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After pressing my finger into his pulse, I signed, “If those kings hadn’t stolen what wasn’t theirs. If Lex hadn’t been shot down…” If everything were different. “I will get our revenge.” They’ll pay for what they did. I made my eyes tell him everything that couldn’t be spoken.

He shook his head in resignation. “I know.”

With one more lingering look, he left me and strode over to the mantelpiece, picked up a green packet, and placed it in his pocket. I raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Carro powder,” he signed. “The Ruckus apothecaries are the best. You never know when you might need to poison someone… perhaps a King.”

That was one of the strongest poisons in the kingdoms, and I wasn’t going to ask him who he was going to kill while the runes shone in the corners and someone listened in a hidden room not far away.

20

The village that had seemed so warm and alive when I first entered now looked like a place under enchantment in the oldest, grimmest sense. Fires still blazed down the centre of the main street, but they were an ominous sign—it was clear we should be inside. Lanterns flickered behind shuttered windows. Snow silvered the rooftops. Every doorway was closed. Every warrior in the forest was behind protected wards and bolted doors… all apart from us.

“We’ll be seen?” I whispered.

“Can’t be sure Torran and Kit aren’t around,” Aster said, leading me along the edge of the nearest house rather than the open track. “Let’s just pray they went to the tower like they said they were.”

We crossed behind the dark outline of a storehouse and came to tall stables half-buried in shadow. Inside, there were six huge bay horses. At the far end, one stamped and turned its head at our approach, steam blowing from its nostrils. A Warhorse, not some placid village creature. Tall, broad through the chest, winter coat shaggy, and legs like dark brown woollen boots. A blue runed star marked its forehead, and it glowed as Aster approached.

“You’re joking,” I said. It was three times the size of a normal horse.

Aster slid back the bolt on the stable door and approached the horse with an outstretched hand. “About what?” The horse nuzzled his hand and snorted.

“That beast is… enormous.”

“Well, it is my horse.” There was an innuendo there that I ignored.

I stopped at a distance. “It’s a mountain with free will.”

“If you’re not complimentary, Griffin might not carry you.”

“Really?” Was that all I had to do to get my own horse? “For a start, the name’s all wrong, and—”

Aster wrapped an arm around my back in one swift movement and pulled me close. “I know of better uses for that mouth.” He was everything I had spent the last three years trying to forget—and now he was right in front of me. One inch closer…

Behind us, the Warhorse whinnied, and Aster turned to scan the stables. “Come.”

Griffin’s ears twitched as if he were also waiting for trouble. Aster saddled him quickly, with silent efficiency. I watched his hands work leather and buckle and strap, and I hated the memories that tugged at me again.

But that was then, and I couldn’t allow myself to trust the Celtic warrior he had made himself into.

“Why not let Torran take me?” I asked abruptly.

His hands stilled on the girth strap. “What?”

“Kit wanted me seen like this—” I opened my arms. “Bronwen offered me you and your healing herbs and food so that I might be more malleable. I’m guessing you’re keeping me away from Torran so she has the opportunity to read the book first. Can she read ancient Annatalian?” He turned to Griffin, running a hand along his flank. “No, but you can.” And so the truth comes out. He wasn’t helping me escape; he was following orders. But two could play at that game because I also had orders: mend the book and read it first.

He straightened slowly, one gloved hand still on the saddle. We were in that empty, silent place between night and dawn, and it had a way of awakening what we tried so hard to hide. His face was so much older and weather-worn.

“Listen carefully, Feather. Bronwen wants knowledge contained. The Seer wants to prove her visions. Torran wants certainty that he controls the skies. He’ll tell himself it’s for the good of all the Riders, for the Otherworld gods, and the future of the Northlands. But if that book holds a way to alter the bond between Rider and phoenix, or break the curse, or restore a way of life long lost, then anyone who gets there first can use that knowledge as power. If it gets into the hands of the Barren or Northland Kings…”

A freezing breeze whipped through the stables and pushed my hood back—my white hair haloed around my vision. He was right. There was no one to trust. “You think all of them… especially the Kings… would hoard that power and not break the curse?”

“I think power in the wrong hands always frames it as salvation and then serves its own agenda.”

He’d said that before, when the Barren and Northlands declared they had put an end to the evil of Annatalia. When they caught and then burned my uncle and aunt alive for their “tyrannical” ways, and then took our people and their fertile farmlands for their own.

“Right now they think you can mend the book, but if they find out that you can read it too, then you become the key to unlock the book, and they’ll take you, or…”