Unlike most of the other entryways we’ve come upon, the doors to the hall are swung wide open. It’s this fact, more than anything, that triggers the warning bells in my head.
Astra whimpers and jerks to a halt.
“Wes…”
“The council room is just beyond this hall,” he interrupts confidently. “There’s a door at the back.”
But that’s not my concern. These doors are rarely kept open. I quicken my pace until I’m several strides ahead of him and reach the entrance first.
The sight bowls me over like a stone to the gut. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this is worse. Far worse. Nausea coats my throat as I swing around, desperate to prevent my friend from seeing.
“Wes, stop.” I lend as much authority to my voice as I can.
“What?”
“Please. Don’t look. Please.”
The second “please” catches him, and he hesitates, trying to read what’s beyond in my expression.
“What’s going on?” Helos asks, not heeding my warning as Weslyn has. He passes straight into the throne room. And stops.
Now Wes can no longer restrain himself. Clearly apprehensive, he steps up to my side and confronts what I so fiercely wish I could shield him from.
The hall is empty, save for the pair of silvered thrones set upon the dais at the far end.
King Gerar’s head is mounted on a post between them.
Wes stares. He stares and stares, so long I’m tempted to turn his face away by force. But I’m afraid to touch him. And because he stares, I feel an obligation to face it, too. The brown-and-silver waves crowning King Gerar’s head. The tan cheeks once flush with life now dull and graying. The crystal eyes gazing at nothing. The lips slightly parted as if breath might pass between them still.
Astra slips inside the hall and presses against Weslyn’s leg.
I do not understand. I don’t see the point of it, don’t see how fortune could be so cruel just as my wasted heart had begun to heal. King Gerar was always kind to me. He offered Helos and me protection, even in the wake of his wife’s death, and treated me as a person of value rather than a harbinger of doom. More than that, he had every opportunity to exploit the power granted to him by royal blood, none of which he took. He had been a good king.
Go safely, Son. The words echo in my mind, over and over, a scythe cutting through the field of grief. The final blessing of a father fated to die.
I can’t help but wonder if this is what my mother looked like when her first husband speared her head on his castle wall. In a way, I’m grateful I don’t know. There’s no memory to call upon, no sight to haunt the rest of my days alongside that of Father’s death. The same will never be true for Wes.
I step in front of him, a near-perfect match for height, blocking out the view of his father. He doesn’t appear to see me.
“You can stop now,” I say gently. Helos is walking the length of the hall, down toward the end. I know he’s going to examine the two notices that have been nailed there, one against the back of each throne, but I don’t watch his progress.
Wes’s jaw is clenched tight with such force I’m afraid he’ll break it. He doesn’t acknowledge my presence, but tears are pooling at the base of his eyes.
I suspect he’d want me to look away, but I’m loath to turn my back on him. I don’t want him to feel, even for an instant, that he’s alone. So instead, I watch the quivering skin, the rapidly blinking eyes, the enormous effort he’s expending to keep from falling apart.
“Here.”
It’s Helos. Wes’s eyes cut to him, so I allow mine to as well. He’s holding out one of the posters, where a few rows of text are scrawled across the parchment in big, bold letters:
King Gerar Danofer, Sovereign of Telyan, has been found guilty of consorting with two shifters and plotting treason against an allied king.
As an insult to his people and a direct violation of the terms of his alliance with King Jol Holworth, Sovereign of Eradain, these acts are found punishable by death.
Let this execution serve as warning to all who would debase themselves and their kingdom in such a manner.
“I don’t believe it,” I whisper, after we’ve all read the message.
My brother watches Wes carefully, then turns to me. “There’s also this.” He raises the second piece of parchment.
It’s a note addressed to us.
To Mariella’s children,
Yes, I know that’s what you are. We did not meet or part on friendly terms, but I would like to rectify that. If you should return to Roanin and see this, I ask that you come to Oraes, so that we might better understand one another. There is much I’d have you tell me, and much that you should know.
-J. Holworth
I squeeze the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, exhaustion suddenly threatening to overwhelm me. “He cannot be serious.”
“What does he mean, ‘much that you should know’?” Helos says.
I shake my head. It’s difficult to think of anything other than King Gerar’s head mounted on the post behind me.
I did warn him of the consequences. Jol’s jeering slithers through my ears. Mocking. Triumphant. I didn’t just condemn Wes’s brother to die. I condemned his father, too.
I could swear the head at the end of the hall is screaming, drowning my mind with the sound.
I glance at Helos, nails serrating my palms. Two shifters journeying together with a member of the royal family. Both of us standing here in this hall.
Maybe the two of us really do mean death. Maybe we’ve cursed the Danofers after all.
“Leave me,” Wes says abruptly, in a voice so firm that for a moment, I see only the prince he was before, cold and unyielding. “Please,” he adds, shattering the veneer with a single cracked plea. “I would like to be alone with my father.”
Neither of us argues or attempts to offer words of comfort, much as it tears me apart to do so. Instead we leave Wes to his grief, turning to shut the doors behind us just as he falls to his knees. A single sob is audible before the clasps latch firmly in place.
* * *
We don’t see Wes for the rest of the night. Helos and I barely even speak to each other, though the shock of death has healed some of the divide between us. Instead, I tell my brother I need to lie down and split off, wandering the corridors with a pilfered oil lamp until I come to an unlocked door that yields a red canopied bed. I’m not sure whose room this is. No doubt they’d consider my presence an invasion of privacy.
I don’t care. I set the lamp on top of the wardrobe and cross the thick rug in a few sullen strides, dragging the curtains closed and shutting out the night beyond them. Then I collapse onto the bed, arms and legs still sore from the river rescue, not bothering to shed any of my clothes. My pack is somewhere else in the castle, and its absence is almost a relief; I’m not even sure where I left it.
An indefinite amount of time passes as I stare at the cloth crowning the bedposts. The flickering light from the lamp casts odd shadows across the red fabric, and I watch the dance with muted detachment. This time, I don’t hide from my fears or my sorrow. I don’t bully myself for feeling them in the first place. In the gathering darkness of the stolen bedroom, my limbs sinking into the feather-soft comforter beneath me, I confront my emotions head-on. I grieve for the deaths I have witnessed and for Wes’s loss. I lament the way things have changed so quickly between Helos and me. I mourn the friendship I fear I’ve lost, and I even let the hatred and resentment I have harbored toward my mother dull to a slate without shine. Whether her reasoning had been selfish or selfless, I cannot change the choices she made any more than I will ever know the truth. I know, however, that I will not let other people’s mistakes dictate the person I become. Not any longer.
Something has changed in me. Pain and grief have long carved a hole through my heart, but what was once hollow and cold now blazes with ferocious fire. Anger and determination. Compassion and hope. The seed o
f vengeance blossomed into an overwhelming sense of purpose, its roots stretching through my body and encasing my bones with the strength of any in the Old Forest.
As the light from the lamp dims to black and the thoughts swarming my brain subside to a distant hum, what amazes me most of all is that in the midst of so much sorrow, I could feel freer than I ever have.
* * *
By the time I find Wes the following day, I know what I have to do. The thought frightened me at first, but by now I’ve made my peace with it. All that’s left to do is tell the others.
He’s in the study with Astra at his feet, staring out of the windows. The same place I used to meet with King Gerar on occasion. Something I will never do again.
They both look up at my approach. The skin around Wes’s eyes is red and raw, and his hair falls in a state of gentle chaos. It’s clear he hasn’t slept any better than I have. More than anything, I long to reach a hand up and run my fingers through the dark brown curls, smoothing them into submission. I imagine his eyes closing at my touch.
But his gaze remains wary, and betrayal still hangs heavy between us.
My hands stay at my sides.
“I have something to say to you,” I murmur.
He takes a deep breath. “Don’t apologize,” he says. “You did only what you believed was right. I don’t blame you.”
The words have a practiced air to them, like he’s thought long and hard about the situation, analyzed it from every angle like a good prince should. Like a king.
A king to his subject. Not a boy to the girl he held in his arms and kissed until she was breathless.
My throat constricts. “I’m leaving.”
He uncrosses his arms, eyes widening. “What do you mean, leaving?”
“You need to find the missing court. Find your people, and your family.” I pause, bracing myself. “But every day you spend looking, every day spent rebuilding, is another day that prison endures.”
He closes the distance between us in a few small strides, putting a hand out to still Astra when she tries to follow. “What are you saying?”
“Maybe stardust is not the only way to cure the afflicted. If magic is only holding on to these people because it’s searching for a way to survive, maybe we need to give it another option besides incompatible hosts.” I look him straight in the eye. “The giants told us that magical beings awaken magic where they go. That as long as they walk the earth, magic will continue to survive.”
He waits.
“I am going to destroy the compound and free those prisoners, bring some of them east if I can. If we can remove the threat and reawaken the earth, perhaps the magic will stop fracturing the land and looking for new hosts.” I swallow. “Maybe it will let go.”
“You don’t know that will work.”
“No. But I’m going to try.”
“Rora—”
“I can’t leave them there, Wes. I have to do this, whether or not it impacts the Fallow Throes.” I take a breath. “And then I will do what Violet wanted. I’ll go north. To Eradain.”
He starts visibly. “Are you mad? You cannot believe Jol’s message; he would sooner kill you than make peace.”
“Probably,” I say, feeling the tiniest seed of doubt in spite of everything. He had that chance already—and didn’t take it. “But his people need to know what he’s doing in the Vale.”
“And if they know already? Know and condone it?”
I hesitate, but only for a moment. “Then I’ll have to change their minds, after I find a way to free those prisoners. Or change his.”
Free them and awaken the land in the east, properly, the way it ought to be. I have seen the cost of relative safety, of dormant magic, and it isn’t worth it. Will never be worth it.
Let the centuries-old divide between east and west crumble. Let magical beings cross the river and finish what the mountain started. If our journey to the Vale was the coming of the tide, my return will be the strike that unleashes the storm.
My wilderness kin. Forestborn.
Community.
Wes looks at me searchingly. Opens his mouth, then shuts it again. Nods once. “Helos will help.”
Now comes the hardest part. “Helos isn’t coming. He’s going with you.”
“What?”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“I haven’t told him yet. But you need his help, and he needs to do this. He needs to see Finley while…” I don’t allow myself to finish the thought. Nor do I mention the concern I’m now struggling to dismiss entirely, no matter how badly I want to believe it has nothing to do with us. The one that hisses two shifters and death. That it really might have been a warning after all.
“I think I know where they are,” Wes says softly, watching my expression change. “Fin and the rest. Fendolyn’s Keep.”
“The garrison?” I wrack my brain for a visual of the military base where Wes was meant to train. In all my years of gathering intel for King Gerar, he never sent me to that elusive place. All I know is that it’s farther south, and intentionally difficult to find.
“It fits,” Weslyn assures me, running a hand through his hair. “The base is hidden in a valley. There are lakes there. It’s where—” He breaks off, the words slightly strangled, as if he does not want to continue. “Violet would take our people there if she felt Roanin were under threat. I know it.”
I nod, unable to do more than hope that he’s right. “Then you’ll be able to help her soon. I’ll meet you there when I’m done.”
His gaze searching, Weslyn shifts closer, just a little. “Rora—”
I smile slightly, not sure I’ll ever be tired of the way my name sounds on his lips. “I’ll be okay. I’m good at disguising myself, remember?”
Wes doesn’t try to talk me out of it. He doesn’t tell me it’s too dangerous, or beg me to stay when he knows others would suffer. He just raises a hand to the side of my face, hesitating a moment before gently sweeping a few strands of hair aside.
It’s the first time he’s touched me since the river. Hope rushes in, flooding my charged nerves like the tide and sweeping away some of the fear as footprints from the sand. Maybe he really did mean the words he murmured on the riverbank.
“Come back,” he says quietly, holding my gaze for a few precious moments.
My eyes chart a course across his features one last time, composing a map to carry with me in the weeks to come. “Look to the skies,” I whisper.
Then I’m gone.
* * *
It’s a strange feeling, walking the city with Helos without the fear of being seen. The morning has dawned clear and cool, better traveling weather than we had on our prior departure. A day has passed since I told the boys of my plan. As much as I have dreaded our parting of the ways, I cannot bring myself to delay any longer.
Wes is back in the castle, preparing for his own journey. We haven’t spoken since that conversation in the study. I’ve stayed away; he needs time to grieve, and much as I want to help, I think my presence only makes things worse right now. Each time he sees me is another reminder of the choice I made. The same kind of reminder he experienced following Queen Raenen’s death.
Besides, any steps we might make toward reconciliation would make it only more difficult to leave.
Now it’s only my brother and me, me with a pack and him without, matching each other stride for stride. He hasn’t spoken in several minutes.
My plan for the prison and Eradain didn’t shock him as much as it had Wes. The fact that I expected him to go with Wes and not me, however, had raised his eyebrows to the sky.
“I promised I wouldn’t leave you, and I meant it,” he’d protested, folding his arms tightly in front of him. “We go together. Always.”
I shook my head. “This time you have to. Finley needs your strength, Helos. And you need him. Hey,” I said, grabbing his arm as he turned away. “Look at me.” It took a few moments, but he finally did. Tears were collecting in the corners of h
is eyes. “This can work, reawakening the land. We can still save him.”
Helos squeezes the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Since when have you ever been an optimist?”
“Since yesterday.”
He blinks at me.
“Two days ago, this plan didn’t exist.” I smile. “Today it does.”
Helos huffs a laugh, running a weary hand over his face.
“I’ve seen the way he acts around you,” I continue.
“Like he can’t bear to look at me again?”
“Like he never wants to look anywhere else.”
His jaw clenches.
“It’s okay to be selfish sometimes. Save him like you saved me.” The answer is no. A question I’ve guessed the sense of by now, even if I’ll never know the wording. “Change his mind.”
He’d broken a little, then. But in the end, he agreed. For the first time, choosing someone other than me.
Now, as we reach the western edge of the city, we slow to a stop.
“You’re going to know the Old Forest by heart at this rate,” he jokes softly. I’m going back the way we came, across the tree bridge and up through the Vale. I don’t want to risk encountering people on the mainland, and I feel sure there’s another river crossing into Eradain. Jol and his soldiers have moved between them somehow. If that fails, I can always fly, but I would rather not be left without a pack and supplies.
I study the trees before me—ancient, towering, welcoming. “I already do.”
“Good weather for traveling,” he adds, examining the sky and echoing my thoughts from moments before. One mind. Even when he hasn’t forgiven me. I can read it in his face.
“Helos.”
He peels his gaze from the sky.
“I love you. And I’ll—”
“Stop it,” he says, cutting me off and hugging me tightly. “Don’t say goodbye. Don’t you do that.”
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