Garrot turned to Lord Daydon. “You didn’t set up a watch the night she came back?”
“Of course we did,” Daydon blustered.
“I slept outside her door,” Bane admitted tonelessly.
Larkin tried to soothe him with a look. “Everyone was asleep. It was part of the spell the piper wove.”
“And how did you escape his thrall?”
She opened her mouth to tell them, but they all looked at her as if she were as crazy as Maisy. “I hit him.” With magic. “And managed to run away.”
The Black Druids exchanged a loaded glance. It was clear none of them—not even Bane, believed her. Larkin’s cheeks heated. “I’m not making it up.” Leaving things out, yes, but not making it up.
“I’m not saying you are,” Garrot said. “But you are a woman.” And a woman’s word didn’t carry much weight, never had. Her hands tightened into fists, knuckles turning white. “Perhaps you were simply dreaming.”
“I can vouch for her,” Bane said.
Bane shouldn’t need to vouch for me! I know what I saw—as much as any man.
“You weren’t there,” Garrot said to Bane. “Women are weaker, more susceptible to the forest’s magic. You don’t know how the forest has meddled with her mind.”
Larkin imagined all the ways she could hurt Garrot without getting caught. “I can prove it.” Garrot finally deigned to look at her. “He tried to give me an amulet, asked me to wear it. He said it would protect me.”
Hunter rose to his feet. “Where is this amulet?”
“At the forest’s edge, where the river goes in.” She closed her eyes, trying to remember, but her memories were fuzzy, dreamlike. “I think I could find it again.”
Garrot handed over her steaming cloak. “Lead the way.”
Larkin stood before the forest, mesmerized by the way the torches threw shadows across the rustling trees. This close, the melodious undercurrent hummed beneath her skin. She’d sensed it ever since she left the forest—an awareness that grew stronger the closer she came to the forest until it demanded her full attention.
“Well?” Rimoth asked from behind her.
She started, whirling back to the four men behind her—Bane, Rimoth, Hunter, and Garrot in their fine leather cloaks. She’d forgotten they were there, forgotten everything except the forest, her gaze lost in the swirling motions.
“I—” She remembered the sound of her bare feet on the bridge, the feel of the damp grass on her legs, the songs of the frogs that had gone silent as she’d passed, and the Curse Tree, one of the branches broken.
“It’s here somewhere.” Bending down, she pushed through the dead grass, shot through with gray rot.
“Spread out to look,” Garrot said, holding the torch over the grass she was searching. She could feel his attention trained on her as last year’s rotting dead grass clung to her hands.
“There’s something you aren’t telling us,” he said softly.
She winced. “I told you everything.”
Garrot slowly shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You know how I can tell?” Without waiting for her to answer, he leaned forward. “You’re not nearly as afraid as you should be.”
How could she explain that, in the stillness, she could sense the forest’s melody and a longing flashed through her like flames through dry tinder? “There’s nothing,” she said a little too breathlessly.
“See here,” Bane said sharply from behind Garrot. “Just because she’s not a sniveling mess doesn’t mean she’s lying.”
“We’ll see.” Garrot pivoted and cut away swaths of grass with his wicked-looking ax. Larkin sniffed and wiped away the drops of water that had leaked though her tattered wool hood, seeped through her hair, and dripped down the sides of her face. She kept glancing toward the forest, swearing she could feel the trees watching her.
She didn’t find anything. None of them did.
“Just a hallucination brought on by the forest.” Rimoth kicked the grass. “I told you women are unreliable witnesses.”
Garrot rolled his neck as if he had a crick. “All right. Let’s get back to the manor.”
“Wait.” Hunter pushed aside a clump of grass and lifted his hand, revealing a simple cord. From it dangled an amulet in the likeness of a bare-branched tree with interlocking roots. It spun lazily, a shimmer of color sparking across its surface like frost in the morning light.
Larkin’s traitorous hands ached with the need to hold it. It reeled her in like a fish on a line. She stood before it, clenching her hands at her side to keep them still.
Garrot took the amulet, turning it this way and that. “This was not made by any tradesman I have ever seen.”
“Is it wood or stone?” Rimoth asked as he reached out to take the amulet.
Garrot jerked it out of his reach. “It’s a piece of opal.” He stretched the amulet toward her. “Larkin?”
She stared openmouthed as the amulet swayed hypnotically, the water dripping from the branching roots. Shaking with fear and maybe a little eagerness, she stretched out her uninjured hand. Garrot dropped it into her cupped palm. Her thumb ran along the surface—smooth like wood but far heavier. Her hand closed around it, and a branch on the amulet pricked her. Heat and light blasted against her, tearing a gasp from her throat, and a vision sucked her in.
She walked on a white bridge that stretched out before her, turquoise water below. As she walked, she shed her clothing, letting the pieces drop one by one. Then she pointed her hands above her head and dove. Falling. Falling. Falling.
She woke with a start, her cheek stinging. Someone was calling her name. Larkin lifted her heavy head to find Nesha grasping her head in her hands, her expression worried. Larkin was back inside the manor, slouched in a chair. At the sound of shouting and a struggle, she turned her head to find Hunter and Rimoth holding back a red-faced Bane, who lobbed threats and insults at Garrot. Standing in a bucket of steaming water, Lord Daydon shouted at everyone indiscriminately.
Larkin shook her head and rubbed her sore cheek. “What . . .”
“You went blank,” Garrot said evenly. “Like you weren’t there anymore.” He pried at her hand before giving a frustrated growl. “Give me the amulet, Larkin.”
Bane struggled to break free. “Get away from her!”
Brow furrowed, Larkin glanced at her fingers clenched around the amulet. She didn’t want to let go. Power coursed up and down her arm—power rooted deep inside her breast. She was breathing hard, and she was afraid and euphoric and angry.
Nesha pushed him aside, her violet eyes piercing. “Larkin, you have to let go. It will be all right, I promise. Trust me, Larkin.” Her hands gently embraced Larkin’s, tugging at her smallest finger. Larkin released her stranglehold one finger at a time. Nesha snatched the amulet as if it would burn her and shoved it into Garrot’s hand.
Again, Garrot’s eyes were pinned on Nesha as he wrapped the amulet in a bit of leather before tucking it in his cloak pocket. Larkin stared at the pocket, angry he’d taken something that belonged to her. Because it did belong to her—of that much she was certain.
Bane muttered something insulting to Garrot.
“Calm down, son,” Lord Daydon snapped. “He was trying to help her.”
“I woke her up, didn’t I?” Garrot responded.
“You still shouldn’t have done it,” Hunter said under his breath. “We got into this to protect women, not abuse them.”
The display of sympathy from Hunter shocked Larkin, though she still wasn’t sure what the sympathy was for.
Garrot sighed and clapped the other man’s shoulder. “All right, my friend. No harm done. Larkin, I’m sorry I slapped you.”
So that’s why her cheek hurt. “It’s all right, Bane,” she soothed. She’d been hit plenty of times.
“I want Bane and the other two women out,” Garrot said.
Bane tried, and failed, to wrench free. “I’m not going anywhere!”
“Upstairs,” Daydon said. “Now!”
Bane grudgingly relaxed, and the men released him. “Let’s get you back home, Larkin. You need to rest.”
“She stays.” Garrot took a deep pull from his mug of mead. “Until I say she can go.”
Bane’s fists tightened. Nesha raised a brow in question. Larkin nodded for her to go. Casting one more look around the room, Nesha headed for the door, Venna a step behind.
Everyone held their breath as Bane stepped nose to nose with Garrot. “Don’t you ever touch her again.” Throwing one last glance at Larkin, Bane reluctantly went up the stairs.
As soon as Bane’s door shut, Garrot and Hunter sat before plates of food that had been set out at some point—mashed turnips, a chunk of rare meat, bread, and cheese.
“What did this man look like?” Garrot asked. His tone had changed. He believed her. Judging by the way the others watched her, they all did.
“He was not from the United Cities of the Idelmarch.” Memories overwhelmed Larkin. She stared into the fire as she described Denan’s fine but worn clothing, the mottled pattern. “He played a flute and a panpipe—such beautiful music—music that sings to your soul of warmth and safety and comfort.” Her words lay unspooled, her tears blurring the licking flames.
“Or perhaps the forest’s curse is taking effect, as my daughter said it would,” Rimoth said—no matter he hadn’t inquired after her even once.
Larkin blinked hard, twin tears plunging down her cheeks. She reeled herself in, back from whatever had entranced her. She took a deep breath and blew it out. She had already revealed too much, had let these strange, powerful men see how affected she was.
Hunter set her now-cold drink in front of her. “Drink it. You’ll feel better.”
She took it, surprised again by Hunter’s behavior, and drank.
“This beast—what did it look like?” Garrot asked.
Larkin described it as best she could. Garrot stabbed his knife into the lord’s fine table and nodded to Hunter, who took his cloak and headed back outside. Garrot leaned back in his chair, his expression distant, haunted. “When I was sixteen years old, a group of us went into the forest. The beast found us. I saw grown men shredded, limbs ripped off. Their venom paralyzes you—much as you were paralyzed. Only a handful of us got away.” He took a deep drink from his mug. “But that night, something else came. I never saw it; I only heard the screams. But the next morning, I found a man who’d been attacked. Through his ravings, we made out his description of the beast before we had to kill him.”
“Kill him?” Larkin gasped.
“He turned on us,” Garrot said, his voice dead.
She gulped the dregs of her too-sweet mead, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
The door pushed open. Dripping, Hunter came inside and tossed a large bag on the table. He untied the drawstrings and reached inside. He turned to her, a grinning skull in the palm of his hand. Larkin jumped to her feet and stumbled away from the gleaming, polished bone of a giant lizard.
“The beast.” Staggering forward, Rimoth rested trembling hands on the skull and stroked its brow like a lover. “Guardian of the Forbidden Forest, taker of the sacrifice.”
Hunter jerked it back. “They are the guardians of nothing!”
Larkin couldn’t look away from the barbed teeth. How many of her friends had those teeth ripped apart?
“How many of these bones have you found?” Rimoth asked, eyeing it lovingly.
“Enough to know there are more,” Hunter replied.
“Get that out of my house,” Daydon said, voice quavering. His daughter had been taken six years ago this spring. She’d had pale blue eyes from her mother and raven hair from her father. A stubborn, wild girl who loved dancing and boys. Larkin wondered if her bones lay somewhere in the forest, bleached by sun and scored by teeth.
Garrot nodded to Hunter, who shoved the skull into the bag and tightened the drawstrings. He hauled it over his shoulder and took it outside. Garrot pulled his chair over so he was across the fire from Larkin. “I only show this so you know the truth: there is indeed a beast. You will say nothing more of the man you think you saw in the forest—or any of the rest of it, for that matter.”
Her jaw hardened. They both knew Denan was real. “Why?”
“Because a Black Druid tells you to.”
Larkin folded her arms. She’d never been very good at doing what she was told.
Garrot stared into the fire, pulled something from inside his tunic, and caressed it. At first, Larkin didn’t understand what she was looking at. Some kind of ivory.
It was a tooth—a human tooth. She recoiled.
“We men will speak alone,” Garrot said.
Because men have handled the forest so well in the past? Knowing better than to say it, she retrieved her steaming cloak, threw it about her shoulders, and reached the door in a dozen steps. As her hand tightened on the latch, Garrot said, “Stay away from the Forbidden Forest, Larkin.”
She froze. Not because of his words so much as the desire that leaped into her heart. She wanted to go back, wanted it desperately. But how could she want something so wicked? Going back to the forest meant death or capture—she wasn’t sure which was worse. Either way, Denan would be waiting for her. She yanked open the door and stomped outside, into the pounding rain and gusting wind that stripped the little warmth she’d soaked in from the hearth fire.
She wasn’t surprised to find the way deserted—it had to have been after midnight. Holding her cloak tight against the steady patter of rain, Larkin ducked her head into the wind and headed down the hill toward the bridge.
She was nearly there when she caught sight of a couple within the willow’s shadows. They were so wrapped up in each other’s embrace she wasn’t sure where one began and the other ended. Blushing, she halted, embarrassed to interrupt, but the bridge was the only way across. She cleared her throat noisily, and the couple broke apart. Her sister looked back at her with a caught expression.
“Nesha?” Larkin gasped. The man pulled down his cowl, hiding his features as he pushed past her. She watched his retreating back, her mouth agape. Everything she thought she knew about her sister flitted away. “Who was that?”
Nesha gripped Larkin’s arm, her fingernails digging in. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“Who was that?” Larkin demanded again.
“We want to marry, Larkin. If he can convince his father.”
A wave of pity swamped Larkin, extinguishing her anger. “Nesha,” she began gently. “The druids won’t allow it.”
“The druids can’t control everything! If we have to, we’ll move in together!”
Rain pelted Larkin’s shoulders through her cloak. She shivered. “You would be branded a loose woman.” Twenty years ago, the druids would have staked her in the forest to face the crucible. Now, the couple and any children would be shunned, taunted, hated.
Nesha’s shoulders shook with sobs. “Why should I have to spend the rest of my life alone because of a twisted foot? I love him, Larkin. More than I’ve ever loved anything.” Larkin gathered her sister in her arms. It wasn’t fair, this stupid law. “He’s going to talk to his father tonight. Things aren’t like they were. Others with . . . defects have been allowed to marry.”
Yes, daughters of wealthy, powerful men who could throw around their influence. “Mama has been training you to be a midwife. You won’t need a husband to provide for you.”
“I hate midwifery,” Nesha said.
Larkin stiffened, surprised by the bitterness in her sister’s voice. “I didn’t know.”
“I want to be a mother and wife—his wife.”
Larkin rubbed her sister’s soggy back. “Let’s go home. Mama will be worried.”
“You won’t tell her?”
Larkin tugged her toward the bridge. “I’ll keep your secret as long as I can.”
“What did the druids say?”
“They told me to keep away from the forest.”
Nesha chuckled. “Tha
t won’t be hard.”
Larkin forced herself to laugh along with her sister. They stepped over the bridge, the river roaring beneath their feet. Larkin stared toward the forest, glad for the rain and distance to drown out its song, but she could still hear it, still crave it.
“Larkin.” Nesha hesitated. “I’ve seen the way you watch the trees.”
Larkin dropped her guilty eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not fear in your gaze. It’s longing. What if Maisy is right and he’s stolen your soul?” He could convince you to betray us. Are you sure you can trust yourself against his magic?”
Larkin turned away. The truth was, she didn’t know what Denan could do—or if she could resist it.
Larkin had barely crossed the bridge when she heard shouting so loud even the swollen river couldn’t hide it. Larkin and Nesha shared a look of dread. Larkin took off at a run that staggered to a slog when she reached the muddy plowed field before the house. The mud sucked at her, clogs popping off, one and then the other. She left them where they lay.
“Where have I been?” Papa’s words became clear. “Where were you all day? I’ll tell you where. Taking supper with the lord. Probably tweaking his—”
“You shut your foul mouth,” Mama shouted back.
The storm picked up, rain sheeting down, obscuring Larkin’s view, but she saw enough. Mama wore her shift, and she was barefoot. Papa held her arm. He had dragged her out of the house into the field. Larkin didn’t see Sela anywhere. She could only hope her sister was asleep.
Papa loomed over Mama, fist raised. “Tell me the truth.”
A half dozen more steps and Larkin could get between them—just a half dozen steps.
Mama lifted her face, defiant in the light from their single window. “I’ll tell you where I went—soon as you tell me where you were. You weren’t on guard duty.”
Papa backhanded her. Mama staggered and nearly fell.
“Papa!” Larkin screamed, diving between them. “Leave her be!”
“Where?” Papa screamed at Mama, his breath reeking of alcohol.
Larkin shoved her father back. She had to make him angry with her instead. “You lazy lout! If you weren’t at the tavern half the day, the fields would already be done!”