Larkin took the lampent and searched until she’d found more gobby. He ate it as quickly as the first. “Have you seen Caelia?” he said around a mouthful.
She pulled him behind a branch with thick leaves. “She’s here.” She steeled herself. He had a right to know the rest. “She’s married and has three children.”
Bane choked and coughed so hard she was sure Denan would hear it.
“Quiet,” she hissed.
Bane swore violently. “I’ll kill the monster that forced himself on her.”
Larkin winced. “He didn’t. She’s in love with him.”
Bane chucked his rind. “She’s enthralled!”
“Shh!”
Bane put his head between his bent knees, his hands locked around the back of his neck.
“How did you find me?” she asked. Did he see her with Denan?
“I left not long after you were taken—gathered up supplies and weapons and followed you in. I lost the tracks in the stirring, but I found them again eventually. The trail was pretty confusing for a while, and I ran into a pack of beasts.” He wiped his mouth, hands shaking. “Who knew giant lizards could run so fast?”
“The pipers call them gilgads.”
He shuddered. “The other ones—the ones made of shadow—they were worse. Not animals at all but some kind of demon. They followed me everywhere I went, but they left me alone if I stayed in the trees at night.”
“Wraiths are the hooded ones. The ones with black lines are mulgars.”
“I didn’t see any of those.” He was silent for a time, his eyes haunted. “When I couldn’t cross the river where you had, I lost them for good. The only thing I could think to do was stick to the river. I’d started to think I’d never find you when one night I saw the glowing trees.”
Unable to help herself, she reached out and touched him again, just to reassure herself he was real. Ever since she’d been taken, this is what she’d wanted—Bane and home. But now . . . “You should have forgotten about me like the rest of the men.” Like her father had.
Bane took her hands in his. “I’ve been hiding out in this unnatural place for nearly a week. This lake drains into the river—our river. If we can steal one of these boats, we can float our way back.”
She shook her head. “Bane, I can’t go back.”
He didn’t seem to have heard her. “After we reach Hamel, we’ll go somewhere no one knows us.”
“And how would we live? What about my family?”
“We’ll take them with us. We’ll find a way.”
To see my family again . . . The thought was sweet and sharp as a knife. She could see Mama and the baby, Sela and . . . But her thoughts stopped after that. She never wanted to see her father again. As for Nesha—Larkin loved her sister, but she would never trust her again.
“Denan would come for me.” He would, but that wasn’t the reason she had to stay.
Bane squeezed her hands so hard it hurt. “He won’t have you. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine.”
Had he seen their kiss? She couldn’t ask. She pulled away. “I can’t.” Her voice hitched, and she had to stop for a moment. She couldn’t get the image of the mob chasing her out of her head. “I can’t risk it.”
“You have to. Larkin, your family needs you. I need you.”
“We’d never make it past the wall.”
“I’ll keep you safe. You go down to that room you sleep in. Take anything you think we’ll need. I’ll meet you at his boat. We’ll find my sister and sneak out.”
“Bane, there are things you don’t understand. There’s a—” Her mouth refused to form the word curse, no matter how hard she’d tried. She wanted to scream in frustration. She tried a different tactic. There’s a great evil here—something that’s causing the girls to be taken and prevents us from speaking about it. But she couldn’t say any of that either. Finally, she held out her hands and formed the barrier between them.
Bane gasped and scrambled back. She watched him, waiting. He gaped at the shield. “You have magic?”
She nodded, relieved. “The pipers need my magic, Bane. With it, we have a real chance of saving both our peoples.”
He frowned. “Larkin, the only thing we need saving from is the pipers!”
“No. The wraiths and mulgars—”
“Don’t bother us.”
“Only because of the barrier around Hamel. Barriers made by women’s magic. Barriers that are weakening.”
“The stirring?” He huffed in disbelief. “Larkin, that’s the pipers’ way of trapping us so we can’t go after the Taken.”
She shook her head. He wasn’t going to understand—not unless he saw it, lived it, like she had. She pushed herself up. “I’m not going with you, Bane. I can’t.”
He stood, eyes hard. “I didn’t come all this way to go home without you and my sister.”
“She won’t go with you either,” Larkin whispered. “She won’t leave her family.”
“I’m her family!”
Larkin took a step back from him. She considered telling Denan that Bane was here, but she wasn’t sure if the pipers would help Bane or imprison him—perhaps something else altogether. “I’ll round you up some supplies, but you need to go.”
She turned to leave, but Bane caught her arm. “Larkin, please trust me. You’ve been enthralled. These things the pipers have made you believe—it’s all part of their enchantment.”
“You need to trust me.” She placed her palm on her chest for emphasis. “It doesn’t work like that, Bane.”
He looked at her for a long time. “At least help me get to the wall.”
She hesitated.
“Get me Denan’s cloak. They won’t question him.”
She finally relented, nodding. “What else do you need?”
“Some more arrows. Food.”
She nodded. “There’s some nuts and dried fruit in the kitchen. Meet me at the dock?”
They parted ways at the main platform, Bane heading down, Larkin up to the stairs she knew led to Denan’s room. The first platform she came to didn’t have a personal item in sight, but she knew it was his—from the bed made up with a precision to the chair tucked into the desk in exactly the center.
Holding the lampent aloft, she opened the armoire to the neat array of cloaks, tunics, and pants. She took Denan’s casual cloak, tucked it under her arm, and hurried to the kitchen. She packed nuts, dried fruit, and some travel bread into a towel, tying up the corners. She would have liked a knife, but Denan always locked up.
Bane was waiting in the shadows by the dock. He pulled on the cloak, tugging the hood low over his eyes.
She bit her lip. “What if the sentinels don’t fall for it?”
“As far as they know, no one else has come or gone from the tree.” He had the voice he used when they were about to get in trouble—the one that sounded more confident than he was.
Hands shaking, Larkin slipped into the boat. “We’ll head for the healing tree. They’ll think we’re going to see his mother.”
Bane carefully untied the line and pushed them off. Almost immediately, their boat was surrounded by the purple glow from the tiny creatures that lived in the water, lighting them up like a beacon to the sentinels above. They started rowing, steady and smooth.
It took everything Larkin had not to search the boughs of the surrounding trees. With painful slowness, they eased beneath the branches of the trees. At any moment, Larkin expected someone to sound the alarm, but no one did. When she was sure they were out of sight of the sentinels, she turned the boat toward the outer wall. They were nearly halfway there when Bane steered them toward a tree and hopped out onto the dock.
“What are you doing?” she whispered. “They’ll hear you.”
“This tree is abandoned,” he whispered back as he pawed through the contents of his pack.
“Bane—”
“Trust me.” He trotted into the shadows.
She waited, tense, as the tre
e groaned above her. He was gone for what felt like a long time. Finally, he reappeared. “From here on out, we’ll have to row more carefully so as not to set the water off.”
Trying her best not to disturb the surface, they rowed back into the open water. By the time her arms ached in earnest, the city’s living wall rose up before them. Larkin hadn’t seen the walls since her first day in the Alamant. They left the cover of trees, moving methodically until the boat bumped into the wall.
“How are you planning to get through?” Larkin asked.
Bane pulled out an ax. “It’s only wood.”
“Besides the obvious fact they’ll hear you, the tree has a barrier around it. You’ll never get through.”
He hesitated a second. “You have magic. Take it down. And don’t worry about them hearing it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’ve managed a distraction.”
“What?”
He peered pointedly back the way they’d come. A faint tinge of orange flickered.
“What have you done?” she breathed.
As if in answer, the warning horn pealed out, Larkin’s heart writhing at the sound.
“What I had to,” Bane said as he fired a crossbow into the wood, burying the head of an arrow. “Hold on to that and keep us steady.” He swung his ax, the sound drowned out by the warning horn. The boat shifted away from the wall, forcing Larkin to tighten her grip on the arrow.
Images flashed in Larkin’s mind—pain and anger and warning. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the foreign thoughts. Behind her, tongues of flame licked up the boughs, as they had yesterday. Her mouth came open. “You’re the one who set fire to Mytin and Aaryn’s tree.”
“I had to draw the sentinels away from your tree long enough to get inside,” Bane huffed with effort. She could see light coming from the other side of the wall.
The burns on Aaryn’s body. Wyn huddled in the yarn. The branches, hissing in the water beside her. Smoke so thick she couldn’t breathe. Screaming for Denan, sure he was trapped and dying in the upper boughs. He would never forgive her for this.
Tears filled her eyes. “You could have killed them!”
“They’re the enemy, Larkin!”
“Defenseless women and children are not the enemy!”
He whirled toward her, the boat rocking dangerously. “Their magic has twisted your mind. You can’t see the truth.”
She slapped him. “If you’ve hurt anyone else, I swear I’ll turn you in to them myself.”
Bane rubbed his cheek. “Larkin, this isn’t—”
“Declare yourself!” a voice rang out sharply from above.
In answer, Bane whirled around and chopped into the wood again, opening it wide enough for them to get through if they crouched.
“Move away from the wall!” the same voice commanded.
A hail of something small scattered all around them. Larkin picked one of them out of her cloak—seeds. She didn’t understand until the water gleamed purple, outlining their dark boat. A long low note rang out, followed by a flurry of footsteps and grinding gears. Boats swung out above them and dropped. Boats filled with pipers, close enough she could make out their hard faces in the light cast by the eerie purple water.
Their eyes widened when they recognized her, widened further when they didn’t recognize Bane. They carried their spears at the ready, their bows tied to their backs. She hoped the fact that they weren’t shooting at them meant they intended to take them alive.
“Stop now!” one of them commanded.
“Larkin!”
She whirled around to see Denan and his sentinels—one of them was Tam—coming after her in another boat. Her heart lurched within her.
“We have to abandon the boat!” Bane tried to push through the opening he’d made, but he came up against the barrier. He slammed his ax into it, sending out a rippling pulse. “Larkin! You have to get us through!”
If she didn’t, the pipers would kill Bane for what he’d done. She was sure of it. Whatever wrong he’d committed, he didn’t deserve that. She squinted at the open space, trying to see what held the barrier together. The thorn on her arm buzzed, and she could see it all—a tightly woven net made up of hundreds of strands of light in a dozen different colors.
Her right arm buzzed, and a sword made of light appeared in her hand. She turned it sideways and slid it into the barrier. It sliced through, the net fraying at the edges like it was made of some kind of fiber. Above her, men cried out in disbelief. Denan and the sentinels were nearly upon them.
“Go, Bane!”
He gripped her arms. “Not without you!”
“I told you, I’m not going!”
He shook her. “I’m not leaving without you. If I stay, they’ll kill me.”
“Larkin.” Denan stretched toward her, his voice gentle. “Remember when I said we don’t go swimming at night? The lethan is in these waters. The disturbances will bring it to us.”
“We’re not lying, Larkin,” Tam said. “Please.”
They had seconds before the boats reached them. Bane released her arms. “I came all this way, and you’re going to let me die?”
The forest take him, he was right. She growled in frustration, pushed past him, grabbed the edges of the hole, and pulled herself through, gaining a dozen slivers in the process.
“No, Larkin!” Denan cried. “You don’t—”
She dove headfirst into the water and swam hard, trying to get as far away from the wall as possible in case the guards decided to use their bows. When she finally surfaced, she gasped in a breath, shifted to a sidestroke, and glanced back. Bane was right behind her. Denan was halfway through the hole, Tam hauling him back.
“We’ll lower the boats,” Tam said in a strained voice.
“How did she get through the barrier?” the one who’d ordered them to halt asked. In the same breath, he lifted his face upward. “Lower the boats on the other side!”
“She had magic. I saw it,” another voice said.
Within seconds, more boats eased down on this side of the wall. The current picked up, pulling them away from the wall. A wave splashed over Larkin’s head. When she came up, Bane had caught up to her.
“Head for the forest!” he cried. “We’ll have to go by land.”
Larkin’s heart sank. On the river, they had a chance of staying ahead of the pipers. On land, it would be nearly impossible, and they’d have to deal with the wraiths and mulgars, but it was too late to turn back now.
She swam hard, the water flashing purple with each stroke. All her focus was on the shore, so at first she didn’t register the flash of movement beneath her. Not until it shot past her with enough force to send her spinning, water churning around her.
“Bane!” she cried a warning as she struggled to keep her head above water.
“What was that?” Bane asked.
Denan’s warning pounding in her head, Larkin searched the water and found nothing, which made her more afraid. Some deep instinct within her warned she had to get out of the water. Get out of the water. Get out of the water.
Panicked, she spun around, looking for the closest way out, but no trees grew nearby, and the boats on this side of the wall were halfway down. The shore was farther still.
“Larkin!” Denan shouted, and the panic in his voice made the fine hairs all over her body stand up. “Come back to the wall! Now!”
The sentinels in the boats were frantically waving them back.
“Hurry!”
“It’s coming!”
She hesitated. Going back wasn’t any safer than here—at least not for Bane.
Denan jerked a spear from one of the sentinels. “Larkin!” he cried, and something in his voice told her he was terrified, but not for himself.
Sensing something beneath, she looked down. Wine-red tentacles bloomed beneath her, revealing a razor-sharp beak aimed right for her. She screamed as the tentacles snapped toward her and wrapped a
round her legs. Her scream cut off as it yanked her under. More tentacles wrapped her up in a too-tight embrace. She writhed, trying to pull her arms free. The tentacles twisted her around. She came face-to-beak with a creature that glowed red, its flesh textured like velvet. Its shining eyes fixed on her as it shifted her toward its open serrated maw.
She was going to be eaten alive. She called up her shield, which lit up the creature, but her arm was pinned uselessly to her side.
From the direction of the wall, a spear launched toward the creature, sinking into its bulbous body. A strong arm wrapped around her chest, knife stabbing into the tentacles that held her. The creature tightened its hold and sank deeper, into the blackness below. Larkin writhed, but the world was growing dark and shadowy. Her body shut down, refusing to obey her frantic orders.
Another spear launched into the creature, burying itself in its flesh.
It released her.
Strong arms hauled her upward. She looked up to see Bane holding her, his gaze fixed on the distant surface even as her eyes lost focus.
The sound of angry voices roused Larkin. She knew by the mineral taste she was underground. She could tell by the heavy weight of her limbs she’d been drugged. She struggled awake, finding herself on a narrow bed in a shallow cave lit by a single lampent on a carved table. A ladder stood sentinel in the center of the room, with a trapdoor above it. Everything had a hazy, over-bright quality. She pressed the heel of her hand into her eye, which throbbed, and tried to piece together what had happened.
All at once, she remembered wine-red tentacles blooming beneath her. She sat up with a jerk, the pain hitting her a moment later.
“Ah, you’re awake.”
Her vision swam, and she leaned forward, bracing herself against her knees. Her hands hurt. She could feel where the slivers had been. Someone must have removed them while she’d slept. At the start of all this madness, she’d had a sliver too.
Careful hands took hold of her shoulders. “Easy, now. Take your time.” After a few settling breaths, Larkin was able to look up. Magalia stood over her, expression concerned. “How are your ribs?”
Larkin tried a deep breath and winced at the pain. She wrapped her hands around her middle.