by Amber Argyle
Denan waited until they were out of earshot. “The wards have never failed us before.”
“Just like the mulgars never burned trees or attacked during the day,” Mama’s voice vibrated with anger.
Denan pushed up and walked a few steps away, his back to them.
“None of this is his fault.” Larkin said angrily.
Mama sank down and held her head in her hands.
“That was our last night in the forest.” Larkin rubbed her mother’s back.
“I smelled the wraiths, Larkin. Oh, ancestors, I felt them.” Mama covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her sobs.
“We’ll be in the Alamant in two days. It’s the safest place there is. What about the others?” Larkin asked. “Magalia? Maisy?”
“Both fine,” Tam said. “The wraiths left as soon as you did. Most of the others survived.”
“What about the ropes?” Denan asked.
Tam frowned. “As far as I can tell, the ropes were carefully concealed before we ever arrived.”
“And our wards?”
“One was broken,” Tam said.
Denan swore. “The other three wards are nearly useless without the fourth.”
“They knew where we would go,” Larkin surmised.
Tam shrugged. “It was the best tactical position. They must have guessed.”
Denan had warned her the wraiths would lay a trap for her, and they’d walked right into it.
Denan rose to his feet, drew Tam a few steps away, and murmured something.
“What?” Tam cried.
Denan shook his head.
“Ancestors.” Tam gasped in a sobbing breath. “I should have been the one to stay behind. I’m better with the bow.” He roared in frustration and kicked at a log once, twice, three times.
As much as Talox’s loss hurt Larkin, it had to be so much worse for Tam and Denan. The three of them had been friends since childhood. How many memories, how many scraps had they survived together? Larkin had to look away. She couldn’t bear her own pain, let alone anyone else’s.
Mama frowned at Larkin’s ankle. “Where else?”
“Bruises is all.” Larkin cleared the lump building in her throat. “What happened to the Curse Queen after Valynthia fell?” She directed the question to the pipers.
Denan wiped the tears trailing through the soot on his cheeks. “Eiryss saved those she could and brought them to the safety the White Tree had created for them. She signed the original treaty with our last queen—Illin. Why?”
“Venna said the Curse Queen had the answers we need,” Larkin said. “The answers about how to kill the wraiths.”
“Poison, remember?” Denan said. “You can’t trust anything or anyone tainted by wraiths.”
Tainted … And yet Larkin was sure Venna had been trying to reach through the taint to reveal the truth.
Tam sniffed and wiped his eyes. “If the Curse Queen had answers, she would have defeated the curse long ago.”
“It means something. I know it does.” Larkin had a feeling she had all the pieces; she just needed to figure out how they fit together. Needing comfort, she reached for Brenna. Mama gave her up easily. Larkin laid the baby against her shoulder, her sweet breaths tickling her collarbone. She breathed deep the sweet baby smell.
How many times had she caught Talox doing this exact thing? He would have been a wonderful father, as Venna would have been a wonderful mother. Now they were both lost to the wraiths.
“When you’re older,” she murmured, “I will tell you stories of the man who saved my life.”
Even enchanted by hundreds of pipers, the taken flinched as they passed through what the Idelmarchians called the stirring. The first time Larkin had crossed it, she’d seen melting trees snatching at her—an illusion meant to keep the Idelmarchians inside. It also acted as a barrier to keep the wraiths and mulgars out.
Thanks to her sister, Larkin only felt a cool wash, like passing through glass. Sela didn’t react at all. Neither did Mama or Brenna.
Sela had lifted their curse as well.
“The barrier,” Larkin said. “It will keep us safe.”
Sela didn’t seem to hear. Worse than not speaking, Sela had shown no emotion the entire day. She went where she was led without protest, ate the food placed in her mouth. She had seen the attack last night, watched the wraiths kill Tyer and dozens of other men. What did that do to a child?
Thankfully, Brenna was too young to remember any of this. She slept peacefully strapped to Mama’s chest. For her part, Mama trekked on without complaint. She seemed numb and exhausted. They all were.
Tam took it the worst. He only spoke when spoken to, and then only in monosyllabic answers. Larkin missed his teasing and jokes, his smile. She often lost sight of him as he ranged ahead, though he always kept them in sight. She didn’t know how Denan fared—he’d gone ahead with the scouts.
Moments before the sun set, nearly three thousand pipers and their captives invaded the United Cities of Idelmarch simply by stepping onto Cordova Road.
The Forbidden Forest ended abruptly, as if the trees dared not venture another branch closer to Cordova Road. Breathing a sigh of relief, Larkin stepped over oxen manure that littered the rutted road. Grass struggled to grow between cart ruts.
An eighth of a mile wide, the road led to the capital city of Landra two days away. To her right, it widened and curved out of sight, but she could make out chimney smoke, which indicated a good-sized town on the other side, which had to be Cordova.
A little way down, a farmer driving a cartload of pigs started and gave a shout. Shields out, three pipers bore down on him. He backed away, his gaze whipping from side to side. He must have realized he was hopelessly outnumbered and dropped to his knees, hands in the air.
He was bound and tucked beneath his own cart with a blanket around his shoulders. He was an Idelmarchian, as Larkin was. Did that make her a traitor to her own people? Or were the Alamantians her people now?
The farmer looked about in bewilderment and caught sight of them. His gaze lingered on their clothing—Mama and Sela dressed in their traditional skirts and shirts, while Larkin wore a tunic and trouser that were obviously too big for her.
“Can you help me?” He must have realized they were Idelmarchian.
Larkin had wandered close without meaning to. The forest take her, she should have stayed away. “They won’t hurt you if you don’t give them any reason to.”
“Please,” he begged.
Tugging on Sela’s hand, Larkin turned her back on him and returned to her mother. It would be night soon. They needed to eat supper and set up camp.
Never far from them, Tam arranged sticks for their fire. He’d managed to shoot a grouse. Mama laid out the herbs and roots she’d gathered.
“We’ll let him go come morning,” Tam said. “We’ll be as safe as if we were in the Alamant tonight. I promise.”
He’d clearly misunderstood Larkin’s discomfort. “And if the people of Cordova attack?” Ancestors save her, she didn’t think she could stand them killing each other.
“They’ll be asleep,” Tam said.
Because his pipers would be putting them to sleep. But there was something about the way he wouldn’t meet her gaze … like he was hiding something and feeling guilty. “You’re taking girls. After nearly losing the last ones?”
Molding shredded bark in his hand, Tam turned away from her. “They won’t even have one night in the Forbidden Forest.”
She was going to be sick. “Tam …”
“We are reaping every unmarried woman who can survive the trek into the forest—all of them. Cordova was Demry’s last stop.”
“What?” Mama choked out in a thick voice.
Tam breathed out. “We’ve been cursed never to have daughters, but to keep fighting, we must have children. So we take wives.”
Larkin’s fists clenched with anger. Those weeks when Denan had hunted her—when she’d been driven into the forest and though
t she would never see her family again—were the worst of her life.
Mama unstrapped Brenna and set about plucking the grouse. “This is wrong.”
Larkin wanted to scream and rage, but she would not upset Sela—not after everything she’d been through and everything that was coming. “It’s kidnapping,” she said through clenched teeth. “It has to stop.”
He snatched his bow. “What would you have us do, Larkin? The druids are the ones who had the gall to break our treaty altogether and start a war with us. And after we’ve been fighting three centuries to protect them from the wraiths!”
The forest take the druids and drop them in a gilgad nest, she thought bitterly.
He huffed in a breath and scrubbed his free hand over his curls. “If you want to be angry, be angry with them.” He stormed off, paced at the edge of the forest, and muttered to himself. Even angry, he never let them out of sight.
Sela watched Tam pace, let go of Larkin’s hand, and sat with her back to all of them. Larkin tried so hard to shield her sister from this, but it just wasn’t possible.
Just when Larkin thought she’d forgiven the pipers, accepted that kidnapping girls was a forced necessity, something happened to break open the wound inside her. The hurt of being kidnapped would never go away, she realized. It could never really heal—not when it kept happening to other girls.
Kneeling, she emptied her satchel of the watercress she’d gathered at the stream and struck flint to steel, sparks dancing across the shredded bark Tam had left for her.
“The wraiths are the real enemy,” Mama said. “If we weren’t so busy fighting each other, we’d see that.”
One of the sparks caught. Larkin held it up and blew. She fed it pine needles and then sticks. Pipers gathered at a bend in the road, out of sight of the town—lying in wait for the town to sleep so they could kidnap its girls, as Denan had lain in wait for her.
The terror and dread that had consumed her when Denan had first enchanted her hit her in full force. For days, she’d managed to evade him. But in the end, she’d gone with him willingly—if only because her village had turned against her.
She couldn’t stop it, but she had to see it. How it was done. How it had been done to her. The fire was going well enough now to leave it. “I’m going to find Denan.”
“Larkin,” Mama said, clearly worried.
“I’ll be all right.”
Mama looked at Sela, then back at Larkin. She wanted to argue, but she wouldn’t do it in front of Sela—not when she was so fragile.
Larkin headed toward where the pipers clustered at the edge of the forest. Tam started toward her. She waved him off. “Stay with my mother.”
“I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”
As if she needed a guard in the middle of an army of pipers. “I’ll be fine.”
Larkin caught sight of Dayne following a dozen paces back, his gaze fixed on her. So, Tam wasn’t her only guard. She looked around, and sure enough, Ulrin wasn’t far off either. Denan had set two guards on her without telling her. She ground her teeth.
Keeping her eyes on the uneven ground, she picked her way up the road in the falling light. Around her, pipers trickled in from all over the camp. All of them were single, as evidenced by their shaved heads, a single lock of long hair behind their ears.
Normally, only those few chosen by the White Tree would make their journey for their heartsong—and some of those would never find a wife at all. Now, all the men in the army would have a chance to try for a heartsong.
She climbed out of a wheel rut and avoided another pile of manure—the road was obviously well used. They’d been lucky to only come across one pig farmer—and then only because it had been nearing nightfall.
Maisy waited on the other side. She reached out and hauled Larkin up close. “A knife in the night for your husband. We could both be hours away by morning.”
Larkin pushed away. “Touch him and I’ll gut you myself.”
Maisy looked hurt. “I couldn’t kill my father either.”
As if Larkin’s refusal to kill Denan was because she was afraid. There was no use explaining that Larkin loved Denan—not when Maisy thought every man should be dead.
Denan had good reason for taking Larkin, and he’d never touched her against her will. Still, Maisy’s words sat like a rock in Larkin’s middle. The shadows settled in the curse marks on Maisy’s cheek.
Larkin was certain Maisy knew more about the wraiths than she’d let on. Still, Larkin hesitated, not wanting to set Maisy off. “Why are the wraiths after me, Maisy?”
Maisy stiffened. “Break and make. In order to break, you must make.”
Larkin wanted to shake her. “Give me something,” she said through clenched teeth.
“They search for their Wraith Queen.”
Larkin gasped. “I’m no wraith!”
Maisy’s haunted eyes pierced her. “They will try to make you one.”
They reached the edge of the crowd of silent, still pipers. Larkin was uncomfortable with so many men—so many pipers—in such tight quarters. Hopefully, Maisy would be even more so and slink off.
Larkin set her teeth and plunged forward. She edged and murmured apologies to move through. The pipers took one look at her and Maisy and immediately moved. Some bowed. Some grumbled. Some did both.
Larkin was just starting to feel more confident when a man blocked her path. His dark eyes narrowed to a glare. “My brother died to free you from Hamel.”
The memories assaulted her so fast that she gasped. Piper music shifted around Larkin, dragging her steps despite the dampener she wore. Her sister was heavy in her arms, her body weak from drawing too much magic. Arrows clattered onto the cobblestones. Pipers fell from the rooftops, their bodies broken and dying.
She shook her head, desperate to clear the memories. “I’m sorry.”
He ground his teeth. “Sorry doesn’t bring him back.”
“Nor my son,” an older man said.
“Nor my cousin,” the other man said.
Maisy hissed, which made the other pipers shift uncomfortably.
“Stop it,” Larkin muttered to her.
Before Larkin could comment one way or another, Dayne and Ulrin were there, both of them frowning.
“Chev,” Ulrin said in a flat voice.
The man, Chev, nodded to the other two men. With a final look at her, the group slunk off into the crowd.
Larkin turned to her guards. “Am I safe here?” If she wasn’t safe among the pipers, she wasn’t safe anywhere.
“Of course you’re not safe,” Maisy scoffed.
Ulrin wiggled his mustache, his unibrow scrunched in unison. “There are grumblings, Princess. But no one would dare lay a finger on you.”
Grumblings. She’d been aware of a few dark looks, but Denan had kept the extent from her and instead assigned her guards. Perhaps she should thank him. She had enough to worry about without angry pipers factoring in.
She nodded her thanks to the guards. “If you’ll lead the way.” She had no desire to be confronted by more irate pipers.
The younger of the two, Dayne, dipped a bow and took the lead ahead. Ulrin positioned himself behind her and Maisy. There were no more interruptions, no more dark looks. Whether because of the guards or the implied threat of Denan finding out, she wasn’t sure. Dayne approached the Forbidden Forest and stepped beneath the trees without hesitation. Larkin paused at the edge, a cold sweat breaking out over her whole body.
The barrier is a quarter mile inside the woods, she reminded herself. I’m safe. Still, she had to make herself take that step.
The entire forest was packed with pipers all the way to the barrier. Every unmarried man in the entire army. It was dark enough now she had to watch her footing, so she didn’t catch sight of Denan until they were nearly upon him.
Someone whispered to Denan. He looked back at her in surprise before striding toward her. “Larkin, what are you doing here?”
She cro
ssed her arms. “I need to see how it works.”
Denan grimaced. “It will only upset you. Let me take you back to the camp. I’ll enchant you. You’ll sleep soundly and—”
Maisy grunted from Larkin’s other side. “So you can lure in another wife?”
He glared at her. “I already have a wife.”
Larkin released a long breath. “What about their families? What about the generation of daughters who will never be born because you’re taking their mothers?”
“It can’t be helped, and I promise they will be well looked after.”
“As if no one ever takes advantage of a taken,” Maisy spat.
Larkin had to admit that she agreed. She’d seen the strong lord over the weak too many times.
He was silent a moment. “It has happened before.”
“Ha!” Maisy crowed in triumph.
Denan ignored her. “With our magic, we always know the truth. The penalties are severe—as you already know.”
Larkin shifted. “I can’t— I can’t reconcile this in my mind, Denan.”
“We do what we must.”
She hated when he said that.
“Whatever you have to tell yourself to blunt the guilt,” Maisy hissed.
He pointed back to the encampment. “You. Over there.”
She set her chin. “I go where I want.”
“Go, or I will enchant you to go.”
Hand on her own dampener, Maisy glared at the men around them. “I warned you, Larkin. Remember that.” She slipped away into the crowd.
Larkin watched her go. She wished she could be what Maisy needed, but she was barely managing to take care of herself and her family.
“Worst bargain I’ve ever made.” Denan cracked his neck. “You can stay, Larkin, but only if you promise not to interfere.”
Interfering wouldn’t change anything. She nodded.
He signaled to his men. A select few pipers lifted their pipes and began playing their heartsong. Even with the dampener Larkin wore, their songs niggled against her, offering the sweet release of sleep.
Denan took her hand and led her through the playing pipers toward the edge of the forest. “We don’t want to put the whole village to sleep all at once,” Denan explained. “Someone could fall asleep in their barn and be trampled to death or too near a fire and wake up burned. We work up to a full force, so the enchantment just makes them more and more sleepy until they find their beds.”
