by Hanna Howard
“I’ve got her, Yarrow!” roared Linden. “Get out!” To me he added, “Merrall and Elegy—?”
“Climbed . . . out the window . . .” I choked.
“Out!” Linden gasped, hustling me forward.
I inhaled a lungful of smoke as we passed through the door, but Linden held me fast, both of us choking as we hurried down the steps of Freda’s house. It wasn’t until we reached the ground that I fully realized what was happening.
It wasn’t just Freda’s house that was on fire; it was the whole forest.
Everywhere, people were running pell-mell, screams puncturing the smoky air, and in the distance I thought I heard the clash of steel and the thunder of hooves. Linden and I sprinted toward the trees.
And then, out of nowhere, three men in black-and-silver livery appeared between the tree trunks, and I felt like I had been pitched backward in time, into the Forest of Eli. The men stopped at the sight of us, staring at me as if they couldn’t believe their luck. One of them took a wary step back, but the other two exchanged a look of triumph.
“Get her!” the largest of them cried, lunging forward with his sword raised.
I reacted instinctively, shoving Linden behind me and flinging up a sunshield. The sword connected with the barrier and slipped to one side. The soldier stumbled right into the golden, shimmering wall with a crackle, and his clothing ignited. He screamed and stumbled back, flailing against the flames.
As the burning soldier’s comrades fumbled to help him, I withdrew the sunshield and hurled a burst of sun energy from each hand, catching both men across their steel breastplates. They too screamed at the heat, clawing at their chests, and Linden and I bolted past them, farther into the trees.
I was shaking, trying and failing to take deep breaths. Something blurred my vision, and I blinked against it. Where were the others? And why—why—had Briar refused to listen to Yarrow’s warnings? I clung to Linden’s hand, still coughing, and then—
We burst into a clearing as three more people charged through the trees opposite us: Yarrow, Merrall, and Elegy. My legs went weak with relief. I dropped Linden’s hand and started toward Yarrow just as he raised his Runepiece with a look of determination.
There was a flash of silver light, a feeling like cotton filling my head.
The world around me disappeared.
I woke with an incredible pounding in my head and a layer like parchment over my eyes. Breathing in earth and smoke, I shifted my sore limbs and blinked. The parchment obscured my vision with an odd, greenish-yellow light. Raising an arm that felt heavier than stone, I shifted the obscuring layer aside and found cool air above.
It wasn’t parchment at all; I was covered head to foot in leaves.
I started and pushed myself to sitting. Leaves fell away like feathers from a molting bird. I had been lying in the narrow hollow between two thick tree roots, too tight a fit to be an accident. My skull was throbbing, and my sense of up and down felt nebulous.
I struggled to my knees and squinted through the trees, many of which were charred and blackened. Smoke drifted like fog through the branches above me, and the stench of burned wood and what smelled like meat was powerful enough to make me gag. I was still in the resistance village—I could see a burned-out elf house some distance to my right. The silver light filtering through the Darkness was fading, which meant it was late afternoon. There was no sound apart from the wind in the leaves. How long had I been unconscious? An entire day?
I swayed as I tried to stand, and put a hand to my head. Linden’s flower tiara was somehow still there, though slightly crooked. I straightened it.
“You’re awake!”
I wheeled to find Elegy charging toward me, her long gray hair dirty and plastered in strands to her ghostly face, which was even paler than usual and streaked with mud. Her old tattered dress was filthy—completely smeared with dirt, soot, and dried blood—but I felt faint with relief at the sight of her.
“Elegy!” My voice came out in a croak. “What happened? Why was I—?” I gestured around my feet at the leaves.
“To keep you safe,” she said, reaching for my hands. Hers were cold and trembling, and her voice was shrill. “Y-Yarrow didn’t want the soldiers to find you. He thought they might not kill the others if they couldn’t catch you. They would want them for bait.”
“Bait?” I blinked at her, waiting for her words to make some kind of sense. “What do you mean, Elegy? Might not kill what others?”
“The soldiers tracked us,” she said wildly, her luminous eyes darting around the clearing. They were red and swollen, I realized with a stab of fear, and new tears were gathering in them. “They wanted you, and Yarrow knew you’d never agree to hide, so he enchanted you and hid you—” Her fingers were trembling in mine, and I hugged her mechanically, rubbing her back with numb hands.
“It’s okay, Elegy,” I said, barely controlling my panic. “Just tell me what happened.”
She took a few deep breaths. “The soldiers—Iyzabel’s men—b-burned everything. They kidnapped a few and k-killed as many others . . . as they could. Yarrow told me . . .” She swallowed and squeezed her eyes shut. A stream of tears issued from beneath each eyelid. “He told me to hide and watch your spot . . . to m-make sure no one found you.”
“You said the soldiers might spare the others? Who—” I faltered. “Who did they take?”
She shuddered. “They took c-captives . . . to draw you. Merrall, L-Linden . . . and Prince Eamon.”
A funny lightness swept through my head, and the next moment I found myself on the ground again, trying not to vomit.
“And Yarrow?” I made myself look up at her. Her face was scrunched in a silent sob.
“I-I’m s-sorry, Siria,” she gasped. “I’m really, r-really sorry. There was n-nothing I could do—there were so many, even too many for his magic—”
“It’s not your fault,” I heard myself say, my voice muffled and far away. I felt that I ought to stand up and hug her again, but I could not.
Instead I simply watched her, a pale little wisp of a girl who was far too young to bear such weight, as she pressed dirty knuckles into her eyes and wept for the best father I had ever known.
47
CHAPTER
Take me to him,” I said eventually. Standing up felt like the hardest thing I had ever done.
Her swollen, violet eyes widened.
“It’s all right, Elegy. Just take me to Yarrow, please.”
Still shaking with tears, she started back through the trees. I followed, feeling like I was made of wood. My emotions were strangely inactive, as though someone had trapped them deep inside me.
We arrived on the south side of a lane of tree houses, where only the backs of a few smoldering, ruined homes were visible. Bodies lay everywhere on the churned, trampled earth, some marred by a single fatal wound, others rendered unrecognizable by fire or sword. My stomach heaved as I looked at them—people I’d eaten with and danced among only yesterday—and I immediately understood why I had smelled burned meat. My trapped emotions quavered, and my legs stopped moving. I did not want to see what damage had been done to Yarrow. But I also knew I wouldn’t believe he was dead until I had seen his body.
Elegy picked her way through the corpses and stopped beside a bloody shape half-covered in a thick traveling cloak. I felt numb all over. Elegy slipped her small hand inside mine and squeezed it.
I forced my neck to bend, forced my eyes to remain open.
Yarrow’s body was riddled with minor cuts and gashes, but the fatal blow had clearly been the stab wound in his abdomen, which, in spite of being covered by his cloak, had bled so heavily through the wool that the stain looked almost black. He blurred out of focus as I looked down at him—at his skin, turned yellowish-gray, his familiar mouth gaping slightly open—but I was relieved to find his eyes were closed. I did not think I could bear to see them blank and lifeless.
The anguish I had not yet felt reared its head then, but I
didn’t glow—didn’t burn—and the pain that should have blazed like molten fire spread like ice through my veins and made me so cold and weak I could not hold myself up. My teeth clanged together until the chattering was all I could hear.
I crumbled toward Yarrow, one knee banging the ground and the other jutting alongside me like a broken wing. I felt furious he was gone, furious enough to rip my own hair from my head, yet the yawning gulf opening inside me stole my strength and kept me from even pounding my fist against the muddy ground, as I longed to do. A broken sound came from my throat, somewhere between a groan and a sob, punctured by gasps as I tried to draw in air. I did not want to be here—didn’t want to be anywhere—without Yarrow alive. With this hole widening inside me like an abyss. My head felt like it would split from the pressure behind my eyes. It was too much to find release in mere tears.
I took his arm—the closest part of him I could reach—and pulled it out from beneath the cloak, wanting to hold his hand. His hand . . . I could feel no curiosity about it, but as I lifted it, I saw that there was something in Yarrow’s hand.
Clutched in his stiff fingers, muddy and slightly crumpled, was an envelope made of black parchment.
Without really caring what it was, I tugged it from his grip. The seal was broken, but I could see what it had been: a raven set behind the letter U, in green wax. The envelope was addressed to The Lady of Light, Miss Siria Nightingale.
I removed the green parchment inside with cold fingers and pried it open. It was covered in swirly black script:
Your attendance is requested at the Black Palace of Umbraz To honor the queen of Terra-Volat with a masquerade ball To take place at midday on the date of the vernal equinox. Celebrations to include feasting, dancing, and a royal blood sacrifice.
SHADOW IS MIGHTY AND WILL PREVAIL
For a full minute, I stared at it. I barely noticed when Elegy pulled the parchment out of my hand to read it herself. Then my brain, like a rusty and unwilling machine, creaked into motion. What had Elegy said? That the soldiers had taken Linden and Merrall and Eamon to use as bait?
I took the parchment back from Elegy.
Celebrations to include feasting, dancing, and a royal blood sacrifice.
Iyzabel’s men had come for me, but they had not succeeded in capturing me. Iyzabel had probably guessed that, failing my capture, I would want to rescue my friends and my brother, so the soldiers had kidnapped them and left Yarrow, the greatest threat to Iyzabel’s plan, dead with an invitation they must have known I would find.
On the afternoon of the vernal equinox.
This meant Iyzabel knew our plan. On another day, it would have twisted my mind to think how she had learned it—Had she guessed? Were we betrayed?—but now the mystery was almost uninteresting. The queen presumably believed like Yarrow that the magic of the equinox would work in my favor if I were in direct sunlight at midday, so she had devised a plan to make certain I would come south at the equinox if her men could not capture me.
Eamon.
Iyzabel was going to kill him. The skin crawled up my arms as I remembered the queen had eaten at least one person’s heart in her lifetime. What would she do to him? Did she have some sinister purpose for him, or was the threat on his life simply motivation to send me into her clutches?
Without really noticing how I had gotten there, I found myself bent forward over my knees with my face to the ground, tears making mud beneath my cheek while I clutched the invitation on one side and Yarrow’s arm on the other. Rage and loss swelled, and I screamed into the sodden ground until my throat felt like it was tearing.
I did not know what to do. Despair crashed through me in waves, again and again, mercilessly. Yarrow was dead, Linden was gone. Iyzabel was going to kill my brother on the only day I had any chance of becoming strong enough to stand against her, and even if I went to Umbraz now, weak and helpless, to try and save him, I would have no defense. I was only one person—two, if I was heartless enough to drag along a twelve-year-old, powerless banshee as well—and I was empty of sun energy and crippled by grief. And the Darkness of Umbraz, I remembered only too vividly, could suck my power dry even when I was strong.
I clutched Yarrow’s hand harder, because there was nothing else to hold on to, and at first I was shaking too badly to realize what was hidden inside his wrist like a miracle. But as I quieted, pressing my thumb against his veins, I began to feel it.
Faint, fading, like a guttering candle at the end of its wick, but still, somehow, there.
A pulse.
48
CHAPTER
I flung myself up, spluttering through mud and grit. “Elegy!” I gasped. “He’s not dead!”
“W-what?”
I pulled her down by the hand and pressed her fingers against his wrist. Her eyes widened, but quickly clouded over again.
“Siria,” she said quietly, “his pulse is almost gone. I don’t need the Sight to know what comes next.”
“No, no—you don’t understand!” I cried, swiping furiously at the hair and dirt clinging to my cheeks. “I can heal him! Yarrow said it himself—I can heal people!”
I knew I sounded feverish, even hysterical, and judging by the look on Elegy’s face, she thought I was grasping at irrational hope. I ignored her, though, and lifted the cloak from the stab wound in Yarrow’s stomach. It was ghastlier than I had feared, but I gritted my teeth and covered it with my shaking hands, drawing my focus inward to my sunspot.
I had realized the energy was all but depleted, but I still swore aloud when I found it empty. I flung my mind toward the hazy clouds, even as a tense voice chanted in the back of my mind, Hurry, hurry, hurry! He is dying, he is dying.
I dragged sunlight into myself as quickly as I could, feeling it burn inside my chest. With more concentrated focus than I had ever put toward any task, I closed my eyes and sent the energy into my hands, imagining it as a thin, golden thread, ready to knit his wounds back together.
At first it merely glowed warm in my palms. Then, as sweat broke out on my forehead, I felt the golden filament begin to heal the scrapes and minor burns on my hands. Yet the energy seemed reluctant to move out of my body. Be master of your emotions, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut and pounding my focus into one single, unified idea: Heal Yarrow!
It was like forcing a frayed thread through the eye of a needle, and I felt I had been sitting in the mud for hours before I sensed it obeying me at last. Unlike firing bursts of sunlight, however, this energy did not disconnect from me when it seeped into Yarrow; rather it seemed to tie me to him.
I faltered as my consciousness followed the light into his wound. There was much more damage than I had counted on, and I could feel my sunlight draining quickly. I didn’t dare break focus to reach for more, though, and I could feel myself shaking with the effort of holding on. But I could also feel tiny, incremental changes in Yarrow’s wounds. Only a little longer . . .
Just when I thought I might faint from the effort, I felt the most critical part of the injury heal. I drew my attention to the entry wound, knitted the skin together, and slumped back, trembling with exhaustion. The work was barely started, but this would at least keep him from bleeding to death while I replenished my sun energy.
“Elegy, look,” I croaked, fumbling for Yarrow’s wrist to see if his heartbeat was any stronger. I was so weak I could barely grip his arm. “Feel his pulse now.”
She did, and then stared at me in disbelief.
“Can you go find help? Bring back any other survivors? Yarrow won’t be well for a while yet, and we’ll need help if we’re going to try to rescue the others.” Linden, I thought with another seizure of dread. Eamon.
Her eyes grew round, but she nodded before turning and running into the wrecked village. I reached up through the late afternoon Darkness again, and energy poured into me, as welcome as water to a dry throat. I let it fill me past full until it poured out of my skin in golden, smoke-like tendrils, shimmering on the air, then I drew it
back in and placed my hands on Yarrow’s stomach once more.
It was agonizingly slow work, and I had to stop and refill my energy so many times I lost count. At last the sun sank beyond my reach, and I could do no more. When I removed my hands, the yellow tinge had left his skin and his heartbeat was strong and regular, though he did not wake.
I sagged back onto my heels. Although the air was cool, sweat trickled down my neck and over my temples. I was utterly spent, and weak with relief and hope. But I felt something else as well.
Before, when I had taken ownership of my power, it had been from a desire to be brave, and to defend my people. I had never felt proud of it before. Even the day I had saved Elegy, what pride I’d felt had been for my hard-won courage, not for anything my power could do.
Yet now I saw my gift could be used for truly good things. It could save lives. For a while I sat beside Yarrow, simply watching his chest move up and down.
I was just thinking of getting up and rummaging for something to eat when I heard a sound that made me freeze, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck lifting.
Hooves. Someone on horseback was approaching.
49
CHAPTER
Scrambling to my feet, I hurtled into the shelter of the trees, seized a low limb, and swung myself into the branches. I had climbed only a few feet before weakness and exhaustion made me stop, and I clung to the trunk, praying Yarrow would stay unconscious a little longer.
Had the soldiers sent scouts back to find me? Had they, perhaps, not all left yet? What if they found Elegy?
The deepening twilight made it difficult to see beyond the trees, but as the horses drew nearer, I could make out shifting, muscular flanks, a straggly mane, a man’s boot. The horses stopped, pawing at the ground and whuffling, as if their riders knew I was close.
“Siria?”
It was Elegy’s voice. They had captured her, then. I closed my eyes, thinking hard . . .
And then a second voice: “Siria, are you here?”