Rain decided to grab the bag of books she intended to donate and take a brisk walk around the upper city of Ash before breakfast. Daric would wait for her, probably reading newssheets and cajoling the kitchen staff into making his favorite berrybread, and King Wilder and Queen Marla never emerged as early as Daric and Rain did. Rising early wasn’t Rain’s preference, either, but Daric couldn’t seem to stop himself from waking her up in the morning.
Two guards fell into step behind her the moment she left the castle, which wasn’t unusual but also wasn’t truly necessary. Nothing would happen to an Ash in Upper Ash. The royal soldiers kept their distance even after she entered the busiest part of the city, and Rain spoke with passersby and shopkeepers who were opening up for business. Despite the brave front they put on, there was little in the way of foodstuff or wares in general. And hardly anyone buying. People were just scrambling to survive, especially after the harsh winter. Leathen was dying, choked by years of drought. Daric would be its saving breath.
Trying not to project too much melancholy since that wouldn’t help the people of Ash or Leathen, Rain handed out the books she’d collected from the castle. Illanna Nighthall had been clear: the royal family of Ash would come to Raana with little more than the clothes on their backs, reinforcing their position as beggars.
She gave a set of novels to the Carpenter’s Guild, although she feared the young apprentices would burn them in the place of firewood; poetry to the baker, knowing his wife would enjoy it more than he would; and a book of fairy stories to the cobbler’s daughter. Now empty-handed and ready to go home to join Daric for breakfast, Rain turned and saw an elderly man racing toward her.
“My lady!” He frantically waved at her. “Stop!”
Rain waited and reached out a hand to steady him. “Are you all right?” She was concerned about how hard the old man was breathing.
“I finally understood… Prepared my student…” He doubled over, gulping down air. “Needed to find you… Or Prince Daric.”
“Catch your breath,” she said soothingly as she waved her guards away. She didn’t need protection.
His hunched shoulders rose and fell on wheezing pants. Grizzled hair hung in stringy clumps down his narrow back, revealing a cloak that was torn in places. He spoke again without looking up. “Leathen doesn’t have to become one with Raana. You must find the Barrow Witch. She has the strength.”
Rain’s heart leaped in her chest. “Not unite with Raana? The Barrow Witch?” She’d never heard of the woman, but sorcerers were best avoided—especially for her.
The man straightened, and unease jolted through her. His eyes swirled with the madness brought on by using too much magic.
Rain turned cold all over as a swift and powerful response rose inside her. Instinctively, she beat it down. The only magic anyone needed from her was gone. What remained served no purpose other than to make her different from everyone else.
“Go to the castle and ask for Non. She’ll feed you.” Stiffly, Rain backed away from him.
“I’m not hungry, my lady. You need to listen.” He closed the distance she’d put between them, and it was all Rain could do not to unleash something that could hurt them both.
He gripped her arms, his fingers like talons. “Isme dolunde vaten crew.”
Magic snapped through her, itchy and hot. She didn’t know the language of sorcery, at least not anymore, but the feel of his sentence still grew into an imprecise thought. Something about an offering. The idea chafed and hollowed and hurt.
“Release me!” Panic thumped inside her, trying to wrench open places she’d locked up. Rain struggled for control over magic that wanted to burst out and expose her to the world. She couldn’t imagine what people would think if she let it out, especially Daric.
“Mockweed. Alderbank. The Blood of Braylian,” the sorcerer said, adding new riddles to the foreign words still banging around inside her as if searching for an opening. She didn’t understand them, but something told her she could.
Her two guards swooped in and lifted the old man away from her. Rain gasped in relief, and then Soren himself appeared from out of nowhere. King Wilder’s personal guard growled like a hallerhound as he swept her behind him and shielded her.
“Soren?” Rain clutched the back of his cloak. “What are you doing here?”
“Buying boots,” he answered, still half snarling as he turned to her. “We’ve a long journey ahead of us.”
To Raana. Her insides dropped like a stone.
Rain swallowed and released her white-knuckled grip on Soren’s garment. She had no desire to think about leaving. For the second time, she’d lose everything she knew and loved.
Soren still loomed protectively over her, a muscle ticking in his jaw as his narrowed gaze swung back and forth between her and the sorcerer. In a voice so gruff it scraped like an angry plow over parched fields, he asked, “Are you hurt? What did he say?”
Rain shook her head. “No. And I don’t know. He made no sense.” The guards still held the sorcerer between them. Soren would question him, but she needed to question him first.
She stepped forward, still shaken but now firmly in control of the part of her that wanted to answer magic with magic. Soren followed.
“What Barrow Witch? Where?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”
The sorcerer’s gaze darted to Soren before coming back to her. “It’s a curse.”
Rain frowned. Everyone believed Leathen’s absent springtime was a curse. They just didn’t know how to break it.
“Remember what I told you. Bring everything to the Barrow Witch, and you might still save Leathen.”
“How?” Rain asked.
“Take him to the castle,” Soren rumbled at the same moment.
The sorcerer’s madness-flecked eyes flared in distress. He uttered a solitary word in his mysterious language and disappeared. Vanished. The guards looked at their empty hands in terror.
Rain gaped. She’d lost him without answers. And she’d never seen such power—not in this lifetime. Just as frightening was the strong, cold echo of magic inside her. She wasn’t a sorceress, though. She was something other.
Soren didn’t let her out of his sight until he’d deposited her in the breakfast room and told the king, queen, and Daric about the incident in Upper Ash. Three times. In detail. Now, it was Rain’s turn.
“Repeat exactly what the sorcerer said to you,” King Wilder insisted once again.
“Mockweed, Alderbank, the Blood of Braylian. He said to bring everything to the Barrow Witch—whoever that is—and that we might be able to save Leathen.”
“Save Leathen from the drought?” the king asked. “Or from Raana?”
Rain shook her head. “I don’t know.” At this point, the two were the same anyway. “That’s all he said.”
Which wasn’t true. She had no desire to lie, but she kept the odd words the sorcerer had spoken to herself. It was as though they were knocking on a door she knew she could open, but she didn’t yet have the key. If she just held Isme dolunde vaten crew locked inside her a little longer, Rain thought she would understand.
“Mockweed grows in the Wood of Layton,” Daric said. “And if the Blood of Braylian is anywhere, it would be in Layton, too.”
“What is Alderbank?” Queen Marla asked.
The king sighed. “It doesn’t matter. These are the ramblings of an unwell person. Sorcery corrupts the mind, and if this man was as old as Soren and Rain say, then he was at least two decades beyond insane.”
“That doesn’t make what he said false,” Daric argued.
“I know you hope for a way out of this marriage,” Marla said. “But we have a solution for the kingdom. We must persist.”
“A terrible solution,” Daric muttered. His eyes flicked to Rain’s. She saw anger in their blue depths.
She hated to think what this marriage was going to cost him. She knew what it was costing her.
“Nevertheless, it’s the solution we’ve agreed to. We have no choice.” Wilder sat at the table, having spoken in a way that clearly dismissed the topic.
Everyone sat down to breakfast in a solemn mood and with little appetite. There was no berrybread—perhaps they had no dried berries left?—and the tea was weak, at best.
They ate what they had, and what they could stomach, in silence. Rain fretted over her incomplete encounter with the sorcerer, and she knew Daric well enough to know he preferred to say nothing rather than let out the fury brewing in his chest. They both knew his parents had only ever tried their best. Wilder and Marla looked sad and defeated, which was as heartbreaking as the rest.
They eventually stood to go about their day, which at this point mainly consisted of emptying the castle and distributing items around the city of Ash. At the doorway to the breakfast room, however, the king and queen stopped Rain and Daric before they left.
“We have a birthday present for you, Rain,” Marla said.
Rain smiled. She knew it would be thoughtful, even if it wasn’t much.
When the queen took off her ring—the one with the Ashstone that had been in the Ash family since the dawn of Leathen—Rain’s heart stuttered in her chest. “In two moons, we must take the name of Nighthall. We’ve negotiated something for you, though, so that you might keep the name of Ash.”
A sick feeling welled up inside her. Rain knew it was an enormous gesture, but her soul wept for everything her family was sacrificing.
She shook her head, but Marla ignored her silent protest.
“Take it with you.” The queen placed the jewel in Rain’s hand and closed her fingers around it. “You’ll be Queen Rain Ash, even in Parr.”
Rain had no idea what Marla was talking about. “I don’t understand.”
Daric stared at his parents, his brows drawing down. Then his horrified gaze swiveled to Rain, and his voice dropped, turning raw and rough. “No. She’s coming with us.”
“Aldo Lockwood has expressed interest in the past. He’s prosperous, powerful, and, to my knowledge, not unkind,” Wilder said. “He wants Rain, and I’ve told him he can have her.”
A haze seemed to cover Rain’s vision. “Without even consulting me?” She wasn’t sure if she was about to throw up, pass out, or simply catch fire from anger. A decision like that made entirely without her? Marriage to an elderly king she scarcely knew?
“He’s three times her age!” Daric exploded.
For the second time that day, Rain started to shake. The House of Ash had always treated her like family, but there was no question of where she’d come from, either. There’d been too many witnesses to her “birth” for that. She was not their child. She was not Daric’s sister. “I’m not of royal blood. He cannot want me.”
“He does,” Wilder answered. “And you have something better than royal blood. You’re Braylian’s daughter.”
Did King Aldo truly believe that? Rain had no power, or nothing useful, anyway. Nothing she dared reveal or wield. She brought nothing of value to a marriage.
Daric raked his dark hair back, his face turning bone-white. “You can’t force her to go south when we’re all going north. It’s not possible.”
“Rain is young and beautiful.” Marla laid a hand on Daric’s arm and squeezed. “Aldo will dote on her, and maybe she’ll give him the son he’s always wanted.”
Rain felt herself blanch. Her. The Queen of Parr. In Aldo Lockwood’s bed.
Daric looked as sick as she felt. Despair and something much more powerful and volatile churned inside her. She bit down hard to keep both inside.
“It’s time you two stopped living out of each other’s pockets,” Wilder announced with an abruptness that hardly masked his obvious discomfort with handing Rain over to a man who could be his father. “Daric will go north and gain Leathen a river. Rain will go south to Parr. It’s final.”
A disbelieving huff burst from her. Rain had never defied the king. She’d been a dutiful Ash since the day she’d become human. She’d never given the family the springtime they needed, but that wasn’t from lack of effort. She’d tried—endlessly.
Her heart pounded out of control. What could she do? The king had already agreed to sacrifice his son, his position, his own name for the good of his people. She wasn’t in the worst situation here. Some part of her recognized that Wilder was trying to protect her. He loved her and knew she’d be miserable in Raana.
Rain touched the starflower Daric had given her. Braylian! Please find us another solution!
As always, silence was her only answer.