EMELINE STARED ACROSS THE space between them. “What do you mean, you betrayed her?”
Before he could answer, the door burst open. A gust of wind howled into the house, sending the sheet music blowing across the room. Emeline quickly did up the last of her buttons as the door swung on its hinges, slamming into the wall with a bang!
Sable stepped inside, with Rooke on her heels.
They were both out of breath.
“Shadow skins,” Sable managed, her chest rising and falling in heaving gasps. Her russet hair was tangled and wild. “Inside the city.”
Hawthorne crossed to them in three easy strides, his argument with Emeline swept away by the wind whistling through the house. “Are you certain?”
It was Rooke who answered, pushing his hair off his face. “There’s no mistake. The entire city has been ordered to lock their doors and arm themselves as best they can.”
“But that’s impossible.” Hawthorne was already pulling on his boots. “The city walls have never been breached. The king’s magic—”
“We’ve always known the curse is getting stronger,” said Rooke, his dark brown eyes almost black. “The king can’t hold it off forever.”
“I slew three in the street on the way here.” Hawthorne’s sheathed sword was gripped in Sable’s hands—the same sword the hedgemen took from him when he offered himself up as Emeline’s surety. She handed it over. “There’s no time to waste.”
He buckled it on.
“I’ll come with you,” said Emeline, moving towards where they gathered by the door. “Maybe I can help.”
She still had Sable’s knife at her hip. And she’d killed one shadow skin today already.
“You’re injured.” Hawthorne stared down at her bandaged heel. “It will slow you and us down.”
“So I’m just supposed to wait here?”
“Go with Rooke to the palace. Once you’re safely inside, stay there.”
Emeline was about to argue, except Hawthorne was already following Sable outside. The moment they passed through the door, it shut in Emeline’s face.
The tarnished brass knob winked at her and Rooke. The house fell silent around them.
Her hands curled into fists.
He’s right, said a voice deep inside her. What can you do? All you have is one little knife against a forest full of monsters.
BACK IN THE PALACE, as the silver moon rose in a velvet black sky, Emeline paced, trying to distract herself with “Rose’s Waltz.” The last thing the Song Mage wrote for her mother. Again and again, she read the lyrics, but the words slipped through her mind like sand through a sieve.
Rooke had assured her that Hawthorne and Sable were well trained and accustomed to dealing with shadow skins. That the king’s army would eradicate the threat. That everything was going to be fine.
But his assurances did nothing to calm her.
Just after midnight, Emeline’s pacing was interrupted by a knock on her door.
When she opened it, Sable stood in the frame, shoulders hunched, russet hair bedraggled, a bloody cut across her cheek.
“We chased a pair of them into the woods.” Sable sounded scared and small and not at all herself. “It was an ambush. Four shadow skins held me down while they dragged him away.”
Him.
She was talking about Hawthorne.
“I kept thinking … why don’t they just kill us? Why leave me alive?” Sable pressed her face into her hands. “It was as if they wanted me to watch him be taken.”
Hawthorne. In the hands of shadow skins.
Had they twisted his mind beyond recognition yet?
Had they killed him yet?
“Rooke’s assembling a search party.”
It will be too late, she thought.
“We’ll find him.”
It’s already too late.
The truth washed over her like a cold, powerful sea. Jolting her out of her shock. When Sable left, Emeline pulled on her Blundstones, shrugged on her coat, and slipped out into the hall.
She might not be able to wield a sword. She might not be trained to fight monsters. But she wasn’t helpless. She refused to sit behind the palace walls waiting for worse news.
Emeline limped quickly through the empty streets until she arrived at the city gate. It was locked and heavily guarded by more hedgemen than usual, the air around them tense.
Turning back, she headed for the door that led to Bog’s boardwalk only to find it gone. She ran her hands over the white stone wall, retracing her steps, but the door was hidden from her. She realized then that she’d only ever left the city with Hawthorne or Grace. It was possible the king’s prisoner was only permitted to leave if she was accompanied. Or perhaps the entrances and exits to and from the King’s City were sealed in light of the breach.
She pounded her fist against the wall, frustrated, when something scratchy brushed her cheek. She jumped, glancing up into the branch of a nearby sycamore.
Come, the tree whispered.
The sycamore’s bark was peeling, revealing a mottled green trunk beneath, and as her gaze followed it skywards she saw that its uppermost branches towered over the wall. The moon was almost full beyond its branches.
Climb, it said.
After glancing around to ensure she was alone, Emeline strode towards the tree, grabbed hold of its lowermost branch, and hauled herself up.
If she’d been in better shape, she might have scaled it easily. Instead, it took more time than she would have liked to get to the top. Her breath came fast and sweat dampened her skin. Straddling the sturdiest high branch, she used it to shimmy towards the top of the wall. As she neared the flat white stone, the branch bent, and Emeline’s heart plummeted, sure the branch was about to snap. She gripped it tight, ready to retreat, but when she glanced over her shoulder she found not the branch bending, but the tree.
Go, it said as it delivered her onto the top of the wall. A wall, she noticed, that was starting to speckle with black mold. Emeline wrinkled her nose at the musty, rotting smell, reminded of the moldy walls of the Song Mage’s house, deep in the Stain.
Had the curse spread to the King’s City? Was that how the shadow skins got inside?
If so, she couldn’t worry about it now; she needed to find Hawthorne.
When her feet touched stone, she let go of the branch, teetering a little without its support. The top of the wall was less than two feet across, and when Emeline looked down she found a twenty-foot fall. Her stomach lurched at the sight.
She quickly got down on all fours, avoiding the mold as best she could, then carefully lowered herself until she was dangling on the other side of the wall. “Thank you,” she whispered to the sycamore.
She closed her eyes and, after counting to three, dropped.
The ground swiftly rose up to meet her. As her feet hit the earth, she bent her legs to protect her ankles, which still spiked with pain.
“Ow!” she hissed, dropping to her knees, waiting for the sharp sting to subside. When it did, she rose and limped into the woods, noticing that the trunks of these trees were turning silver with disease.
Her stomach twisted with uneasiness.
Patches of starlight flickered through the leafy boughs overhead. “Where is he?” she asked the trees.
They murmured and swayed, as if consulting each other.
This way, they hushed, leading her to a gurgling river, which shone like a silver ribbon beneath the bright moon. Follow it west.
As she hobbled alongside its whispering current, the earth began to thunder beneath her feet, as if at the mercy of hammering hooves.
Emeline paused, listening. Were the ember mares running?
Don’t stop, said the trees.
Emeline scanned her surroundings. Something red flickered in the distance. She squinted, focusing on it, and found a dozen black mares galloping to a halt in a nearby grove, snorting smoke and stomping their fire-gold hooves, which sparked against the forest floor.
Unlike Lament—who was steady and calm—their whinnies were shrill and piercing, and they tossed their heads restlessly. Unlike the wild ember mares she once stampeded with through the woods, these had steel harnesses welded to their faces, the metal biting into their flesh, leaving raw, bleeding wounds.
Worse, there were shadow skins astride their backs.
Emeline sucked in a breath as the monsters rode their captives slowly though the grove, heads turning back and forth, as if hunting something.
When one glanced her way, Emeline dropped to the underbrush, her pulse pounding. Her breath came fast as she listened, but nothing encroached; there was no sound of fiery hooves or horrifying footsteps.
Hurry, begged the trees.
Emeline crawled forward on her elbows, pushing through leaves and burrs and thorns. If she could distance herself, keep out of sight …
A rough-soft voice pierced the quiet.
“Emeline?”
She stopped crawling.
Hawthorne?
“Is that you?” His voice shook, as if he was frightened. He sounded very close.
This shadow skin hunting party—they must be the ones who took him.
“Help me, Emeline.”
His panicked voice tugged at her, drawing her towards him. Emeline stood up. She turned away from the river and silently crept from tree to tree, trying to conceal herself as she moved towards the sound of his voice.
No, said the trees.
Sharp branches scraped her cheeks and caught at her hair, as if the trees were trying to stop her. Emeline ignored them as a shape appeared ahead, between her and the captured ember mares.
“Hawthorne?”
The figure halted, swinging in her direction with an unearthly swiftness. Two more shapes stepped out to join it. Emeline went still, staring at the three dark shadows from between the boughs of the spruce she hid behind. Their tall, thin forms were blacker than the night, and they had no eyes.
“Emeline!” Hawthorne’s terrified voice knotted around her heart.
She moved without thinking, reaching for Sable’s knife as dead leaves crunched beneath her steps. She was about to call out—to tell him she was coming—when a hand slammed down over her mouth.
Someone grabbed her from behind, their arm fastening around her middle, hauling her backwards. She tried to squirm and kick and buck, using her elbows and feet. She tried to scream, but the hand clamped too hard, stifling the sound.
“It’s not him!” hissed a voice in her ear. “It’s not him.”
Emeline breathed in the tang of smoke and steel.
Sable.
When her hand fell away, Emeline insisted, “It is him.” She was still fighting as Hawthorne called for her and Sable continued dragging her backwards, into the hollowed-out trunk of an old tree. At the center was an empty hole, letting the stars shine through. “They’re hurting him!”
“Hush. Hush.” Sable pulled Emeline against her. “It’s not him. I promise you.” She leaned back against the wall of the hollow and sank down to the ground, bringing Emeline with her. “Stay quiet and still.”
Hawthorne’s tortured cries drew closer, calling out for her. His voice echoed in this hollow, swelling around them.
Emeline pushed against Sable, needing to get to him.
Sable held on tighter.
When Emeline dug an elbow into her ribs, trying to hurt her so she would let go, Sable started to sing. It began as a hum in the back of her throat, soft as velvet. The way a mother might soothe a crying child.
Emeline fell still at the sound.
But it wasn’t Sable’s singing that entranced her; it was the song she’d chosen. One of Emeline’s.
An old song buried in the password-protected folder on her phone.
How on earth…?
The tune was only a whisper, but its familiar rises and falls held Emeline spellbound. She could barely remember this song—nor any of the others she’d locked away. How could Sable possibly be humming it?
Like every other song Emeline had ever heard or sung, this one came with a memory: She was maybe fourteen, sitting on the second-story beam of Pa’s barn, her bare legs swinging as she sang. It was the height of summer and everything stuck to her sweaty skin: her clothes, her hair, the dust in the air. And she wasn’t alone. There was someone beside her, all stretched out, lying with her back to the beam. A girl with brambly hair and bright gold eyes. She was smiling as she listened, her dirty bare foot bobbing to the rhythm of Emeline’s song.
Sable.
The memory burst like a popped bubble.
What??
It made no sense. Emeline and Sable had only just met. Had something distorted the memory trapped in the song? Or had her brain inserted Sable because Sable was the one singing it now?
In Emeline’s confusion, the terror in Hawthorne’s voice stopped tugging. His calls for help quieted, moving into the distance. Finally, she heard the truth in his voice: beneath the familiar cadence was a sick and festering rot—like the curse itself.
It was a trick of the shadow skins. A weapon to lure her in.
Sable hummed until the sounds beyond the hollow trailed into silence. When the shadow skins had moved on, Sable fell silent, letting Emeline go.
Their staggered breaths echoed in the dark space.
“We should go.” Sable pushed upwards to her feet. “Before they circle back.”