by Hanna Howard
I started, utterly bewildered. It was a woman’s worried voice, not a gruff, demanding soldier. And . . . I frowned . . . Wasn’t there something familiar about it?
“Siria?” cried Elegy again, sounding tearful. “Oh, what if something’s happened to her?”
This was definitely not something she would say to an Umbraz soldier. I clambered back down and stepped out from the trees to gape at the two people on horseback.
It was Bronya and Roark Dell.
“Oh, Siria!” cried Bronya, as if the remarkable thing about this encounter was that I was alive, not that we had met in a burned-out patch of the Northern Wilds, strewn with massacred rebel bodies. “You’re all right! We were so worried.”
Her husband swung off his horse and went to give Bronya a hand down, and Elegy ran at me, throwing her skinny arms around my waist.
“Elegy says Yarrow was badly injured,” said Bronya, coming forward to hug me too. Her deep-brown face showed confusion and pain, and I remembered the strange tension between Yarrow and the Dells. “She said you may be able to heal him.”
“I have. Or at least, I’ve started to.”
She looked overwhelmed. “W-where is he?”
I led them to the place where Yarrow still lay in the mud, half-obscured by his cloak. Bronya and Roark crouched down to examine him, and though Bronya’s expression was conflicted when she turned back to me, relief showed most prominently.
“He seems stable,” she said in amazement. “Your powers, Siria . . . I’m not sure, but I think they’re more than anyone could have hoped for. This kind of healing is . . . rare.” She turned to her husband. “Let’s move him, Roark. Get him out of the mud.”
Roark gripped Yarrow beneath the armpits and Bronya took his feet, and as Elegy led them into one of the abandoned rebel houses, Bronya began to explain why they had come.
“About a week ago an Umbraz battalion rode by our farm, heading north,” she said. “Roark and I were sure it had something to do with you.” She readjusted her grip on Yarrow’s feet and glanced fleetingly at her husband. “He decided we should follow them.”
I raised my eyebrows at Roark.
“We didn’t know what help we would be—if any,” Bronya continued as Roark guided Yarrow’s shoulders through someone’s front door, “but we thought we might be able to offer some small aid if we followed the soldiers. The troops were so vast, we were able to follow at a distance without attracting notice. The only time we came close to being caught was when they all stopped just below the mountains, to build a bridge over the pass that could accommodate horses. I’m amazed to find you here and alive, Siria. The sheer number of them . . .”
“I’d be dead if not for Yarrow,” I said, and quickly explained what had happened, including what I had deduced from the invitation in Yarrow’s hand.
When I had finished, we were seated in the dark, cramped den of a house that had been built around the trunk of a huge oak, and Yarrow was lying on a straw mattress we had moved downstairs.
Bronya and Roark stared, horrified, at the green parchment invitation I had passed them, and seemed unable to articulate any reply. Elegy was curled like a gray cat in an armchair by the cold hearth, already asleep, and as I watched her side rising steadily up and down, I considered what Bronya had said. If the soldiers had been traveling for over a week, they must have left Umbraz a few days before I found Linden in Polter, then met up with the scout we had let escape, who had led them to the pass . . .
“Weedy?”
The other three started, but I jumped up so fast I banged my head on a low-hanging lamp. I hurried to kneel beside Yarrow’s mattress. His eyes were open, but they were bloodshot and glazed. “How are you feeling?” I asked, tugging the blanket slightly higher over his chest.
“Weedy . . . where in the bloody Chasm am I?” His voice was a thick, weak version of its usual growl. “What happened?”
“Don’t talk too much. You were . . . injured.” I swallowed, trying to clear the sudden obstruction in my throat. “But I fixed the worst of it, I think. We’re in one of the abandoned rebel houses. The soldiers have all gone. They took . . .”
I couldn’t finish.
“The others,” he said heavily. “Yes, I remember that. All except Elegy.” He squinted at me, and then frowned and shut his eyes. “Are you all right?”
But I looked behind me, to where the other three sat in their chairs watching. Bronya got up and walked toward us.
“Yarrow,” I said, “you’ll never believe it. Elegy went looking for help, and she found—”
But I broke off, because Yarrow had gone completely still as he caught sight of Bronya behind me. His gray eyes filled with tears and his hands trembled beneath the blankets.
“Hello, Yarrow,” said Bronya gently. “It’s been a long time.”
His mouth moved, but he seemed unable to speak. And then he croaked, “Ilona?”
I stared at Yarrow, then at Bronya, whose face crumpled in sudden, inexplicable grief as she shook her head.
“No, Yarrow,” she said in a choked voice. “It’s Bronya. Not Ilona.”
Yarrow’s wrinkled face closed like a trap, and angry color flooded his cheeks. Before I could stop him, he had flung off his blankets and pushed himself up from the mattress, limping across the small room to the door.
“Yarrow!” I cried, scrambling to my feet.
I turned to Bronya as the door swung shut, hoping for some explanation, but she merely said, “Damn him!” and hurried after him with tears on her cheeks.
Roark seized a lit lantern, and Elegy and I followed. It was fully dark outside now, and Yarrow was making less impressive progress down the charred, rubble-scattered lane. He appeared to be losing strength, as he kept landing heavily on his right foot and lurching out for branches and saplings. Bronya had almost caught up to him, though her legs were much shorter than his.
“Yarrow Ash!” she said. She seemed to have regained control of herself, for there was no more tremor in her voice. In two more strides she had moved to stand in front of him. “Stop this nonsense and talk to me.”
Yarrow made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a snarl and sidestepped her, stumping off into the woods.
Bronya followed, Roark, Elegy, and me trailing after her with the lantern. A short distance into the trees, she stopped, batting branches away from her face as she looked down.
Yarrow was crouched in the underbrush, hands busy near the ground with something I could not see. He did not turn when we approached.
“You’re going to hear me out, whether you like it or not,” Bronya said to his back. “You’ve been running from this for too many years.”
Showing no sign he had heard her, Yarrow continued what I now recognized as the assembly of a small snare. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it: Bronya had pursued him to the edge of doom to say whatever it was she needed to say, and Yarrow was trying to catch rabbits.
“I’m sorry,” Bronya said. “I’m sorry for all of it. But I can’t help what happened any more than you can, and if our decision was different from yours, you can’t judge us for that.”
Yarrow stood up a little unsteadily and fished inside a pocket for more twine before stomping off again.
“We want to help you, Yarrow,” Roark called as we all followed. “Put the past aside, man, and let us!”
“What past?” I asked, tripping over a fallen log. “Yarrow, what’s going on?”
He grunted but made no reply. Bronya said shrilly, “What’s going on, Siria, is that he won’t forgive us for leaving the rebels. He thinks that if he could carry on after all that happened to him—”
“Bronya,” Yarrow snarled, twisting around to face her. It was the first time he had spoken her name, and his voice was so tight with fury it startled me.
But Bronya plunged on, voice wild. “He doesn’t understand that some people take longer to heal than others, and other people don’t heal at all—they just run from the past and try to forget i
t by throwing themselves into new tasks they hope will erase the wounds over—”
“Bronya Dell, I forbid you to say another word!” Yarrow was on his feet now, and with his bloodstained clothes, his muddy skin, and the mess of twine swinging from his fist, he looked completely deranged.
“No!” Bronya shouted, seeming to match Yarrow’s anger. “You fool, Yarrow. The time for secrets is over. This girl trusts you with her life. And if you’d stop being so proud, you might notice there are other people who’ve suffered too, and from the same wounds you have.” Bronya was crying now. “Yarrow, my children are not my only loss. I miss Ilona too.”
His face twisted—whether in fury or grief, I could not tell—and for a wild moment I thought he might run at Bronya. But then he turned and marched off through the trees again, back toward the rebel houses, branches snapping beneath his feet. Bronya slumped against a tree and sobbed.
I could not understand what had happened. Roark handed me the lantern so he could take Bronya in his arms, and I stood beside an equally bewildered Elegy, not even sure where to direct the light.
At last Bronya’s sobs subsided, and she wiped at her cheeks while Roark smoothed back her hair. Dim suspicions had begun to form in my mind. I took a deep breath.
“Bronya,” I said, “will you tell me how you met Yarrow?”
She gave me a bleak look. “He obviously would rather I didn’t.”
“If he wanted to stop you, he shouldn’t have left.”
She chewed her lip. After a long moment, she nodded. “Yarrow Ash,” she said bleakly, “is my brother-in-law. My oldest sister was his wife.”
His wife.
His wife?
Even though I had thought the answer must be something like this, hearing it spoken sent waves of shock through me. It was almost impossible to imagine Yarrow—gruff, solitary old Yarrow—with a wife.
“He resents our decision to leave the rebels because Iyzabel killed his family too—his three children as well as my sister. I think he wanted to forget them, forget his pain . . . but anyone could have told him that helping you was the wrong way to do that. You remind him more of Ilona than any other person alive could. It’s part of why he loves you so much, I’m sure.”
I swallowed, my heartbeat so loud in my ears it made my voice seem muffled and distant. “What do you mean, I remind him of her?” A thousand memories poured into my mind, moments when Yarrow had flinched or balked at the sight of me. Every single one of them since my transformation.
There could be only one answer.
Her lip trembled. “Because, dear heart,” she said, a tear catching in her bottom lashes, “my sister Ilona was a sunchild.”
50
CHAPTER
When we returned to our adopted tree house, we found Yarrow collapsed on the floor, and I suffered a moment of terror before we determined he had only passed out. After we lifted him back onto the mattress and I used more sun energy to ensure he was continuing to heal, we left him to sleep and went back out into the night.
Yarrow once had—and had lost—children, just like Bronya and Roark. But unlike them, he’d also lost his spouse. He had in fact lost everything, and yet he still came south to find me, to raise and protect me. Maybe he should have faced his grief in the ways Bronya said, but I admired him all the more now that I understood what he had done. Not only had he refused to give up, he also let himself love Linden like a son, me like a daughter. Me, a sunchild, a constant reminder of his dead wife. And though he’d been a little prickly at times, and had struggled to look me in the face after I had transformed, he had never pushed me away.
If Yarrow could be that strong after losing everything, I could do what had to be done now.
“Right,” I said as soon as the door shut behind us, and was surprised to find Bronya, Roark, and Elegy looking at me in expectation, as though they had been waiting to hear my thoughts. I blinked in the lantern light, trying muster my courage. “I don’t have much time, and we really must tend to—to the dead.” I paused to steady myself. “But then I think our paths must split. Can your horses bear two riders?”
Roark frowned. “At least long enough to get us to new mounts. I know a man below the pass who would loan us horses.”
“Good. Then I want you to take Yarrow home with you to your farm, and see that he’s nursed back to health. Elegy—” I looked at the banshee, who was already wide-eyed and shaking her head. “You’re free to go. Stay with Yarrow and the Dells if you want, or go where you like, but I won’t put you in any more danger.”
“No—” began Elegy, but Bronya spoke over her.
“What will you do?”
I sucked in a breath. “I have five days until the equinox, at which point I must be in Umbraz, or Iyzabel will kill my brother, and probably Linden and Merrall as well. And if I’m to have any chance of saving them, I need to see the sun. I’ll go north, to where the Darkness ends, and then fly above it to Umbraz.”
This bald synopsis of my plan sounded even worse spoken aloud than it did inside my head, but Bronya looked unfazed. “I thought so,” she said. “You’re like Elysia. But this won’t be easy, Siria.”
“I don’t have much choice.”
She nodded. “I know. We can do it, though—the four of us. If we keep switching horses and ride hard, I think we can be in Umbraz in time.”
“What?” I said, startled. “No, Bronya, that’s not what I meant—”
“You can’t think we’d let you go alone,” said Elegy, looking profoundly relieved. “We’re going to help you, Siria. This matters to us too.”
“Elegy, it’s too dangerous. Bronya, Roark, please . . . Yarrow’s not even conscious.”
“But he will be,” said Roark with a wry smile. “And can you imagine what he’d do if he woke up and discovered we’d let you run off to Umbraz alone?”
I pressed my lips together. He was right, of course, and I couldn’t deny that the offer of help in this mad endeavor was tempting. But I couldn’t risk their lives.
“You can’t do this alone,” said Bronya frankly. “You’ll die, and so will the others. If we help you, it’s possible you’ll stand a chance.”
Her expression seemed to finish her thought for her: Not much of a chance, but a small one nonetheless.
I bit my lip, thinking hard. Now that they knew my intentions, I doubted I could keep them from going to Umbraz. It would be better to plan with that in mind.
“Fine,” I said, rubbing my eyelids. “But listen, then, because time is short.” I took a deep breath. “Iyzabel has this urn—a shiny black one—that she keeps with her on special occasions. I saw it the night I transformed. Yarrow thinks it’s linked to her power somehow, so if we destroy it, she might be easier to defeat. We also need to find Linden and Eamon and Merrall when we arrive, so I think the best chance will be for you four to split up and enter the Black Castle in disguise. Elegy and Yarrow will have to use his magic and stay hidden, but I think you two”—I nodded to Bronya and Roark—“shouldn’t have much trouble getting into the ball if you wear the right clothes and take that invitation.”
Bronya nodded. “We can manage that. And I suppose if Iyzabel is in her ballroom, that’s where the urn will be?”
“I think so,” I said. “So if Elegy and Yarrow work on finding Merrall and Linden—because I think Eamon will be in the ballroom too—then when I come, I can hopefully cause enough of a scene to give you a shot at the urn. And if I have Iyzabel’s attention, the rest of you can try to free the others. Elegy, if you sing, you might be able to cause enough panic to get them all out before anyone notices.”
She nodded eagerly.
I met Bronya’s eyes and saw in her face a mirror of my own feelings: trepidation, doubt, and fear, mixed with fierce determination. It was a weak plan, riddled with holes, but we still had to try.
“Let’s pile the bodies,” said Roark. “A pyre is less than they deserve, but it’s all we have time for.”
Even Elegy helped,
and we worked through the night, aided by those rebels who had survived and were still too shocked or angry to grieve. I didn’t ask any of them to join our suicide mission, but as dawn crept closer to the horizon, two of them volunteered.
“You’ll be going after him, won’t you?”
I looked around at the sound of the deep, hoarse voice. It was Sedge, accompanied by the elf woman who had loaned us her house, Freda. Like me, they were filthy, covered in dirt, ash, and blood. Freda’s wrinkled face bore burns and cuts, and Sedge was limping; a bloody gash in his right thigh had stained his entire trouser leg.
“Briar’s dead,” he said harshly. “Along with most everyone else who led these people. But that witch took our prince, and I have a sworn duty to help him. If you’re going south, I’m coming with you.”
Freda said nothing, but her gaze was steely in the light of her lantern, and I remembered what she’d said the night we arrived.
I nodded.
By the time we had finished piling all the bodies we could find into a half dozen pyres, the night was nearly spent. I went from pyre to pyre, setting them alight with fire from my own hands, and the rebels who stood by to mourn choked out thanks, or bowed to me and called me Highness. I wished they wouldn’t. With every maimed corpse I had dragged onto those piles, I felt more heavily the weight of my responsibility for their deaths. Regardless of the rebels’ failure to reinforce their borders, it had still been my presence that had led the soldiers here. The horror and grief were almost smothering.
Yet I did not have time to dwell on it.
“He’s awake,” said Elegy as I came, weary and filthy, toward the house where we had left Yarrow.
“Thank you,” I said with a smile I didn’t feel. “Will you find Bronya and Roark? It’s time to get going.”
She nodded and ran off, and I went into the house.
“The banshee told me what you’re doing,” croaked Yarrow from the mattress.
I crossed to sit on the edge of his bed. “I suppose you’re going to tell me not to go?”
He gave a dark, wheezy chuckle. “What could I do about it? No, Weedy, I’m not going to try to stop you. As a matter of fact, I think you’re doing the right thing.”
