She relaxed a fraction, considering this. She didn’t want to fight either; fighting was exhausting. For a moment, she considered thanking him for bringing her back last night instead of letting her get lost in emotions that were not her own. But he didn’t deserve any of her apologies. She sighed, frustrated that she found it hard to hate him. Like when he’d offered to kill Venna—he’d been doing the wrong thing for the right reason. Memories of the wraiths overwhelmed her. She’d forgotten something. “When you fought off the wraiths, one of them said something about finding ‘her’ and pleasing the king. She seemed to know you.”
Denan went very still. “If a wraith can’t kill you or turn you with its corrupted blade, they will try to poison you in other ways—lies mixed with truths, truths mixed with lies.”
He knew more than he let on. “What is the truth mixed in with the lie?”
“I hope you never find out.” He found what he’d been looking for and approached her, box in hand.
Get him to drop his guard, she chanted in her head to keep from snapping his head off. “What are you doing?” she said through gritted teeth.
“Let me tend your wounds.” She forced herself to hold still as Denan stepped closer and tipped her chin back to look at her neck. “It’s healing well.”
She reached up, fingers touching the uneven surface. “It’s ugly.”
“Alamantians have a lot of scars.” He bent in half, lifting his trousers to reveal a pitted, jagged scar on his upper thigh. “It means your body can heal.”
She dropped her hands. He was right. She was being vain. “How did you get that?”
“Mulgar’s spiked club took a chunk out of me.” Dropping his pant leg, he fingered the mess of pale markings on her arms that matched the ones on his. He unwrapped and inspected her thorn. “You haven’t rejected your thorn yet. That’s a good sign.”
She felt a thrill of anticipation. It would be a relief not to pierce her hand every time she needed access to the magic, and she craved the knowledge of how to defend herself. “Will it always hurt?”
“No.”
“How will you know if it does take?”
He gestured to the geometric lines all over his body. “It will begin to grow.”
Something growing beneath her skin? She shuddered and studied him. He opened the box and removed some bandaging and ointment. “Where did the mulgars come from?”
“Long ago, the wraiths made them of their own people. Now, their poisoned blades turn anyone they pierce.”
Denan had said Venna was possessed by dark magic and by the wraiths. “I still don’t understand it.”
Denan became distant, haunted. “I’ve lost friends to the wraiths. The darkness strips away all that is moral and robs them of their ability to choose good.”
The humanity had leached from Venna’s eyes, replaced with hatred and destruction. Death really would have been a kindness. “Unless they have the limb amputated before it spreads?”
“Which can be done if a master healer is in the unit and can get to them in time.”
“And if there is no healer?”
Anguish swept over Denan. “We do what we must.”
Ancestors, what had he been forced to do? Denan turned from her, going back to the platform. She followed slowly. He picked up the wooden ax again, holding the haft out to her.
She eyed the ax warily. Surely this was a trap. “What’s this?’
“An ax.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“All Alamantians train with weapons.”
“Even the women?” she baited him, sure he would tell her no.
“Especially the women.”
This surprised her. “Why?”
“The smallest among us have even more need to protect themselves.”
She straightened to her full height. “I’m not small.”
“Average, then.” Denan lifted her hand and closed her fingers over the haft. “I thought you’d be thrilled at a chance to hit me with something.”
A sigil covered the inside of his right forearm—a geometric flower with angular petals. A vision superimposed over the sigil, the real flower. The petals curled up and fell away, leaving a single black seed the size of Larkin’s fist. Her hand reached out, capturing his wrist and tracing the place where the seed would be, marveling at the dichotomy of the sharp curving lines.
“The ahlea,” Denan said, voice husky. “Symbol for women’s magic.”
“Why would you have the symbol for women’s magic?” She looked up to find something unreadable in his gaze. He touched his lips, his expression indicating he couldn’t tell her. She looked down to where her hand caressed his arm. They were so close.
She lifted the ax and chopped at his shoulder. He ducked and spun. She swung again. He caught her wrist, twisting it so she had no choice but to release the ax. Her chest rose and fell as she stared at him, waiting for his anger.
He gave her a wicked grin—as if he enjoyed this—and went for another shield and ax from another trunk. Watching him warily, she picked up the ax he’d forced her to drop. When she straightened, he tossed a shield at her, which she promptly fumbled.
Embarrassed, she bent down to pick it up. When she straightened, he was there, showing her how to slide her arms through the loops and hold on to the handle. “Now, I need to get an idea of your skill level. So come at me with all you have, and we’ll place you from there.”
She’d been wanting to hit him for weeks. She lunged, swinging with everything she had. The ax hit his shield with a resounding crack, the reverberations jarring her arm. She pulled back and stabbed with the sharp tip. Again, he easily deflected it. Changing tactics, she aimed for his knees. His shield swept her ax out and up. He stepped forward, twisted to catch the joint of the ax on the top of the shield, and jerked it from her hands.
They went another round, which ended with her flat on her back. She blinked up at him as he watched her disapprovingly. “You’ve really had no training?”
“Women don’t fight in the Idelmarch.”
“My mother nearly killed my father with a sharpened stick. She still handles a sword better than my father.”
Larkin had never heard of such a thing. “Good for her.” She pushed to her feet, throwing her ax. He deflected it with his shield. She kicked his leg with the top of her foot. The pain dropped her. For half a moment, she wondered if she’d broken her foot.
He knelt next to her, gently bending her ankle. “Well, you certainly have the aggression for it.” He took her ax and shield, settling them inside the beautifully carved trunk. “But we’re going to have to start from the beginning.”
Her gaze fixed longingly on the trunk. “I like the ax.”
He chuckled, surprising her again with how much more open he seemed since they’d left the Forbidden Forest and entered the Alamant. “As do I, but an ax thrust is really an extended punch.” He reached down and pulled her up. She winced as the weight came on her injured foot, but the pain quickly faded.
He showed her how to stand—with her feet spread hip length apart, one foot cocked back—how to shift her weight, how to throw a punch. She’d seen her father take that stance, seen him ball up his fists . . . felt those fists connect with her middle.
And suddenly, she was a little girl again, her father’s hands clamping down on her shoulder and crotch as he lifted her above his head and pitched her headfirst into the river, like she was garbage, like she was already dead.
She staggered back from Denan, feeling sick. He froze, watching her like an animal he’d spooked. “What good does it do when your opponent is always bigger and stronger?” she cried. “Curse it, he was always so much bigger.”
She hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to reveal so much, but the water had been freezing. It had closed over her head. She clawed for the surface, her fingers breaking through, but never her face.
Larkin couldn’t breathe. She backed away, desperate to be free.
br /> “Larkin, careful—”
She turned to run and came face-to-face with a long drop to the water below. She cried out, but her momentum dragged her forward. Hands grabbed her shoulders and hauled her back. As soon as she was safe, Denan backpedaled, palms facing her. “You have to watch the edges.”
Eyes closed, she battled to control her ragged breathing, to rein in the fear clawing its way through her. Music slipped over her and around her and slowly pushed away her panic. The music changed, becoming the flitting of a bird through the trees as it easily evaded the predators locked to the ground—dodging and dancing and reveling in the strength of being free.
The music faded, leaving Larkin firmly in her own body.
“Who hurt you?” Denan asked softly as he lowered his pipes.
She hesitated. This wasn’t something she talked about with anyone, but Denan wouldn’t have her father in the stocks or gossip at the tavern later. “My father.” Instead of panic and shame, loathing choked her. “I hate him and I love him. How is that possible?”
Denan was silent a moment. “The people we love leave the deepest scars.”
“Even when they don’t mean to,” she murmured, thinking of how much it hurt to be apart from her mother and younger sisters. The baby, Brenna, was she doing all right? How was her mother getting along without Larkin’s help? And Nesha . . .
Larkin and Denan’s gazes met, their pain intermingling. Who had hurt him? She turned away, unwilling to share a sorrow with Denan. Instead, she tugged the amulet out from her shirt. “Where did you get this?”
He hesitated, and she silently begged him to let the conversation drop. He sighed and touched his lips, his way of indicating he couldn’t tell her. “I will teach you how to protect yourself.”
She shot him a flat look.
He shrugged. “Even from me.”
Denan went to the trunks, pulled a globular fruit out of a bag, and tossed one to her. She caught it at the last second.
“Gobby fruit,” he said. “It grows from the trees no matter the season.” He sat at the platform’s edge, his feet dangling over the water. He peeled back the crimson rind and bit into the meat, juice running down his chin.
Her own stomach rumbled, and she sat down far away from him and peeled back the tough rind, revealing pale pink flesh that darkened to peach in the center. She bit down. Sweet and tart exploded across her tongue. Her mouth ached with the perfection of it. She ate the whole thing, spitting out the little black seeds and watching them fall. Sela would have loved to climb this tree, eat this fruit, see the White Tree in all its glory.
“For all your kindnesses, for all your promises that I’m free, you won’t ever let me go home. Caelia, Alorica, and Venna”—her voice broke on the last—“their families won’t ever know what happened to them.”
“I can’t tell them.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
His mouth pursed in frustration. “Can’t.”
She looked down to the water below, calculating her chances of shoving him off. Denan scooted away from her. She closed her eyes, reminding herself again of her promise to get him to trust her. She tucked the anger away, deep inside. “You said you can’t teach me how to use magic, but you must know something.”
“The library that contained the records was lost in a mulgar attack decades ago. What I do know is that the magics were complementary. Men’s magic controls thoughts, feelings, moods, but only temporarily. It works best when the subject is relaxed.”
That explains why girls are always taken in the night.
“Women’s magic has to do with the creation of different types of barriers—they all used to have a name and a function. Many of the larger ones have crumbled. But if they were made by a strong enough enchantress, the smaller ones can last for years.”
“There were more?”
He nodded. “Bridges, dams, defensive walls . . . The shield you made before, it’s supposedly a simpler spell. You won’t be able to access the magic until your sigil takes hold, which could be a couple weeks. Can you swim?”
She warily nodded.
Denan pushed to his feet, fetched a spear from a chest, and stripped off his pants, leaving him in only his underthings. “Come on. Let’s get some fish for breakfast.”
She had to admit, he was very nicely built—if she noticed such things. She was staring. She looked away, but not before she caught his broad grin. “What am I supposed to swim in?”
“Just your tunic.” He focused on something she couldn’t see, and he launched himself spear first into the lake. The water enveloped him.
Larkin peered down, waiting for him to come back up. She waited a long time—long enough for her palms to sweat—before he broke the surface. “Aren’t you coming?”
Feeling self-conscious, she tugged off her pants, exposing her legs from mid-thigh down. She caught him staring at her freckled skin. He turned away quickly.
Knowing he would tease her mercilessly if she hesitated, she took a deep breath and stepped off the edge. Surprisingly warm water enveloped her. She opened her eyes and found herself transported to another world.
A faintly glowing white crust surrounded the tree’s roots, from which strange plants grew. Some were stiff, sharp even, under the pads of her feet. Others were like gently waving fans. Yet others were like weird bare-branched trees, and instead of birds flitting among the branches, fish of every color, size, and shape swam and darted. Far below, farther than she could see, the tree’s roots speared down.
She turned in a circle and fought the need to surface as she took it all in. Denan motioned her up. She broke the surface, paddling and gasping in fresh air. “It’s amazing!”
His eyes crinkled as he smiled at her, clearly pleased. “I’m glad you know how to swim. Not many girls from the Idelmarch do.”
She’d been enjoying spending time with Denan, which felt like betraying the life she’d had before—a life that had spit her out like moldy bread. She frowned. “Bane taught me.”
“He sounds like a good man.”
She turned away. “He is.”
“Would you like to see more?”
She nodded.
“Stay right behind me.” He bent in half and kicked down. Taking a deep breath, she followed him as he swam around the tree’s base. Denan pointed out a flat fish with a pair of eyes on the top of its head. It was burnt orange with bright blue spots that shimmered when she approached. Denan’s hand came down on her arm, and he shook his head, warning her not to get any closer.
Farther out, translucent ropes floated lazily, carrying dozens of creatures shaped like cucumbers. Those, too, Denan steered her away from. But he let her hold a creature shaped like a flower. Its petal-like arms waved through the water, and its center glowed a pale yellow. They picked misshapen yellow lumps, which they placed in a pouch at Denan’s waist along with some orange critters that looked like cockroaches. He dove deep, spearing a fish.
They approached the dock. Below it, piles of sticks tied with twine were tethered down with hooks, and Larkin wondered what they were for. Denan hauled himself up, Larkin half a beat behind. She slicked water from her face and wrung out her hair. Denan led her up a level to a platform she hadn’t seen before, hidden on the opposite side of the buttressed roots. It was obviously a kitchen: a table and chairs took up the center, shelves filled with cooking implements built into the trunk.
Denan rested his spear against one wall and took down a bowl. He showed her how to roll the yellow fruit to release the juices, then how to cut it in half and squeeze the juice into the bowl. While she did that, he cleaned the fish and shelled the cockroach critters. He put all of it in the juice and then stretched out in the sunlight on the floor.
“Aren’t we going to cook it?” she asked.
He yawned and scratched his stomach—he was oddly hairless for a grown man. “You must never light a fire in the Alamant, Larkin. The penalties are severe.”
“Why?”
He
gestured lazily to the trees all around them.
She couldn’t imagine a life without fire. “But what about heat?”
“It doesn’t get cold.”
“Even in the winter?” Winters in Hamel were always wet, dreary things, full of freezing rain. On rare occasions, they woke up to snow covering all the depressing browns, but it was mostly gone by afternoon.
“There is no winter here.”
Had they really gone that far south? Larkin didn’t think so. “What would happen if someone were to light a fire?”
He shuddered. “Imprisonment, at the very least.”
She tried to imagine life without cold. Every day feeling much the same as today—no struggling for food or to keep warm in winter. Hugging her knees to her chest, Larkin watched the sunlight sparkling on the lake. The boughs swayed gently above her. This place was like an enormous garden; only, it didn’t need plowing or planting or tending. “Is this what life is like for you? Every day as easy as this?”
He chuckled. “Honeymoon, remember?”
“And who’s dealing with your princely duties?”
“King Netrish. He wasn’t at the ceremonies. Tradition dictates he step down after your coronation.”
Larkin was suddenly dizzy. “Coronation? I’m to be crowned?”
He nodded. “As soon as the prince’s new wife has settled in, he becomes king.”
She had to get out of here. “And Netrish will step down peacefully?” Stepping down wasn’t something Larkin thought kings did.
“He doesn’t have a choice. I have the military’s loyalty, and the magic of leadership will shift to me.” Denan’s eyes darkened, making her think it wasn’t as easy as he implied.
She studied the sigils on his skin, wondering which one marked him as king. “What do they mean?”
“The meanings are symbolic. This one”—he touched the White Tree in the center of his chest—“named me as the future king.”
He hopped up and brought her the bowl of fish, snagging a piece with his bare hands and plopping it into his mouth. Larkin was hesitant, as they hadn’t cooked it, but if Denan could eat it, so could she. It was sour and fresh and delicious. She ate even more than he did. He handed her some bright red berries she hadn’t seen him gather. They were sweet and chewy with a bitter aftertaste.