“So far, just random lines, but they’re spreading down your back.”
“I still don’t know what it does.”
“Have you tried drawing from it?”
She closed her eyes and pulled magic through it. A vision flooded her mind. The White Tree, its luster diminishing to nothing. She sat back. “I saw the White Tree fade away.”
He held out his hands in a helpless gesture. “She is nearly five hundred years old.”
They fell silent for a time. “Denan, I’m sorry for what I said about Serek. I was angry and lashing out. It wasn’t your fault. You did what you could for him.”
He had to clear his throat a few times before he could speak. “Tell Magalia that.”
“She knows,” Larkin said softly. “She just can’t accept it.”
Denan took a shuddering breath. He looked like a lost little boy. She wrapped her arms around him. He was incredibly warm, his arms gentle. Sudden light blinded Larkin. Holding her hand up to protect her eyes, Larkin made out forms dropping into the cellar.
Denan was already on his feet. Blinking, Larkin drew her shield. Together, they faced dozens of druids armed with bows and arrows. Larkin pulled more magic, expanding her shield around them both, her arm buzzing like a thousand angry bees were trapped inside it.
Garrot dropped down last. “Come quietly, piper prince.”
“I see no reason to go anywhere.”
Garrot’s eyes narrowed. “I still have your sister, Larkin.”
Larkin shook her head. “You won’t do anything to hurt Nesha.”
Garrot’s silence confirmed her suspicion. He drew his bow and aimed for her shield. The arrow shattered on impact, the barrier rippling like water hit with a scattering of stones.
Garrot didn’t seem surprised. If anything, he expected it. He murmured something to a pair of his men, who disappeared into the darkness behind them and came back with Crazy Maisy, kicking and gnashing her teeth like a wildcat.
Garrot traded his bow for a knife, which he held at the other girl’s throat. Maisy stilled, her eyes wide and nostrils flared. Larkin locked her knees to keep them from shaking.
“What about Maisy?” Garrot said. “Will you let me kill her to save your own life?”
Denan’s head came up. “This is how you wage war, Garrot? By threatening women and children?”
“Isn’t that the way you’ve always played it?”
Denan took an angry step forward. “That was our treaty! Women in exchange for protecting you! It’s not our fault you let those women believe beasts took them.”
Garrot sneered. “The treaty is over. Now make your choice.”
Why break an over two-hundred-year-old treaty now? The wraiths and mulgars were still out there. Denan’s gaze shifted to Larkin. She saw the anguish and grief there. Already, she was shaking her head.
“You can’t hold your shield forever,” he whispered. “And that girl doesn’t need to suffer more than she already has.”
“They’ll kill you.”
He took her face in his hands. “No. They’ll use me as bait to trap my men—like they used you to try to trap us last night. My men won’t know about the dampeners.”
“Tam and Talox—” she began.
“Tam doesn’t know about the dampeners. Talox didn’t make it out. You have to break out of here and warn them before dark. If you hear pipe music, you’ll know it’s too late.”
A well of grief opened inside her. Talox was one of the kindest men she’d ever known. He’d died trying to save her family. But she’d seen Tam carry Sela and Brenna out, Mama beside them.
“Denan, please,” she whispered.
He pushed her against the wall and spoke low. “You have to find a way out of this cellar. You have to warn my men.”
“Warn them? How?”
He tore something out of his tunic and pressed it into her hands—how many things did he have hidden in his tunic? “It’s a distress whistle.” It was thin, half the girth and length of her smallest finger, and attached to a thin cord. “Blow on it, and they’ll find you.”
She closed her fist around it. She had to find her way out of this cellar. She stared at the distance from the floor to the cellar door; it was easily twice her height.
“You can do this.” He pulled away from her, his absence leaving her cold. He stepped to the edge of her barrier. When it didn’t dissolve, he looked back at her. Though his face was now cast in shadow, she knew the determined set of his shoulders. “Trust me like I trust you.”
After all they’d been through . . . She let the barrier dissipate. He stepped through the parting druids without looking at any of them and halted before Garrot, who released Maisy. She scuttled back into the recesses of the pit. Garrot snapped his fingers. A ladder was lowered.
“After you,” Garrot said. Denan climbed without looking back, the rest of the men following. Garrot was the last to go, his gaze lingering on Larkin. “I gave you a choice, offered you everything.”
Larkin didn’t owe him anything. “If you hurt Denan, the Alamant will descend on you.”
Garrot gave a hard smile. “I’m counting on it.” He dropped a water bladder and something wrapped in cloth. One hand on his bow, he climbed the ladder and slammed the door shut.
Larkin released the shield, her knees buckling, all the fight draining out of her and leaving behind dread. She looked at the whistle in her hand—carved from the wood of the White Tree. She held it to her chest a moment before slipping it around her neck. When she’d regained a little strength, she approached the water thirstily. She drank until she could hold no more, then unwrapped the old towel, revealing travel bread and some early berries. Leaving half of it for Maisy, she retreated to her own corner of the cellar and ate, knowing she would need her strength.
“Maisy,” she called out. “Is there a way out of this cellar?” No answer. “Maisy!” she snapped.
“Don’t you think I would have left by now if there was?” Maisy’s voice sounded more herself.
Larkin knuckled her forehead. “Do they leave a guard? Lock the trapdoor?”
“They don’t need to,” Maisy said. “It’s too high for us to reach.”
Well, that would be the druids’ mistake. Larkin gathered rotten bits of shelving and stacked it under the trapdoor. Hours passed as she worked. The shafts of light around the cellar door slowly shifted from one side of the room to the other, growing stronger and then weaker as the day moved toward night.
She heaved on a particularly heavy piece, her hands slipping. The wood bit into her. She cursed, pulling back to find a sliver lodged in the meat of her palm. Holding her breath, she jerked on it, hissing as the pain flared. She laughed—a high, maniacal sound—but she couldn’t seem to stop. A sliver. A sliver had started all this. Only, now the villains and heroes had switched sides, and so had she.
The mound was high enough now she could reach the trapdoor. She pushed against it, but it didn’t budge. It was locked. She called up her sword and thrust it through the wood.
“I have orders to shoot you on sight!” called a voice from above.
They’d left a guard? How was she supposed to save Denan if she couldn’t even get out of this blasted cellar? She sank down on the top of her precarious structure. There had to be another way out. Perhaps she could tunnel? But she’d spent all her time trying to reach the trapdoor. There wasn’t time to dig her way out—not before nightfall.
“Is this real?” asked a small voice. “Am I really here?”
She looked up to find Maisy standing at the edge of the light. “Yes, Maisy, this is all very real.”
Maisy’s brow furrowed. “Why did he help me? My own father wouldn’t have helped me.”
“Because he’s a good person—too good, sometimes.” Larkin sniffed, struggling against the ache behind her eyes that signaled tears were close.
Maisy stared off. Just as suddenly, her lost-little-girl look hardened, and her voice changed, becoming deeper. “Come wi
th me.”
She moved to her corner of the cellar, shifted aside some hanging roots, and slipped out of sight. Larkin hesitated, wondering if this was a trick, but she supposed she didn’t have anything to lose. Denan’s knife tucked in her palm, she followed, soon realizing this wasn’t a corner at all, but an opening to another room.
Judging by the undercurrent of rotten fruit beneath the musty dirt smell, this had been a wine cellar. The space was filled with roots. Larkin parted them and step around ones that had found purchase on the soil below.
Maisy climbed a set of roots and pulled back a free board that had been fitted between them. “We would have died down here weeks ago if we hadn’t found a way out.”
Larkin looked up to see the peachy yellows and oranges of approaching sunset. “We?”
Maisy grunted. “You met the sad one earlier. I come out when she needs something done.”
Larkin had no idea what that meant. “What about the guards?”
Maisy pulled out a stick sharpened to a wicked point. “If they see us, we’ll have to kill them.”
Larkin balked. She was trying to save her people, not kill them.
“The druids never came after the Taken,” Maisy said matter-of-factly. “They let us think there was nothing we could do, when all along, girls were being bought and sold by the very men charged with protecting all of us.”
Larkin’s resolve hardened. She would not leave Denan at the mercy of the druids. She would not abandon him as she had been abandoned. She pushed past Maisy, peeking out into the twilight. She found herself between the roots of a massive tree, the crumbled building’s walls beyond. She didn’t see a guard, which she hoped meant he couldn’t see her.
She eased halfway out, keeping low to the ground, ready to call on her magic at a moment’s notice. Seeing no one, she hauled herself out. Maisy came up behind her, her widening eyes all the warning Larkin had. She threw her hand behind her and called up her shield before she’d even managed to turn.
Dancing light alerted her that she’d been hit. She opened herself to the magic and turned to face the guard. He discarded his bow in favor of a sword and shield. “Get back inside.”
In answer, she charged. A blow from her shield sent him flying backward. He landed with arms and legs splayed, but somehow managed to keep hold of his sword. She stood over him and stepped on his arm. Her glowing sword pointed at his vulnerable throat, she looked into his eyes. They were dark brown and wide, his jaw clenched. She hesitated. She didn’t have to kill this man. She could tie him up. She drew back a little. “Roll on your belly and—”
He swept her legs out from under her. She landed hard on her side, her magic stuttering out. All the breath whooshed out of her, her lungs paralyzed. He jerked her up and slammed her against the wall, a knife to her throat. “You’re all the same. Weak little traitors who turn your backs on your families for little more than a song.”
His blade parted her skin. Blood dripped down her neck. She wanted to fight back, but the slightest movement would send the blade into her throat. Suddenly, she wasn’t in the ruins of an abandoned house, but lying on a field, Hunter pinning her down, his knife at her neck. Hunter’s face superimposed over the guard’s before fading back into the recesses of her memories.
He licked his lips. “They won’t blame me for killing you. After all, you tried to escape.”
He grunted suddenly, eyes going wide. His hand on her shoulder went from pinning her in place to clutching her for support. He slowly slid down the length of her body, landing in a jumble, a large stick between his shoulder blades.
Maisy spat on him. “Hypocrite.” She retrieved his discarded sword and shield for herself. She hefted the weight of the sword. “Mercy is a luxury we don’t have time for.”
Larkin pressed her hand to her throat, cooling, sticky blood seeping through her fingers.
She lifted the whistle to her lips and blew.
Maisy started. “Who are you calling?”
Larkin met her steely gaze. “The pipers.”
The other girl pivoted and walked away.
“Maisy,” Larkin called after her. “Where will you go?” She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. There was nowhere Maisy could go where the druids wouldn’t find her—at least, not in the Idelmarch. “You have to know the pipers aren’t the monsters the druids have made them out to be. They would take you in.”
Maisy paused. “You can’t know that.”
“Denan is their prince, and I’m his wife. I can know that.”
Maisy half turned. “Why would you help me?”
Larkin cleared the emotion from her throat. “Because I know what it is to have a monster for a father.”
Maisy wet her lips. “Swear you’ll get me out of here.”
“If you promise to help me, I’ll swear.”
Maisy slowly came back. Larkin looked around, getting her bearings. They were on the southwest side of town. The four-story wall wasn’t far. She searched its length for a swarm of approaching pipers but saw nothing.
She glanced at the sky, at the sun sinking below the horizon. She blew the whistle again. As the note faded away, flute music rose up all around her, dancing on the breeze that played with Larkin’s hair. The melody spoke of beauty and majesty and magic—The Song of the Alamant. Such beauty contrasted with the dread coursing through her. Denan had said if she heard the music, it was already too late.
She spun as another song entwined with the first, coming at her from all sides. Her mother’s lullaby. Maisy crumpled to the ground, the sword and shield still gripped in her fists. Larkin groaned in frustration. The other guards had worn dampeners. Perhaps this one did as well. Larkin knelt over the body, finding one of the leaf amulets under his shirt. She pulled it gently over his head and placed it on Maisy.
Within seconds, the other girl stirred. She sat up, eyes squeezed shut and the heel of her palm rubbing her forehead. “What happened?” she asked.
“The pipers are playing, putting the town to sleep and calling the girls from their beds.”
Maisy peered at her. “How did you stop it?”
Larkin held up her amulet. “Dampeners. They block the effects of the pipers’ songs. I put the guard’s on you.” Larkin scanned the length of the wall surrounding the town, searching for any sign of the pipers. “They’re walking into a trap. They’re all going to die.”
She helped Maisy to her feet. Ahead and to the left, the manor lorded over the hill. Her eyes narrowed at something built before the front door—a platform, a form spread between two poles. Larkin gasped in recognition.
Denan.
They’d staked him to a crucible—as they’d done to her. She took off running.
The horizon devoured the last smudge of the sun as Larkin barreled into town. On the hill, she had a clear view of Denan, but she couldn’t make out if he was alive or not. Something wrenched loose inside her. Ancestors, what if he wasn’t? She held the whistle to her lips, blowing and blowing and blowing, calling the pipers to her.
A fist wrapped around her hair, jerking her into an alley. Through the pain screaming through her scalp, Larkin threw a blind elbow into the person’s ribs. A grunt came from behind, and a shove sent Larkin sprawling onto her back. She twisted around, her sword appearing in her hand.
Maisy glared down at her. “Are you trying to die?”
Relief and confusion warred inside Larkin. She released her sword and sat up, resisting the urge to rub her stinging scalp. “What are you—”
Maisy pointed to the rooftops beyond them. “You can’t go running into a baited trap. The druids will catch you.”
Larkin pushed to her feet. “I have to save him!”
Maisy fisted her own hair and sawed it off with the guard’s sword. It fell to the ground like a dead thing. She tucked the jagged remainder behind her ears. “No. You have to think. You have to find another way.”
“Larkin?”
A shadow emerged from the alley behind Maisy. Her
knees went weak. “Talox?” A bandage was wrapped around his head, blood crusting one side. She threw herself at him, encircling his big frame, surprised at the tears gathering in the corner of her eyes. “I thought you were dead!”
His large hand patted her back. “Besides the lump on my head, I’m fine. Tam saw your family to safety and came back for me.”
Ancestors, her mother and little sisters were safe. She looked behind him as another man emerged from the shadows. Tam looked her up and down. From the building beside them came soft thuds. Exchanging nervous glances, they backed farther into the shadows.
“Isn’t that the one Alorica called Crazy Maisy?” Tam whispered.
Maisy lunged and shoved him against the wall. “Don’t call me that! I hate when people call me that!”
Tam lifted his arms, his eyes wide. “I’m sorry.”
Larkin pulled Maisy back. “We have to be quiet.”
Maisy shoved him once more for good measure and released him.
Larkin made a mental note to never call Maisy crazy again. “She saved my life. I promised her the pipers would take her in.”
Tam studied Maisy. She glared defiantly back at him. “Where are the rest of you?”
His head fell. “Of the fifty we brought, only seven survived, including Denan. Four are playing their pipes in the forest. That left me and Talox to come rescue you.”
Rescue her, not Denan. The world spun around her. Dizzy, she braced herself against a nearby wall. “Do you really think now’s the time to kidnap girls?”
“We need a ransom for Denan,” Tam said.
She rubbed her forehead. “The druids have dampeners.”
“At least fifty of them, if I counted right,” Talox said.
Fifty against four.
From down the street, the thuds continued. Larkin barely heard them. “And you’re going to abandon Denan?”
Tam’s shoulders tensed at the accusation. “We have to wait for reinforcements.”
She struck the wall, welcoming the pain that flared in her already sore wrist. “They’ll torture him, Tam.” Her voice broke. “Until he tells them everything he knows about the Alamant, then they’ll kill him.”