“You just got back.”
“I was only gone overnight. This time will have to be longer.”
“Where will you go?”
“Dragonswood.”
“Why do you have to go there?”
“You know why, Uma,” he whispered. “I have to talk to my grandfather Onadon—find out what he knows about Desmond’s murder. If he’s not the one behind this and there’s a rogue element hiding in the wood . . .” He frowned, lost in thought.
I knew it was selfish of me, but I didn’t want him to go. He and Vazan made Pendragon Castle bearable. Even when we couldn’t get away like we were now to talk alone, knowing he was close helped me live a little easier, breathe a little easier. I wanted . . . I closed my eyes to push away his image, and saw his somber face still etched behind my eyelids before I gave up and opened them again.
Horsemen trotted up the road toward us. We pressed ourselves against the tree trunk listening to the muffled voices, hooves clopping in the packed dirt, then fading as two men-at-arms passed the tomb heading for the castle.
“We have to get back before they raise the drawbridge,” I said.
“And the wolves start to howl,” Jackrun added, glancing up the hill. I could barely see the outlines of the evergreens up beyond the graveyard at the edge of Dragonswood.
It hurt a little to see Jackrun wasn’t wearing the wolfsbane pouch I’d made especially for him. “You should wait for the time of Wolf Moon to be over before you enter Dragonswood.” Please wait a little longer. “It won’t be long before Dragon Moon. You might be safer then.”
He didn’t speak. I knew I hadn’t convinced him. Already he was crossing over the Dragonswood boundary wall in his mind because he was Jackrun and danger was his bread.
“I should tell you something before we go back inside,” Jackrun said, turning his gaze from the distant woods back to me. “I’m afraid you won’t like it.”
I faced Jackrun under the widespread oak. “Tell me.”
“If the fey of Dragonswood set up Desmond’s murder, they might have meddled in other ways to ensure my aunt has no more heirs.”
“Are you saying the queen has been infertile all these years because of them? That they put some kind of . . . curse on her?”
Jackrun’s eyes flicked toward the castle. “It’s possible. A hex or a spell maybe.”
Sickened, I leaned against the trunk, arms folded, barricading my heart.
“Uma?” Jackrun gripped my arms gently. “I know. It’s a terrible thought. It’s just an idea I had after we talked the last time. I might be wrong. I hope I am.”
“Do you really think they would kill her only son and hex her womb? Are they that wicked, Jackrun?”
He frowned. “Not the ones I knew on Dragon’s Keep, but there are good and bad folk among them, Uma. I cannot say what they would do.”
I put my face in my hands.
“What is it, Uma?”
I shook my head. If Jackrun was right, it meant no matter what I did to help her, she would not conceive. My father had died for nothing, and I would lose. I would die. The army would do what they liked to my tribe.
“You need to come with me,” Jackrun said.
“Where are we going?”
“Something I need to show you.”
“It’s too late. We have to get back.”
He led me to the tomb, opened one side of the double doors, then motioned with his hand for me to go in first.
My feet went leaden as I peered inside the dark tomb. I’d forced myself to tolerate the thick castle walls and dank hallways with torches that smelled of burning pitch, but the Pendragon tomb was far worse than the many-windowed castle. The round stained-glass rose window over the double doors was the only source of light. Dark passageways inside led to underground catacombs filled with the remains of the dead. “I don’t want to see anything in there, Jackrun.”
“Trust me, Uma. This won’t take long.” Jackrun stepped over the threshold, gently drew me inside, and plucked an unlit torch from the wall sconce. He closed the door and whispered, “We cannot light this just yet. Sexton might see the torchlight shining through the rose window and come out here to inspect. We’ll have to feel our way along at first, but the stairwell isn’t far.”
“Are you taking me to see Prince Desmond?” I’d heard his glass coffin was placed in a stone sarcophagus with his likeness carved on the lid. “I don’t need to see where they laid him to rest.”
“Not his burial place. It’s a way into the castle. Come.”
I took a tentative step. Father’s warning whispered through me, Never trust the English.
You never met Jackrun, Father, I argued in my head. But my trust for Jackrun didn’t ease my nerves. Our feet whispered against the floor.
Jackrun stopped abruptly. The dark air around me changed. Heated up. “Jackrun?” I asked, afraid.
He shoved me aside. I fell back, knocking my head against something hard.
“Jackrun!”
The next moment, he roared fire. The passage echoed his roar.
I half ran, half stumbled back toward the entrance.
“Uma!” I heard Jackrun calling. “Wait!” I turned on him in the narrow corridor. He caught up to me, his torch now lit.
“What do you mean ‘wait’? You’re the one who just shoved me aside and nearly lit me on fire! What’s wrong with you!”
“Nothing, Uma. I pushed you aside so you wouldn’t get burned when I lit the torch. You weren’t afraid when I breathed fire when I was fighting Desmond, when I burned the weeds at your father’s grave. What’s changed now?”
“I knew what you were angry about then. This . . . this rage came out of nowhere. You aimed it right at me. What did I do to deserve it? Tell me.”
“Nothing. Believe me. And I didn’t aim it at you, Uma. I aimed it at the torch. I thought you knew I have to summon anger to breathe fire. That’s how it works.”
I was still trembling. “You summoned anger just to light a torch?”
“Yes, Uma.” He handed it to me. “Are we all right now?”
“All right,” I whispered.
He led me back down the corridor.
I held the torch up, lighting our path. “What if there is more to your dragon power than anger and destruction?”
He turned and stopped. “There isn’t.”
Yellow light pooled around us. Beyond that, all was dark. The small white scar on Jackrun’s lower lip and chin was not much bigger than an apple seed. I resisted the impulse to touch the place where Desmond had split his lip the day Jackrun fought for me. “Just now you only wanted to use your fire in a good and simple way, to give us light to see by. The reds back home train their young. There are many uses. Fire for warmth, for illumination, for—”
“You think all I need is training?” he snapped.
“Yes. Why not?”
Silence.
“Tell me what you did that frightened you and your family so much that you had to hide your gift from everyone.”
Silence.
A loud groan of cranking wood and metal came from somewhere in the distance. At first I couldn’t place the sound. Then I knew. “They are raising the drawbridge”
“This way,” Jackrun said, leading me down the stairs.
Jackrun stepped into a smaller chamber and crept behind a stone sarcophagus with the likeness of a Pendragon king holding a cross carved on the lid.
“There’s a passage known only to the Pendragons. Father told me where to look for it in case I needed a quick way in or out of the castle. I’ve used it once before,” he added. He pushed against a square stone at the base of the wall and drew it aside for me to see. A spider scuttled out of the low opening as I stepped closer.
I am Euit, used to wide-open spaces. The sight of the dark passage sick
ened me. My shaking hand made the torchlight jump along the walls. Jackrun held my wrist to steady the torch. The flame above us made a soft, deep-throated roar.
“Beautiful Uma, don’t be afraid.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Pendragon Tomb, Wilde Island
Wolf Moon
September 1210
BEAUTIFUL UMA. My knees went to water at those two words. He had strung them together so easily like two pearls on a single strand. I wanted to stay with him and to run away from that dark gaping hole in the wall he expected me to crawl into. I was not sure at the moment if I could even walk.
Jackrun took the torch. “There are more spiders inside, I’m afraid. They like abandoned passageways.”
“I am not afraid of spiders.” It’s the passage itself. Stop trembling. It made no sense that I should fear the underground when I am mostly earth element, when fox is my Path Animal and foxes live in dens. Shouldn’t deep burrows and passageways feel like home to me?
Jackrun said, “There is no other way back inside the castle now.”
“And you made it that way keeping us out so long!”
“We might both need this escape route with a murderer on the loose. Father said to tell no one our family secret, but I’m telling you in case you need a quick way out.”
If he was waiting for me to thank him, he would wait a long while.
“Are you ready to try the passage, Uma?”
Of course I was not ready. I would never be ready.
Jackrun took my hand. “I’ll keep you safe.”
I ducked through the low opening. He shut the hidden stone door behind us. I took a few cautious steps. Hard to breathe. I began to sweat. Partway in, a large spider dropped to my shoulder. Jackrun quickly brushed it off, his hand lingering at my collarbone, warming the fox mark beneath my gown. He stood close to me as breath. He searched my face before we walked on.
I felt the terrible weight of rock and water over our heads as we stepped under the moat. Holy Ones help me. I cannot do this. I froze, unable to move my feet.
“It’s not much farther, Uma, I promise.” His palm was warm against mine. It was rough and calloused from sword fights in the yard, from clutching horses’ reins, but the grip was light enough for me to pull away if I wanted to. I didn’t want to.
The tunnel ended in the wine cellar deep in the castle, the door opening behind one of the many large barrels. He closed it again, the wood slats melding with the others, hiding the door.
“We have to part now,” he said. “You can go up first. The stairs lead to the buttery. No one will be there this time of the evening, but wait and listen first to be sure.”
“And if we need to talk again? How do I let you know?”
“Send a message through my page. The boy’s a troublemaker, but I can rely on him. Say only the queen is improving. When I get that message from you, I’ll know you want to meet.”
“Where?”
“Behind the tomb in the graveyard. That way we have a sure escape if we need it.”
“Jackrun, do you think there are any fey folk around us in the castle now?”
“I’ve been looking out for any sign of them. If there are any on the castle grounds, they’ve guised themselves well. Remember to watch the windows and the mirrors as you move about. A glamour spell doesn’t fool a mirror or any other shiny surface. You will always see the person’s true reflection there.”
“And if I should see something unusual?”
“Send your message so we can meet. I’ll want to know right away.”
“When are you going to Dragonswood?” Leaving me here alone.
“Soon.”
“What will you do?”
“I don’t know. I wish everything didn’t seem so impossible.” Jackrun looped his forefinger under my dragon belt and pulled me closer to him. He ran his fingers through my hair.
I closed my eyes, feeling his fingers weave along my scalp until he lowered his arm and brushed his thumb slowly across my lower lip. Cupping the back of my head in his large hand, he leaned down and kissed me. A foreign world turned in my chest; a still, dark place sensed dawn in his warm kiss. I went up on tiptoe wanting to strengthen the pressure of his mouth against mine. He tasted of sea salt, pine, and smoke.
We kissed longer, until we drew apart, breathless. His arms encircled me. I wrapped mine around his waist, pressing closer.
There was no going back to Uma, the lone healer.
No going forward with Jackrun, a royal Pendragon.
He was right. It seemed impossible.
• • •
BACK UP IN my herbarium, I washed tunnel dust and spider webs from my skin and hair. I caught myself grimacing in the vanity mirror as my brush caught a tangle, and laughed, still shy of my reflection. Back home I had only seen myself in pools. I’d seen a guise back then, a woven tunic top, proud boyish scrapes on my chin or cheek. I had not seen a girl.
Tonight I found my mother and father in the glass, both English and Euit wed together in my face: Mother’s shapely lips, curved brows, and large eyes; Father’s prominent cheekbones and darker coloring. I found sadness in my eyes, missing Mother, missing home.
But I also noticed something else: a faint glow that did not come from the rushlight, but from my own skin. I moved my lips, silently naming the source of the glow, Jackrun.
I opened the shutters to the endless night sky, felt the sting of the September wind and grabbed my Euit blanket. The scratchy weave rubbed the back of my neck where Jackrun had rested his warm hand, before he tipped my head back and kissed me. For that one moment, entangled in his arms in the semidarkness behind the casks in the cellar, I’d felt free.
But Jackrun would go to Dragonswood. I’d soon be on my own again, mixing medicines for the queen.
I leaned on the windowsill, cupping my chin in my hands. All my careful preparations and doses would not matter if the fey had been hexing Queen Adela to prevent her from having more children.
I’d doubted my gifts many times since Father died, leaving me alone to heal the queen, but I’d always had his fertility cure to rely upon. At least I had had that. But if what Jackrun said was true, Father and I had battled against fairy magic from the start. All the tonics in the world would not have given her a child. If the fey worked against me, it meant failure. Death.
I pressed my palms hard against my eyes. Tiny shooting stars darted behind my eyelids. If I died, who would free my tribe?
She is late, I reminded myself. Her courses haven’t come yet. There is a chance she’s with child now and Jackrun’s wrong. My heart did not lift. Where was my faith? Why couldn’t I believe?
I swept the floor, set out the four sacred elements, and knelt in the middle of the circle. Holy Ones, if this is true, help me. Your magic is far greater than fey magic, but I am just a beginner, following what my father taught me. I was never trained to undo a powerful fairy spell. I don’t even know how to begin.
I stayed on my knees a long while, surrounded by silence in the chilly tower room. Before I put the elements away, I leaned over the water dish and touched the surface. Trembling circles broke around my finger, widening until they reached the edges of the bowl. I peered at my dark eyes when the surface was still again. Jackrun said, A glamour spell does not fool a mirror or any other shiny surface. You will always see the person’s true reflection there.
I would watch for the fey hidden among the English. The barred castle windows would not show me much, but there were silver chalices and shiny food platters. I’d make sure to check the mirror in Her Majesty’s bedchamber when I was with her. At least it was a start.
Chapter Thirty-two
Pendragon Castle, Wilde Island
Wolf Moon
September 1210
THE SOUNDS OF the queen’s ragged weeping echoed down the stairwell the next m
orning. Halfway up, I paused to listen, steeling my nerves before continuing up the spiral stairs with Her Majesty’s potion. Lady Olivia was on the landing above, wagging her finger and hissing orders at a cowering laundress. Spotting me, she gave the laundress a little shove. “Show her,” she said.
The girl hurried down, half tripping with her linen load. On the step above mine she stopped and parted the wadded sheets, nodding down at the bloodstains. Not the small droplets that might only mean spotting in early pregnancy, but enough red to show the queen’s monthly courses had come in force.
Her lateness was only that. There wasn’t any child.
The laundress folded the linen again, hiding the stain before she hurried down. My body went heavier than clay. Lady Olivia gave me a terse look as she reached for the door handle. “The queen won’t see you this morning, Uma.”
“She has to, my lady.” I held out the steaming brew, the familiar scent filling the air in the landing. It was once the smell of hope, but now . . .
“She won’t drink that today. She told me she is sick of your potion. She might not agree to take it ever again.”
I gripped her arm. “But I have another month to help her conceive. She promised me I would have until the end of Dragon . . . the end of October.”
Lady Olivia looked down at my hand and I removed it. “Please,” I added. “What can I do?”
We listened to the sobs. “I have to go back inside. But Her Majesty needs whatever it is you give her to calm her nerves.” She paused. “Can you guise it? Put the herb into some sweetmeats?”
I was afraid to admit I was out of bapeeta. “I can try, my lady.”
“Go then, do it. I will bring her downstairs to her aviary. Her birds usually lighten her mood.” There was a crashing sound beyond the door. “It might take some time to get her cleaned up. I’ll send a messenger when she’s ready,” she added before letting herself back inside.
Damn you, Vazan, I thought, heading downstairs and through the long hallways to the kitchen. If only you’d harvested the bapeeta when I first asked you to! Cook had some sweetmeats in the larder. Back upstairs, I unlocked Father’s Herbal and flipped through the pages searching for something, anything I could mix with the gooey paste in the center of the sweetmeats. None of the herbs or tinctures had the calming power of bapeeta. I slammed the Herbal shut, cut a sweetmeat open, killed a curious fly that showed too much interest in what I was doing.
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