by Amber Argyle
“Why the songs, Eiryss? The people can’t even remember Valynthia anymore. They’ve forgotten everything.”
Eiryss took another amulet—this one shaped like an ahlea flower—out from inside her shirt and held it in her hands. “Because someday one of my line will break the curse, and she will need all our help.”
Larkin gasped awake. It was deep night. She’d had another vision. Why? Why now? Her hand throbbed, harder with each beat of her heart. She released her amulet clutched in her fist, a thin line of blood trickling from her palm to drip onto her blankets. She picked it up, the dampener clinking against it.
Her tree amulet had given her the visions.
The first, of the day the curse had begun. And now, she’d seen Eiryss in Landra. Ramass was haunting her, and the curse changing her, killing her. But it was the last bit that snagged in Larkin’s memory. Eiryss had held up a journal, with songs to be sung at every village. Why would she do that?
Suddenly, Larkin understood. “The lullabies—they’re messages.”
“What lullabies?” Mama asked wearily.
In the firelight, sentinels patrolled the edge of the encampment. Larkin rolled over and shook Denan. “I had a vision.”
He peered blearily up at her. Knowing he must go through his routine to wake up, she waited as he stretched, his back cracking and his bare chest peeking out from beneath his blankets. He yawned and shook himself. He pushed up, grabbed his tunic, and pulled it on. “I’m ready.”
Larkin grasped the edge of the dream to keep it from fraying apart. “Eiryss was in Landra. She was dying—vines kept growing over her. The curse was making people forget Valynthia and the wraiths. Denan, I think she hid messages in the lullabies for us to find!”
He rubbed his head, clearly still half asleep. “Lullabies? What messages?”
“‘Blood of my heart, marrow my bone.’” She froze, realizing something else. “If Eiryss was the first queen, does that mean she’s my ancestor?”
Mama nodded. “Oh, yes. Iniya was always proud of that fact.”
Larkin’s head filled with a rushing sound. She looked at Denan. “Then both our ancestors were there when the curse began—on their wedding day.”
That Larkin and Denan would meet and marry now, when the curse was falling apart—it couldn’t be a coincidence.
And the lullaby … Blood and marrow of Eiryss’s bones. “She said one of her line would break the curse,” Larkin said. Sela already had, in part.
Denan and Mama exchanged uneasy glances.
Larkin closed her eyes and tried to remember what came next. “‘Come hear the saddest story e’er known. A cursed queen, her lover lost.’”
“Dray and Eiryss?” Denan asked.
“Has to be,” Larkin said. “‘A forbidden magic and dreadful cost.’”
“Clearly the curse,” Mama said before launching into the next line. “‘Consumed by evil agents of night, seek the nestling, barred from flight.’”
Larkin shuddered. Because the evil agents of night were seeking her like a snake eyeing a clutch of nestlings.
Mama rested her hand on Larkin’s knee. “‘Midst the vile queen’s curse of thorny vine, fear not the shadow, for you are mine.’”
Eiryss hadn’t seemed vile. She’d seemed desperate and determined and cursed. Someone to be pitied instead of hated.
“‘In my arms,’” Larkin recited the last, “‘the answer lie. A light that endures so evil may die.’”
The three of them sat in silence as morning eased away the shadow. A light. What light? Her eyes widened with understanding. When Dray had lay dying, he’d given Eiryss an ahlea amulet and told her to take his light.
“Light! Denan, the other amulet!” she cried. “What happened to her ahlea amulet?’
He only lifted his hands. “We don’t know that. And even if we did, if Eiryss couldn’t use an ahlea amulet to break the curse, what makes you think you can?”
“I heard her say it in the vision. She wrote it in the lullaby.”
“An amulet? Like the one you’re wearing?” Mama gestured to the one hanging from Larkin’s neck.
“No.” Larkin nodded to Denan, who lifted his sleeve to reveal a geometric flower with angular petals on his forearm. “It’s shaped like that,” Larkin said.
Mama stared at the sigil without blinking. “I always wondered about that flower—it never looked like anything I’d ever seen before.”
“Mama?” Larkin asked.
Mama shook her head as if coming out of a dream. “It’s carved on her tomb.”
Larkin gaped at her. “Where?”
Mama hesitated. “In the crypts beneath the druids’ palace.”
Larkin looked west, toward Landra. As the sun broke over the horizon, a vision superimposed over the encampment. A little bird with a copperbill flew toward the capital city.
Larkin’s mind spun. What if she wasn’t useless after all? Perhaps she hadn’t been the one to break the curse, to become the Arbor. But she could still do something. Still make a difference. “I’m meant to go to Landra.”
“What?” Denan burst out.
“Go to Landra, get the ahlea amulet, break the curse,” Larkin said in a rush, excitement making her giddy.
Tam snorted awake, sat up, and fumbled for his bow. “Where are the—” He looked at them and blinked. “Did I miss something?”
“Larkin is going to Landra,” Mama said.
Denan looked at Mama, aghast. “You can’t want her to do this.”
“She’s the one with the visions of Eiryss,” Mama said. “And after seeing all those girls taken … I think she’s meant to do this.”
“Larkin isn’t that foolish,” Tam said.
“I am,” Larkin said.
Tam blinked at her.
“What if Garrot recognizes her?” Denan said.
Mama nodded to herself. “You said yourself that Nesha is still in Hamel, that Garrot is overseeing the trial.”
Bane’s trial. Larkin’s breath whooshed out of her. Bane had saved her life twice. He’d been an idiot, but he was also her best friend. And Nesha … Larkin couldn’t think about her sister. It was too painful.
“Send her to Iniya in the guise of Nesha,” Mama said. “Tam will accompany her. The Master Druid invites the entire city into the keep for the spring equinox. Druids and their wives will come from all over. It will be easy for Larkin to blend in. Iniya can get her into the keep.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Denan said.
“There’s one way to know for sure.” Larkin squeezed her amulet. The sharp branch bit into her palm. The vision swept her up.
Eiryss was clearly dead, her skin so pale it gleamed white beneath the full moon. She’d been laid out beneath an archway, a blanket crusted in pearls and diamonds tucked under her hands. A thin film rested over her, like spun glass. And at her throat was the amulet Larkin had seen before—the one Dray had made with his dying breath.
With the vision came the undeniable sense that Larkin must go to the queen, to the Black Druids’ crypts. “Yes. This is what I’m meant to do.”
Denan crossed his arms. “Your amulet is from the Black Tree. We can’t trust it.”
Larkin shook her head. “You’re wrong. This was Eiryss’s amulet—I saw her wearing it. It has its own magic that I used against the druids and you. Somehow, it contains her memories.”
Denan stood and moved to the edge of their fire, his back to her. “I’ll consider it.”
“It isn’t your decision to make,” Larkin said.
He turned to her, his expression fierce. “As commander of the Alamant, it is.”
She was aware of Tam slinking into the shadows. “I’m not Alamantian.”
Denan stormed toward camp. She caught up with him and grabbed his arm. But he spoke first, not meeting her eye. “You know what will happen if the druids catch you.”
The shouts and accusations of her neighbors calling for her death overwhelmed her.
“Lo
ok at me, Denan.” He stiffened but did as she asked. She flared her weapons. “I am meant to fight. My magic is made for fighting.”
“You know I can’t risk you,” Denan said. “We’re almost there. By tonight, I’ll know you’re safe and well and I can finally rest easy.”
But he could risk her—because she wasn’t his curse breaker. Choking on a sob, she turned away.
“Larkin?”
She kept her back turned—she couldn’t say this while looking at him. “I am not the prize you think I am.” She cleared the emotion from her throat. “I’m only a girl with red hair and freckles.”
“What?”
Part of her wanted to deny the truth. Lie. Give him some other version. But she’d promised him after she’d told him that he was her choice: no more secrets. “I never removed the curse on the magic. Sela did.”
Silence from behind her.
She shivered. “You were meant to find the one with magic, and you did. It just wasn’t me.”
“How can you be sure?”
“That day in the forest, the day we met, she did something to me. I didn’t understand. Not until I saw her do it to Magalia on the promontory. She’s removed the curse on my mother and sisters too—it’s why they didn’t react to the barrier.”
“Is that what you think you are to me—some sort of prize?”
Remembering the pipers who’d confronted her earlier, she sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I’ve made so many mistakes. How many men have died because I escaped, Denan?”
He stepped up behind her and turned her to face him. He tipped her chin up and held it there until she finally met his gaze.
“You are brave. How many would risk the dangers of the Forbidden Forest, not once but twice, to save three girls—one of whom was her enemy? You are loyal. How many women would leave the majesty of the Alamant and the man she’d fallen in love with to save her childhood friend? You are resilient. How many women would face a horde of Black Druids to rescue me?” He brushed his fingertips down her cheek. “And yes, you need to learn a balance between loyalty and self-preservation, but Larkin, your heart has always been the thing I’ve admired most.”
She hesitated, not sure she believed him.
“Would you love me any less were I not a prince?” he asked.
“I think”—she swallowed—“I think it would be easier.” Less pressure and scrutiny, certainly.
“Just a girl with red hair and freckles.” He shook his head and took a step toward her. “I love your hair. It makes it easier to spot you in a crowd. And your freckles—I can see every place the light has touched you.”
She practically leaped into his arms. Chuckling, he stroked her back. She gloried in being loved just as she was.
All too quickly, the feeling faded, leaving her with a heavy stone of dread in her belly. “For the first time in three centuries, women have magic again. I thought I’d brought it back.” She shook her head, fighting back tears. “But I didn’t. My sister did. It took me a day to tell you, because I was afraid it would make me less in your eyes—as it did in my own.”
He opened his mouth to argue. She held out her hand. “Now I have a chance to retrieve the ahlea amulet. To put an end to the wraiths. To bring our people together as one, as they are meant to be.”
“You can’t ask me to stand by while you walk into a death trap.”
“I’ve watched you walk into battle plenty.”
“You’ve not been trained.”
“This isn’t the kind of thing you can train for.” He had no more reason to keep her from fighting in her own way than she did him. “Am I nothing more than a vessel for your sons?”
His expression hardened. “I never said you were!”
She swallowed hard. “You told me the White Tree gave you a vision once of a bird held captive in your hands. It died over and over and over again—until you opened your fingers and set it free.” She stepped closer to him. “You have to set me free.”
He wouldn’t look at her. “I’m not sure I can.”
“Talox told me to own my destiny. That’s what I intend to do.”
“Larkin?” a small voice said. Sela stood between them and the fire, her hair plastered to one side of her head.
Larkin gave her a trembling smile. “Sela, you’re talking again?”
“She told me I have to,” Sela said. “Talking will make me strong again.”
Denan crouched before Sela. “She? The White Tree?”
Sela bobbed her head and choked on a sob. Finally, finally, Larkin would understand her part in all this.
“Larkin has to go.” Sela’s bottom lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. “But I don’t want her to either.”
Larkin knelt, arms wide open.
Sela darted into them and cried, “The light. You have to get the light.”
Eiryss’s amulet. Larkin looked at Denan, who held his hand over his mouth. “How is this possible? She doesn’t have a sigil.”
Larkin had had visions before her sigil. Magic too. Because of a sliver. Larkin’s eyes widened. The bloody elbow Sela had received at the arbor ring. Larkin pulled up her sister’s sleeve, revealing a nearly healed scrape and a dark sliver embedded and swollen.
“Hurts,” Sela sniffed.
Larkin couldn’t stop Sela from being the Arbor, but she could put it off for a few days. She pinned her sister’s arm and slid her thumbnail toward the sliver’s opening. It shot out in a burst of pus.
Sela flinched and wailed, “I can’t feel her anymore. Where did she go?”
Denan crouched beside Larkin. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“It had to come out.” Which was true, even if it wasn’t her primary reason.
Mama hustled over and gathered Sela into her arms. “What happened?”
Larkin embraced her mother and sister. “I have to go.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Denan said.
She faced him. “I won’t forgive you if you force me again, Denan. I can’t.”
He pulled his hands through his short hair, paced toward her and then away again. “I can’t go with you, Larkin. I can’t risk being captured by the druids.”
But she could, and they both knew it. “Come first light,” Larkin said, “I’m going.”
Denan turned on his heel and stormed away.
Larkin changed into the clothes Tam had pilfered from Cordova on Denan’s orders—a fine dress and corset in dour black. Her mother and sisters were still asleep. She’d said goodbye to them last night, so she simply bent down, pressing a kiss to Brenna’s downy head.
They would be safe in the Alamant by tonight. “Love you,” she mouthed.
Larkin and Tam started through the slumbering camp. She glanced around for Denan. “Will he really not say goodbye?”
“If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot.” Tam straightened his robes. “You’re sure I look druidy enough?”
She glanced over his long robes, the intricately tooled belt cinched at his waist. All in deepest black instead of the rich browns and greens the pipers wore to blend in with the forest. Last night, Tam had stolen it from Cordova’s resident druid along with a fine dress and cloak for Larkin. “You look positively evil.”
Tam grinned. “Perfect.”
Larkin could feel Denan watching her. But it wasn’t until she reached the edge of the encampment that she saw him standing on a hill. He lifted his pipes to his lips and played their heartsong.
It tugged a cord deep inside her. The dampener muted it enough that she could resist. She didn’t want to resist. She ran to him and wrapped her arms around him.
His eyes slipped closed, and he pulled her into his grasp, his body trembling. “I will always come for you, little bird.”
“And I will always come back.”
They held each other a long time—long enough for the shape of his body to imprint on hers. When he finally released her, he pressed a tender kiss against her mouth before pulling back. He lick
ed his lips as if tasting her.
“Tam?” he said. She looked over her shoulder to see Tam watching them from a dozen paces away.
“With my life,” Tam whispered.
Larkin winced—Talox had said the same. He’d kept that promise. She couldn’t bear to think of Tam dying for her.
The pipers weren’t the only ones capable of protection. And with my life, Larkin thought, I will protect you.
His fingers slipping from hers, Denan turned and strode back to camp, calling out orders to his pages and captains to get the army up and moving. Dawn was coming.
Safely tucked out of sight, Larkin and Tam spent two days traveling in the forest between the barrier and the road. Now, they secreted themselves beneath the dense, dripping canopy.
Through the steady drizzle, Larkin studied Landra in the distance. Bane had told her stories of the capital, but he’d focused on the people and food. He’d never adequately expressed how beautiful it was. The city had changed so much from Eiryss’s time as to be completely new.
The druids’ white palace gleamed beneath its turquoise copper roof. The river passed through cleverly built channels in ever-widening concentric circles. A long land bridge cut through the center of it.
Such a beautiful place seemed so at odds with the darkness of the druids who ruled it.
She and Tam waited for a break in the steady streams of refugees coming from Cordova. Though the pipers had melted into the forest right after dawn, apparently the Cordovans thought an attack imminent from an army that didn’t fear the forest—an army whose arrival and departure had coincided with the reaping of their daughters.
Hundreds of them had fled for the safety of the capital city. When they’d come close enough to listen at the edge of their campfires at night, Larkin and Tam had heard a dozen rumors. All had a single thread in common. Starting with the attack on Hamel, men were coming from the forest to attack the Idelmarch. Since the beast ruled the forest, he also ruled this mysterious army.
Finally, a break in the carts and foot traffic. Larkin and Tam hurried from the forest and waded through dripping grasses to reach the road. Mud caked her boots and splashed onto her hem. Doing her best to avoid the puddles, Larkin kept her hood low and her head down to hide her striking hair.
