I refused to give up hope, but I was rapidly running out of ideas. I tried waving and screaming to the distant figures below, but it did nothing except release some of my pent up emotion. And soon I ran out of energy for it, my arms impossibly heavy to lift. I stopped and rested my cheek against the cool, smooth surface of the glass.
A flash of white caught my eye, followed by another and another. I straightened, peering out into the night. A wedge of swans flew into view. My swans.
I resumed waving and calling, and they wheeled toward me, honking and bugling as they came. One by one they glided in to land on the balcony, surrounding me. I sank to my knees and pressed my face against their feathers, tears running unheeded down my cheeks. They had sensed I was in trouble, and they had come. If only they were big enough that I could climb onto one of their backs and soar away.
A wild thought caught me. I ran back into the room, rushing to the bed and stripping off the top sheet. Bundling it in my arms, I rushed back to the window, nearly tripping twice, my weak arms struggling with my burden.
For all I knew I was courting disaster, but my swans had proven themselves so much more capable than they had any natural right to be, and I chose to believe that they could manage this too. I had to try something.
With a single yank, I brought the curtain down, rod and all, almost collapsing in the process. Removing four of the large rings proved simple, and I quickly tied a corner of the sheet to each one.
Dragging my creation behind me, I returned to the balcony where my swans waited. Sammy was the steadiest and most reliable of my friends, so I approached her first, wishing for daylight and the ability to speak in their language.
But when I held out the ring, she seemed to understand anyway, allowing me to slip it over her head and down to the strong base of her neck. The others all pressed in around me, and I had to shepherd them back, keeping only Snowy, Sunny, and Shadow herself beside me. Soon they were all attached to a corner of the sheet.
The remaining three hopped up to the edge of the balcony, dropping out of sight before soaring back up above us. My chosen four also hopped up, ready for their own departure. But they paused before throwing themselves off, looking at me. I couldn’t hesitate, that would only give my body time to deteriorate further—and my mind time to think better of the dangerous plan.
Climbing up among the swans, I perched on the edge of the balustrade, cupping myself in the sheet. Despite my determination not to hesitate, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. But a sudden force at my back sent me plummeting off the balcony, the material tangled around me.
I screamed as I fell, honks and flapping wings surrounding me, before I slowed, jerking and finally beginning to rise. Somehow, impossibly, it was working. My four swans spread out in a square formation, carrying me between them in the sling created by my sheet. I loosened the death grip on the fabric bunched in my hands and twisted myself so I could peek over the edge.
Big mistake. I pulled back, my head spinning. We were high. I had expected them to lower me gently down, but instead they lifted me higher, angling around the curve of the Keep.
“Where are you going?” I asked, but only received a bugle in reply.
Peering out again, I saw that Stormy seemed to be in the lead, something held in her beak. Sweetie flew behind her, Eagle coming last.
“Wait!” I shrieked as Stormy flew directly at a window.
She didn’t hesitate, however, the stone in her beak ramming into it at full speed. I gasped as she fell, dazed, the stone plummeting beside her. But her wings flicked out and caught her just in time, bringing her in for a soft landing on the lake.
Sweetie followed her lead, aiming for the exact same spot, where a spiderweb of cracks now branched out across the glass. I watched anxiously as she too caught herself before hitting the water.
Eagle flew in last, moving faster than the others to my eye.
“Not too fast,” I called, just as she smashed into the window. It shattered around her.
She disappeared from sight as her momentum took her into the room. The birds carrying me flapped hard, lifting me level with the windowsill, and I grasped hold of it, scrambling into the room in a flurry of waving arms and legs. I landed on a number of objects, all showered in glass, and winced as the shards sliced at my beautiful wrap. But at least I had avoided any larger pieces that would have pierced through to my skin.
It only took a second’s glance around to recognize where I was. Everything became clear. Stormy had led us all to the window where she had seen Leander on her scouting expeditions. My swans had known what I needed without my having to say it.
My eyes fell on the dazed Eagle, a trickle of red splashed against the surrounding glass beside her. Slipping and sliding, I stumbled over to kneel beside her.
“Come on, girl,” I whispered. “Come on.”
She stirred, opened one beady eye, and honked at me. I helped lift her to her feet where she regarded the chaos around us with a disapproving air. I laughed—a weak chuckle, but still a laugh—and managed to rise to my own feet, although I now swayed dangerously, my head spinning.
“Lady?” whispered a small voice, and my blood froze.
Peering further into the room, I could just see a pair of bright eyes and tangled hair peeking out from behind the overfull desk.
“Juniper?” A surge of energy replaced a portion of the strength I had lost and allowed me to scramble over the mess toward her.
“Lady, where are we?” Juniper bolted from her hiding spot, careening into me and nearly sending both of us over.
She began to cry, noisy tears that tracked down her smudged cheeks. I no longer had to wonder how Leander had ensured Audrey’s cooperation. I could only imagine the threats he had made.
“I didn’t know the men,” she wailed. “But Cora said to be quiet and behave.”
“What men?” I asked, but I suspected I already knew the answer.
“I don’t know,” she said. “The men who brought us here.”
Us. She had said us.
“Where’s Cora?” I looked around.
“She won’t wake up,” Juniper cried, and I almost collapsed beside her.
No. No, no, no, no, no. Not Cora.
“Where is she?” I managed to rasp out.
Juniper grasped my hand and tugged me back around the desk. Eagle followed, picking her careful way across the scattered debris.
I had little feeling left in my body, aside from the alternating hot and cold flushes that swept through me, and I no longer knew if it was a physical symptom of my impending death or a result of the shocks of the night.
We rounded the desk to find Cora sprawled out flat on the ground, one of her arms across her stomach, and the other flopped above her head. Juniper immediately let go of me and fell on her, shaking her wildly.
“Wake up, Cora,” she shouted. “Wake up.”
“Quietly, Juniper,” I said. “Quietly.” The only thing that could make this moment worse would be Brock bursting in on us.
Juniper’s hand, resting against Cora’s ribs, rose and fell. I gasped. Leaning in close, I checked again. There, another breath. Juniper was right, Cora was asleep.
I gasped in a grateful breath, steadying myself, and then joined Juniper in shaking Cora. She made a soft sleepy groan but otherwise didn’t stir.
“See,” Juniper said. “I can’t wake her up.”
“Yes, I see,” I said. “What happened to her?”
If she had been hit on the head, her non-responsiveness seemed like a bad sign.
“They came to the haven, right into Cora’s bedroom,” Juniper said. “They kept saying I had to go with them, and Cora said not without her, so then they made us both come.”
I could imagine the scene, reading between the lines of the four-year-old’s narration. My heart was in my throat, a lump that made me feel as if I might be sick.
“I looked for Mama or you or Auntie Audrey,” Juniper said, her lip wobbling and tears l
eaking out again, “but they made Cora walk too fast. And once we got up here, they gave her something to drink. She got all slow and strange, and she seemed…” Juniper hiccuped, as if this were the most terrifying part of all. “She seemed scared. But Cora isn’t scared of anything.”
“Scared?” I stared at the little girl.
It was a familiar word, and I had lived with the effects of it all around me. But this was something else—something stronger. Whatever had overtaken Cora was far more potent than mere timidity—almost as if the fear had made her give up on consciousness altogether.
Juniper had said Cora wasn’t afraid of anything, and it might seem that way to her, but Cora was normally only slightly less fearful than everyone else—she just hid it better. Well, except for Audrey—she could do with a little more fear in her life. Perhaps she had rubbed off on the haven’s proprietress. Either that or she had learned from Vilma—ready to take on a dragon, despite her age.
I frowned. Audrey. And Vilma and Gregor. Now that I thought about it, it made no sense. How had I never wondered about it before? How had Gabe never questioned it? Surrounded by meek and timid Talinosians, Audrey stood out, stark against the rest. Even Leander had commented on it.
How had Audrey—out of the whole kingdom—retained her dauntless courage? And Vilma and Gregor too.
I stared down at the sleeping Cora. They had given her something to drink…
My mind worked slowly, grasping at the pieces, until suddenly everything clicked into place in a rush. We had so many lakes in these forests because we were near the mountains—the source of the two rivers that fed Talinos. If Leander’s enchantment was something you drank, and if he put it in the water up here, it would slowly flow down to the rest of the kingdom—strongest here, perhaps, but working its enchantment everywhere.
Small pockets might escape, maybe, but not enough to make a difference. Especially not when fear was so catching.
Pockets like Vilma and Gregor who insisted on drinking the odd-tasting water from their private well. Water Vilma had shared with me today and had no doubt shared with Cora and Wren on many an occasion—both of them far too kind to refuse. And Cora and Wren had always seemed less susceptible than most. As for me, I drank largely from my enchanted lake.
Leander no doubt dosed his servants directly to ensure they remained extra compliant, but I had seen with my own eyes his mercenaries carting in large jugs to their forest hideout—no doubt full of clear water.
Palinar had its own rivers that originated in the mountains across the border, and one of those rivers fed Marin. There couldn’t be a tidier way to reach all of Talinos without touching the other kingdoms.
Clearly whatever Leander had used to dose the rivers was low in concentration, taking years to build up in the body and take effect—Gabe had been spared by spending so little time in his own kingdom. But what of Audrey?
I could think of nothing to explain her immunity. She had always refused Vilma’s offers of water, wrinkling up her nose and claiming it tasted odd. Which was ironic coming from—
I jerked upright, my racing thoughts snagging and slowing. Audrey largely drank her disgusting tea, the one only she liked, that she claimed had all sorts of healing properties. None of us had ever taken her seriously, but what if she was right? What if she had somehow found a natural substance resistant to whatever had caused this enchantment?
I ripped off my wrap, fumbling through its folds for the bag she had given me. Audrey had made me an emergency pack for the ball, and if I knew her…Yes! I pulled out a packet of the tea, the odor hitting me as soon as it broke free.
Cora stirred, muttering something inaudible in her sleep. I threw the rest of the bag aside and thrust the tea packet directly under her nose, fumbling it open and letting the leaves spill out directly onto my friend.
“What are you doing?” Juniper asked, but I ignored her, my sole focus on Cora.
Her hand moved first, fluttering to her head, and then she moaned.
“Where am I?” she asked groggily, and then memory must have returned because she sat up so sharply she fell back down again, my hands reaching out to cushion her fall.
“Junie?” she cried. “Where are you?”
“She’s right here,” I said. “Just rest a moment. She’s fine.”
“Lady?” Cora’s eyes fluttered back open and fixed on me. “What are you doing here? And where is here?”
She sat up more slowly this time, looking around as she distractedly brushed at the tea leaves that clung to her.
“What is that awful smell?” she asked. “Is Audrey here? It smells like that tea of hers—but much worse.”
“It is that tea of hers,” I said, with a sniffle. “And I think it just saved you.”
Quickly I sketched a rough outline of everything that had happened, skipping the part about my death because Juniper was watching me with wide, fascinated eyes. Cora’s wits returned quickly, her sharp gaze saying she knew I was holding something back.
When I swayed, she reached out to support me, our roles reversed.
“Lady…” she said softly.
“It’s not good,” I said in a grim whisper. “Don’t ask.”
She hesitated then nodded, switching topics.
“If Leander has been poisoning the whole kingdom’s water for years, then he must have a supply of it somewhere. And a way to make more. We need to find it and destroy it.”
I nodded. “And we need to find the enchanted object that he’s using to control me and all those other animals.”
Eagle honked loudly, in agreement or to remind us of her presence, I wasn’t sure.
“This place is a mess.” Cora surveyed the room with disgust. She would never countenance the haven falling into such a state.
“Yes, he doesn’t allow any servants inside, so I think it has been accumulating for years,” I said. “But we looked through a lot of it the other day, and I’m sure we didn’t miss anything as substantial as what he must need for the rivers. Leander mentioned experiments, and I think…” I paused and gulped. Inevitably, the search had brought me back here to the one place I didn’t want to go. “I think there’s another room.”
Chapter 27
I pointed at the door beside the tapestry. It no longer leaked smoke, but somehow it looked just as ominous. The same fear that had filled me the first time I saw it still lodged behind my ribs, but my certainty had only grown that whatever substance Leander used to put fear in the rivers of Talinos was brewed behind that door.
Wait. Fear. Of course I was so afraid of it! What better indication could there be that what we needed to find was behind that door? I leaned over and inhaled deeply over some of the discarded tea leaves. My desire to avoid the door was replaced with determination.
Cora gave me an odd look but said nothing. Scooping Juniper onto her hip, she strode over to pull the door open.
Instead of revealing a room, as I had expected, it opened onto a single flight of stairs. I gaped at them, looking sideways at the tapestry. It made sense, I supposed—the door going up and the door going down beside each other. And it explained why the Keep seemed taller than its top floor—there was an extra secret story.
Cora had already started up the stairs, so I tried to hurry behind her, the weakness in my legs making it hard to move with any speed. Eagle brought up the rear, waddling even more slowly than me. We made an odd procession, Juniper staring back over Cora’s shoulder at us, her eyes straying constantly to Eagle and seeming to get rounder every time.
“Her name is Eagle,” I told her.
She frowned. “But she’s a swan.”
I smiled, Juniper’s innocent confusion somehow breaking through the horror of the evening.
“Yes, she’s a swan, but her name is Eagle. She has the heart of an eagle.”
The swan honked her agreement, and Juniper giggled.
“Huh.” Cora sounded surprised, so I forced my legs up the final stairs, coming to a stop beside her.
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br /> The vast, open room before us could not have been more different from the one below. Pristine and tidy, nothing littered the floor here or crowded on the many long benches that lined the walls and ran down the middle of the room. Leander might give no effort to the room below, but this must be where he conducted his experiments and studied the godmother objects. I could only imagine how bemusing this aspect of his son must have been to the old lord—by all accounts a genial man but not a scholar.
How many of the items on the benches were enchanted in some way? My eyes latched onto several terracotta pots holding a variety of plants. The most impressive was a small tree, large enough to bear odd-looking fruit almost like dates in appearance, although they couldn’t possibly be dates.
Nearby, a large open hearth contained a banked fire, a sizable iron pot hanging above it. Cora put Juniper down with a stern instruction not to touch anything and strode over to the pot. She peered inside and then looked back at me.
“There’s liquid in here,” she said. “And I don’t see anything else that could hold liquid.”
I scanned the room before joining her and looking into the pot myself. Several shapes floated in the watery substance in different stages of disintegration. I glanced back at the potted tree. It looked like whatever strange fruit it bore was feeding this unknown concoction.
“Seeds,” I said, making Cora look at me in confusion. “Leander kept talking about seeds and fruit—I thought he was talking metaphorically, but now I think he was being literal.”
I stared at the tree. I had heard of types of fruit that were godmother objects, but I had never considered that if someone planted the seeds from one, a tree might grow. But what had tainted it so badly that it would grow such fruit as this? Can you not guess? whispered a voice in the back of my mind. I had seen first-hand an entire kingdom poisoned by the kind of evil that led someone to kill their own family. I shivered.
“I intend to destroy what’s in this pot and that tree along with it,” Cora said.
A Captive of Wing and Feather Page 22
