by Amber Argyle
She buried her face in his neck, breathing in his familiar scent of woods and smoke and sunlight. She splayed her fingers across the raised sigil—the White Tree that took up most of his chest and proclaimed him the future king of the Alamant.
The tension and fear left her in increments, her body losing its rigidity only to succumb to teeth-rattling shivers.
He took her pale, thickly freckled hand in his bronze one, pushed the copper tendrils of her hair away from her face, and kissed her temple. “Better?”
She’d missed this man. This husband of hers. Missed the safety of his arms and his ability to wield the ax and shield lying within easy reach.
“I will be.”
Denan rubbed her arm, seeming to need the reassurance of touch as much as she did. “The effects won’t last. Just ride it out. It will be all right.”
“Denan, if you hadn’t come for me …” Ramass would have taken her with him. Somewhere she wouldn’t want to survive.
“But I did. I will always come for you.”
There was a time when those words terrified Larkin; now, they gave immeasurable comfort.
“‘Blood of my heart, marrow my bone.’ Ramass said that to me, called me his. What does it mean?”
Denan’s grip tightened around her. He didn’t say anything for so long that she thought he wouldn’t answer. “It’s what they say to their slaves before they take them back to Valynthia.”
Valynthia, the ruined city the wraiths had corrupted, the heart of the curse that enslaved them all. He would have made her his slave. As Maisy had been. No wonder she’d gone mad.
“You’re safe,” Denan murmured.
For now.
The shivers lost some of their bite. She sagged, exhausted, in his arms. From her left, footsteps sloshed through a hollow of leaves. Sela ran toward them. She stopped short at the sight of Larkin, her wide eyes taking in the half of Larkin’s ruined, bloody dress that lay in tatters on the ground.
Larkin forced herself to stand, to give a watery smile. “We scared them away.”
Sela clamped her lips shut. Larkin’s heart fell. Somehow, she knew her sister was done talking for a long while.
Larkin wanted to curse the wraiths and cry at the injustice; the wraiths had no right to hurt any of them, least of all her sister. Instead, she took Sela’s hand.
Tam tipped his head back the way he’d come, his spring-blue eyes flashing. “Denan, you need to see this.”
Denan grabbed his weapons and motioned for Larkin and Sela to walk between him and Tam. They strode into the ring of trees.
Denan looked about in awe. “I thought all the arbor rings had fallen.”
“What’s an arbor ring?” Larkin asked.
“A place where the White Tree’s magic flares. They’re surrounded by an enchantment that renders them nearly impossible to find.” Denan studied her with pride. He clearly thought she’d found it.
She should tell him the truth—that Sela had been the one—but she needed the warmth of his gaze. Needed his approval. The truth congealed in her throat.
“The light is back,” Tam said.
A crescent of sunlight stamped out the black sky, washing the world in blessed light—light that would keep them safe from the wraiths.
Until night fell.
Tam and Denan led the way for Larkin and Sela through the press of pipers—all wearing leather armor and mottled clothing like dappled sunlight on the forest floor. The men bowed to Denan, their prince, but their eyes followed Larkin—some with curiosity, some with disapproval, some with reverence. But they were all looking.
Larkin kept her head down. Apparently, the rumors of her being the first woman with magic in nearly three centuries had spread. As had her escaping with Bane. She’d been trying to save him—how could she not try to save the boy who had saved her so many times?
But the pipers wouldn’t know that. All they would know is that she had escaped. Men had died to rescue her from the druids. Some of those men would have friends here.
At least Denan had managed to find her a tunic and trousers, so she didn’t have the embarrassment of wearing the stained skirt with his overlarge tunic. Larkin almost missed the corset—it had held in her bruised ribs, which ached fiercely.
Larkin heard the stream before she saw it—the singing of water slipping over moss-covered stones. Three piper guards watched her mother pace back and forth. She turned as Larkin and her friends came into view.
“Sela!” Mama cried, startling baby Brenna in her arms so she flailed. Mama pushed the baby at Larkin and scooped up Sela, scolding and crying at the same time. “You’re going to kill me if you don’t stop running off.”
Her brown eyes offered Larkin thanks. Warmth built in Larkin at the love behind those eyes. She may have inherited her freckles and bright copper hair from her father—curse his drunken hide—but her brown eyes were all her mother’s.
Larkin laid her infant sister on one shoulder, patting her bottom and shushing her. “She was talking before.”
Mama made a cry of relief. “Oh, Sela, sweetness, can you talk for Mama?”
Fat tears rolling down her cheeks, Sela adamantly shook her head and pulled back her sleeve, revealing a bloody scrape. Even at four, Sela knew the power of distraction. Larkin hadn’t even known her sister was hurt.
Mama sniffed and turned over her arm. “We need to wash it.” She carried Sela to the stream and settled her next to it. Sela squirmed, but Mama held fast, poured water, and rubbed at the scrape.
“What happened?” Mama asked.
The curse bound the tongue of any who knew the truth from explaining it to another. Mama knew about the pipers and Larkin’s magic. She didn’t know about the wraiths or the curse.
“Tam and Denan fought off a beast.” It was all the curse allowed Larkin to say.
Mama tugged Sela’s sleeve over the cut. “Oh, my girl, it will be all right in the end. You’ll see.”
Larkin remembered when she was a child of no more than ten. It had been so hot and dry that even the weeds were wilted. A sudden rainstorm had gusted over them. Larkin and Nesha had whooped and shrieked and slid down the muddy hill until Larkin had sprained her ankle.
Nesha had ducked under Larkin’s arm and helped her to their father. He’d scooped Larkin up in his arms and taken her to Mama, who wrapped her ankle with torn rags and gave her bitter, willow-bark tea.
Larkin was achingly aware of her older sister’s absence, of her father’s descent into drunkenness. That awareness came with a stab of pain; both had betrayed Larkin so thoroughly she could never forgive either.
Brenna arched her back and yawned, her gums and pink tongue visible. The baby would never know her father or oldest sister. Pity welled in Larkin—pity where relief should be.
Pushing her confusing emotions away, Larkin looked for Denan and found him huddled in conversation with Tam and Talox, who must have arrived while she was busy with her mother and sisters. Talox and Tam could not be more different. Tam reminded her of a fox—if a fox had curly hair, blue eyes, and a constant, impish grin. Talox reminded her of a huge, sleepy bull—gentle and soft-spoken until he stepped into battle.
Tam shifted, and she caught sight of a fourth man—Denan’s uncle, Demry. With their dark features and similar builds, uncle and nephew looked quite a lot alike. Demry had guarded her after the arson attempt on Denan’s family—a blaze set by Bane. She breathed out in frustration. Both the pipers and the druids wanted Bane dead. It made it awfully hard to keep him alive.
She snuck up behind the men and strained to listen.
“Can we make Ryttan before nightfall?” Denan asked.
Demry’s dark eyes glanced at the sky. “Not this late in the day.”
“Best make for the waterfall, then,” Talox said in his rumbling voice.
Denan nodded to his group of pages. The young men were always rotating in and out of duty, making it impossible for Larkin to keep them straight. “Give the signal. Our armies move out now.”
One of the boys lifted his flute to his lips and played a set of sharp notes. The pipers shifted into motion, packing up their sleeping pods and camps.
Denan pointed to one of his pages. “Engineers to take the lead. I want pikes and a trench dug.” Another page broke into a run, his too-big shirt flapping. “Captain Demry, you march next, arrow pattern.”
Demry gave a sharp nod and started off. He caught sight of Larkin and stopped in his tracks, his face shifting from determination to disapproval. “Princess.” He gave a curt bow and marched past her.
Larkin’s cheeks burned. As far as Demry knew, she’d run away from her husband with an attempted murderer. She awkwardly shifted the baby in her arms and approached Denan.
“We can’t leave,” Larkin said in disbelief.
“I have to see to my men,” Denan said. “Talox will take you to the center of our two armies. You’ll be safe. I promise.”
Larkin stepped in front of Denan, blocking him. “Bane and Maisy are still out there.” Maisy had disappeared in the night. And Bane—Denan had promised they’d rescue him from the druids.
Denan ground his teeth. “No one has seen Maisy.”
“We can’t just leave the poor girl.” Mama came up from behind Larkin, Sela gripping her hand.
“She’s the one who left the encampment,” Tam muttered.
Talox shot him a look. “Maisy knows the dangers of this forest better than most.”
“My men know who she is,” Denan said. “If she’s smart, she’ll follow. There’s not much else I can do.”
“Perhaps she went back to the Idelmarch?” Mama said.
“She’s been branded a traitor,” Tam said. “To return would mean death.”
“As I was branded a traitor,” Larkin ground out. “As was Bane when he saved our lives.”
Sela began to cry.
Denan shot Talox a look. “Pennice, Larkin, go with Talox.”
Larkin wasn’t going anywhere.
Not meeting her seething gaze, Talox took Brenna from Larkin’s arms. “Come along, Pennice.”
Mama planted her fists on her hips. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.
Denan shot a glance at Sela and stepped closer to Pennice, his voice dropping. “You’ve seen Larkin’s magic?” Mama nodded. “There is another kind of magic, as dark as Larkin’s is light. When night falls, they’ll attack. We need to reach a defensible position before then.”
Mama paled. “I left my home because I was promised my family would be safer with you than with the druids.”
“I swear by my life,” Denan said, “I will protect you and your daughters, Pennice.”
Tam leaned against his bow. “They won’t even get close.”
She looked at the three men, then at the pipers shifting through the forest around her. She addressed Denan, “You stole my daughter from me. Why?”
“He can’t tell you, Mama,” Larkin said. “Magic prevents it.”
Sela tugged on Mama’s skirts, begged to be picked up, and then buried her face in Mama’s shoulder. “The light magic or the dark?” Mama asked.
“Dark,” Larkin said. “You have to figure out the truth, as I did.”
Mama looked at Denan. “Perhaps you had a good reason for kidnapping my daughter and forcing her to marry you. Perhaps you didn’t. Either way, you have wronged us both.”
He bowed his head. “I will make it up to you.”
Mama stepped back. “You better.”
Talox motioned for Larkin and her mother to follow them while Denan headed off.
“Go on ahead, Mama. I’ll catch up.” Larkin hurried after Denan.
Lips pursed, Mama trailed after Talox.
“You promised we would go back for Bane,” Larkin said when she caught up to Denan.
Tam took one look at her and jogged ahead, out of earshot.
“I never said that.”
She rounded in front of him. “We can’t leave him to die!”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Rescue him.”
Denan let out a long breath. “How many men would it take to overpower the druid-led army inside Hamel’s fortifications?”
Hamel had been quiet, unimportant. She still didn’t understand why the army had come, why they’d built a fortified wall on the outskirts of her hometown. “I don’t … I don’t know.”
“Five hundred Idelmarchians with access to dampeners and defensive superiority.” Dampeners, made from the sacred tree, that rendered the pipers’ magic useless. “Even with my two thousand pipers, a prolonged siege would expose us to retaliation from Landra.” The Idelmarch’s capital city and the seat of the druids’ power. “We would have to take the city by force within two days. I estimate at least five hundred casualties. Perhaps a thousand.”
Bitter cold washed over her despite the rising heat. She wrapped her arms around herself.
Denan’s voice gentled. “Are you willing to face the mothers, wives, and children of the men who die to save your friend? And what about the men of Idelmarch? How many of them will perish?”
“Could we sneak in, like you did to rescue me?”
“Before the dampeners, yes.” He shook his head. “But not now.”
“So you’re telling me Bane is going to die and there’s nothing we can do about it?”
He sighed. “I can try to ransom him. Perhaps the druids would trade him for gold … but I don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
Ancestors. She rubbed at the ache in her chest. “How will we ever tell Caelia we left her brother behind?” Bane’s sister had been taken to the Alamant nearly a decade before.
Denan’s gaze dropped, his hands fisting at his sides. “Are you so eager to save him because he’s your friend, or is it something more?”
“Denan …” She trailed off.
“Why, Larkin? Why did you choose him over me?”
The pain in Denan’s eyes … She hadn’t meant to choose Bane. Not like that. But she supposed, in the end, she had. She reached toward Denan, but he flinched away from her touch. She hadn’t realized how badly she’d hurt him.
“He wouldn’t leave the Alamant without me,” she whispered. “I couldn’t let him die—not after everything we’d been through. I planned to take him home to Hamel, see my family one more time, then return to you.” Her eyes fluttered closed. Unless Denan managed to ransom him, Bane was going to die, and there was nothing she could do to help him. “You must think me very foolish.”
“No. Young, perhaps. Inexperienced in warfare, certainly.” He sighed. “We expect resistance from the taken—how could we not? But I thought … I thought you were growing to care for me. And when you escaped with the boy you had claimed to love so many times, I almost didn’t come after you, Larkin. If not for my promise that I always would …”
She swallowed at the lump in her throat. “I meant it when I said I chose you.”
He finally met her eyes. “No more running and no more secrets, Larkin. I can’t bear it.”
“No more running. No more secrets.” She risked reaching for his hand. He stared at her palm before taking it in his.
“I will send a messenger to the druids, offering a ransom for him. Will that do?”
She nodded, relieved. “Bane isn’t an enemy of the Idelmarch. The wraiths are the real enemy. Surely we can make the druids see that.”
“I wish it were that simple,” Denan said.
Still chilled from the wraith’s touch, Larkin shivered. “The druids can’t want the wraiths to win. There has to be a way.”
“If there is, we’ll find it.” He squeezed her hand. “Stay with Talox until I come for you.” He took off at a jog, caught up to Tam, and called out orders to his men by name.
Larkin glanced in the direction of her village. The ransom would work. It had to. She hurried to catch up to Talox. Through the heavy forest, Larkin caught glimpses of hundreds of pipers, their pied cloaks rendering them blurs of movement out of the corners of her eyes.
>
It was shocking how fast the Alamantians cleared out, how completely they melted into the Forbidden Forest.
The ancient, enormous trees of the forest blocked out the sun, leaving the pipers in cool shadows. They pressed through the leaf litter from the previous fall. The meat of the leaves had long since rotted away, leaving behind the skeletal traces of veins, delicate and lovely as a moth wing.
The forest smelled of death and life—the spiciness of green rot and the sweetness of new growth. But deep beneath the rich colors and smells, an undercurrent flowed—an undercurrent that gently buzzed against Larkin’s sigils as if it recognized her.
The White Tree was hundreds of miles away, seated deep within a lake inside a fortified city of trees. And yet it was here too. How had she not sensed it before?
Larkin heard the gentle rush of the spring long before she saw it. The smell came next—clean, cold water and moss. The spring bubbled up between black rocks before rushing into the forest.
It was the same spring she, Alorica, and Venna had stopped beside that first day in the forest. Alorica had convinced Venna to make a run for it. She’d been darted with gilgad venom for her trouble and carried for the rest of the day.
Venna was dead now.
Much of the army paused to drink, crushing the bright green moss against the rocks. Larkin took her turn drinking from the headwaters. She refilled her water bladder while Sela lay on her belly and drank straight from the source.
They moved downstream to let someone else have a turn. They found Mama leaning against a tree, nursing Brenna. Larkin handed her the waterskin. Her mother drained it in one go.
Larkin directed Sela to kneel beside her on the bank. Together, they washed the sweat and dirt from their hands and face—the midspring day had turned hot.
Crouched beside her, Talox shifted, water dripping from his chin. “I’ve my own needs to attend to. I’ll refill that waterskin and be right back.”
Mama watched until he was out of sight. “Tell me the truth, Larkin. Has Denan enchanted you? Because if so—”
“Did the druids tell you that?” Larkin shook out her tousled braid and rewove it. “You’ve felt the pipers’ enchantment. Their influence disappears with their music.”