“What I do know is that you used it to get through the barrier. Do you understand how?”
She looked at him. “Why should I help you?”
He sighed in frustration. “We both want to know how that amulet works. We can help each other.”
She considered him. She wanted so badly to refuse—to hurt him in even the smallest way—but he was right. She wanted to know how to use the amulet more. “It works when the branches pierce my skin.”
He nodded. “What else has it done?”
She hooked her arms around her drawn knees. Telling him any of this felt like a betrayal, but she wasn’t sure of whom or what. “I’ve seen visions. And when Garrot attacked me . . . for a moment, there was a barrier between us and he couldn’t touch me.” Pride swelled within her. She’d stopped the druid, even if for a moment.
When Denan didn’t respond, she stole a glance to find him smiling. “You have women’s magic,” he breathed, something like reverence in his eyes. She scooted a little farther from him. “Larkin, the first time you accessed the magic, before I even gave you the amulet, how did you do it?”
Something about his intensity made her uneasy. He wanted this answer, wanted it badly. Inside her fist, her thumb brushed across the sliver scar.
“Surely, you must have an idea,” he said when she didn’t answer. “When was the first time you felt the magic?”
She lifted her palm for him to see. “I had a sliver. When it came out, I couldn’t access the magic anymore.” She sniffed. “I’ve answered your questions, piper. Now you will answer one of mine: why me?”
In answer, Denan rested his pipes against his lips and breathed out a melody that had her soaring with freedom, with claws and a beak sharp enough to protect those she loved. And if she was a bird, he was the wind that bore her. She was free—free and powerful and in control of her own destiny.
When he finished playing, she found herself leaning toward him, yearning flowing through her like spring water. His eyes were dark—black bands around the inside and outside of his iris, with a touch of brown between—and his lashes were long and black. Unable to resist, she ran her fingertips across the dark gold of his cheek, surprised to find it as smooth as her own.
“That’s why,” he said softly, as if the song affected him as well.
She jerked her hand back as if burned and scooted away from him. It was cruel to trick her into feeling something that wasn’t real. “I love Bane. I’ve always loved him. And I hate you.”
Denan’s expression shuttered. He slid off the boulder and into the water. “You should eat. Meat’s never as good cold.”
Hoping that she’d hurt him, Larkin stared at the food he’d brought her—gilgad meat. Her lip curled in distaste, but she couldn’t ignore her hollow stomach anymore. She took a bite, juices flooding her mouth. It tasted a lot like chicken and a little like fish. She took another bite. She ate all of it and wished for more, despite her swollen stomach. She looked out at the sun, kissing the horizon in the distance.
“So, maybe I shouldn’t have made a joke out of poisoning you.” She turned to find Tam on the shore, his hands in his pockets.
She glared at him.
He sighed in frustration. “What is it with women and glaring? It’s like you’re trying to kill someone with your eyes.”
Despite everything, she felt the corners of her mouth twitch.
Tam shrugged his stooped shoulders. “I’m supposed to bring you in. I think Denan doesn’t want any more death eyes, the coward.”
“Will you dart me like Talox did Alorica if I refuse?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It would be a nice break from the death eyes, but my shoulders still hurt from packing Alorica—she’s heavier than she looks—so I’d rather not.”
He made her want to laugh, and that made her angry. How dare he be anything other than awful! She debated throwing a rock at him—one with slimy moss so it would hurt and make him dirty.
His gaze traveled slowly across her face. “From what Denan tells me,” he said softly, “you don’t have much to go back to. Why are you fighting so hard?”
She slipped into the water and found a rock big enough to do some damage, but not big enough to kill him. She chucked it at him, but he easily danced out of the way.
Tam sighed. “I’ll fetch Denan.”
Muttering under her breath, she sloshed after him. Back at camp, she sought out Venna, camaraderie snapping into place between them.
She’s my friend, Larkin realized. She’s always been my friend.
Tam slipped into a tree, climbing until he was out of sight, though she could still hear the rustling of the boughs.
Denan laid out a blanket and supplies next to a fire, where some water heated in a small pot. He took the pot off the fire. “Lie down, please.”
“Why?” Larkin asked warily.
He glanced at the setting sun. “I need to change your bandage.”
She hesitated, not wanting him to touch her. “Can’t Venna do it?”
“Venna hasn’t been trained in field dressings,” he said with a touch of impatience.
She really didn’t want him touching her again, but by the way her wound kept breaking open, it probably did need to be treated. Reluctantly, she lay down and looked off into the trees. Denan untied the strips and unwound them. He gingerly pulled back the bandage. Venna gasped and looked away.
“Is it that bad?” Larkin asked.
“No,” Denan said as he dropped the strips into the boiling water. “Though I need to stitch it.”
“It’s a little late for that,” she huffed.
From his pack, he removed a packet wrapped in cloth, opening it to reveal black catgut threads and a hooked bone needle. “It isn’t.”
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted, wishing she could see it for herself.
“Larkin,” Venna said, her voice thin and wavering. “Let him.”
Denan was probably being overprotective, and Venna was probably overreacting. The truth most likely lay somewhere in the middle, which meant it was serious, but not life-threatening. She waved him off. “I’ve had worse.”
Denan stilled. The silence grew awkward. Larkin looked away. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She was used to keeping Harben’s abuse a secret, as much out of shame as to keep him out of the stocks—he always beat them more after he returned—but here, she had no one to protect. And she suspected Denan already knew.
“You can say whatever you want.” He held out a silver flask. “One swallow. No more.”
She took it from him reluctantly, watching as he threaded the needle. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me. You keep breaking that promise.” She knew this didn’t count, but she felt like being mulish.
“Apparently, I’m a liar.” Denan’s eyes flicked nervously to the west. “Because to save your life, I will do whatever I have to. There isn’t time to argue, Larkin.”
“What’s the hurry?” she muttered. She tipped the flask to her lips. Fire and bitterness streamed down her throat, making her eyes water.
“Everything is set up,” Tam called from somewhere above. “It’s time to be off the ground, Denan.”
“Not enough time for the medicine to kick in,” Denan muttered to himself. “Soothe her,” he called up to Tam. Moments later, music drifted down, and Larkin’s limbs grew heavy and her thoughts slow. She felt like she was falling into a tunnel, everything around her distant and echoing. Denan scrubbed his hands in steaming water, hissing at the heat. When he pulled them out, they were bright red. The needle pricked her, the thread pulling tight. The pain was there, but distant, like a dream. When he was finished, Denan wrapped it gently. “Any deeper, and he would have cut into your vocal cords.”
Larkin melted into the blanket beneath her. Rainbow auras surrounded the flames. Colors circled his body. Why did he have to be so beautiful? It would be so much easier to hate him if all the horrible things he’d done had stained his outside to match his inside.
> Denan pulled the old, steaming bandages from the water. He waited for them to cool before scrubbing her blood from them and dipping them again. When he was satisfied, he hung them up to dry on a bush.
“You see the colors yet?” Denan asked.
“Mmm,” was all she could manage.
“That’s enough, Tam,” he called into the tree.
As the music faded away, she came back from the waking dream. Her body lay heavy and thick. The pain was there; she just didn’t care about it. “I suppose . . .” Her mouth was lazy, slow to form the words. She furrowed her brow, concentrating, and tried again. “I suppose you want me to thank you for saving my life—again.”
“As you pointed out earlier, I’m the one who put it in danger in the first place.” He hurried to pack everything back up. His tension stole through the colors and into her syrupy thoughts. She shifted her attention to the growing shadows of the darkening forest.
Talox reappeared to scatter the now-dying coals. “Sunset,” he said simply as he scooped up Alorica.
Alarm bells ringing through her delightful haze, Larkin forced her heavy body to shift to a sitting position. “What are you doing with her?”
Talox handed Alorica up to Tam.
Larkin stood up too fast and stumbled. A second later, warm arms steadied her. Dizzy, she rested her forehead against a strong chest. “What if he drops her?” she mumbled.
“He won’t.” She was too dizzy to protest as Denan swung her up into his arms. “And I won’t drop you either.”
He passed her up to Tam, and the two of them switched passing her off to one another as they climbed higher and higher. “I’m going to fall to my death,” she said. She should be terrified, but she was too busy studying the last wisp of the sun wavering on the horizon.
“We’ve trained for this,” Tam said.
They passed what looked like a pied peapod that hung from a pair of sturdy branches. Inside, Larkin could see Venna peeking out at them.
“You trained to put unconscious women into peapods high up in the trees?” Larkin asked.
Denan chuckled. “That’s even what we call them—pods.”
Tam held open a pod while Denan eased Larkin inside and wrapped her in a blanket. She watched him, satisfied he didn’t touch her a moment longer than needed. Finished, he pulled up the hood of his cloak so his face was hidden in shadows and tightened the toggles of his cloak. From below, he would be nearly impossible to spot.
“Denan,” she asked. “What are you hiding from?”
He held his finger to his lips and bent closer, pulling the edges of the pod together. “Until sunrise, you must remain quiet and still.”
She glanced past him, at the steel sky streaked with red. “Is it the gilgads?”
His mouth tightened into a thin line. The way he was looking at her—there was something else. “What’s worse than gilgads?”
“I hope you never find out.”
Why was he playing all these games? Why not come out and tell her? “May the beast gobble you up and spit out your bones,” she tried to say, but the words got jammed on their mad rush out of her mouth. She figured Denan would get the gist anyway.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he muttered as he pulled out his pipe. Music wove with the coming darkness, pulling Larkin under, colors playing out behind her closed lids.
Larkin woke with a start, her neck throbbing. All around was the smell of death—stale, cloistered spaces and cloying rot. Above her, the leaves rustled a warning. From far below, she heard voices—nonsensical and wrong, like the chittering of insects. Whatever the pipers were afraid of, whatever they’d climbed this tree to escape, it was here.
“Larkin,” Denan whispered, so softly she could barely hear it over the chittering and the warnings of the tree. He appeared over her, a shadow in the shadows. He pushed the flask into her hands. “One swallow. It will help with the pain . . . and the fear.”
“It’s the beast, isn’t it?”
His shadowy form shifted. “We call them wraiths.”
Hands shaking, she took one swallow, eager for the colors to take her under again, away from the horror all around her.
“Sleep,” he said. “I’ll stand guard.”
When she woke the second time, fear lingered like a bad aftertaste. She swallowed, wishing she could banish the feeling as easily. Denan’s voice echoed back to her: We call them wraiths.
What kind of nightmare forest had she wandered into?
At that moment, the sun peeked over the horizon. She blinked at the light, shocked that dawn could return after such darkness. No matter how dark the night, dawn would always rise. And so would she.
Despite everything, she felt better rested than she had in weeks. She had Denan’s music and whatever was in that flask to thank for that. Sleeping in the pod had also been surprisingly comfortable, more comfortable than her woven mat or even the straw tick mattress of Bane’s house. At the thought, a pang of longing shot through her. What was Bane doing right now? Were her mother and sisters safe? Then, remembering Nesha’s satisfied expression when she’d betrayed Larkin, she decided it was best not to think altogether.
Desperately needing to relieve her bladder, she peeked out of the pod. Wrapped in a pied blanket, Denan had situated himself at the intersection of trunk and bough, his head cocked at an uncomfortable-looking angle. She took a moment to study him unfettered—the way his dark lashes swept across his cheek like a raven’s wings. His cheeks were angular but pitted with pockmarks. Dark hair shadowed his scalp—he probably needed to shave.
He is handsome, she admitted begrudgingly. Doesn’t mean I have to like him.
Annoyed with Denan for that handsomeness, she pushed herself up—neck stinging and tight—and reached for a smaller branch to steady herself. She managed to plant one foot onto the bough, but when she tried to pull out her second foot, it tangled in the blankets. She tugged but couldn’t manage to extricate herself. When she shifted to try to free her foot, she lost her balance, her hold on the branch the only thing keeping her from falling.
A hand reached out, catching hold of her waist and setting her up straight. Denan reached down and released her foot. Without a word, he went about untying the knots that held the pod to the tree. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he hadn’t slept well.
“I still don’t trust you,” Larkin said.
“You’re not a very trusting person.”
She bristled. “I’ve had plenty of reason not to be.”
He grunted in agreement.
“The wraiths . . . What are they?”
Denan wrapped up the pod and stuffed it in his pack. “They were men once—men who used their magic for evil until they’d corrupted the source, which in turn twisted them into something no longer human.”
The others stirred. She followed him to the last branch. She wasn’t sure she could jump out of the tree without losing control of herself. When he saw her hesitating, he held out his arms. She didn’t want him to touch her, but she didn’t want to wet herself either. Eventually, necessity won out over her pride, and she reached out for him. On the last branch, he lowered her easily to the ground. She immediately stepped back and headed toward the bushes.
“Larkin,” he called after her. “You can wash up, but don’t go far.”
She eyed him. “You won’t peek.”
He grunted. “If I do, you can tell my mother. She’ll promptly break my neck.”
It was hard to imagine that Denan had a mother. Larkin hurried out of sight beyond a clump of trees. She would have liked to strip and take a proper bath, but there was no way she was taking off all her clothes, no matter what Denan promised. After relieving herself, she removed her dress and waded out in her shift.
Venna came into view, Alorica propped up at her side. The girl moved stiffly, her face a grimace of pain and fury. Larkin considered helping Alorica into the pool, but if the girl could run for it, she could deal with the consequences.
Sh
uffling awkwardly, Alorica managed to strip to her shift and reach the water. She bent down to wash herself and glanced back toward camp. “We have to try again, tonight.”
Larkin stiffened before scooping up water to scrub under her arms. “Didn’t you sense the—” She tried to say “wraiths,” but her mouth refused to form the word. She tried again and ended up standing there with her mouth gaping.
Alorica took an uneasy step back. “Are you going to be sick?”
“I can’t say it.” Denan hadn’t been lying. He really couldn’t tell her what was going on. He had only been able to tell her about the wraiths after she’d experienced them herself. “But there’s something out there, something far worse than the gilgad. It came under the tree last night. We have to stay with the pipers.”
“You saw it?” Venna asked in a small voice.
Larkin hesitated. “No, but I felt it.”
Alorica rolled her eyes. “The pipers are the real beasts. I’ll not stay with them another moment. Don’t you want to be free?”
Larkin wanted nothing more. She watched the sun crest the top of the waterfall, turning its waters crimson—like the blood that had spilled from her throat the day before. The sounds of the townspeople calling for her death rang in her ears, and she swayed on her feet, feeling as if she wasn’t attached to her body.
“I already told you, my father—” Alorica began.
“You think you’re so much better than me,” Larkin snapped. “That what happened to me can’t happen to you. You’re ignorant, Alorica. And that ignorance is going to get us killed.”
“We’ll go with or without you,” Alorica said coolly.
“You need my help or you wouldn’t be bothering,” Larkin said.
“Are you that much of a coward?” Alorica hissed.
Larkin turned to the two girls. Her eyes glittered with rage. “Your father, Alorica, wanted me dead by hanging. Garrot leaned toward burning me at the stake. I don’t have anything to go back to.”
“Didn’t my grandfather help you?” Venna asked in a small voice.