She opened her mouth to say she was fine, except she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.
“I can make us dinner while you continue practicing.” He stretched his neck, then rolled his shoulders, wincing a little as he did, clearly stiff from standing all day—or possibly from the damage Claw had done the day before. Wiping the back of hishand against his gleaming brow, he looked to the glass walls around them. “Besides, I could use a change of scenery. My house isn’t far from here.”
With his blue knit sweater thrown over his arm, he collected the sheet music from the stand and turned to leave the domed room.
Unsure if she understood, Emeline called after him: “Is that a dinner invitation?”
Without stopping, he said over his shoulder, “If you want it to be.”
Emeline’s pulse quickened.
He was a fiend in the Wood King’s employ. She shouldn’t be having dinner with him. Not alone.
But Emeline had learned only two of the Song Mage’s eleven songs today. If her demonstration was tomorrow at midnight, she should try learning at least one more before the night was out. She could then spend tomorrow perfecting all three. Hawthorne was the only one who could help her do this.
Her stomach rumbled again, snapping her out of her thoughts.
You can’t survive on songs alone. You also need to eat.
“Coming?” Hawthorne called from the doorway.
Summoning her courage, Emeline followed the tithe collector out of the room.
It was only as she left the glass dome that she realized the woods hadn’t come for her while she sang. No horde of insects swarmed. The sheet music hadn’t molded over. The woods had been absent the entire time.
Odd.
Perhaps it was because they’d gotten their wish: Emeline trapped within their borders. But if that was true, why did they want her here so badly?
Emeline turned the question over in her mind but found noanswer. Shaking off the ominous feeling threading through her, she hurried to catch up with Hawthorne.
FROM THE PALACE GROUNDS, Hawthorne led her down a dirt path through a quiet wood leading away from the city center. The path took them to a small stone bridge over a gurgling creek, and by the time they reached it the sun had almost set and the trees had grown dark beneath their canopies.
Hawthorne’s house stood on the other side of the bridge, green ivy creeping up the dusty stone and swerving around the window shutters. His yard was bordered by a drystone wall speckled with moss.
Hawthorne opened the door and stepped through first, moving into the darkness. Emeline stood frozen on the threshold, Claw’s warning suddenly clanging through her like a gong.
Beware of this one.
A sudden realization—that she was alone with him, far away from the eyes of the palace—turned her legs to jelly. She pressed her hand to the doorjamb, steadying herself.
A match flared nearby.
“You look terrified,” Hawthorne said as he lit the lamps. “I’m not going to murder you, I promise.”
“The promise of a liar,” she said, forcing herself to step into the dark and shut the door behind her. “How comforting.”
Candles and lamplight soon softened the darkness, allowing Emeline to see her surroundings. The pine floorboards beneath her feet were swept clean, and the house smelled of flour and yeast, as if someone had recently made bread.
It didn’t seem like the house of someone dangerous.
But appearances could be deceiving.
While Hawthorne started a fire in the hearth, Emeline scanned the room, looking for clues. Anything that might give her insight into the king’s tithe collector, his motives and secrets.A worn harvest table stood wedged between two benches near the window. On its surface, a lamp burned low, illuminating the book there. It had a crimson cover and a cracked slender spine. She wandered over to it.
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair,the title read. By Pablo Neruda.
Why would Hawthorne be reading a book from her world?
