by Amber Argyle
Mama unlatched the baby and shifted her to the other breast. “And how do you feel about Denan?”
Avoiding her mother’s gaze, Larkin tied the end of the braid with a cord of leather. “He’s the best man I’ve ever met.”
“You don’t really know him.”
Larkin wet the corner of her borrowed tunic and wiped a patch of dust Sela had missed on her temple. “There now,” Larkin said.
Clearly exhausted from walking all morning, Sela lay down on the moss and watched the water slip past.
Larkin sat beside her mother. She dropped her voice to a whisper so Sela wouldn’t hear. “I thought I knew Bane.” His name felt like an ember on her tongue. “He was my best friend for years. But I never guessed he and Nesha were together, that she was carrying his child.” Before Nesha, he’d been sleeping with Alorica. Larkin hadn’t known that either.
Mama winced and pretended to be interested in something to her left.
Larkin’s gaze narrowed. “You knew?”
Mama shifted nervously. “I tried to get Daydon to allow them to marry. But with her club foot … He offered Bane for you instead. It was the only way I could save you from the forest.”
Larkin rubbed her face and tried to stem her rising anger. “Nesha believes I knowingly stole Bane away from her.”
Mama raised an eyebrow. “She said you saw them kissing.”
Apparently, Mama believed that too. “Why are you both so quick to think so little of me? I saw Nesha kissing someone; I never saw his face, never guessed it was Bane.”
“Maybe we never really know a person.” Mama wiped her cheeks. “Do you remember when your father would chase you around our hut on all fours and tickle you until you cried?”
“I hate him.”
“He wasn’t always awful.”
Why was she defending him? He’d betrayed Mama most of all.
“He saved me from my brute of a father and coward of a mother,” Mama went on. “Took me where they couldn’t find me, even with all their money. Bought land and built me a house with his own hands.”
Larkin had never heard these stories before. Mama never spoke of her past. So why start now?
Mama chuckled. “Neither of us knew anything about farming. We worked until our fingers bled.”
Yet it had all changed that afternoon he’d overheard Mama telling them she would have another daughter. “Why was he so angry when he found out Sela was a girl?”
Mama shrugged. “He never told me. All he would do was drink.”
He was mean when he drank. “I’ll never forgive him. Nesha either.”
“They’re your family.”
“And both of them nearly got me killed.”
“Larkin,” Mama said, her voice chiding.
Huffing in disgust, Larkin left her mother’s side to lay beside Sela on the mossy rocks, watching the light highlight the ribbons of water. She reached in and pulled out a smooth, mauve stone. “Pretty.”
Sela looked at the rock, stood, and walked away. Heart aching, Larkin watched her go.
Over the tops of the trees, the massive cliffs loomed larger and larger. The waterfall split the cliffs in half, the roar discernable even at this distance. Beneath that roar, the thwack of axes sounded. They turned a corner, their view opening to the base of the gully.
Pipers built a pike wall—sharpened sticks lashed to fences at the perfect angle for impaling a rushing horde. Beyond that, sleeping pods had been set up in trees and cook fires let off lazy smoke.
“Nearly there,” Talox said. Sela slept on his massive shoulder, her arms curled tight even in sleep.
Larkin breathed a sigh of relief—her arms ached from holding Brenna. It had been a long time since their lunch of dried meat and fruit.
“Thank the ancestors,” Mama murmured. Between giving birth not long before, nursing, and lack of sleep, she was clearly struggling to put one foot in front of the other.
Talox pointed ahead. Larkin shaded her eyes and caught sight of Denan at a break in the pike line. Bracing Brenna’s head, Larkin hurried forward.
Unstringing his bow, Denan strode out to meet her. He embraced her, squeezing her too hard. Brenna squirmed and squawked. He pulled back and chuckled. He rested a hand on Brenna’s downy head. “Sorry, little one.”
Larkin peered up at him. “What’s going on?”
“You must be tired. Let me have a turn carrying her.” Without meeting her gaze, he tugged Brenna from her arms and started past the pike line.
Unease caught fire in her belly. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Denan glanced at her askance and then away again.
The situation reminded her of the first time they’d pushed through the forest. Only that time, he’d been bound from telling her the truth by a curse—a curse that no longer applied to her. “Denan—”
He glanced back at Talox, Mama, and Sela. He dropped his voice. “The wraiths don’t just take slaves. They fixate on certain girls. And they don’t stop until they have them.”
Horror washed through Larkin. She could feel the wraith around her again. His smell invaded her body. His shadows ate away all warmth and goodness. The vision of the Black Tree superimposed over reality. She couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t catch it.
Denan pulled Larkin behind the shelter of a massive tree. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Maybe …” Brenna fussed, and Denan patted her back. “Maybe all this time they’ve been looking for the girl meant to break the curse.”
Dizzy, Larkin pressed her hand against the bark. The steady, faint tingle in her sigils increased. Calm washed through her. She breathed out in relief.
“Don’t tell my mama.” It was bad enough that she knew.
Denan’s jaw set with fury or determination or both. “Ramass would have to go through both my army and Demry’s to touch you, Larkin. You’re safe.”
Two thousand against the mulgar horde. Would it be enough? “How long until we reach the Alamant?”
Brenna’s fussing increased, and he bounced her in his arms. “If we force march, two days. Maybe three.”
Men were going to die. Tonight.
This was happening too fast. She couldn’t take it all in. “My family?” She choked, thinking of the terror Sela would endure, and so soon after she’d just started opening up again.
Brenna had settled in his arms. He laid her over his shoulder and rubbed her back. “We’ll enchant them and hide them high in the trees. They’ll sleep through the worst of it and wake up with no memory of what happened.”
“And if the mulgars break through?”
“They won’t.”
“But if they do—”
“We have the advantage of choosing our location and building fortifications. And we only have to hold them off until morning.”
“Mulgars don’t fight during the day?”
“Oh, they will. They’re opportunistic—driven by instinct and hatred. They go for the easy kill, the taste of blood. But without the wraiths to drive them, they won’t keep throwing themselves on our spears. They’ll retreat.” He cupped the side of her face. “Where’s my warrior wife? The one who braved the forest twice to protect those she loved? The first female warrior in three centuries?”
“Not that I’ve done anything with that magic,” she grumbled.
“You saved me. And your magic will only grow stronger as your sigils do. Someday, you’ll do more. I know you will.”
The weight of his words settled around her heart. “How can you know that?”
Shifting Brenna to his other arm, he pulled up his sleeve, revealing the ahlea sigil—the sigil for women’s magic on his wrist. “I was meant to find the one who would break the curse. I found you.”
He rested his palm on her uninjured cheek. “The Idelmarch lost magic and memory; the Alamant faces barrenness and shadow. Part of that curse was broken with you. I think you can break it for others.”
L
arkin heard her mother’s labored steps long before she reached them.
“Start with your mother.” He pulled back. “See if you can remove the curse from her.”
Mama huffed into view. She stiffened at the sight of Brenna in Denan’s arms. Then her gaze went to Larkin, and she stilled. “What’s wrong?”
Denan gave a bright smile. “There’s a lovely pool below the waterfall to wash up in, Pennice. Ancestors know the baby needs changing.” He grinned down at her. “Don’t you, sweet girl?”
Kicking her feet, Brenna stared up at him with eyes that still straddled the line between brown and blue. They reminded Larkin so much of Nesha’s violet eyes that she had to turn away for a moment. Mama took the baby from him and stepped back.
Pretending he hadn’t noticed her mistrust, Denan strode out ahead of them. “This way.”
Larkin felt her mother’s questioning gaze on her, but she kept her head down and followed Denan. She paused at the base of the pool ringed with stones. Water plunged from the steep cliffs covered in ferns into a turquoise pool.
Pipers stood on the shore, bows in hand as they fished for their supper. Others sat around campfires, sleeping or eating. Even with the masses of soldiers, it was still a beautiful place. The mist kissed her sweaty face and felt like a cool caress on her exposed neck.
But that tranquility and beauty seemed far away. All Larkin could feel was sorrow. The first time she’d been here with Alorica and Venna. They’d been so determined to escape, so united in their hatred of the pipers.
The second time, Larkin had been escaping with Bane. They’d plunged over the waterfall in their small boat. Larkin could still feel the grit against her cheek. Still feel the shock at the sight of hundreds of mulgars standing just inside the tree line, watching, but not attacking.
Why hadn’t they attacked?
“Larkin?” She started out of her memories to find her mother watching her with concern. “What is it?”
Mama wouldn’t be brushed off—not a second time. “I was here with Venna and Bane.” Venna was dead. If Denan’s ransom went wrong, Bane would be too. She choked, any other words she might have said sticking fast to her throat.
Mama reached for her.
From the pool, Tam crowed as he held up two fish on the same arrow. The men around him slapped him on the back and cheered.
“Looks like Tam has our supper.” She pushed past her mother.
Bellies full of fish and foraged greens, Larkin spent the last remaining moments of sunlight washing out Brenna’s swaddling—even with mulgars and wraiths hunting them, such things must be done. Mama wrung them out and hung them on bushes to dry while Sela stared at the waterfall as if entranced.
Scrubbing her hands clean, Larkin caught sight of her reflection in her cupped hands. The wraith’s blood had left splattered burns across her cheek and neck amid the freckles—the stinging, one of many small hurts. She shivered and let the water fall.
A dozen steps from the shore, a boulder jutted out—the same boulder she and Denan had shared her first time through the forest. She’d just discovered he meant to make her his wife, whether she wanted it or not. She’d been so angry with him. So confused and hurt and lost.
It was also the first time she had a name for the strange things she’d been able to do since he’d given her the amulet. She touched it through her tunic, feeling the outline of a tree imprinting against her skin. Like the sacred arrows and the pipers’ weapons, it was made of the sacred wood of the White Tree and had its own kind of magic.
Just like the magic pulsing in her four sigils. She opened them to the magic, marveling as they gleamed iridescent, their shapes geometric and floral. They were still growing in size and strength. The one on the back of her hand called up her sword. The one on her left forearm called up her shield. The final two were on the nape of her neck and a band around her upper arm. She didn’t know what they did.
She opened the one on her arm to the magic, to the familiar, almost painful buzzing. She focused on herself and her mother, trying to see what was different between them—why one of them was cursed and one wasn’t.
Nothing.
She tried again with the sigil on her neck. Still nothing. She rubbed her hand over her head in frustration. It would help if she knew how her curse had been broken. Perhaps she’d been born this way?
No. She rubbed her thumb across the faint scar on her palm. Everything had changed with the sliver. Her first thorn. Imperfect and quickly lost. The first time she’d gone through the forest, the barrier—or stirring, as her people called it—had attacked her, rendering her a blubbering mess of terror. It hadn’t the second time. But then it had again the third.
But what had allowed her to receive her thorn in the first place? It was almost like the White Tree had reached out through the ordinary trees, infusing it with just enough magic for her to use. Like the tree had cared about her even then. Like a friend might.
“The trees are our friends.”
The words Sela had spoken in the arbor ring and then before, when she and Larkin had been running for their lives from the beast. The enchantment made the trees look like melting candles, their wicked, burning branches snatching at Larkin.
Until her sister’s cool hands had touched Larkin’s shoulders. The enchantment had faded. Something had broken free inside Larkin—a light where before there had been only darkness. And then Larkin had noticed Denan, who’d been watching Sela, keeping her safe from a distance.
Could it be? Was Sela the one Denan had been meant to find—the one who’d broken the curse? Larkin gasped and rose to her feet, her gaze landing on her sister, who stacked stones into precarious towers.
“Larkin.” Denan came up behind her. He wore his armor of boiled, studded leather. Strapped across his back were his ax and shield, both made of the impenetrable wood of the White Tree—it would send anything with dark magic back to the shadow until night came again.
The way he looked at her, almost reverently. What if that reverence was just because he thought her a curse breaker—the savior of his people?
No. Sela was a child. She couldn’t have been the one to break the curse. She just couldn’t.
Denan’s gaze fixed on Larkin—open and vulnerable and so full of need.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice cracked on the question. A stupid thing to ask. He could die this night, protecting her and her family. She might never see him again.
“Come with me?” he asked.
Mama laid out the last of the swaddling over a bush. “She needs to stay with me.”
“I’ll be right back, Mama.” Larkin pushed to her feet and took Denan’s warm hand in her cold one. Larkin felt Mama’s eyes on her. She clearly didn’t approve. How could she? But Larkin didn’t pull away. She couldn’t.
She followed Denan wordlessly along the pool of water. He looked around once before pulling her into an alcove tucked behind a tree. The waterfall spray misted her skin, and the roar of it filled her ears.
The space was tight, her back against the moss-covered rock face, ferns draped across her hair. His body a mere breath away; the heat between them became a living thing. His hands braced on either side of her head. The muscles in his arms locked as if it took a great deal of strength to keep from touching her.
“Denan, what’s wrong?”
“I almost lost you today.” He sounded almost angry. He rested his forehead against hers. “Larkin, if the wraiths had …” Unable to bear his pain, she reached up, taking his beardless face between her palms.
The forest take her, she could lose him too. “I’m here.”
“May I kiss you?” He still hadn’t met her gaze. He seemed almost … shy. She heard the question he wasn’t asking. Did she want this? Did she want him—forever?
“We’ve already kissed twice,” she reminded him breathlessly.
“But you’ve always kissed me.” The backs of his fingers shifted down her cheek, along her neck, before skimming across her collarbo
ne, trailing fire wherever they touched. “This time, I want to kiss you.”
“Yes.” Please.
A trace of a smile ghosted across his full lips. And then finally, finally, his gaze met hers. The depth of feeling in his obsidian eyes made her heart kick in her chest. Was that feeling based on a lie? Ancestors, it couldn’t be. She couldn’t have tasted this only to lose it so soon.
She wanted to rise up, wrap her arms around him, and kiss him. But she forced herself to wait, to let him set the pace. The pad of his thumb rubbed her bottom lip. His hand slid along her jaw and into her hair. He tilted her jaw back. She wet her lips, eyes slipping closed. Their mouths met, his lips soft and tender.
She took his face in her hands, the pockmarks rough under her fingers. She wound her arms around his neck and rose up on her toes. His palms skimmed down her back before settling around her waist.
He was holding back. Being patient. Considerate. The forest take him, he was always so patient and considerate. She took his bottom lip in her teeth, nipping before sucking gently. He moaned—a moan that sparked through Larkin, turning to a molten heat that spread through her torso and then her limbs.
He deepened their kiss, his arms wrapping around her so tight he lifted her from the ground, her toes scraping the mossy ground.
“Denan,” Tam called from out of sight.
She let out a frustrated breath and rested her forehead in the crook of his neck.
“Denan,” he called again. “It’s almost sunset.” She heard the apology in Tam’s voice.
Denan growled low in his throat—she could feel the vibrations against her lips. “I don’t start a battle I can’t win. No harm will come to you, Larkin. I swear it on my life.”
“And who will protect you?” Emotion choked her voice.
“I will always come for you.”
Tears clogged her throat. She clutched the words that had once felt like a curse; now, they were a promise to keep her afloat in a sea of turmoil.
He squeezed her. “I love you.”
The words shocked her. Before she could decide if she should say them back, he strode away. Her fingertips covered her mouth. She could still taste him, still feel his body against hers. What if he never came back to her?
