“The one you were humming.”
It was possible Emeline mistook it. Maybe the tune only sounded like hers and too much distance made her misremember.
But she didn’t think so.
Or maybe her fear for Hawthorne, combined with Sable’s sudden presence, made her brain alter the memory. Memories were tricky things, after all. Just look at Pa, whose memory had utterly betrayed him.
“I can’t recall where I know it from,” said Sable, guarded. The snow-white pommels of her long blades gleamed from where they crisscrossed her back. “I panicked. It was the first thing that came to mind.”
She hadn’t seemed panicked. She’d been so calm. Maybe that was Sable’s nature, though: still as a glassy pool on the surface, chaos churning beneath.
Emeline decided to let the subject drop—for now. Not only had Sable saved her, Hawthorne was out here somewhere. They needed to find him.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “For stopping me.”
Sable glanced back. “You’re welcome.” Her eyes shone like a wolf’s in the darkness and she paused, waiting until Emeline caught up.
They continued on in silence, Emeline listening to the trees’ directions, then telling Sable where to go. If Sable found it odd that the forest spoke to Emeline, she didn’t show it.
All too soon, the trees took on a sickly white translucence, their deadened trunks shining eerily beneath the starlight.
The Stain.
The air was thick and stagnant. No breeze blew. No birds called. No insects croaked.
There,rasped the dying trees.
A cage of bone-white elms stood in the center of a clearing, illuminated by glowing torches lodged in the ground. The elms grew in a perfect circle, with less than a handbreadth of space between each trunk. Six feet from the ground, they bent inwards, twisting together like a knot, trapping the shape within.
Hawthorne.
He lay sprawled in the dirt, hair plastered to his temples, eyes closed. Still as death.
Emeline ran to him.
“Hawthorne?”
He didn’t stir.
“Hawthorne!”
Emeline scanned the elm trunks. “Where’s the way in?”
“There isn’t one,” said Sable, walking twice around the cage, her gaze running up and down the trunks.
Emeline reached through the space in the elms, feeling for apulse. The skin of his neck was cool to the touch, and it took her several tries before her fingertips felt the slow thud of his heart. She let out a shaky breath.
“He’s alive, at least.”
She reached for a slender trunk and pulled. It didn’t budge. She reached for the knife at her hip and was about to start sawing when, on the other side of the cage, Sable tensed, her attention fixing on something behind Emeline.
She spun to face it.
The Vile stepped into the clearing with them. She grinned, her pale gaze fixed on Emeline as if Sable didn’t exist. As ifthiswas her reason for capturing Hawthorne: he was bait in a trap set for Emeline.
Emeline stared back, hands curling into fists as a cold, dark hatred twisted her insides.Herewas the monster that murdered her father and imprisoned her mother in that cellar.
Sable moved like the wind, drawing the two blades simultaneously from the sheaths at her back as she stepped between Emeline and the Vile.
