by Amber Argyle
“If these are my last hours, I would spend them with you in peace, Larkin. Please.”
A sudden image of Eiryss weaving magic to form an orb that pushed back the shadows flared in Larkin’s mind. She’d watched Eiryss weave the magic a hundred times—she had the scars on her arm to prove it.
“Magic binding up the night,” Maisy had said.
Light to bind the shadow.
Working on instinct, Larkin gathered all her magic. Enough for a small sword and nothing more. Pulling out of Denan’s arms, she wiped her nose and glanced at the crowd gathering around them.
“Alorica!” Larkin commanded. “Flare your magic.”
She started. “What?”
Larkin pushed to her feet, catching sight of five more copperbills around her. “Flare your magic. Now!”
After a moment’s confused hesitation, they obeyed. Doing as Larkin had seen Eiryss do, she grasped the edge of their shields. The magic felt warm, soft and hard at once. She tightened her grip and pulled. The magic came free like molten glass in her hands.
Alorica gasped.
With a thought, Larkin changed the shape into a long strand, like a dangling ribbon that gleamed a faint blue.
“She can’t do that,” Tam gasped. “It’s men’s magic and a lost art, besides.”
“Not for the Valynthians,” Denan said. “Their women wielded the magic and their men fought.”
Valynthians—Larkin’s people. She took the magic from another copperbill. And another. Six in all.
“What are you doing?” Denan asked.
She closed her eyes, her memories of Eiryss playing out behind her closed eyes. Eiryss wove the strands in a familiar pattern. Dray played the music behind her.
Larkin hummed Dray’s tune, got it wrong, and started again. Catching on, Tam took out his flute and played. Larkin wove the magic as she’d seen Eiryss do, the slight variation in color making it easy to tell which strand went where. Between Tam’s music and her fingers, she made an orb.
“The forest take me,” Alorica murmured. “How did she do that?”
Someone shushed her.
Larkin moved the orb toward Denan’s side. The words of one of Eiryss’s poems came to mind. She sang it, her voice rough, the notes all wrong.
Light through dark and shadow pass,
Then tighten and trap the poison fast.
“Larkin,” Denan gasped. “What are you—”
She pushed the magic into his side, his blood sticky and slick beneath her fingers. The shadows inside him were sharp-edged thorns clawing forward. Her orb slipped past them. She shifted the weave, tightening it to become impenetrable. It flared once and then steadied.
“Wh-What have you done?” Denan asked.
She concentrated on the shadows as they niggled against the barrier she’d created. Those shadows bristled, sending a phantom ache through her limbs, but the thorns spread no further. One breath out, then in again. She pulled the orb, drawing it out.
Denan writhed away from her. His head thrown back, he screamed, the sound raw and primal. She froze. He panted, gasping. “No. You’re killing me.”
Tears smarted her eyes. “I have to draw it out.”
Denan gripped her wrists. “It’s part of me.” He shook his head as if even he didn’t understand. “If you pull it out, you’ll kill me.”
Slowly, she released her hold on the magic, gasping in relief when it remained in place.
“It’s contained,” Larkin said. For now, a nasty voice in her head echoed.
Denan peered at the wound, his hands freezing cold against her wrists.
“You— That’s not possible.” Tam knelt beside him. He traced the edge of the wound. “They aren’t moving.”
The three of them exchanged glances.
“Can you do it again?” Tam asked.
Larkin swallowed. “I-I think so.”
“Then do it for me.”
Larkin knew that voice. Hated that voice. She whipped around, a too-thin sword clenched in her fists.
Garrot wavered on his feet, lines of black visible on his collarbones. He had perhaps an hour left before the shadows reached his eyes and he was lost.
“How many men are dead because of you?” she hissed.
He deserved this. This and so much worse.
He spread his hands, the lines stark against his palms. “Nesha will never forgive you if you let me die.”
How dare he use her sister against her—again! She took a step toward him.
Tam gripped her arm. “Kill him now, and the fighting may start all over again.” She tried to wrench free.
“Think.” Denan grimaced as he pushed to his feet. “Do this, and the Black Druids are at your mercy.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “He destroyed my family. He murdered Bane!”
Gripping the back of her neck, Denan rested his forehead against hers. “I know. I know he did.”
“There are so many others I can save,” she whispered. “People who will be dead because I took the time to save him.”
“Larkin,” he whispered.
She shook her head. “You can’t ask this of me.”
“You’re a princess, Larkin. You do what’s best for your people. Always.”
She pulled away from the warmth of Denan’s embrace and stared at Garrot. “The war is over.”
“Yes,” Garrot said.
“From now on, we work together.” Her voice trembled.
“To defeat the wraiths,” Garrot agreed.
“Your people will make the pilgrimage to the Alamant to have their curse removed,” Denan said.
Garrot’s eyes widened. “That’s possible?” Before any of them could answer, he staggered, his hands going to his neck. His eyes and veins bulged as the shadows writhed up his neck. “Yes. Anything you want. Please.”
Behind him, one of the Black Druids dropped, his whole body jerking. He sat up, his eyes fully black. Tam shoved a sword into his neck.
The first step was the hardest. Larkin gathered magic from the copperbills, weaving the magic into an orb while Denan and Tam played.
Light through dark and shadow pass,
Then tighten and trap the poison fast.
She pushed the magic into Garrot’s skin.
Larkin stumbled through the mist, rain seeping from her hood to run in freezing streaks down her back. Darkness fell, bringing with it the scent of death and the grave. It grew stronger with each step she took. Until she ran blindly.
A sound behind her. She slammed into something and fell back. Above her, a body swayed, turning. She didn’t want to look. Couldn’t look away. His face pale and dead, Bane looked down at her. “I can’t die for you twice, Larkin.”
She staggered to her feet and backed away from him, only to bump into another body. Talox, his eyes black. “It’ll be your turn soon.”
She turned and fled, running until she reached the edge of a ravine, a frothing river rushing far, far below. The updraft blew at her hair. She turned as the Wraith King slipped from the shadows.
Ramass reached for her, one gloved finger trailing down her cheek. “Every mortal has a price.” It was not the wraith’s horrible voice that said it, but Denan’s.
Larkin gasped awake to early morning. She wrenched herself up, away from the sweat-soaked sheets. She drew her knees to her chest and panted, letting herself orient to the simple elegance of Denan’s bedroom—their bedroom now. Through the magical barriers, the White Tree gleamed opalescent gold in the dim morning light.
Denan lay beside her, one arm over his face. She longed to curl up beside him, feel the impossibility of his body—all hard softness—against her own. But he slept so fitfully, when he slept at all.
Letting him rest, she slipped soundlessly from the bed and tugged on a long tunic. She left their room, padded down the stairs of their hometree and through the main room. Not far above the water, the training platform jutted out.
She took a long staff from the hooks embedded in
to the tree and centered herself. She went through the motions Tam and Denan had been working with her on—slowly at first, perfecting each movement before she increased her speed.
Not long after sunrise, Denan appeared at the entrance. He watched her a moment and then left, returning with a pitcher of water and two gobby fruits. Still, she didn’t stop until she was too tired to picture the faces of the dead.
She slumped down beside him, drinking directly from the pitcher. She wiped her mouth and tore into the gobby.
“What is it?”
Her first instinct was to shrink away from him. But she had made that mistake with Nesha once. She wouldn’t make it again. “I saw Bane and Talox dead. A wraith hunted me. And when he caught me, the wraith was you.”
“Oh, Larkin.” He wrapped an arm around her.
She considered all she had risked. All she had lost. All she might have lost but didn’t. “They died for me. Why? Why is my life worth more than theirs?”
“It has nothing to do with worth. It has to do with love. They laid down their lives because they loved you and they loved me.”
“I can never repay them.”
“You can make their sacrifice worth it.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “I didn’t find the ahlea amulet.”
“We will.”
“The wraiths are still out there.”
“We will defeat them.”
“How?”
He kissed her temple. “The same way we have always faced the darkness: together.”
She sighed, pushed herself up, and held her hand out to him. “The delegation from the Idelmarch should be arriving in a few days. We have a lot to do to prepare.”
He allowed her to pull him up, but instead of letting go, he tugged her until she stumbled into him. He pressed his lips against hers. The kiss tasted of the sweet tartness of the fruit, with an undercurrent of salt from her lips. He deepened the kiss, which started a low fire in her belly.
She pulled back. “We don’t have time for this. And I’m all sweaty.”
“I’m a prince. We have time for whatever I say we have time for.”
She tried to wriggle out of his arms. “At least let me shower.”
“Certainly.” He swung her into his arms and stepped up to the edge of the platform.
She squealed and kicked her feet. “Denan! What are you doing?”
He looked at her, perfectly serious. “Giving you a shower.”
Then they were falling, dropping through crystal clear water, pulsating fish darting for cover all around them. She flung out her limbs, which wrenched her from Denan’s arms. She swam for the surface. Light rippled through the plants around them, indicating Denan had touched down at the bottom.
She risked a glance to see him arrowing toward her. She broke the surface, took a gasping breath, and swam for the edge of the tree. Hands wrapped around her waist from below, rolling her under him.
Denan grinned at her, clearly thinking he’d won. She flared her magic and pulsed, sending him shooting away from her.
He skidded like a skipped stone across the water, bellowing, “Cheater!” before he sank.
She pulled herself out of the water, laughing. His head popped up, and he glared at her. She laughed harder. His eyes slid down her wet tunic, her bare legs, and his gaze turned hungry as he swam toward her.
“You’re not sweaty anymore,” he said as he climbed the length of her.
She trembled inside. She was so grateful for this man. For letting her be sad. For making her laugh. For letting her fight when she needed to fight. “Thank you. For coming for me.”
He kissed the palm of her hand. “Larkin, I will always come for you.”
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Of Ice and Snow.
Pushing aside the thick brush, Otec eased into the shadows of the ancient forest. Branches scratched at him like a witch’s fingernails. He tried to ignore the itch that always started under his skin when he found himself in a space that was too tight. Soon, midday had darkened to twilight under the impenetrable fortress of leaves.
“Where’s the lamb, Freckles?” Otec asked his dog. “Go get her, girl.”
Freckles perked her ears and sniffed the air. They hadn’t gone more than a half dozen steps before she stiffened suddenly and burst forward, right on the heels of a squealing gray rabbit.
Otec shouted at her, calling her back. But Freckles was already out of sight. Even his own dog wouldn’t listen to him. Grumbling under his breath, Otec continued following the spoor his sheep had left earlier that day.
Finally, he spotted an out-of-place patch of white under some brush. He knelt down and parted the angry thorns, then took hold of the lamb’s neck with his shepherd’s crook. She bleated pitifully and struggled weakly to get away. Her face felt feverish under Otec’s palm as he held her still. “Easy now, little one.”
He gently took hold of the animal’s front and back legs and hoisted her over his shoulders, her wool coarse against his always-sunburned neck. And though she wasn’t that heavy, the burden weighed down Otec’s shoulders.
Heading back the way he’d come, Otec didn’t bother to call for Freckles—she’d get bored or hungry and come along eventually. Just when he could see the way out of the forest, something warm and runny slid down the left side of his chest. He glanced down to see himself covered in sheep diarrhea.
Otec swore—he was wearing the only shirt he owned, so it wasn’t like he could change. He set the lamb down and jerked his shirt off, careful not to smear any of the excrement on his face. Then he tossed the shirt into a bush. The thing was worn so thin it was nearly useless. Besides, after he spent an entire summer in the mountains, his mother always made him a new shirt.
The shadowy breeze crawled across his skin. Shivering, he took hold of his shepherd’s crook and was about to pick up the lamb again when something out of place caught his eye—a splash of red in a square of sunlight. It was far enough away he could cover it with an outstretched hand.
Squinting through the tangled limbs all around him, Otec automatically quieted his steps and moved at an angle toward the strange shape and color, hoping the lamb he had left behind would remain quiet. As he came closer, the color shifted and he could make out a pair of bent legs clad in black trousers with a bright-red tunic. Strange clothing.
Otec pushed aside some brush and saw a figure bent over something. Even at fifteen strides away, he could see that the face was fine featured with deeply tanned skin, enormous brown eyes, and thick black hair.
He knew two things at once. First, this wasn’t a man as he’d first suspected—but a woman wearing men’s clothing and sporting hair so short it barely touched her ears. And second, she was a foreigner. What was a foreigner doing on the edge of the Shyle forest?
She was close to Otec’s own age of twenty, and she was almost pretty, in a boyish sort of way. But what intrigued him most was how engrossed she was in what she was doing, the tip of her pink tongue rubbing against her bottom lip, and her brows furrowed in concentration.
That concentration stirred something inside him, an uncanny sense of familiarity. Something about the forward bend of her head, the intensity of her gaze, sparked a deep recognition. He shouldn’t be watching her—should be moving the sick lamb to the village, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes away. Eager to see what she was doing, Otec moved as close as he dared, coming to the edge of the shadows and peering at her from behind a tree.
A sheet of vellum was tacked to a board on her lap. Her hands were delicate, beautiful even, as her fingers worked a bit of charcoal in what seemed a choreographed variation of long and short strokes. Bit by bit, the drawing began to take shape. It was of Otec’s village, which was spread out below them. Surrounded by the crimson and gold of autumn, Shyleholm was nestled deep in the high mountain valley. This foreign woman had somehow managed to capture the feel of the centuries-old stones, cut from the mount
ains by glaciers, rounded and polished for decades before they were pulled from the rivers by Otec’s ancestors.
She had depicted the neat, tidy fields of hay set up against the harsh winters, even managing to give a hint of the surrounding steep mountains and hills. But what she hadn’t captured was the chaos of wagons and tents set up on the far side of the village. They were a little late for the autumn clan feast, but Otec couldn’t imagine any other reason for them to be there.
After his five months of solitary life in the mountains, the mere thought of the mass of people set Otec’s teeth on edge. Already he could hear the incessant noise of the crowd, feel the eyes of hundreds of other clanmen who, when they found out he was the clan chief’s son, expected him to be the leader his oldest brother was. The warrior his second brother was. Or the trickster who was his third brother.
They learned soon enough not to expect anything at all. When Otec wasn’t in the mountains, he was carving useless trinkets or playing with the little children who didn’t know he was supposed to be more. To them, he was simply the man who brought them toys and tickled and chased them when no one was looking. And that was enough.
The woman’s darkened hands paused. She set aside her drawing and twisted the charcoal between her fingers. Wondering why she had stopped, Otec looked past her and saw another foreigner with the same strange clothes and dark features climbing the steep hill toward her.
Just as the man crossed under a lone tree, an owl stretched out its great white wings. It was easily as long as Otec’s arm. He’d never seen its like before, white with black striations. And stranger still, it seemed to be watching the girl.
Still in the shadows, the man spoke to the girl drenched in light. “Matka, what are you doing out here?” He had a strong accent, his words flat and blunt instead of the rolling cadence of native Clannish.
Matka didn’t look up at the man, but Otec noticed her shoulders suddenly go stiff. “I can’t—can’t be around them, Jore.” Her accent was milder.
