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Author: Leah Cypess Chapter One
Darri didn’t see the ghost until he was upon her, a solid weight that dropped from the branches above and threw her sideways of the saddle. Because he was solid, she didn’t realize at first that he was dead. She hit the ground with a thud and rol ed to her feet, pul ing her dagger from her boot. By the time she was standing, she had already thrown it.
The dagger plunged into the man’s chest with a thunk, and he laughed at her. He was a large, ruddy man wearing a fine set of riding clothes and a short cape. As he laughed, his body slowly faded, so that even in the torchlight Darri could see the trees through him. Her dagger dropped straight down through his body and disappeared into the dark mass of ferns that covered the forest floor.
Darri’s breath twisted in her throat. Her horse—a bat le-trained stal ion who could face a mounted charge without flinching—neighed shril y in terror and reared. The dead man laughed louder. He became solid again, bent to pick up her dagger, and lunged at her.
Darri’s body reacted instinctively, whirling sideways as he rushed past her. She was poised to kick the dagger out of his hand, but her mind betrayed her. Terror burned through her chest, and by the time she swal owed it, the moment had passed. The specter’s side was no longer unguarded. He turned and came at her again, and the scent of rot ing flesh fil ed the air.
Her at acker jerked suddenly, an expression of surprise wiping the laughter from his face. And then he was gone.
When his hand vanished, Darri’s dagger dropped again. With it fel another—the blade that had been hurled into the ghost’s back. That one gleamed with the unmistakable glint of silver before it disappeared into the ferns.
Darri took a deep breath and looked up at her brother, who was leaning back in the saddle to recover from his throw. His face wore its usual unruf led expression.
Darri wil ed her voice steady. It didn’t quite work. “I thought the terms of our invitation specified that we bring no silver weapons. ”
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the wind and the snorting of her horse. Then Varis’s face shifted into its second most common expression: resigned contempt, as if he couldn’t believe how stupid she was. “We had bet er keep going,” he said. “Retrieve the knives. ”
Darri glared up at him. Over the past ten nights of riding, her patience for Varis had grown shorter and shorter. “I didn’t exactly get of the horse to dawdle. ”
“Just get back on!”
He sounded nervous now, which Darri counted as a victory. With deliberately sauntering steps, she walked over and handed him the silver blade, then pat ed his mount’s hindquarters. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to try and delay us. ”
He leaned over to slide the dagger into his boot sheath, then straightened. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you did. ”
“That,” Darri snapped, “is because you don’t know anything about me anymore. ”
“Nor,” Varis said, gathering up the reins, “am I interested. ”
She flinched despite herself, and suddenly the whole thing wasn’t worth it. She should have known bet er than to start with Varis; he always hurt her, and she never even scratched his imperturbable surface. Darri mounted her horse without another word.
It had been years since she had even wanted a reaction from Varis—four years, to be exact. But being alone with him in this dark, deadly forest played tricks on her memory. It made her feel afraid, as if she was once again a smal girl relying on her older brother to protect her.
She had bet er get past that fast.
She closed her eyes, trusting her horse to fol ow the path, thinking as hard as she could of sunlight and blue sky and empty plains. Until now, the mental image had kept her just at the edge of panic; she tried to let it fil her inner vision, pushing out the fear.
It wasn’t working anymore. Her arm ached where she had hit the ground, and her grip on the reins was so tight that her horse snorted in protest and tossed his head. She unclenched her fingers and tried to breathe, opening her eyes. Al around her, the shadows shifted among the tangled trees. She wanted to be home, where the dead were safely hidden beneath the earth, and you could see an enemy coming for miles. Where people rode during the day and slept at night, instead of the other way around.
Despite herself, Darri looked back. Even with the moon nearly ful , the forest was so dark it could have hidden a thousand ghosts—or none at al . The brambles leered at them. Hundreds of eyes could be watching them pass, hundreds of twisted, undead things.
Here be ghosts, the maps said, and that was al they had to say about the kingdom known as Ghostland.
They were riding toward a castle where, the legends whispered, the dead outnumbered the living. Each of the dead seeking vengeance and nearly impossible to fight. They could kil the living with any weapon they pleased, but only silver or sunlight could harm a ghost.
Varis prodded his horse into a faster walk and scanned the shadows between the thick tree trunks, as if Varis prodded his horse into a faster walk and scanned the shadows between the thick tree trunks, as if expecting another ghost to leap out from between them. Darri imitated his movement, her shoulder blades tightening. The thought of another at ack was enough to tip the balance between pride and fear. She took a deep breath and said, “Do you think it was alone?”
For a moment she was sure Varis wasn’t going to answer. Then he shrugged and said, “Probably. If there were two, they would have at acked together. ”
“Why did it at ack us at al ?”
Varis glanced over his shoulder at her, long enough for her to see that the contempt was back. “Because we wil control their country, one way or another. For al the talk of al iances and marriage, some of them must realize it. ”
Great. Wonderful.
Cal ie, she thought, and cal ed up a memory of her sister: Cal ie with her arms spread to her sides, twirling around and around in the long grass with her smal round face tilted back, giggling uncontrol ably. The memory was an old one—Cal ie had been perhaps five years old, Darri eight—but it was the one Darri had fal en asleep to for more nights than she could count.
Except she always woke up to another old memory: Varis sneaking into her tent to tel her the news. She had been eager to see him, thinking he was coming for one of his usual visits, to regale her in whispers with the tale of a daring raid or a successful hunt. Instead he had told her, in calm concise tones, that Cal ie would be sent to marry the prince of Ghostland. That their lit le sister was a reasonable price to pay for the one territory on the east coast they couldn’t easily conquer.
He had seemed surprised when she erupted from her bedrol , but not too surprised to grab her by the wrist before she made it to the door flap. “Darri. I know it’s hard. But no sacrifice is too great. ”
“This one is,” Darri had raged at him, trying inef ectual y to free herself. “This is Cal ie you’re talking about, Varis, not a herd of horses or a tactical bat le advantage. Father can’t do this to her. He can’t. I’l stop it. ”
Her brother had looked at her with his blue eyes narrowed, disbelief slowly turning to disgust, and said, “I won’t let you. ”
That was the last time he had ever snuck into her tent.
Now Varis shifted in the saddle, and his voice sharpened. “I think it would be best not to mention this incident when we get to the castle. ”
“Because in order to explain what happened, we would have to admit you were carrying a silver dagger?”
His response was another look of cool contempt, and Darri had had just about enough of those. She wasn’t stupid, no mat er how many stupid things she had done in her rage over Cal ie’s betrayal. Maybe it was time Varis noticed tha
t. She spurred her horse forward to ride beside him, shouldering his stal ion sideways so they could both fit on the forest path, ignoring both his raised eyebrows and the branches that brushed along her left arm. “I know what we’re doing here, Varis. ”
“I should hope so. It’s been explained to you in some detail. ”
And he had been repeating it twice daily since they left: the al iance with Ghostland was crucial, especial y now that their forces were ready to turn west. They didn’t have time to wait for Cal ie to come of age. Instead it would be Darri who married the prince of Ghostland, and she had bet er remember her responsibility to her people.
The fact that Darri never argued didn’t seem to reassure him at al . Varis was not stupid either.
She shouldn’t argue now, she knew; there was nothing to gain. But the words came tumbling out anyhow.
“I stopped listening to the explanations after your first at empt,” she said. “They’re not going to start making sense because you keep repeating them. Nobody bothered to ride here with Cal ie when you traded her away.
Why do I get treated bet er than she did?”
“Someone has to watch you,” Varis snapped, “to make sure you do your duty. You’ve made that perfectly clear. ”
An overhead branch snagged her hair, and she reached up with one hand to wrench it away. The pain in her scalp was welcome; it felt deserved. “Because I love my sister more than I love our father’s ambitions.
Unforgivable. ”
Varis’s fingers tightened on the reins. “There is nothing more important than maintaining our security. Don’t you remember what it was like when we were the weakest of the tribes, when anyone could hurt us at wil ?”
He knew she did. Neither of them would ever forget the night their mother was kidnapped and kil ed, the night their two older brothers had died trying to protect her. Cal ie had been just a baby, wailing for her mother without understanding that she was gone forever. It had been Varis who had wept with Darri, and held her, for night after night as their father prepared for war. And then left her behind to go to war with him.
She didn’t want to remember that, or to think about how much he had changed when he came back. How she had closed her eyes to the changes in him, fol owed his lead, wanted exactly what he wanted . . . until the night she final y realized how far he would go.
Varis drew in a breath, let it out, and—in the moment it took his horse to step over a fal en log—became cool and remote again. “But now you care about nothing but Cal ie. So you should be happy that the two of you wil be together again. ”
Darri lost control of the reins for a moment, and her horse hit his hind leg on the log and stumbled. She regained her balance and turned in the saddle, this time ignoring the branches that caught at her hair. “Cal ie regained her balance and turned in the saddle, this time ignoring the branches that caught at her hair. “Cal ie wil go back with you! Once I marry Prince Kestin—”
“She can help you set le in. ” Varis spurred his horse forward, leaving her with a view of his rigid back and his horse’s swishing tail. “Her experience wil be valuable to you as you learn the ways of the court. ”
Darri watched openmouthed as his horse’s tail flicked against her stal ion’s face, making her mount snort and shake his head. That was so like Varis—to assume that Cal ie would stil be loyal, would stil devote herself to the Rael ian conquest, even after her life had been traded away.
Let him assume it, she thought as she let her horse fal back. Let him assume whatever he wanted. It would make her task easier.
Because regardless of her father’s true reasons for sending them to Ghostland, Darri was here for one purpose only: to get Cal ie out. And not Varis or her father or al the dead men in Ghostland were going to stop her.
Prince Kestin, Cal ie noted, was brooding. He had been gloomy for several nights now, and it made him look exceptional y handsome—he had the sort of long, intense face that seemed made for deep thought, and always looked a bit incongruous when he laughed. For most of the banquet, Cal ie had thought that was the reason for the brooding. But now he had taken to drinking, which was a bad sign.