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“Gods, don’t do this.” I managed to slip my arm free of one of the guards and gripped the frame of the door. “King, please.” My voice cracked; I hardly knew what I was saying. “She needs me to find her; she . . . she needs me to remind her to breathe.”
For a moment, I thought Valen jolted at my words. Livia’s mother peered over his shoulder. A bit of wet glass coated her pale eyes.
The queen’s tears were the last thing I saw before the door slammed in my face, and I was tossed out of the great hall.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SONGBIRD
The woman,flanked by two guards in silver bracers and blue tunics, led us down a narrow corridor. Rafters that came to a point overhead were draped in satin banners with curious constellations glittering in the light.
My toes hardly touched the woven runners, always ready to race away, always spinning about, looking for the wretched grin on Larsson’s face. One I’d considered friendly not so long ago.
“We’ll walk alone, Dorsan,” the woman said to the guard on her right. He was young in the face, but stern as stone.
One tilt to his head and the second guard halted in the doorway, giving us freedom to enter a forest pathway that carved through bowers of trees and shrubs.
Verdant canopies of branches intertwined like knobby fingers. Glossy black ferns lined the path, trapped midnight woven in the velvet leaves, and serpentine wooden walkways honeycombed throughout the forest, up slopes and down into ravines.
Each walkway lifted over stilts lost beneath water with no current. Stagnate tides were left to gather foamy green blossoms over the surface until the black water looked like a meadow of grass.
“Follow that path”—the woman gestured inward—“and you’ll meet the swamplands. Beautiful, but dangerous should you not keep to the path. However, sun wings are friendly enough to light safe steps should they find you appealing enough.”
“Sun wings?”
The woman flicked her fingers in front of her face. “Tiny insects that flicker with gold. Rather beautiful, but wholly suspicious little things.”
Milky blossoms were carried on the breeze, a collision of sweet and silk buried under the brine of the nearby sea. Cerulean tides glowed like fire beneath the setting sun.
“You may want to flee,” she whispered, “but your enemies crafted a rather sturdy spell cast while you slept. It binds you to their presence, so if they remain on the shores, so do you. I assure you the Otherworld will call should you try to leave.”
“Exactly the thing a captor would say.” I angled for another path, ready to sprint through the trees.
A hand curled around my arm. “Be still. I will take you.”
This had to be a jest, some sort of trick, but without protest, the woman carved through the trees, directed at the shore.
One glance over my shoulder, one weary breath, and I followed.
By the time trees thinned and only spiked leaves of strange shrubs irritated my ankles, my strange companion held out an arm. “Wait. There is a ward buried deep here” She reached for a knobby branch, fallen in the foliage, and tossed it over the border of the wood.
Once the limb landed, the sand and pebbles swallowed it until only one sharp end was not submerged. Earth hardened, trapping the limb in place.
The woman sighed. “A snare spell. Not deadly, but I’ve no doubt the sea witch feels a bit of resentment toward you and would let you rot in the sun should you be caught.”
Despair cinched in my chest.
“I can take it,” said the woman. “This is not a blood spell.”
“Take it?”
“Yes.” The barest of grins twitched in the corner of her mouth. “I have ways to take matter as I please. Spell casts, affinities, all magic is matter unseen. If you wish to prove my words at the sea, I will take it so we may cross.”
“Why would you help me?”
“In truth?” The woman smoothed her slender hands over the folds of her gown. “I’m rather irritated by all the spell work on my isle. We can hardly walk anywhere without snares or sharp edges protruding into our flesh, trying to stop us. And”—another hesitation—“there is a disquiet in my heart. I’m not satisfied with the tales I’ve been told as to why you are here.”
Perhaps I was naïve in the art of war and battle and enemies. My sheltered, love-soaked life had lent few opportunities to truly face deception from those I knew. She could be lying, could be leading me toward a trap. Still, there was a softness to her features. A nudge from somewhere in my veins—fury magic or instinct—that urged me to keep calm at her side.
