THE NEXT MORNING, SHE woke to the sound of someone knocking. Emeline pulled the covers over her head, willing the noise to go away. After the horrors of yesterday, she wanted to sleep for a hundred years. Wanted to dream this all away.
The knocking turned to pounding.
She forced her groggy eyes open, then pulled back the white canopy. The golden sun was only just cresting the trees outside her windows. Dawn. The time she usually fell into bed.
“Please go away,” she croaked, turning over and pulling a pillow over her head.
The pounding continued.
Emeline groaned, threw back the covers, and hauled her tired body out of bed. Halfway to the door, she passed a mirror and stopped dead.
Squinting hard, she found a miniature nightmare staring back. She’d fallen asleep in the pale gold dress, which was now a rumpled mess. Her long black hair was as tangled as a bird’s nest, and her face …
Bloody hell.
The deep, dark shadows beneath her eyes were hardly the worst of it. Gold dust smeared her right cheek; her left was creased with pillow marks.
She briefly considered trying to make herself presentable but decided not to. People who pounded on other people’s doors at this godforsaken hour deserved to be greeted by small horrors. Gritting her teeth, Emeline swung the door open.
Hawthorne Fell stood in the frame, arms crossed, scowling down at her.
Apparently, he wasn’t a morning person either.
“What are you doing here?” She tried to sound scathing, but her voice came out soft and croaky from sleeping.
His eyes darkened as he took in her rumpled dress, wild hair, and mismatched cheeks. There was probably drool on her face. She quickly swiped at her mouth.
“Where are your attendants?” He scanned the room and then, to her astonishment, let himself in. “I told them to wake you before dawn. You should be dressed.”
Emeline moved quickly out of his way, trying to will herself to full wakefulness. She shook her head and pointed to the door. “Get out of my room, you lying jerk.”
Ignoring her, he approached the dark wood armoire in the corner. Its doors were each fastened with copper plates, the surface stamped in an elegant design of yarrow flowers. Emeline stared as he wrenched open the armoire doors and began pawing through it, his movements calm and efficient.
“You want to save your grandfather, yes?”
Emeline crossed her arms over the bodice of her rumpled gown.
“I can help with that.” He caught sight of an article of clothing that apparently pleased him, because he pulled it out. “Most of the king’s minstrels don’t last more than a few weeks here. Some only last a few days.”
A few days??
“In order to survive, you’ll need an edge.”
“What kind of an edge?” Emeline asked, intrigued despite her annoyance.
“The king had a favorite minstrel, once. A human with a magical voice. He was known as the Song Mage, and he died a long time ago. The king’s been searching for his replacement ever since.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
Hawthorne thrust a pair of thick wool leggings with long leather patches on both inner legs towards her. “Put these on.”
When Emeline didn’t uncross her arms, he shot her a withering look and lowered the leggings to his side. “The sooner you dress, the sooner we leave. If we want to be back before nightfall, we need to leave now.”
“We?” she choked out. “I’m not going anywhere with you.” A liar, and the reason Pa’s imprisoned here to begin with.
“Don’t be daft. The king grows crueler by the day. If you have any hope of surviving this place, we need to fetch the Song Mage’s sheet music today. You must learn it before your first demonstration.”
Emeline shook her head. “I can’t read music. I can only play songs by ear.”
He seemed completely unfazed by this. “Someone will teach it to you.”
She frowned. “And if you’re wrong about all of this?”
He paused but didn’t glance her way. The sunlight spilling in through the windows glowed warmly against his skin as he stared into the armoire. “I have watched dozens of minstrels die for offenses as petty as singing a single note off-key. Or forgetting half a verse of music. Or wearing a color the king didn’t particularly fancy that day.”
Um, what? This was vital information Rooke had definitely forgotten to mention.
“The king is mad and longing for his long-lost Song Mage—a man who’s been dead for years. That’s why he only ever takes human men. Until you. Thanks to Rooke.” Hawthorne ran his palm across his forehead. “If you want to survive here, this is your best chance.”
Seeing the wisdom in this, Emeline nodded. “All right. Tell me where this sheet music is and I’ll get it myself.”
Hawthorne pulled out two more pieces of clothing—a saffron yellow camisole and a dark brown sweater. “Getting there is a half day’s trek on an ember mare, three days on a regular horse. You won’t make it alone, and no one else is willing to escort you, trust me. Not to the aerie. Put these on.”
Emeline crossed her arms harder. “I’m not going anywhere with someone who lied to my face.”
He pulled out one last item from the armoire—a pair of gray woolen socks—and added them to the growing pile. “If you had listened to my lies, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
Emeline glared at him, her body buzzing with anger. “I’m in this predicament because of you. You’re the tithe collector. Whatever Pa tithed to the Wood King, you could have decided it was sufficient. Or you could have taken something else. You didn’t have to take him.”
The tithe collector had been doing it all her life: Punishing her neighbors for insufficient tithes. Stealing their horses, or their herds, or their daughters. Inflicting pain because he could.
But Pa had been dutifully paying his tithes for as long as Emeline could remember. And now that he was old and forgetful, this boy was going to punish him for it?
“Just know that I hold you responsible,” she growled. “For all of it.”
“Right.” His cheek twitched as he stared emptily into the armoire. “It’s my fault you returned to the woods immediately after I told you to leave. It’s my fault you marched yourself straight up to a cursed king, demanding back a tithe. And it’s my fault you bartered your life in exchange for Ewan Lark. Yes. I see how I am utterly to blame here.”
Emeline’s hands tightened into fists.
He turned fully, crossing the room in three easy strides to stand before her. The heat rolled off him, warm like a wood fire.
“Do you know what else I see?” He glared down at her. “A girl who is in far over her head, and too foolish to know it.”
He stepped closer, bringing the smell of the woods with him, along with that delicious warmth. Despite herself, Emeline wanted to step into it.
She shook off the urge.
“No one else can help you fetch the Song Mage’s music.” His voice was a warning. “And if you don’t fetch it, you will never learn his songs, and if you don’t perform them for the king—and in so doing, please him—your skull will join the wall of others belonging to minstrels who fell before you. And you will certainly never bring your grandfather home. Is that what you want, Emeline Lark?”
Emeline’s mouth opened and shut. She swallowed her anger, looking to the windows.
His name suited him perfectly, she decided. Hawthorn trees were prickly, gnarly, horrible things—just like him.
And yet he seemed to be trying to help her.
He’d been trying to help her last night too, she realized, when he tricked her out of the woods. She didn’t have to like him, though. She didn’t have to forgive him for bringing her grandfather to this wretched place. But she could take what he was offering her if it meant getting Pa out.
She gritted her teeth and said, “Give me the clothes.”
A small smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, as if he’d won some great victory. It made her blood boil.
Oh, she would dress. She would go with him to fetch this music. She would take his advice: learn this dead man’s songs, perform them in order to please the king, and then, when her grandfather was safe, she would make her escape.
That’s what this is. One step closer to going home.
“Turn around,” she said after seizing the stack of garments from him.
He tipped his head in a mocking bow, then did as he was bid. It wasn’t until he faced the wall that she turned to the window and set the clothes down on the bed. But when she started tugging at the dress, trying to pull it over her head, she realized she couldn’t: it was laced too tightly at the back. Frantically she tried to undo the laces. She contorted herself, bending her arms up her back and then down over her shoulders, trying to reach. Desperate to reach.
But she couldn’t.
“Something the matter?” he asked, impatient.
An embarrassed heat flooded Emeline’s body as she became aware of what she needed: help. The soft silk of her dress crumpled in her fists as she squeezed her eyes shut.
He must have sensed her drowning in her own humiliation, because she heard him turn.
“Oh,” he said after a moment. “I see the problem. I can help, if you’ll let me.”
Steeling herself, Emeline turned her head. She spotted his reflection in the mirror, his gaze on the back of her dress. Coolly, she said, “If you think you can manage it, sure.”
His eyebrow cocked, as if she’d issued a challenge. But he said nothing more as he strode across the room. The heat of his body spread across her back as he stepped up behind her. They stood before the bed, its canopies drawn to reveal the windows facing the gardens.
First, he swept aside her hair. Emeline kept her attention fixed straight ahead as she felt his gaze trail downwards, stopping on the nape of her neck.
Next, he reached for her laces, his fingers a hot graze on her skin as he pulled them loose, slowly and steadily, knowing precisely what he was doing. Emeline wondered if helping girls out of their clothes was a regular occurrence for him.
She quickly stuffed that thought down deep, where it would shrivel and die.
When the bodice slackened fully, his hands paused, then fell away. But he didn’t step back. His breath was warm on her neck as he asked, “Can you manage from here?”
She nodded, wordless.
“Then I’ll wait in the hall.”
The cold rushed in as he left her.