She glanced back. The guard grinned beneath the rim of his helmet, revealing rows of sharpened teeth.
Emeline shuddered and stepped quickly forward again.
“Why not try her?” Rooke pressed. “If her singing displeases you, you can do away with her like all the others.” He flicked his fingers, as if flicking away a bug. “You have little to lose.”
Do away with me?She glared at Rooke. But he had warned her, hadn’t he? Back in the swamp, when she’d thanked him for his help.
The king drummed his fingers slowly, the cracked nails clicking on the arm of his white throne. He looked from Rooke to Emeline.
Meeting his cold, calculating stare, she managed to say, “And if I refuse?”
Silence followed her question. The courtiers gathered at the edges of the grove stopped talking.
Suddenly, the king threw back his head and laughed. The sound boomed through the clearing like thunder, shaking the earth at her feet. Rooke glanced her way, and there was pity in his gaze.
The Wood King snapped his fingers at something in the distance. Emeline turned to find armed hedgemen dragging someone out of the crowd of murmuring courtiers.
“N-no,” stammered a too-familiar voice. “S-stop. W-where are you t-taking me?”
The guards shoved their prisoner into the middle of the grove. The old man stumbled in the starlight. His gray hair was mussed, his blue shirt wrinkled.
Pa.
“W-where’s Rose?” Her grandfather’s voice was loud and frantic. “Where’s my Rose?”
Her heart snagged in her throat. He always asked for Emeline’s mother when he was frightened and confused.
When she caught sight of the thick green vines binding his wrists, anger flooded her. He was a harmless old man. There was no need to restrain him.
“Take those off!”
When no one did, Emeline moved to do it herself. The guard at her back grabbed her wrists, halting her. Hot fingers dug into her skin.
She tried to twist free. Tried to elbow her captor in the ribs, but the guard only yanked both arms up her back. Pain lanced like lightning from her fingers to her shoulder blades, shocking her into submission.
Helpless, she watched Pa cower before the advancing guards. Two stepped forward, forcing him to his knees in the dirt with their spears.
“Don’t touch him!”
She struggled, but the guard only tightened his hold.
“Emeline.” Rooke’s voice was edged with unease. “Don’t make this worse.”
“Help him,” she breathed. “Please. Help him.”
“Only you can help him now.”
Her eyes filled with furious tears. Her grandfather blurred before her.
“Choose, Emeline Lark,” the Wood King boomed. “Be my minstrel and save his life; or refuse and watch him die.”
Die?Emeline shook her head. Her next words sounded small and scared: “You can’t …”
“Can’t? Am I notking of the wood?”
His voice grew shrill as a whistling wind as he rose to his feet, the water gushing faster and thicker around him, flowing down the steps of his throne, rushing over the grass like a tide. Something desperate and wild scrabbled through her as the king stepped down, moving towards Pa. Like a predator closing in on its quarry.
Her grandfather lifted his head, blue eyes wide with fear as he knelt in the shadow of the king.
