Tobin rubbed his jaw. “How do I know you aren’t simply playing both sides?”
Dacia stood up and handed back the wine and honey. “Thank you,” she said at first, with a small curtsey. I recognized her shrewdness—the way she let that purity be seen. It was not a performance, but true vulnerability. She simply was all that she showed. Oh, how she broke my heart.
“Our lives depend on your help. We have been terrified, tormented, these last few months. All the priests say it is you causing the torment. All the old women say it is Lord Death. I know fairy tales do not live in this forest, and now that I have met you, I know the priests are also wrong. Butsomethingis out there, in the night, stealing away girls. We need someone who will care to stop it.”
For a moment, I believed she had convinced them. She spoke so earnestly, so perfectly, and I could see the gleam in Tobin’s eyes—but also something more, that already half-in-love look that men could getaround her. Maybe it was my own feelings clouding it all, but in the pause as he considered her words, I thought that he would surely let us go.
“I cannot let you go,” he said.
My stomach sank to my feet.
“You’ve seen us here. You could run straight to the Baron and inform him for protection. I believe you must stay here. I’m sure we can find some”—he paused as if his mind skipped over the unspoken things—“use for you both.”
Until that point, I had hoped, stupidly, for this to be different. They had treated us well. They had taken us to the spring and cleaned my wounds and not touched us. And these simple gestures had lulled me into hoping we could escape. That deep down, these were good men.
But I had failed to remember they were simply men. They were thinking only of their bellies, their taxes, their fees, and what coins and pleasure they could steal. I remembered Renaud trying to get me to think bigger when I first arrived at the château, and oh, did I understand now. How could I get them to understand the world was so much more than some low-rate Baron in the hinterlands of the empire? How could I get Dacia free from their stupidity and smallness and their eager desire simply to use her? In frustration, I reached for the incantation I’d found that turned my hair and dress white and made me glow. I needed to shock them loose of their feeblemindedness.
All at once, my light filled the entire ravine.
Tobin and Jon threw themselves back from me, their faces pale. Dacia froze, but then her hands slowly covered her mouth, staring at me with wide, horror-stricken eyes.
I only glanced at her, and the glance alone broke my heart. I could never undo it. Never earn my way back into her heart. But I would set her free—even if it meant setting her free from me.
“Tobin, I have been sent to give you a message,” I said slowly, my voice amplified by the light, deep and resonant. I sounded like a creature of the wood.
His green eyes were wide, and he moved as carefully as a fox around a trap, hands a little too close to his knife. “I will curse you if you try to hurt or detain us again,” I said, though I’d learned nothing of curses. Oh, why had I run from the one safe place in the world for me?
“A message from whom?” he asked.
“From the gods,” I said, feeling rather foolish. I thought that would be obvious.
There was a long pause, and it took me a moment to realize they were waiting expectantly for the message. My message. The message I was to deliver. I cleared my throat. “You have been sent a quest from the gods, Sir Tobin. They demand that you find who is stealing women from these villages and ensure that no more are taken.”
I thought it rather a desperate effort, but the men seemed awestruck, looking at me with profound respect. As if I were someone who was worth listening to, instead of an invisible, endless scream that no one seemed to hear.
For effect, I waited a bit longer, then thought the reversal of the spell. Instantly, I was back to my former drenched black hair and bruised, naked body. “We will be leaving,” I said primly. “I will give you the courtesy of blindfolding us as long as you take us toward the village.”
Tobin stared at me still. His shrewd green gaze held an echo of my own glow. “We could use a witch.”
I sniffed and pushed back my hair. “Why? You have your own gifts.” It was a guess, but I said it bluntly, thinking to show off my insight. I thought he’d be flattered to be perceived. But he bristled, his calm exterior cracking for the first time. “I know not what you mean.”
I was confused then, unsure what to say. Did he not know? Or was he trying to hide his gifts as I had once hidden mine? “Well,” I said as if that hadn’t happened, “you may have need of me. I have no need of you. If you have wish for my help, send a crow.”
“How?” Tobin began to ask, but I grabbed Dacia’s arm and turnedbriskly away, daring to try to leave. “You’ll go back to wherever in this forest you hide?”
I narrowed my eyes and tried to speak to the fox, rather than just the man. “I go where I please and where the gods send me.”
He nodded. “We shall blindfold you.”
I did not like it, but I had been the one to offer.
At any moment, I expected Jon’s ham-size fist to grab me and tie me up. But they put the blindfolds back on our faces and then went to get the horses.
I could feel Dacia standing quietly beside me. She was my cardinal direction—wherever she was, I was drawn. Under the dark blindfold, behind my eyes, all the images of us together tumbled over and over, the kind of memory that could never wear out, that spilled molten gold all through my limbs. I could still feel her under my fingertips.
But I had other memories too—her words.I am a Christian. I do not like to go into the witch’s home. And now, the horror in her eyes that seemed so final, so profound. I waited, but she did not speak. I wanted to say something, but no words came to mind.
I was a witch—everything she rejected, everything she opposed. Still, I could not help it—I tried to reach for her. My fingertips grazed the edges of her dress. And then I heard her feet shift in the dirt as she moved away from me.
