ARC: Stolen Songbird

by Danielle L. Jensen

  He laughed. “Never that – I’m afraid that I am the one you can’t be counting on these days.” He made a small gesture with one hand towards his covered legs.

  Taking a deep breath, I raised the edge of the blanket. I immediately clenched my teeth to hold back the bile threatening to surge up my throat. From the knee down, the pulverized bone and flesh was barely recognizable as having once been a leg and foot. “God have mercy,” I whispered, lowering the blanket.

  “I’m not so sure your god has much time for us,” Tips said through clenched teeth.

  “Why not?” I asked, settling into a chair next to the bed. “You’re nearly as human as I am.” I turned my head to address the other miners. “Could you please leave us alone for a bit? I need to speak privately with Tips.”

  Nodding, they all started to leave the room. “Send Élise up when she arrives,” I added, praying that would be soon. Once they were gone, I pulled the grimoires out of my pocket, flipping through the pages until I found what I was looking for. This wouldn’t be simple. And it would be far from perfect.

  “If you’re thinking that you being here will stop the guild from ridding themselves of me, you’re wasting your time,” Tips said, his one eye fixed on the ceiling. “They won’t bother with the labyrinth – I’m done for without it.”

  “Not if I have my way, you aren’t,” I muttered, my eyes fixed on the page, praying that I wasn’t being falsely optimistic.

  The sound of him shifting on the bed caused me to glance up. Tips was staring at me, his one eye filled with anger. “What exactly do you think you can do to stop me from dying, girl? Your false hope is no kindness to me.”

  “It isn’t false hope,” I replied. “I intend to heal you with magic. Human magic.”

  His eye widened. “You’re a witch!” Despite the incredible amount of pain he must have been in, a smile stretched across his face. “I knew there had to be more to you than meets the eye.”

  “I suppose we’ll find out,” I said. Footsteps pounded up the stairs and, seconds later, Élise came into the room. She smiled encouragingly at Tips as she handed me a sack of supplies.

  “Did you find everything?” I asked.

  She nodded and set to helping me spread the various plants and herbs out on the floor next to the basins she had brought. Once we had everything arranged to my liking, I sat back on my heels and took a deep breath. “Tips, there is something I need to tell you before we start.”

  He gave a slight nod.

  “This grimoire,” I began, “it tells me that spells can only speed along that which is humanly possible to heal.” I took a deep breath. “Which means that although I can save your life, I can’t save your leg.”

  Élise pressed a hand to her mouth, but Tips didn’t flinch. “What do you plan to do?”

  I dug my fingernails into my palms. “I think if we take the leg off just below the knee that I can heal the… stump.” Sweat broke out on my forehead – it had been one thing to think it, another to say it.

  “You think?”

  “I’ve never done this before,” I admitted. What I had done to Tristan had been something different – I’d somehow channeled his magic, not the earth’s. But comparing Tips’s and Tristan’s magic was like comparing a drop of water with the entirety of the ocean. His power wasn’t capable of managing this injury, even if I could replicate the circumstances.

  “You want to cut off my leg.” His face tightened and a bead of sweat ran down his forehead to soak into the pillow.

  “It is our only option,” I said. “The only way you are going to live.”

  “Live?” He snorted. “Even if this works, what good will I be?” he asked bitterly. “What good is a miner with one leg – you’d be saving me from death only to see me sent off to feed the sluag.”

  “Don’t say that,” I snapped, rising to my feet. “Your worth isn’t determined by your leg – it is determined by your heart and your mind. It is determined by what you do with your life.”

  “Pretty words.” He turned his head away from us. “Just let me die.”

  “No!” I shouted. “You listen to me, Tips, and you listen well. It isn’t your leg that can smell gold. It isn’t your leg that has ensured your gang never missed quota. And it isn’t your leg that all your friends chose to have as their leader. They need you, Tips. Without you, it will be your friends who will be facing the labyrinth.” I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. “The odds have been stacked against you from the day you were born, yet here you are. Alive. And having persevered through all of that, how dare you turn your head and tell me to let you die. You’re better than that.” My voice trembled. “You once told me that power doesn’t determine worth. Well, neither does a leg.”

  He kept his head turned away from me, and the silence hung long and heavy.

  “You make a compelling argument.” His voice was choked, and when he turned his head, I could see the gleam of tears on his cheeks. “Do it then.”

  I nodded and looked at Élise. “I’ll need your help.”

  It seemed my mind stepped back and away from what it was witnessing as I carefully mixed the spell’s ingredients into the basin, following its instructions to the letter. “I need fire,” I muttered, and Élise held out her hand, silver flames blossoming from her palm.

  I stared at it for a minute. “Real fire,” I said. Tearing a blank page from the book, I rolled it tightly then held it to her troll-fire, nodding with satisfaction as it flared up with yellow and orange flames. Holding the burning paper above my mixture, I turned my attention to Élise. “Are you sure you can do this?”

  She licked her lips, and I could see her hands were trembling. “If this doesn’t work, he’ll bleed to death in moments.”

  “If this doesn’t work, I’m dead anyway,” Tips said. “This isn’t the time for you to turn prissy on me, Élise.”

  “All right,” Élise whispered. “Then I’m ready.”

  Tips twitched slightly as her magic bound him to the bed and the ambient sounds of the house faded as she blocked us off – the last thing we needed was for Tips’s screams to draw attention down upon us.

  “Bite down on this,” I said, putting a spindle we’d broken off the chair back between his teeth. “Close your eyes.”

  “When I put my hands in the basins…” I broke off and gave Élise a hard look. Her lips tightened, but she nodded.

  Touching the burning paper to the mixture, I jerked back as it burst into flames. Then I began the incantations. Eleven times I repeated the words, and on the twelfth time, I plunged one hand into the burning mixture and the other into a basin of water. Power flooded up my arms, filling me, and then spilling over. I nodded at Élise.

  Troll magic sliced through flesh and bone like a surgeon’s scalpel, blood spraying in all directions, and Tips screamed once. Leaning forward, I grasped hold of the bleeding limb and said the incantation for the thirteenth time: “Heal the flesh.” At the touch of his blood, I could feel a faint hint of his alien magic, but I passed it by, knowing instinctively that he was a child of this world. The earth’s power drained out of me and into Tips, recognizing him. Amazed, I watched as pink skin sealed over the wound, paling and hardening into tough scar tissue before my very eyes. Then exhaustion hit me, and I fell backwards to lie on the cold, wooden floor.

  “Cécile!” Élise’s face appeared above me. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I croaked, although I was not entirely sure that I was. “Is Tips alive?”

  She moved out of my line of sight. “He’s alive,” she exclaimed. “Unconscious, but alive. And the wound is healed over as though it were half-a-lifetime old.”

  Coming back over to my side, Élise helped me to my feet, releasing the magic blocking sound as she did. Screams instantly attacked both our ears.

  “Stones and sky,” I said, clinging to her arm. “What is going on out there?”

  “I’ve no notion,” Élise said, her eyes wide. “We would have felt
it if there had been another earthshake.”

  We both jerked at the sound of an explosion, followed up with more screams and the sounds of running feet.

  The door burst open followed by one of the miners. “Lord Roland is on the loose,” he panted. “He’s tearing apart the Dregs. You need to get out of here now.” His eyes fixed on Tips, who was only now rousing. “How in the…”

  “There is no time for that now,” I snapped. “Take Tips with you. Get him somewhere safe. Élise, you help him.”

  Not waiting for their answers, I bolted down the stairs. Roland was hunting half-bloods, I knew it. And who knew how many he would kill before someone powerful enough arrived to stop him. I needed to distract him, buy Tristan or Anaïs enough time to get here and for the half-bloods to flee. Roland wouldn’t hurt me – insane or not, he’d know that harming me would harm his brother. I was the only one close enough who had a chance of stopping him.

  The lower level of the house was empty, but the streets were full of panicked half-bloods running for their lives. I fought against their flow, jostling against their greater strength while I ran towards the sound of screams. Then abruptly, I was alone, their footsteps fading into the distance behind me.

  A young troll stood in the center of the road ahead of me, an older half-blood pinned to the ground at his feet. The half-blood screamed and thrashed, trying to escape, while the boy watched with interest.

  “Your Highness!” The words were out of my mouth before I could think. “Lord Roland.”

  The boy looked up, and the blood in my veins turned to ice. It was not the resemblance to Tristan – I’d expected that. What made me want to run as far and as fast away from this creature as I could were his eyes: they were cold, completely devoid of empathy or compassion. Or sanity.

  “Hello, Cécile.” He cocked his head to one side, watching me with undisguised malevolence.

  I curtseyed, my knees shaking. “You know who I am, then, my lord?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’ve heard a great deal about you. You are the human that my brother Tristan is bonded to.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, his recognition not bringing any relief to my fear, because what was looking at me was utter evil.

  “My foster father told me that Tristan loves you – is that true?”

  I nodded, forcing myself to hold his gaze. The longer we talked, the more time the half-bloods had to get away. “And I love him.”

  Roland scrunched his face up as though he had smelled something foul. “Well of course you do, that makes perfect sense.” He shook his head, his brow furrowing. “It’s him that I don’t understand.”

  This creature didn’t understand love at all.

  During our exchange, Roland had released the half-blood, and the man was now trying to crawl away. His motion caught the Prince’s attention, and his face twisted. “Vermin,” he hissed. Raising one hand, he brought it down fast, and the man collapsed against the street with the sound of crunching bone. I swayed on my feet.

  “Where is my brother now?” Roland asked, stepping over the corpse and walking slowly towards me.

  “Very near,” I lied. Tristan was indeed coming this way, but it would take long minutes before he arrived – and that was time I was beginning to suspect I didn’t have. “I am sure he will be pleased to see you.”

  “I doubt that.” He bolted towards me, and before I could move, he had me by the wrist. Even though he was shorter and slighter than me, with one twist of his wrist he had me on my knees. He ignored my groan of pain, carefully inspecting the silver tattoo on my fingers. “He is near, you say?” His childish giggles filled the street. “Not near enough, I say!”

  “If you hurt me, you hurt him, you know that,” I pleaded. But what did that mean to this remorseless creature. He didn’t care about his brother – he didn’t care about anything but himself.

  “I know that very well,” Roland said, shoving me back. He closed his eyes and, for a moment, he was a beautiful little child. Then he opened them again, and it was like looking into the eyes of a devil. “And when I am king, I will be certain not to bond something as weak as you. Or anything at all.”

  I clambered to my feet.

  “Roland, stop!”

  It was Anaïs’s voice, but she was too late. As I turned to run, magic slammed into me, crushing the wind out of my lungs and sending me flying through the air. My body slammed against the ground and, after that, all I knew was pain.

  CHAPTER 35

  CéCILE

  When I awoke back in the palace, it was to an agony that told me instantly my injuries were grievous. Mortal. It hurt to move – it hurt even to breathe – and I was so very, very cold.

  “Cécile?” Tristan was sitting at my bedside, his eyes rimmed with red. “I am so sorry.”

  I licked my parched lips. “It isn’t your fault.”

  “Yes, it is.” His voice was bitter. “Anaïs warned me something like this would happen – she told me to take care of Roland before he got any more powerful, and I refused.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” I whispered, unable to manage anything louder.

  “I knew he was dangerous,” Tristan said sadly. “I was just too much of a coward to do anything about it.”

  He pushed my hair back from my face. “But I won’t make the same mistake twice – I’ll deal with him and, when you’re better again, Trollus will be safe for you.”

  “Tristan,” I said. “I think I need help. From a doctor. It hurts to breathe.”

  He bit his lip. “We don’t have doctors.”

  I knew that. Trolls didn’t need them. “It hurts.”

  His jaw tightened. “It will get better.”

  I gave a slight shake of my head. “I’m not a troll,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “I am only human. Mortal and breakable. There is no one here with the skills to help me. I’m afraid…” I broke off, coughing weakly.

  He took a deep shuddering breath, and his trepidation grew thick as he slowly pulled the glove off his left hand. His lovely eyes fixed on the golden lace tattooing his hand. The vines, once so bright and vital, were dull and tarnished. “I was afraid to look,” he said. “I was afraid this is what I would see.”

  “I’m dying,” I whispered. My voice was calm and completely incongruous with the riot of terror and anger in my head. I did not want to die. Only a day ago, it had seemed my future spread ahead of me like a wild, passionate, and unexplored sea, and I was the captain at the helm, eager to see where the winds would take me. I was in love, and I was loved. I’d never felt more alive and happy, and now it was all going to be over. My lower lip trembled and I clenched my teeth to make it stop. It wasn’t fair. Trollus was full of magic – magic capable of doing the impossible, but powerless to help me in this. An angry noise escaped my lips. “It isn’t bloody fair,” I swore. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”

  My chest spasmed, and I hissed in pain. “I’m sorry,” I said through clenched teeth. Because that was the worst of it – not only was I going to die, I was going to bring Tristan down with me.

  “No,” he said, rising to his feet. “No!” He picked up a decanter and threw it, then backhanded a vase off his desk. I watched in horror as he set to destroying everything fragile in sight.

  “Tristan, stop!”

  He froze, turning back towards me. A shard of glass had sliced open his cheek and one drop of blood trickled down his skin before the cut sealed over. “There isn’t anyone here with the skill to help you. But somewhere else there is?” He turned. “Could other humans help you?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly a surgeon could.” There is always hope, I thought, remembering Pierre’s words. Hope that I might live, and that my future with Tristan wouldn’t be cut short. But my hope was diminishing.

  “There are always humans coming and going. They’re always wanting to sell something. Always wanting our gold.” His face set in determination. “One of them will be able to help y
ou.”

  Anaïs must have been waiting outside, because she came in right after Tristan left.

  “Tristan said he was going to find you a surgeon,” she said, sitting next to the bed. “And medicines to help you heal.”

  I said nothing, but something in my eyes must have told her what I was thinking. “They can help you, can’t they?” she pleaded.

  I gave a slight shake of my head. “I don’t think so. A witch could, maybe.” But Tips was an all too recent reminder that even witches had their limitations.

  “There are no such creatures in Trollus.” Anaïs gripped the sides of her chair so hard the wood creaked. “Except, it turns out, you. The whole city is talking about what you did for that miner.” Her eyes brightened. “If we got you the same materials – couldn’t you heal yourself?”

  “No.” I mouthed the word, feeling short of breath. The pain in my side was sharp and internal. “I’m dying.” The words came out silently.

  “No!” Anaïs shouted, leaping to her feet. “You can’t die! If you die, he…”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” I said, sucking in a painful breath to make myself clear. “I know what it feels like, Anaïs!”

  I started coughing, the pain of the motion so intense it made me dizzy. It was a long time before I could speak again, and Anaïs was forced to lean close in order to hear me. “I need your help, Anaïs. I don’t trust his father, and the twins told me you’re the only other one as powerful as Tristan. You have to keep him alive. I know he did it for Marc, so can’t you do the same for him?”

  Her shoulders slumped and my hopes fled. She shook her head. “There is a reason they have ruled us for so long, Cécile. There are none in this world as powerful as the Montigny family – I wouldn’t have a chance of stopping him. Only his father could restrain him, and even then, it would be a struggle.”

  I tried to take shallow little breaths, but I could taste blood on my tongue. “Is there no other way?”