The sigil at her wrist flared silver beneath her skin. With its light came its purpose. The ahlea flower. She was the bearer of the seed. She saw herself then. Planting sacred trees in all the forests of all the world. Revered as a mother by the forests and sacred trees alike. Immortal. Beloved.
The Black Tree would be the king of them all. He would rule his children. Teach them to gather the souls of the dead and twist them to shadows. Mankind would end. But she never would. Nor would Denan, for he bore the ahlea of the White Tree.
She would be with him. Forever.
All she had to do was embrace the darkness.
She hung suspended, knowing nothing but the wicked beauty unfurling before her. A breath away from accepting the only option she’d ever known. And then a tiny speck of light appeared. A flower floating amid torn shadows. It gleamed opalescent, colors dancing along the edges.
She reached out, touching it.
“Use my light,” a masculine voice echoed down through the ages.
More light flared, spearing into the dark. Flooding her with bright memories. Beginning with an ancient king dying to create the amulet she held. Eiryss, working to build a new kingdom for her broken people and the child she believed would one day come. Hagath and Ture and even Vicil fighting back the poisonous shadows for centuries.
More recently, Mama and Sela, who’d never stopped protecting her. Bane and Joy and Venna and Daydon, for their generosity. Tam for his humor. Talox for his gentle strength.
Denan. For his determination and unconditional love.
So many small kindnesses, from a simple smile to the grandest act. So many had made her life better, even going so far as to lay down their lives for hers.
Outshine the darkness.
She’d thought it a metaphor. But Sela had meant it literally.
I choose light, she thought.
“Then we will both die,” the Black Tree screamed. “And all the sacred trees with us!”
The moment Larkin had slipped into the abyss, the White Tree had known this would happen. Known her kind would not survive if mankind did. She’d chosen to save them anyway. Duty hadn’t driven her. Love had.
How could Larkin do any less?
She fisted the amulet, feeling the point enter her skin. She channeled all her magic into it, her whole body buzzing. Light flared.
So bright that even through her closed eyes, she could see all the bones in her body.
So bright she hung suspended within it.
So bright it hurt.
That light drove the darkness from the shadows. Without the Black Tree’s malice to blind them, the shadows remembered something other than darkness.
The boy remembered his newborn sister’s shock of red hair. Fishing in the lake on hot summer days with his father.
The grandmother remembered dancing with her husband for the first time. There were flowers in her blonde hair, and her cheeks hurt from smiling so much.
The bride remembered laughing with her father.
The thief and his sister remembered eating with their parents at a dinner table, their bellies full and their feet swinging.
So many memories. Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands. So much light.
“You’re free,” Larkin cried. “He can’t hold you.”
Then they were gone.
The Black Tree was not. Still, he pressed against her, trying to penetrate her light. She had freed the souls trapped within him, but she had not killed him. She flared all her sigils, silver and white. She took the magic between her hands.
She was a weaver. She could shape it.
She was a warrior. She could wield it.
She wove warrior and barrier magic into her weapons sigils, shifting her swords into thousands of scythelike blades that curved around her in a tight spiral. She pulsed the scythes. A crack like the earth splitting in two, like thunder resonating in her head.
The Black Tree broke, cut into thousands of pieces that exploded with her as the epicenter. For a moment, all around her was falling and noise and chaos. And then it was simply gone.
She hung suspended in the light. Below her, the fen was a turbulent mess of chunks of the sacred tree. The wood was no longer black, but a glittering silver. The first row of hometrees was broken to splinters. A huge wave rode outward, bending other trees so they bowed away from her. Would her friends survive it?
The Black Tree was gone.
The magic around Larkin was fading, and she was falling. Faster and faster. Toward a churning mass that would crush her.
There’s a chance, Sela had slurred. If you can weave . . .
Weave what?
The answer came at her in a rush. She was a fool for not seeing it earlier. Using the last of her magic, she wove a dome around herself, remembering to tie it off moments before she hit. Still, the impact dropped her legs out from under her, her head cracking against the bottom. Then there was nothing but darkness.
Pain throbbed in Larkin’s head, and her stuffy ears rang. A hard, glass-slick surface was beneath her. A surface that rocked rhythmically. The dome. She was still inside the dome, floating somewhere in the fen. She had survived. Had Denan? Sela? The others?
She forced her eyes open. It was early morning. There were branches above her, and bright green leaves. A bird hopped from one branch to another, its brilliant copper beak snatching at a bug before flitting away. Debris choked the water—only, the wood glittered silver instead of black.
He really was dead. She didn’t find joy in that. Only relief. She had to find the others.
She banished the dome and plunged into the water. She tried to swim, but it was more flotsam than water, making swimming impossible. She finally calmed enough to let herself float to the surface. She managed to grab hold of a large enough branch to keep her head above water and kicked for the tree roots.
She pulled herself partway up and rested, breathing, trying to adjust to the fact that she had survived. To outlast the dizziness making her sick. But then came the horrible sounds of sobbing, of a heart being broken.
“Hello?” she called, but her voice was weak and didn’t carry.
It had to be one of her friends, mourning someone’s deaths. Who? Not Denan. Not Sela. Not any of them.
She had enough strength to get her knees under her. After a moment, she pushed up and stood, wavering. Leaning against the tree for support, she crossed the sloping roots.
Around a bend, she caught sight of her friends. They were all huddled around one another. She made a quick count. Caelia rocked Sela in her arms. Hagath held Tam, who was sobbing uncontrollably. Ramass, Eiryss, and Ture huddled together.
Talox stood at the edge of the water, his gaze fixed on something.
“I promised my wife I’d bring her back,” Tam cried. “She’s going to kill me, and I don’t blame her.”
Light. Where was Denan? Light. She tried to speak, but the words came out as a squeak quickly swallowed by the sound of the lapping water. Her head swam, and she nearly fell.
“She’s gone,” Talox said.
“No,” said someone from above.
Larkin knew that voice. She took two more trembling steps and looked up. Her husband stood in the first level of branches and scanned the water where the Black Tree had once stood. His side was dark with blood, but he was alive. Her relief was so profound her legs cut out from under her.
“Denan.” The word came out in a choked whisper that no one heard.
“No one could have survived when the Black Tree exploded,” Talox said gently.
“I saw her in the light,” Denan said through gritted teeth. “I know I did.”
Larkin finally found her voice. “Denan!”
His head jerked, and his gaze locked on hers. “Larkin.”
He dropped from one branch to another. Larkin tried to stand, only to fall back. He grabbed her, holding her tight.
“You’re hurt,” she protested.
“I’m fine.” He stopped and cradled her hea
d. “You’re all right?”
The spinning hadn’t helped her headache. “I hit my head.” She rested it against his chest.
Tam held out a vial of sap. Larkin drank it in one swallow—resin and minerals—and looked back to the place the Black Tree had once stood. There was nothing left of it. Her gaze went back to the Valynthians. Their sigils were silver, not a trace of shadow to be seen.
They’d done it.
The Black Tree was dead.
The curse was broken.
Something gripped her leg. Larkin glanced down to find Sela wrapped around her, eyes a beautiful, heartbroken green. “She’s gone. It took the last of her magic.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I lost my friend.”
Larkin wasn’t strong enough to lift Sela, so she and Denan dropped to their knees and pulled her sister into the embrace. “I know. You’re not alone, Sela.”
Tam gave a whoop and joined in. The others soon followed, and they were a laughing, weeping family. When the hug finally broke apart, Tam played his pipes, and the others danced. Denan wrapped an arm around Larkin’s shoulders and held her tight against his chest.
Sela moved to the edge of the water, her gaze fixed on the emptiness where the Black Tree had once stood. The White Tree was gone, and for Sela, she’d just lost her dearest companion.
Denan helped Larkin move to stand beside her sister. Amid all the joy, there were pangs of sorrow. West and Atara were gone. As was Garrot. Larkin was surprised at how sad that made her. Nesha had been right. Garrot had done the wrong things, and he’d gone too far. But he really thought he’d done them for the right reasons.
Denan came to stand beside her. “The last of the sacred trees are gone. The magic will die as our generations do. The hometrees will eventually fall, and the forest will lose its wakefulness. It’s the end. The end of everything. The end of magic.”
Larkin traced the ahlea on the inside of his wrist—the sigil that mirrored the one on her own wrist.
“No,” Sela said. “It’s the beginning.”
One year later
Just after nightfall, Larkin stood on her family’s land on the banks of the river Weiss. Mama, Nesha, Caelia, Alorica, and Sela stood on her right, Tam on her left. In their hands, they held paper lanterns tied to boards.
Tam went first, crouching to set the lantern into the river. He gave it a little push. “Goodbye, West.”
Larkin went next, setting Maisy’s lantern in the water. She’d tried to protest—to insist that someone else should place her lantern. After all, it had been Larkin who’d killed her.
“She was glad it was you,” Tam had insisted. “I saw it in her eyes at the end. And besides, she didn’t have anyone else.”
Certainly not her rat father.
Choking back a sob, Larkin gave the lantern a little push. Mama set Papa’s lantern into the water and stepped back quickly. Nesha set down Garrot’s and then broke down sobbing. Larkin wrapped an arm around her sister’s shoulders and held her tight.
Nesha hadn’t been surprised when Larkin had told her that Garrot had given his life saving hers. She wiped her tears. “He made it right in the end.”
Larkin kissed her head. “He did.”
Sela set Raeneth’s lantern afloat. Caelia released Bane’s. Alorica sent Atara’s lantern off. The little lanterns spun and bobbed before joining the thousands of others, each one for a soul who died when the shadows were unleashed.
Most of the Alamantians had found shelter within their chambers or beneath interlocked enchantress shields. But when the barrier fell with the White Tree’s death, the Idelmarch hadn’t had those protections. It had been a wholesale slaughter; every inhabitant of Cordova was dead. A good number in the other towns and cities too.
The weight of those deaths pressed heavily on Larkin.
As if sensing that weight, Mama pulled Larkin close. “You saved thousands more. Remember that.”
Larkin still had nightmares. Still woke panting and horrified in the middle of the night. On those nights, Denan held her as she cried. Sometimes, Larkin found herself so irrationally angry that the only thing that helped was sparring until her anger was spent. Afterward, Mytin usually made a big dinner. Wyn regaled them with stories of his antics in the training tree. Aaryn sent her home with something she’d made.
She wasn’t jumping at every shadow anymore, and the setting sun no longer sent her into full-blown panic. Magalia had given her some herbs that helped with sleeping and her moods.
Nesha cried hard. They all held each other and cried until the last of their tears were spent.
“Mama!” At eighteen months, Soren escaped his minders and toddled down the hill, an enormous frog in his little hand, its eyes bulging at how hard he squeezed it.
Rushing up to him, Nesha caught him just before he fell. He grinned up at her. “Look!”
She kissed his cheek. “Let it go in the river, baby.”
Instead of setting it down, Soren threw it. It tumbled end over end, sat for a moment, as if dizzy, and then plunked into the river.
“Atara and I used to catch frogs by the river,” Caelia said.
“I know,” Alorica said. “I used to bawl until Mama made you take me.”
“I remember that!” Caelia said with a laugh.
“Come on, Larkin,” Sela said from behind them. “The moon is almost spent.”
They climbed the embankment to those waiting for them. Denan stepped forward to help Larkin up the steep part. Bane and Caelia’s father, Lord Daydon, wrapped his coat around Mama’s shoulders, though it wasn’t cold. She smiled up at him with a soft shyness that no one else had been able to draw from her. Eiryss passed a sleeping Brenna to Mama; the toddler’s breathing didn’t even shift.
Tam kept shooting terrified looks up the rise to Alorica’s family, who stood on the other side of the bridge.
“Your father-in-law won’t eat you,” Larkin teased.
He swallowed hard. “It’s the mother-in-law I’m afraid of.” His voice dropped. “She’s worse than Alorica.”
“What?” Alorica shot back at him.
Tam put an arm around her and rubbed her growing belly. “Nothing, dear.”
She huffed. Tam winked at Larkin.
Talox held Venna with one hand and Kyden with the other. The boy had fallen asleep with his hand fisted around Talox’s hair. The boy loved the big man almost as much as he loved Denan. “I’ll just keep him for now.”
Larkin nodded in relief. She and Denan had been raising the boy since he’d been weaned. If he woke up now, he might be awake for hours. The whole group crossed fields of rye, wheat, barley, and oats. They passed Larkin’s family hut, which was used for storage now.
Venna drew even with Larkin and held out her fist. “I have something for you.”
Larkin placed her open palm beneath the other woman’s. The ahlea amulet Eiryss had given her dropped into it. It was scorched and a little cracked but otherwise intact. And it hung from the chain Caelia had tried to give Larkin before. “How did you—”
“One of the Valynthian settlers drew it up in a net,” Venna said with a smile. “We bought it.”
Larkin blinked back tears. “That must have cost a fortune.”
Talox shrugged. “It was yours. We just got it back for you.”
Larkin dropped it over her head. It felt good having it. A reminder of all they’d overcome.
On the far side of the fields, beneath the spreading branches of the Forbidden Forest, Ramass, Hagath, and Ture were waiting. Mama had become fast friends with Hagath and Eiryss. The two groups merged, making a little circle with Larkin and Denan in the middle. They came to a stop beneath the tree Larkin stood beneath the day Sela had disappeared inside the Forbidden Forest and Larkin had gone in after her.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Larkin whispered to her husband.
He raised an eyebrow. “We’ve been over this. The council approved it.”
Larkin shifted her weight uneasily. “I know. B
ut after we do this, there’s no going back.”
He reached forward, tucking a stray strand of her wild hair behind her ear. “Their kind deserves to live every bit as much as ours.”
She knew this. Of course she did. It was just the nerves. He held out the arm with the ahlea sigil. She took hold of his forearm, so the sigils on their wrists pressed together. Denan lit his first, and Larkin could feel the warmth and gentle vibration through her connection.
Hoping against hope that they weren’t repeating the mistakes of the past, Larkin opened her sigils. Between them, light flared, blinding their night eyes. Larkin blinked as her eyes adjusted. Something grew between them. Pain flared. Blood dripped. She hissed but didn’t pull away—after all, there was always pain at a new beginning.
The light flashed, forcing them all to look away. There was the smell of minerals and starlight. The smell of a living sacred tree. Larkin almost wept at the familiarity of it. When they pulled apart, a small seedpod dropped to the ground. It gleamed silver and opalescent on the dark ground.
Sela broke ranks, squeezing the pod in her fist so it split open. Inside were rows of silver and opalescent seeds. Sela gripped one in her fingers and held it up to Larkin.
Larkin blinked back her tears. “A female.”
Sela tucked the rest into her pocket. After this, they were going to the Alamant and then Valynthia. After that, who knew?
Sela flared her magic. “Make it grow.”
Save Daydon and the babies, everyone lit their sigils. Larkin took their magic and wove the enchantment for growth. Denan’s hand over hers, they pressed it into the soil.
Larkin felt it then, a new consciousness coming to life, reaching out to sense them. The seed split, two new leaves stretching toward the moonlight. The branches were opalescent and edged in purple, the leaves a rich green and teardrop in shape with lovely scalloped edges that curled to and fro like Larkin’s wild hair.
It grew taller still—leaves branching apart until it was taller than Larkin—before the magic gave out. She reached up, running a finger along a velvety leaf. She wondered if this was what it felt like to hold your child in your arms for the first time. Flaring a little knife, she nicked her finger and the bark until a bead of blood and a bead of sap welled.
Wraith King Page 43
