THE NEXT MORNING, EMELINE’S attendants brought her to a domed room for her first singing lesson. The bowed walls were made of glass, giving her a bird’s-eye view of the city below. Cobbled streets glided snakelike beneath terra-cotta rooftops all the way to the city wall. Beyond it, the tops of the autumn-touched trees spilled outwards as the woods stretched as far as she could see.
Emeline looked north, in the direction of Edgewood, but there was no sign of her world.
Suddenly, someone cleared their throat behind her. Emeline stiffened, turning towards the sound.
Hawthorne stood in the center of the domed room, bathed in sunlight. He wore a navy-blue knit sweater and his hands were clasped behind his back. The usual thunder darkened his brow.
She crossed her arms at the sight of him, still angry that he’d refused to take a message to Joel.
“I’ve just been informed that the king wants a demonstration at midnight tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Emeline’s arms fell to her sides. “But we haven’t even started.”
Hawthorne nodded. “Which is why there’s no time to lose.” He turned to the delicate sapling growing in the center of the room. The tiny tree was shaped like a music stand. On its leafy branches rested a stack of vellum: the Song Mage’s sheet music. Elegantly inked bars and black notes scrolled across the milky surface, with lyrics written underneath. “If you can learn three or four songs before tomorrow, it should suffice. All he wants is proof—of your talent, and your obedience.”
Swallowing her disappointment, Emeline nodded. “Then let’s begin.”
They spent all morning in that domed room, with the sunlight flooding the crystal windows and the woods spilling out in all directions beyond the walls.
Emeline found herself pleasantly surprised by Hawthorne’s enchanting baritone. He was a little rusty—clearly he hadn’t sung in quite some time—but the rawness of his voice only made it more endearing.
She had never been here before, with Hawthorne in the Wood King’s palace, singing a dead man’s songs. Yet the moment he started singing, a dizzying sense of déjà vu struck Emeline. A memory prodded at her mind while he sang, but when she tried to reach for it, it eluded her.
Soon, they fell into a comfortable rhythm. Once Hawthorne taught her the notes and breaths, Emeline joined her voice to his, matching him note for note, breath for breath, memorizing the patterns and fluctuations.
Hawthorne sang verses; Emeline echoed them back. When she had trouble with a progression, he made her repeat it, mercilessly, until she got it right. When she got it right, he immediately moved on to the next part, never giving an inch.
He set the standard high, and Emeline met it.
See? she thought. You’re wrong about me. I’m not some fool in over my head. This is what I’m good at.
If she softened beneath the pressure he exerted, if she melted under the heat of his demands, it was only because her life—and Pa’s—depended on her learning these songs and pleasing the king.
It had nothing to do with the admiration burning in Hawthorne’s eyes. Nor the smile he hid when she hit a note exactly right. Nor the way he glanced sharply away when she looked up to find him staring.
Pitchers of water appeared at Hawthorne’s request, to keep her hydrated. Midday came and went. There were eleven songs in all. She wanted to learn three today, if she could.
When the late-afternoon sun shone through the glass, raising the room’s temperature from warm to too warm, Hawthorne reached for the hem of his sweater and started tugging it off.
“We should stop soon. I don’t want to overextend you.”
As he pulled up the sweater, the shirt underneath came with it, giving Emeline a glimpse of toned abdomen. She looked away quickly, feeling suddenly too warm herself.
He wrenched the shirt down, then finished wrestling the sweater over his head.
“I sing for a living.” Emeline put her hands on her hips, staring intently at the floor. “I know my limits. I need to keep going.”
As if to contradict her, Emeline’s stomach grumbled loudly.
Hawthorne arched a brow, his hair gently mussed. He ran his fingers through it, smoothing it down. “It sounds like what you need is something to eat.”
She opened her mouth to say she was fine, except she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.
“I can make us dinner while you continue practicing.” He stretched his neck, then rolled his shoulders, wincing a little as he did, clearly stiff from standing all day—or possibly from the damage Claw had done the day before. Wiping the back of his hand against his gleaming brow, he looked to the glass walls around them. “Besides, I could use a change of scenery. My house isn’t far from here.”
With his blue knit sweater thrown over his arm, he collected the sheet music from the stand and turned to leave the domed room.
Unsure if she understood, Emeline called after him: “Is that a dinner invitation?”
Without stopping, he said over his shoulder, “If you want it to be.”
Emeline’s pulse quickened.
He was a fiend in the Wood King’s employ. She shouldn’t be having dinner with him. Not alone.
But Emeline had learned only two of the Song Mage’s eleven songs today. If her demonstration was tomorrow at midnight, she should try learning at least one more before the night was out. She could then spend tomorrow perfecting all three. Hawthorne was the only one who could help her do this.
Her stomach rumbled again, snapping her out of her thoughts.
You can’t survive on songs alone. You also need to eat.
“Coming?” Hawthorne called from the doorway.
Summoning her courage, Emeline followed the tithe collector out of the room.
It was only as she left the glass dome that she realized the woods hadn’t come for her while she sang. No horde of insects swarmed. The sheet music hadn’t molded over. The woods had been absent the entire time.
Odd.
Perhaps it was because they’d gotten their wish: Emeline trapped within their borders. But if that was true, why did they want her here so badly?
Emeline turned the question over in her mind but found no answer. Shaking off the ominous feeling threading through her, she hurried to catch up with Hawthorne.
FROM THE PALACE GROUNDS, Hawthorne led her down a dirt path through a quiet wood leading away from the city center. The path took them to a small stone bridge over a gurgling creek, and by the time they reached it the sun had almost set and the trees had grown dark beneath their canopies.
Hawthorne’s house stood on the other side of the bridge, green ivy creeping up the dusty stone and swerving around the window shutters. Its yard was bordered by a drystone wall speckled with moss.
Hawthorne opened the door and stepped through first, moving into the darkness. Emeline stood frozen on the threshold, Claw’s warning suddenly clanging through her like a gong.
Beware of this one.
A sudden realization—that she was alone with him, far away from the eyes of the palace—turned her legs to jelly. She pressed her hand to the doorjamb, steadying herself.
A match flared nearby.
“You look terrified,” Hawthorne said as he lit the lamps. “I’m not going to murder you, I promise.”
“The promise of a liar,” she said, forcing herself to step into the dark and shut the door behind her. “How comforting.”
Candles and lamplight soon softened the darkness, allowing Emeline to see her surroundings. The pine floorboards beneath her feet were swept clean, and the house smelled of flour and yeast, as if someone had recently made bread.
It didn’t seem like the house of someone dangerous.
But appearances could be deceiving.
While Hawthorne started a fire in the hearth, Emeline scanned the room, looking for clues. Anything that might give her insight into the king’s tithe collector, his motives and secrets. A worn harvest table stood wedged between two benches near the window. On its surface, a lamp burned low, illuminating the book there. It had a crimson cover and a cracked slender spine. She wandered over to it.
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, the title read. By Pablo Neruda.
Why would Hawthorne be reading a book from her world?
He’d lit several lamps scattered around the room, and in the golden glow of their flames Emeline saw the shelves were crammed full of books.
Hundreds of books.
Sorted alphabetically, by author.
Drawn to them, Emeline lifted her fingers, reading the worn spines. Her fingertips swept across the works of Rumi, Christina Rossetti, and W. H. Auden. She found Antigone and The Iliad. Meditations and War and Peace. East of Eden and If Beale Street Could Talk.
On one shelf was an entire row of books with blank, smudged spines. Sketchbooks? It made her think of the graphite she’d seen on his fingers yesterday.
She turned to look at Hawthorne, who crouched before the hearth, blowing into the flames, trying to make them catch. His gray wool shirt stretched tight across his back, revealing the wings of his shoulder blades beneath.
He seemed so human, here in his house.
On either side of him, two moss-green armchairs faced each other, with more books stacked on the tables beside them. Above, a vivid painting hung over the fireplace. Inside its frame, a woman was transforming into a tree.
The lower half of her body was bark and roots, plunging into soil, while her waist and chest arched upwards and her outstretched hands reached for the sky. The nymph’s dark hair was a knotted mass of branches around her head, sprouting bright green leaves.
It was the myth of Daphne—the nymph who begged the river god to save her from Apollo and was turned into a laurel tree.
“It must be a terrible thing to lose,” Hawthorne said, making her jump.
He looked up from where he crouched near the fire: to the woman in the frame. His left forearm was streaked with black ash.
“What’s a terrible thing to lose?”
Hawthorne’s eyes glittered as he studied the nymph. “Your humanity.”
“But it was her choice,” said Emeline, feeling defensive of Daphne. If the river god hadn’t turned her into a laurel, she would have fallen prey to Apollo. “She asked to be saved.”
Firelight flickered over Hawthorne’s face as his gray-eyed gaze caught hers and held it.
“Saved,” he murmured, considering this. “Is that really what the river god did? As a tree, her life is forfeit. She’ll never be human again. She’ll never laugh or sing, ponder or love, again. Don’t you think she would have preferred the river god defeat Apollo, or at the very least warn him away, instead of taking something so precious from her?”
Emeline stared at him, wordless. His attention was intent on her, as if willing her to hear something he wasn’t saying. As if he was no longer talking about Daphne, but something—or someone—else.
Her skin prickled as she tore her gaze away from him. “At least she’s safe. As a tree, nothing can hurt her.”
Hawthorne said nothing.
In the kitchen, Emeline shook off their strange conversation about Daphne and insisted on doing her part. A plan was forming in her mind. Here, in his home, Hawthorne seemed … softer. More at ease. If she, too, lowered her defenses, if she proved herself friendly and helpful, she could try asking again about the message to Joel. She could explain why her career depended on it. Maybe he’d be more understanding this time.
Hawthorne passed her a wooden cutting board and two white onions for chopping.
She sliced herself almost immediately.
“Darn it.”
Bright red blood seeped up from the cut on her index finger. Hawthorne glanced up from where he stood roasting tomatoes on the woodstove.
“I should have warned you.” He came towards her. “Sable’s blades can sever fingers in one stroke. Let me see.”
Emeline contemplated the knife gleaming on the wooden countertop. It was a beautiful blade, with a razor-thin edge and an elegant rose pattern carved into the ebony handle.
“Sable made that?”
She remembered the way Sable rose to Hawthorne’s defense at dinner last night. They must be friends.
Hawthorne arrived at her side just as Emeline hooked the tip of her finger into her mouth, sucking gently to stop the blood flow. The taste of salt bloomed on her tongue.
Hawthorne fell instantly quiet.
“She’s the king’s bladesmith,” he murmured, watching her.
When she withdrew her finger, Hawthorne reached for her wrist and drew her hand closer to examine the cut. “Let me bandage this.”
It was only a thin red line now, so Emeline shook her head. “It’s fine.”
Letting go, Hawthorne stepped back and put the contaminated knife in the sink. After reaching for a new one, he quickly and efficiently chopped her onions.
“Why don’t you do what you’re good at.” He nodded to the sheet music resting on the countertop. “And leave the chopping to me.” He scraped the onions into the pot, then reached for a cord of purplish-white garlic bulbs hanging down from the window over the sink.
She crossed her arms. “You don’t think I can do this.”
“Do what?” He broke off a flaky bulb, peeled four cloves, then started to crush and mince them.
“This. Cook.”
He paused his chopping and raised an eyebrow. “Can you?”
The last thing she’d cooked herself in Montreal was a package of instant noodles. She glanced away, reaching for the stack of music. “I’m not great at it, no.”
“Well, I happen to be good at it. So relax.” He nodded to the windowsill above the sink, where a mason jar perched. Another object from her world. Curious. “Have some of Rooke’s moonshine, if it will help. Then sing through those two songs. By the time you finish, this soup will be simmering, and I can assist with the next one.”
Emeline hoisted herself onto the pale wooden countertop and reached for the jar of moonshine. Twisting the lid off, she brought it to her nose, sniffed, then raised it to her lips. As Hawthorne scraped the garlic in with the onions, she took a sip.
The liquid burned like a wood fire on its way down, all smoke and heat, the warmth of it flooding her.
“Oh,” she murmured, surprised by its strength.
As the smell of cooking onions flooded the kitchen, she took a fuller sip, leaned her shoulders against the cupboards, then did as Hawthorne suggested: with the Song Mage’s music on her lap, she sang though the songs she’d learned.
Both were ballads about a woman “marked by the moon.” In them, the Song Mage praised his muse, describing her midnight hair, her rosebud mouth, her rocky spine. They were odes to her unparalleled beauty.
“He’s a little obsessed,” said Emeline when she finished singing. “Even her teeth enchant him.” She browsed through the next ballad—also about his moon-marked woman. “And she must have had some pretty sexy ankles, because there’s an entire verse devoted to them in the next song.…”
The corner of Hawthorne’s mouth turned up. “Maybe ankles were his weakness.”
Emeline glanced up at the boy cooking her dinner. He was like the forest, she thought. Quiet and steadfast in the way he held himself, with secrets hidden beneath.
What’s your weakness? she wondered.
Emeline cleared her throat, trying to ignore the heat creeping across her cheeks. She took another sip of Rooke’s moonshine. “Everything about her appears to be his weakness. It seems too good to be true.”
Hawthorne, absorbed in his work, said nothing.
As the alcohol hit her bloodstream, Emeline grew warmer. Brighter. Watching Hawthorne cook, it struck her again how human he seemed. Thinking of his concern over Daphne’s lost humanity, she glanced to his shadow. It didn’t twist like Rooke’s and Sable’s. It didn’t hint at any other form.
She decided to brave a question. To test the waters before she asked about Joel.
“Hawthorne?”
“Hmm?”
“What are you?”
Hawthorne—who was in the middle of turning the roasted tomatoes over with a wooden spoon—froze. “I’m sorry?”
She thought of the books on his shelves.
“You live here, in the Wood King’s court. But you aren’t a shiftling.” She nodded towards his normal-shaped shadow stretching across the floorboards.
He lowered the spoon. “I’m human,” he said stiffly. “Like you.”
“Then how did you become the king’s tithe collector?”
Quiet, he studied her. His walls were going up, those gray eyes turning cold and wary.
Before he could withdraw completely, Emeline took another sip of moonshine—to give her courage—and slid down from the counter. She walked over to the stove and pressed the jar into his hand.
“I saved you from a dragon yesterday, Hawthorne Fell. You could at least answer my question.”
His gaze trailed over her, leaving her skin warm in its wake. Taking the moonshine, he brought it to his lips and tipped it back, taking a long swallow. Returning the jar to her hand, he wiped his mouth on his wrist. “I’m no one. Trust me.”
But I don’t trust you.
He’d been keeping secrets from the start.
Hawthorne turned back to the tomatoes, which were starting to blacken. “I’m almost done here,” he said, as if the topic was closed. “And then we can work on the next song.”
Letting him evade her—for now—Emeline lifted herself back onto the counter, considering him as he added the tomatoes and some fresh basil and salt to the pot.
“Here,” he said after a long while. Dipping the spoon into the soup, he cupped his hand beneath it as he walked over to where she sat on the counter. He blew on it softly, cooling it for her as he stepped between her knees.
At his closeness, all of Emeline’s senses came alert. He was pressed against the counter, his hips wedged between her legs. If she scooted forward a few inches, her body would be flush with his.
Her heart kicked.
He lifted the spoon to her mouth. “Tell me if you like it.”
She opened for him. He put the roasted tomato soup on her tongue, watching her lips close over the spoon.
Mmm, it was good. His soup tasted like comfort and warmth. Like being bundled up in blankets next to a blazing fire on cold winter days, watching the snow fall outside.
She looked up to find Hawthorne staring at her mouth. Like soup was the last thing on his mind.
Heat sparked between them. The moonshine hummed in Emeline’s blood. It made the room beyond them soften, putting him alone into sharp focus. She’d drank too much too quickly, on too empty a stomach, and now her blood was turning to fire.
It made her reckless.
“Let’s play a game,” she whispered.
Hawthorne’s mouth curved. Setting down the spoon, he braced his hands on the edge of the countertop, gripping it on either side of her. “What did you have in mind?”
She tipped her head back against the cupboard, gazing up at him. “I ask a question, and if you refuse to answer, you take a swallow.” She pointed to the mason jar. “Then we switch.”
He considered her for a moment, as if sensing the folly of such a game. But he didn’t step away. Only leaned in closer, his gaze hungry. “All right. You start.”
He betrays you in the end! Claw’s voice hissed in her mind.
Emeline didn’t know how to reconcile that boy—the one she first met in the woods, the one Claw warned her against—with this one. A boy who liked to read, and kept his house cozy, and made his guests soup from scratch.
It was as if the rope he’d secured her with at the aerie was still looped around her waist and he was tugging on it. Pulling her towards him.
Maybe Claw’s wrong.
But even if he was wrong, Hawthorne still took Pa and lied about it. Which was, indirectly, the reason she was stuck here. And if she couldn’t get a message to Joel, Hawthorne would be—indirectly—the reason her music career crashed and burned.
“Why won’t you deliver my message?” she asked as he frowned. “I don’t think you understand—”
“I understand perfectly.” Where a moment ago he’d been loose—almost liquid in his movements—his limbs had gone taut and stiff. But he didn’t pull away from her. “And I already gave you my answer.”
She reached for his sweater, which he’d pulled on during the cold walk here from the palace, and bunched it gently in her hand. The knit wool scratched her skin. “I was hoping you’d reconsider.”
Their faces were inches apart. His gaze swept down her, and a startling heat flared in his eyes. Her body responded with an echoing warmth, rushing from her cheeks to her toes.
“Perhaps you’re the one who should reconsider,” he murmured, wrapping callused fingers around her wrist. “If you’re this desperate, deliver the message yourself. Return to him.”
He issued it like a challenge.
She narrowed her eyes. “You know I can’t leave. Not without Pa.”
“Then this discussion is over.” His expression shuttered as he abruptly let go of her wrist and stepped back. Out of reach.
She bristled, glaring after him.
Another, deeper question surged up inside her.
“Why did you do it?”
The room was starting to spin a little from the moonshine.
“Do what?”
“Why did you take my grandfather?”
Hawthorne went stiller than stone. She watched those walls go up. High, high.
“You’re the tithe collector,” Emeline pressed, scooting to the edge of the counter. “Whatever Pa tithed to the Wood King, you could have decided it was enough. Or you could have taken something else. You didn’t have to take him.”
He shook his head, taking another step back. “Let’s not do this.”
She pushed herself down. “I need you to explain. You could have taken pity on him. He’s just a harmless old man who’s forgetting everything.” She was walking him backwards, towards the kitchen wall. “Why would you steal him from the safety of his own bed and lie to me about it?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Tell me.”
He halted, holding his ground. “It wasn’t his own bed.”
She stopped a few inches away from him. “What?”
“It was a bed he’d been forced to sleep in.” He looked away. “He didn’t belong there. He belongs in his house, on his farm, close to the people who love him. Not trapped behind locked doors, waiting for someone who isn’t coming to rescue him. So yes. I took him. I took him because he begged me to.”
The words were like ice water dumped over her head.
What?
“Ewan Lark tithed himself to the king.”
Emeline stared at him, wordless. Her body growing hot, then cold.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” he whispered, refusing to look at her. “That man loves you more than his own life.”
Emeline’s eyes burned.
“And you put him in that place to forget him.”
“Stop it.”
“You should have seen the way he paced those halls, looking for you. The way he stood at the windows, watching for you. The way he sat near the phone for hours on end. But you never even called.”
A hot coal simmered within her. She wanted to shove him. She wanted to sink to the floor and cry.
“Why call him when he doesn’t even know who I am!” she shouted. “He doesn’t remember me! Last night, when I accidently woke him up, he was terrified. Of me. His own granddaughter.” Her hands balled into trembling fists. “He thought I was a stranger coming to hurt him.”
The tension in the room snapped like a too-tight guitar string. Hawthorne stepped back as hot tears tracked down Emeline’s cheeks. She spun away, walking out of the kitchen, palming her face in swift strokes.
“Pa asked me to put him in that care home,” she whispered. “It was his decision.”
It was true and not true. Pa had asked—for her sake. He wanted his granddaughter to be free of the burden of him.
“Emeline…”
She couldn’t stay here, in his house, knowing that Hawthorne thought her a selfish, coldhearted girl—and wasn’t she exactly that? Wasn’t that why she felt so guilty?
“Emeline, wait.”
Moving for the door, she said, “I’ll let myself out.”
Slamming it behind her, she escaped into the night.