spine collided with armor.

“Have you smoked yellow idleweed before?” a voice said in my ear.

It took me a moment to recognize Hamelin with his face painted. “No.”

A noble with thin lips and gnarled knuckles bent low over Benji. His spine went rigid, but he did not resist. The noble inhaled idleweed smoke into her nose from her burning branch, seized Benji’s face—

And clamped her mouth over his.

I let out a curt breath. When the noble let Benji go, imbuing him with smoke, the clarity in the king’s blue eyes was already fading.

“They only ever burn it like this when a new king comes for a ceremony,” Hamelin murmured. “I’ve heard breathing it is like a fever dream. Your mind is thrown asunder. Prepare yourself for a treat.”

It’s not just the idleweed, I thought. It’s the chime.

All five nobles bent over Benji, filling him with smoke from their mouths. When they’d finished, the king was still on his knees, but he seemed unaware of it. He was swaying, as if he weighed too little—yet far too much. His eyes rolled back, and he began to hum in wretched harmony with the chimes.

The nobles watched him, satisfaction stealing over their painted mouths. They turned.

And set their smoldering branches loose on the knighthood.

The idleweed was passed from knight to knight, the process repeated. Not all partook. Those who did breathed in the smoke. Pulled in a second breath, then pressed his or her mouth over another’s—filling them with smoke like a tongue fills a mouth in an impassioned kiss.

I thought of Four, blowing idleweed into our mouths the night we visited Coulson Faire. How she’d told us of what life would be like away from the tor, transporting us into the future. How, in a soft cloud of smoke, I’d promised her a world where we would always be together.

How, without meaning to, I’d lied.

Next to me, Hamelin held a branch of idleweed. Breathed it into his nostrils, then turned to me. “Take a deep breath. You’ll like it.”

I shook my head.

Hamelin’s hand fell upon my shoulder. “Come, Diviner. Be mythical, be fearsome,” he said, echoing the words he’d said to me weeks ago, between kisses. He sucked more smoke into his nostrils, leaned his face toward mine. Whispered, “He’s a dark horse, keeping you close.”

He tried to blow the smoke into my mouth, his lips practically on mine.

I shoved him back. Hard.

He stumbled, as if the idleweed—and being twice denied by a Diviner—had made him unsteady. Hamelin looked up with lifeless eyes. Took a step toward me again.

And was brought to a wrenching halt.

Rory had his fellow knight by the face. He gripped Hamelin’s cheeks—pressed brutally. Hamelin coughed out smoke—and Rory sneered at him, slapping the idleweed branch from his hand. “Don’t fucking touch her again.”

Hamelin’s gaze darted from Rory to me, then to Benji in the distance, as if beseeching the king to put a leash on his knight. But Benji was on his knees upon the dais, swaying with shut eyes, leaving Hamelin no option but to lower his own.

When Rory let go of him, he blurred away, disappearing into the glen—into smoke.

I reached for Rory. “It’s the Faithful Forester’s chime,” I said. “When it rang, did your mind—did you—”

Rory caught my arm and pulled me against him. “Yes.” He winced against the smoke. “The idleweed isn’t helping. Or maybe it is. No one suspects a magic chime is twisting their thoughts when there’s this much smoke in the air.”

He reached to his belt. Withdrew a small knife, then cut the hem of his tunic into two strips. He held one to his face, covering his nose and mouth, then handed me the other. “This will help with the idleweed. That chime, however—”

Maude was suddenly there, and so was the gargoyle, their voices reverberating around me. She nodded at the dais. “We need to snag that chime from Helena Eichel while the others are too distracted by the smoke to—”