Merecot lay on the golden leaves in the center of the grove and stared up at the swirling spirits. She’d never felt so alone. “You should have killed me.”
“I couldn’t lose another friend,” Daleina said.
Turning her head, Merecot looked at her, saw the spirits crowning her, and closed her eyes. “I will hate you always.” She meant every word.
“That doesn’t matter,” Daleina said infuriatingly. “I made my choice.”
On the other side of the grove, Hamon knelt by his mother. “You deserve to die,” he told her. “You’ve killed so many people, and you haven’t cared.”
“Ah, but I saved you,” Garnah said. “In the end, at least I did that. I can die contented.”
“I’m not giving you that kind of peace,” Hamon said, and he opened his healer’s bag. For the first time since he’d entered the grove, his hands were steady as he began to sew his mother’s wounds.
To the north, in Semo, Arin readied another packet of herbs. She’d laced this charm with poisonous bark mixed with pepper dust. She didn’t know why the spirits hadn’t calmed yet—the Semoian hedgewitches had to be trying the “choose” command.Maybe the spirits here are just too strong.
Arin glanced over her shoulder at Havtru and Hanna—they were fending off an air spirit that looked like a bat made of glass. She then looked at the circle of stones in front of them, the grove. “You have to do it,” she told Cajara. “Go!”
Cajara seemed as stuck as those stones.
She can do this. I know she can. And I can help her.Daleina always said she became queen because of Arin—to protect Arin.I was Daleina’s motivation. I can be Cajara’s too.
“You don’t have to stop them,” Arin said to Cajara. “All you have to do is keep me safe.”
And then, before she could lose her nerve, she ran into the grove.
She heard Cajara call her name, but she didn’t stop until she was within the circle of stones. Unlike the Aratayian grove, the grove in Semo was a bowl of smooth, black stone. Granite pillars lined it, and the mountains towered above.
Looking up, Arin saw hundreds of spirits.
One of them saw her and shrieked, “Intruder!” Others took up the cry. “Traitor! Defiler!” They whipped faster in a circle, and the air around the stone circle cyloned. Pebbles were lifted into the air. Arin blocked her face with her hands as dust and gravel pelted her.
Maybe this was a bad idea.“Cajara?”
“There are so many,” Cajara said. Standing in the center of the stone circle, untouched by the cyclone, she looked so lost. “And they... I can hear them... They don’t want you here. You’re not an heir. They...”
Pushing against the dust-choked wind, Arin crossed to her. She took Cajara’s hands in hers. “Don’t think about them. Look at me. Focus on me.”
Lowering her gaze from the spirits, Cajara met her eyes.
“Good.” Arin shuddered as an ice spirit grazed her arm, the cold shooting down to her fingertips. She kept her voice calm, as if this were a pleasant summer day. Behind Cajara, she saw an earth spirit, a stone giant, rise out of the ground. It held boulders in its fists. “Now all you have to do is tell them to choose you.”
Cajara shook her head. “I’m no one. Why would they choose me?”
“Ichoose you,” Arin said, and then she leaned forward and kissed Cajara. Cajara’s lips tasted sweet, like strawberries just ripened in the summer heat. She pulled back, but not too far. Foreheads touching, she whispered, “Tell the spirits to choose you too.”
Cajara’s eyelids fluttered closed. Still holding on to one of Cajara’s hands, Arin reached into her pocket for another potion-laced charm... and felt nothing. Her supplies were gone. She looked up at the sea of spirits filling the sky, and at the stone monsters closing in on them.
“I choose you,” Arin repeated.
Far to the west, in the untamed lands, Ven hacked his way through the wild spirits. There were so many of them, diving, charging, tunneling, biting, fighting, in a whirlwind of talons and claws. He was bleeding from dozens of wounds.
I will not fail,he promised himself. He kept the people clumped tightly together as they moved forward, bit by bit. He couldn’t see the cave or even the rock formation where it was, but he knew it was ahead.
Naelin was clearing a path for them—a narrow one, but he could thread it. He ran up and down the line, protecting the children, the men, the women, the old and the young. He didn’t see the faces. But he did see the eyes, full of fear. And full of trust.
He fought for them, widening the tunnel through the mist as they pressed on toward the cave where the body of the Great Mother of Spirits lay. Inch by inch, he won ground. Until at last he reached them: Naelin with Bayn and the children, outside the mouth of the grave.
“In,” he ordered the people.
