‘Now without any more interruptions, let us continue …’ said Samsel, clearly keen to move the ceremony on.
He gestured to the musicians, who began beating the drums and blasting the trumpets in a steady rhythm.
‘People of Calestra,’ he cried. ‘Feed the flames!’
Children rushed forward, throwing felt dragon figurines into the bonfires, which surged and roared. The crowd cheered.
Cressyda watched it all, smoke stinging her eyes.
Maylie
MAYLIE WADED THROUGHundergrowth with fierce determination, ignoring the scratch and tug of sprawling bushes and bracken. The vegetation pressed in on all sides, wild and unyielding. There was no trodden path to follow, only the raw, tangled scrub that grew dense and chaotic, cloaking the slope in a green, unruly mass. Thorny branches caught at her clothes and thistles bit into her skin. Every so often, she lost her footing on the rutted, lumpy ground and stumbled, her ankles twisting beneath her, but she did not rest. She pressed on without pause, her breath steady and her eyes fixed ahead.
She must get to the Maiden’s Path.
She must stop this.
Earlier that day, on her way to Tormale, Maylie had heard the shocking, terrible news. She had been passing through the lowest Mountain village of Farell, a sleepy cluster of stone cottages at the foot of the last mountain, when a dust-streaked herald had ridden into the main square. She had had enough provisions in her smallpack to make it to the city – Chrisanie had made sure of that before she set off – and she had not intended to stop anywhere. She had wanted to reach the capital before sundown, hoping to request an audience with someone at Syonno Castle that evening. But since the herald was here, she had decided to pause and listen to his decree. From a shaded corner beneath the eaves of Farell’s Sanctuary, she had wiped her hands on her skirts and watched as the square filled with villagers. Children were called in from play, aproned women stepped away from their shops, and men laid down their tools to stand shoulder to shoulder, eyes narrowed towards the stranger on horseback.
It had been past lunchtime, the sky a pale, drowsy blue overhead, and everyone was calm. They knew that had the Maiden Sacrifice been one of their own girls, the herald would have already visited first thing that morning. They could rest easy knowing that they had been spared another spring.
But when the announcement had come, it had stunned everyone.
The herald’s voice had carried clearly through the square, piercing and formal, as he unrolled the sealed scroll and read the name aloud. For a moment, it was as if the air had paused. Even the lovetails nesting in the eaves of the Sanctuary fell quiet. Then the murmurs began, rippling through the crowd.
‘The Princess has Mountain blood?’ someone had gasped. ‘Would you ever have thought such a thing?’
‘I suppose she never were a real princess …’ came one reply.
‘’Tis good, I say,’ a raspy voice yelled out above all the commotion. ‘Let the Calestrans feel the pain of the Maiden Sacrifice for once!’
Shocked and sick, Maylie had stumbled away to the outskirts of Farell, her thoughts reeling and her dread mounting.
The Princess – her daughter – was the Maiden Sacrifice.
Maylie’s breath came in broken bursts, and the ground seemed to tilt beneath her feet. The villagers’ voices faded behind her as she pushed through narrow paths, past weather-worn cottages, barely seeing where she was going.
This was what the Hidden People had tried to warn her about – this was the terrible thing foretold.
And she was too late.
Maylie should have acted sooner. At that moment, the Princess would already be at the ceremony in Tormale’s main square. Perhaps she would already have set out on the Maiden’s Path, flanked by guards, winding her way through the mountains towards death.
As the horror of it had settled over Maylie, her hands had flown to her face, nails dragging across her cheeks leaving bright red lines. The guilt, the unbearable helplessness. There was only one thought pounding in her head now, louder than anything else – she must do something. She must stop this.
The Princess could not be the Maiden Sacrifice. It was impossible. Not because of sentiment or station or worth, but because she was Maylie’s daughter and Esmelie’s niece – a girl could not be chosen twice from the same family in two generations. It was the rule. Maylie had seized upon this technicality and clung to it. It did not matter that she had kept the Princess’s heritage a secret because the truth existed, and that truth could save her. Maylie had told herself that if she could explain this to the guards, they would be forced to let the Princess go. The rule was clear and it could not be broken. She just needed to get to them in time.
Turning, Maylie had started retracing the path she had followed that morning. Her boots found the narrow track again, though itnow seemed steeper and crueller than before. She snaked her way back up the winding mountainsides between the scattered villages, rushing as fast as her body would allow. The familiar curves and bends of the trail blurred around her, reduced to landmarks she barely registered in her single-minded determination. She had refused to stop or rest, even when she had started to pull away from the known trails into the wild scrubland. Her pace had slowed on the rough, uneven ground and dampness had spread beneath her arms and across her back, the afternoon sunshine beating down warm and relentless. But still, she trudged on.
She had failed her daughter once and she was not about to let it happen again.
She tore through thorny underbrush, climbed over moss-slick boulders, shoved aside low-hanging branches that whipped her face and arms. The sting of it barely registered. She struggled on, her stride long and grim, even as the burn in her thighs grew fiercer and the dull throb in her left hip began to blossom into something harsher. She kept going, swivelling her head left and right, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Maiden’s Path.
Then, at last, she saw a patch of woodland ahead. It was not what she had hoped for, but she still huffed in relief. At least it would give her a moment’s respite from the heat of the sun. She was thinking of little else when she stepped beneath the nearest tree, swallowed into the coolness of its shade. The hush of the canopy wrapped around her, muffling the sound of her footfalls and the pulse pounding in her ears. She welcomed it, leaning briefly against a trunk as her thoughts spun in half-formed fragments – the Princess, the Maiden Sacrifice, death – but before any of them could settle, something caught her eye.
A wink of silver. Quick and bright, gone in an instant.
She turned her head and saw it: the shadow.
