by Amber Argyle
He’d come to prepare her, she realized. To make sure he hadn’t left any words unspoken before battle. She hurried after him, arms reaching, but by the time she left the alcove, he was already striding past Tam and Talox, his gaze fierce and dark.
Damp from the waterfall spray, she shivered. The two pipers faced her. Tam had the gall to wink.
Talox rolled his eyes at his friend. “Can you be serious for even a moment?”
Tam shoved him.
Talox barely shifted. “Denan has gone to battle a hundred times, Larkin.”
For half a moment, she wondered why they hadn’t started after Denan yet. After all, they were his personal body guards. Then she realized the truth—he’d left them to guard her.
“No,” she said. “Go with Denan. I’ll be all right.”
“I am,” Tam said. “Only Talox is staying. But I couldn’t miss the opportunity to tease you before I go.”
Talox smacked the back of Tam’s head. “His men love him, Larkin. They will not let him fall.”
Tam made a face. “I wouldn’t say love. A certain fondness, maybe.”
Larkin rubbed her throat. “You can’t know that. No one can.”
Talox didn’t disagree.
“He won’t be on the front lines.” Tam flipped his dagger, catching it by the hilt. “He’ll be directing his commanders and the reserves.” He cursed as he timed it wrong and sliced his finger. Sucking on the thin line of blood, he picked up the dagger. “After all, can’t have our prince dying.”
She flared her sigils, a blade and shield of golden light appearing in her hands. Tam dropped his dagger again.
Talox looked more determined than ever. “You haven’t been trained to use them.”
He was right. She’d only be in the way. She reluctantly dismissed them. “What can I do?”
Talox tugged his pipes out from beneath his shirt. “I could enchant you. When you wake, he’ll be there.”
She considered the gleaming flute. “No. If he can fight, I can wait for him.”
Talox tucked it back in his shirt. “Then I will wait with you.”
Tam turned on his heel. “Have fun guarding the women and children, Tal! I’m off to kill mulgars.”
She opened her mouth to berate him for being so flippant, but Talox rested his heavy palm on her shoulder, his eyes flashing as he called, “They stick you in a tree because you’re too short to reach over the shields.”
Tam spread his arms in challenge. “Why hide behind a shield when you can rain fire from above?” He started whistling.
Talox leaned over her. “Humor is how Tam deals with the fear and pain.”
“How can you stand it?” Larkin mumbled.
“You should try it. It helps.”
He led her downstream. Mama nursed the baby by the river while Sela curled against a gnarled root, her ear pressed to the bark and her expression dreamy. Talox guided them to a tall tree, where three men waited. He introduced them as Dayne, Ulrin, and Tyer. Dayne was tall and broad, dwarfing all the other men. Ulrin had a unibrow, the curve of which matched his mustache. Judging by his long hair, Tyer was married.
Ulrin and Dayne took the children and started up the tree Sela had been under. Tyer assisted Mama.
When Larkin moved to follow, Talox held up a hand. “Your family will be safer separated from you.”
Her mouth fell open in wordless protest. “But—” She stopped herself from saying she needed to protect them. Talox was right. If the wraiths were after Larkin, her family was safer away from her.
Mama hopped down from the tree. “We will stay together.”
Talox’s expression gentled. “The dark magic is after Larkin specifically. Your little ones need you. I will look after Larkin.”
Larkin’s eyes slipped closed. She hadn’t wanted Mama to know the wraiths hunted her.
Tears welled in Mama’s eyes. “How is this safer than the Idelmarch, Larkin? We would have been better off with the druids, and you know how much I hate the druids and that worthless queen.”
It was easy to forget that the Idelmarch had a queen. Iniya Rothsberd had lost her power to the druids decades before Larkin had been born. They’d even kicked her out of her own castle.
“There are two thousand men between me and the—” Wraiths. Larkin choked, the curse stopping her mouth. “The dark magic. This is just a precaution.”
Mama wrapped her arms around herself. “We’ve all been cursed, haven’t we?”
Larkin blinked in surprise. Her mother was a smart, brave woman. “Yes, Mama. And I’m going to break it.” Certainty burned in her chest. But then her gaze shifted to Sela, resentment flaring. Larkin shook herself. Sela was her sister. She loved her.
Mama wiped her cheeks and shot Talox a fierce look. “You bring her back safe.”
He bowed. “On my life.”
Mama turned without a word and took Tyer’s hand. Larkin watched as the three soldiers helped her family up the tree.
Talox touched Larkin’s arm. “This way.”
She looked toward where the sun had been cleaved in half by the horizon. With one last glance at her mother and sisters, Larkin climbed another tree far enough away she couldn’t make out her family through the forest between them. There, she settled in to watch the last of the daylight die.
The sun had long since disappeared beneath the horizon, and still the mulgars had not come. Inside the camp, guards patrolled the shadows beneath the trees. Archers had strapped themselves to the perimeter trees. Foot soldiers waited taut beneath them.
Beyond, the engineers had chopped down a line of trees—the trunks of which had been strategically piled in the center and alighted, while the branches had been lashed together to create rows of pikes before a shallow trench.
The forest was eerily quiet; even the wind had died. Larkin had slept so little and been so worried over the last few weeks that her body felt wrung out. Her eyes burned whenever she blinked. Despite her declaration that she would wait and watch, she fell asleep in a pod stretched tight between two branches.
It was the smell that woke her first. A pervasive decay of rotting flesh. Heart thudding in her throat, she sat up, eyes shifting to where Denan had been last, near the center of the line, behind the soldiers. He wasn’t there. She climbed out of the pod. The edge caught her foot. She grabbed a branch to steady herself; the drop to the forest floor seemed very far away.
“There.” Talox pointed to the right. Denan’s shield gleamed in the firelight as he called to his men and gave orders to his captains. One of the archers called a warning. Pipers moved into battle formation two rows deep. The first row held short swords and huge shields. The second carried spears.
She sat in her pod, legs dangling. “Wraiths?”
He shook his head. “They’ll be far back from the sacred arrows, driving the mulgars forward.”
“But I can smell them.”
He shook his head. “It’s not as old or as oily.”
She sniffed. Talox was right. The smell was that of a fresh corpse just starting to turn. Not that of old rot and the grave. “What is it, then?”
“Mulgars. Thousands of them.”
No sooner had he spoken than the first mulgar broke away from the line of trees. She wore what was once a fine dress. Black lines etched her face and disappeared into mismatched armor. She hadn’t managed two steps before she fell, body bristling with arrows.
Hundreds of mulgars burst from the forest’s shadows, the firelight etching their faces with darkness. Aside from the pounding of hundreds of feet, they didn’t make a sound. Not as arrows bristled from their flesh, black blood dripping. Not as the first dozen fell upon the pikes or the dozens and dozens after them. Bodies piled up two and three deep. Still, they kept coming, leaping over their fallen without pause.
“Do they not feel pain?” Larkin asked.
“They know only the will of their masters.”
More and more poured from the trees. “Where did they all come fr
om?”
“The Valynthian side of the Forbidden Forest.”
The first few reached the Alamantian line. Spears stabbed from above, swords from between shields. More mulgars fell, dying without a sound. Limping on leg stumps or stepping on their own spilling entrails, they fought until death. Their faces remained blank, empty.
They had been human once. They were not anymore.
“Are my mother and sisters watching this?” Larkin asked in a choked voice.
“Their guards will keep them asleep,” Talox said. “As I should be doing.” Yet he made no move to his flute.
She shifted to look at him, the pod swaying beneath her. “Then why are you allowing me to watch?”
“You have been chosen as a warrior, Larkin. This will be your life someday.”
Pipers called up and down the line. The first man fell, his hands gripping his side. A reserve soldier moved to replace him, while a pair of healers lifted the man on a stretcher and carried him to the healers’ tent.
“How can I be a warrior if I’m a wife and mother?” Most women alternated between pregnant or nursing well into their forties.
“There are herbs to prevent children—or to limit them, if you chose.”
“Such things are myths.” Mama had always said so. As the town midwife, she should know.
“Perhaps for the Idelmarch,” Talox said.
If such a thing were possible, Larkin could live whatever kind of life she wanted. She could choose. “Am I not also chosen to be queen? To break the curse?”
“A queen is a warrior of necessity in times like these.”
She gripped the edges of her pod. “I’m not sure I would choose it.”
Talox shrugged. “Sometimes it’s not what we choose, but what chooses us.”
His words niggled at the doubt buried deep inside her. What if she hadn’t been chosen at all?
Denan rotated his front line out. Carrying their injured, they retreated to safety. They rested, drank water, and bound up flesh wounds. Some lay down, but most kept their eyes on the mulgars.
Talox rubbed his head. “Own your destiny, Larkin. Whatever it may be.”
“What if I’m not any good as a warrior?” What if she was nothing more than the first woman with magic? A coincidence of timing and nothing more?
“You were chosen by the White Tree. She can see things inside us that we can’t see on our own.”
In the healers’ tent, a soldier started screaming—screams that sounded eerily similar to the ones Venna had made. Larkin closed her eyes against the memories assaulting her. Venna fevering in her arms. The black lines climbing her skin, bleeding into her eyes. The madness that had taken her before she’d tried to kill Larkin.
Larkin started to rise. “I should assist the healers.”
Talox’s hand closed over her shoulder. “The wraiths can’t sense you in the trees.”
“But the wards …”
“We don’t want the wraiths to have a handle on where you might be—they can sense you sometimes, if you leave the trees.”
Even surrounded by water, fire, and two thousand men, she wasn’t safe. Larkin gritted her teeth. If she was to be a warrior, she would defeat the wraiths, once and for all. “Will you teach me? To kill them?”
Talox gripped a knife, as if merely talking of the wraiths made him anxious. “Wraiths cannot die. They can only be sent back to the shadow.”
If the curse could be defeated, even in part, surely there was a way to defeat the wraiths. “Then teach me that.”
He watched the battle. “Four wraiths with three centuries of experience. They are the greatest warriors to have ever existed and wily as a pack of wolves. You do not defeat the wraiths—not alone.”
The day before, Denan had charged the wraiths while Tam loosed from a distance. “Archers. You use archers.”
Talox nodded to the front line. “That’s why you don’t see any of the wraiths now. One arrow will weaken a wraith. Two or three will send them back to the shadow. If you must fight them hand to hand, keep an archer nearby to end them the moment there is a clear line of sight.”
“Does no one ever defeat them hand to hand?”
“Not often. Not when the merest cut of their blades turns one into a mulgar.”
“But I have an advantage.” When the wraiths had been waiting outside the arbor ring and she’d been certain she was doomed, she’d flared her shield and nearly sent all of them back to the shadow. “I can pulse.”
A wicked smile curved his lips. “Can you imagine what a dozen women with magic could do?”
It would change everything.
She flared her sword—a curved, cutting blade with a tip for thrusting. It gleamed with a faint gold light in the pitch dark.
Talox plucked a leaf and ran it against the edge. It sheared in half with the merest pressure. “A blade this sharp can be as dangerous to the person wielding it as their enemy. Not to mention that the light draws attention. Lore has it the ancients could shift between weapons. Even vary the sharpness and brightness of the blade. You need to figure out how before you end up in trouble.”
“Perhaps if I lessen the flow of magic.” Larkin constricted her sigils, and the blade dimmed to the faintest outline of light, like the reflection of moonlight across glossy leaves.
Talox tested another leaf. It didn’t cut at all. He ran his thumb across the edge and then pressed harder. “Good. Much safer for you, anyway.”
And it would use up less magic.
“Now,” Talox went on. “See if you can change the shape.”
With a thought, she made it into a knife. Then a dagger. A two-handed blade. Awed, she flared her shield and changed it from round to square.
Below them, a man was screaming. Two soldiers dragged him between them toward the healers’ tent, blood gushing from his leg. She rubbed at the lump in her throat. “How do you bear it? How do any of you bear it?”
“That’s enough for tonight.” Talox tugged out his pipes and played—the music full of drowsy sunshine and droning bees. Larkin tried to stand, but her legs didn’t want to move. Come to think of it, she didn’t want them to move either. She was too comfortable and sleepy. Her horror melted away into contented dreaminess.
“But I have on a dampener,” she protested, though she didn’t want him to stop playing. Denan had given it to her when he’d tried to rescue her. It made her resistant to piper enchantment.
Talox held up her chain with the amulet and dampener, which was shaped like a curving leaf.
The lying cheat. “I’m staying awake for Denan.” Why was she staying awake for Denan? Sleeping was a better idea. She couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore.
The branch shifted. Her legs were lifted into her pod, a blanket tugged over her. “You aren’t doing yourself any favors by being too exhausted to march tomorrow,” Talox said. “And none of us will be in any kind of shape to carry you.”
Without his constant enchantment, she nearly succeeded in opening her eyes. She should get up. But she could no longer remember why. He began to play again, and sleep stole her away.
The sun was a distant sliver on the horizon. The last of the daylight swallowed up by darkness. Her fingers were locked tight around a hand. Bane’s hand. Though she didn’t dare turn around to look, she recognized the size and shape. Even the callouses were familiar to her.
Her head whipped from side to side, desperately searching for a tree to hide in. It was too late. The wraiths were behind her—though for once she couldn’t smell them. They chased her and Bane. She tugged hard on his hand, trying to get him to run faster.
Then his hand was gone.
The sleeping pod shifted, freeing Larkin from the nightmare.
Cold arms wrapped around her, cinching her tight against an equally cold—and very bare—chest. Shifting, she curled into Denan, breathing deep the scent of his soap to chase away the last of the fear.
Suddenly, she remembered the battle from the night before. Her eyes flew
open to find Denan watching her, early morning light softening the scars on his cheeks. Light that would keep them safe from wraiths. She examined his face, searching for signs of pain or injury. “Are you all right?” she asked breathlessly.
“The mulgars broke away before dawn. Demry’s army is pursuing them.”
The branch beneath her shifted. Talox slipped down the tree. Her eyes narrowed to a glare.
“Talox did me a favor,” Denan said. “You too, if you’d admit it.”
“Denan …”
He traced the planes of her face with his fingertips. “Your freckles remind me of stars. I wonder if I could map out constellations to guide my way to your mouth.” He bent down and kissed her, lips soft. Then he pulled her tight to his side. “I need a few hours of sleep while the reserves pack up the camp and start transporting the wounded.”
He flung the other arm over his face. His dark lashes brushed against his cheeks. The dark gold of his skin gleamed. His hair had grown longer, a bristling that felt soft and prickly at once beneath her fingers.
“You’re looking at me. I can tell.” He peeked at her through one slitted eye. “What is it?”
He’d kidnapped her, stolen her from her life and her family. And yet, from the first moment they’d met, he’d been willing to die to protect her. In every moment since, he’d proven he would live for her too. And just now, he’d called her freckles stars.
Warmth swelled in her chest, filling her until she thought she would burst. She leaned forward, pressing her lips gently to his before pulling back.
He tried to blink the sleepiness from his eyes. “What was that for?”
Emotion clogged her throat. She wanted to push it down, force it away, but he’d gone to battle last night. He’d said the things he needed to say. She had not.
“Little bird?” he prompted when she remained silent.
She forced herself to meet his gaze. “I love you too.”
His eyes widened, nostrils flaring. Joy seeped around his mouth. He bit his bottom lip, as if to keep the emotion from showing. “But?”