“HOW DO YOU KNOW that song?”
Sable—whose lupine eyes could clearly see in the dark—strode several steps ahead, as if she were trying to put distance between them. As if Emeline were wrapped in barbed wire and if Sable got too close she’d get cut.
“What song?”
“The one you were humming.”
It was possible Emeline mistook it. Maybe the tune only sounded like hers and too much distance made her misremember.
But she didn’t think so.
Or maybe her fear for Hawthorne, combined with Sable’s sudden presence, made her brain alter the memory. Memories were tricky things, after all. Just look at Pa, whose memory had utterly betrayed him.
“I can’t recall where I know it from,” said Sable, guarded. The snow-white pommels of her long blades gleamed from where they crisscrossed her back. “I panicked. It was the first thing that came to mind.”
She hadn’t seemed panicked. She’d been so calm. Maybe that was Sable’s nature, though: still as a glassy pool on the surface, chaos churning beneath.
Emeline decided to let the subject drop—for now. Not only had Sable saved her, Hawthorne was out here somewhere. They needed to find him.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
Sable glanced back. “You’re welcome.” Her eyes shone like a wolf’s in the darkness and she paused, waiting until Emeline caught up.
They continued on in silence, Emeline listening to the trees’ directions, then telling Sable where to go. If Sable found it odd that the forest spoke to Emeline, she didn’t show it.
All too soon, the trees took on a sickly white translucence, their deadened trunks shining eerily beneath the starlight.
The Stain.
The air was thick and stagnant. No breeze blew. No birds called. No insects croaked.
There, rasped the dying trees.
A cage of bone-white elms stood in the center of a clearing, illuminated by glowing torches lodged in the ground. The elms grew in a perfect circle, with less than a handbreadth of space between each trunk. Six feet from the ground, they bent inwards, twisting together like a knot, trapping the shape within.
Hawthorne.
He lay sprawled in the dirt, hair plastered to his temples, eyes closed. Still as death.
Emeline ran to him.
“Hawthorne?”
He didn’t stir.
“Hawthorne!”
Emeline scanned the elm trunks. “Where’s the way in?”
“There isn’t one,” said Sable, walking twice around the cage, her gaze running up and down the trunks.
Emeline reached through the space in the elms, feeling for a pulse. The skin of his neck was cool to the touch, and it took her several tries before her fingertips felt the slow thud of his heart. She let out a shaky breath.
“He’s alive, at least.”
She reached for a slender trunk and pulled. It didn’t budge. She reached for the knife at her hip and was about to start sawing when, on the other side of the cage, Sable tensed, her attention fixing on something behind Emeline.
She spun to face it.
The Vile stepped into the clearing with them. She grinned, her pale gaze fixed on Emeline as if Sable didn’t exist. As if this was her reason for capturing Hawthorne: he was bait in a trap set for Emeline.
Emeline stared back, hands curling into fists as a cold, dark hatred twisted her insides. Here was the monster that murdered her father and imprisoned her mother in that cellar.
Sable moved like the wind, drawing the two blades simultaneously from the sheaths at her back as she stepped between Emeline and the Vile.
“Take one step closer and I’ll gut you like a fish,” she snarled. The glow from the torches glinted off her enchanted steel.
The Vile sneered, her lips pulling back from sharp teeth. “Your magic steel can’t bite me, shiftling.”
There came a grotesque cracking sound, like bones snapping and joints dislocating, as the Vile opened her mouth, revealing layers upon layers of those needlelike teeth and bloodstained, rust-colored gums. Her dark maw widened like a cavern, as if to swallow Sable whole.
“Wait.” Emeline’s voice rang through the clearing. The Vile turned her head, staring. “I’m the one you want. Let them go, and I’ll be your prisoner.”
Sable shot her a startled look. “You’ll do no such thing.”
Holding Sable’s gaze, she whispered, “Trust me.” She’d distracted the Vile once before with her singing, and now that she knew who her father was, how there was a chance she’d inherited some of the Song Mage’s magic, she was certain she could do it again. It would at least buy Emeline enough time to run—after Sable and Hawthorne were safely away.
But first and foremost: she wanted to find out what the Vile did to her mother. She needed to know if Rose Lark was alive.
The Vile’s pale blue eyes bore into Emeline.
“If you can get him out of that cage before I eat your friend, they can both go free.” The creature’s attention shifted to Sable and she grinned hideously, taking a clawed step towards the girl.
“Don’t worry about me,” Sable said as she lifted her blades, knuckles bunching around the handles. “Find a way to get him out of there.”
Emeline nodded, turning to the elm cage.
I’m the Song Mage’s daughter, Emeline told herself. Her singing summoned the woods. It put a dragon to sleep and stripped back Hawthorne’s defenses. It had even held off the Vile, temporarily, down in that cellar.
What else could it do?
She pressed her hand to one of the trunks. A gentle thrum pushed against her palm. Like the faint and sluggish pulse of a dying heart, beating below the bark.
Maybe these blighted trees hadn’t quite given up yet. Maybe there was something alive in them still.
Behind her, the air hissed with the swing of a blade. Emeline looked to find the Vile mere steps from Sable—teeth bared, ready to strike.
Her heart sped up.
Focus.
Emeline wrapped her hands around two elm trunks, thinking of the day she’d seen inside Hawthorne’s mind. She’d wanted to defy him. Wanted to break down the walls he erected to keep her out.
She remembered singing Claw to sleep. She’d been thinking of Pa as she sang it. Pa, singing lullabies.
Maybe intention mattered. Maybe, when her voice did strange things, it did them in tandem with what she wanted.
Emeline. The voices of the trees whispered like ghosts. Sing us a true song.
A true song.
But what did that mean?
When Sable’s steel whistled through the air again, Emeline stopped thinking and reached for the song she’d written to the tune of “Rose’s Waltz.” The lyrics were her own. Did that make it true? She hummed the first verse, wading slowly into it, thinking about what she wanted: Hawthorne, free.
The pulse beneath her palms quickened.
She sang louder, letting the song grow, and as it did, the pulse locked away in sap grew with her, drumming loudly beneath her hands, matching the beat of her song. As if it were harmonizing.
It was like singing with Hawthorne—that tuning-fork feeling glowed within her. She could feel their feelings, spilling into her. Flooding her senses. Like they were one, her and these trees.
Unexpected sorrow and longing infected her. Weariness sank down to her roots. The forest was sick and tired and cursed—but holding on. Determined to keep fighting.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just Emeline’s song flooding out, but something else. A thick and shimmering power gushed out of her, like blood from a wound. Around her, the clearing changed. Pale, dead leaves cascaded to the forest floor like snow. The trunks of the trees changed from powdery white to deep browns and dappled greens, color spreading like a blush from their roots to their branches. New leaves began to bud and unfurl, teeming with life.
Looking back to Hawthorne’s unconscious form, Emeline sang louder.
Let him out, she told the trees. Set him free.
A moan filled the air, coming from above. At her command, the elms untwisted themselves—slowly, slowly—until they no longer caged Hawthorne in. The trees bent, arching away from each other in a V, giving their prisoner enough space to escape through.
Her song fell silent as Emeline stumbled into the cage. Immediately, the forest spun around her. Exhaustion crashed like a wave onto her shoulders, making her collapse to her knees at his side.
Emeline felt like an old rag, all wrung out.
She tried to wrap her arms around him. Tried to pull him up. But the strength had gone out of her. “Hawthorne,” she whispered. “Hawthorne, wake up.”
Outside the cage, the wind sighed. The trees were quiet and calm, the starlight soft and twinkling.
But then the air turned sour, and the rot returned—fast, faster, spreading like spilled ink. Emeline felt the trees try to fight it, felt their panicked desperation. But the curse was too strong. It leached them of life, leaving them sickly white.
Emeline hadn’t saved them at all.
What did she expect? That just because she was the Song Mage’s daughter, she could counter the curse?
Wrapping her arms around Hawthorne’s torso, she gave a fierce cry and pulled, dragging him through the gap in the trees and out of the cage. As soon as his unconscious body was free, the opening closed behind them.
Emeline collapsed to the earth, utterly spent, then looked up.
Sable drew away from the Vile, whose eyes were darkening with rage. Her veins blackened like ichor beneath her skin as she stared down Emeline like she’d never seen a more loathsome thing.
“I thought so.” The Vile’s voice scraped like wintry branches on a frosted pane. Pointing a clawed finger at Hawthorne, she hissed to Sable, “Take him and leave!”
A black ember mare came out of the trees, muzzled and ready to ride. Sable paused, reluctant. She clearly had no desire to leave Emeline alone with a monster.
But Emeline needed answers only the Vile could give her. So she said, “Get him to safety.” When Sable still paused, Emeline forced herself to rise, despite her body feeling heavy as stone. “Either we all die here, or you escape and bring back help.”
Seeing the logic in this, Sable narrowed her eyes and said, “Promise me you’ll stay alive.”
Emeline nodded. Together they hoisted Hawthorne onto the horse. Sable climbed up after, holding him in place with one arm looped around his chest.
“Sable?” she heard Hawthorne’s slurred voice say. “Where are we?”
Sable looked back once before the horse stepped into the darkness beyond the clearing. And then they were gone.
The Vile started forward, examining Emeline like a meal she intended to eat.
Thinking of the cellar, Emeline started to sing in an attempt to fend her off. But the Vile seemed unaffected. She didn’t back away this time, or try to shake off the spell of Emeline’s voice. Only scowled.
“Song Mage spawn!” hissed the monster before her. “He thought the poison in his voice was boundless too. But it wasn’t.”
The Vile lunged for her. Shakily, Emeline drew Sable’s knife from her hip—too late. The Vile batted it easily aside, moving in. One bony hand grabbed Emeline’s jaw, gripping her cheeks painfully, while the other wrapped around the wrist that held the knife and squeezed until Emeline dropped it.
The steel fell to the ground with a thud.
“It’s why he locked me in that cellar. To force me to stay. Because whenever the venom in his voice dried up, I remembered.”
Emeline frowned, confused. The Vile was the prisoner in the Song Mage’s cellar?
The Vile’s pupils widened, swallowing up her irises until they were entirely black. Letting go of Emeline’s wrist, she dragged translucent fingers down Emeline’s cheeks, her touch rough as dried leaves, her sharp nails skimming dangerously against the skin.
“I could never leave him, he said. He loved me so much, you see.” Her slitted nostrils flared angrily. “So I killed him.”
The Vile was talking nonsense. The Song Mage loved Rose Lark, Emeline’s mother. Not this monster standing before her.
But if it was the Vile he imprisoned …
She remembered the butterfly pin.
A horrifying thought took root in her.
No …
Letting go of Emeline’s face, the Vile bent down, her fingers plunging into ashy leaves until they found Sable’s blade. When she rose, she lifted the honed tip to Emeline’s heart, holding the hilt with both hands, ready to plunge it in.
“I know you’re his. You have his eyes. And his blood—I could smell it in that cellar. Just as I smell it now.” Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “And that song…” She bared her teeth. “Is that why you came to the manor—to finish what he started? To imprison me there for good?”
Emeline’s thoughts were spinning too fast. It can’t be.
It was too horrible.
She shook her head blindly as images of Rose Lark rose up: laughing with her head thrown back, eyes bright with joy; smiling adoringly up at Tom.
You can’t be her.
The trees began to hiss around them. The elm tree cage pressed into Emeline’s shoulder blades. She wrapped her hands around their thin trunks, leaning back, away from the knife, trying to stop the world from spinning.
She thought of the sycamore, delivering her over the wall. Thought of all the other times the trees had assisted her, giving her warnings or directions.
It reminded her of what Pa said the other night: he’d given an offering to the king on the day she was born, in exchange for the forest’s protection.
Was that why the trees were always helping her—they were trying to protect her?
She sent up a desperate plea to the woods. Help me again now—if you can.
The wind picked up, rattling through the brittle branches. That faintly beating pulse thrummed beneath the bark, pushing through to her.
A soft rustling sound broke the quiet as something swelled in the earth beneath her feet.
The Vile paused, listening. She lowered the knife as the ground shifted. Rising and dropping. As if something slithered under the newly fallen leaves.
The Vile turned, sensing danger.
Twisting white roots surged upwards, reaching like fingers to wrap around the Vile’s ankles and twine up her legs. As they did, the Vile stumbled, losing her balance. Fury flashed across her face. She righted herself, then turned to Emeline—who was still within striking distance.
Run! hissed the trees.
Before the blade lashed across her chest, Emeline ducked out of the way.
The Vile screamed.
Emeline ran—from the rage in that scream, from the edge of that sweeping blade, but most of all, from the realization slamming through her.
The Vile and Rose Lark were one and the same.
That monster is my mother.