The attacks that Giles had predicted didn’t come that day, though, or the next.
Soldiers on horseback swept up and down the road four different times as they journeyed. The triplets found hiding places every time. They skirted around high-walled towns surrounded by massive, stinking piles of refuse and rivers polluted with the townsfolk’s leavings. Army camps sprawled across abandoned fields. The flags that flew above those camps shifted symbols and colors as the long days passed, but the devastation left behind was universal.
It was no wonder the land was crying out for mercy.
Colorful flags of boars, badgers, and falcons flew high in triumph above the latest field of dying crops. Cordelia bared her teeth when she saw them: the symbols of Lune’s and Arden’s rivals, the duchess of Solenne and her allies, who all wanted a different heir for the Raven Throne … and who would kill Cordelia and her triplets to achieve that goal.
They can have the throne, she thought bitterly. But, of course, it made no difference what she thought. Lune and Arden wouldn’t listen even if all three triplets begged on their knees to give it up. All they cared about was seizing power for themselves … and keeping the duchess of Solenne’s alternate heir from gaining it.
Who was that other possible heir, anyway? Would they care about this broken kingdom?
Someone had to do something, for the sake of every innocent pawn in the dukes’ and duchesses’ schemes … and for the sake of the land itself, whose pitiful moans echoed endlessly through Cordelia’s ears.
Broken. Broken. Broken!
The triplets camped out of sight of farmhouses that still stood. They foraged for their food in abandoned fields. They didn’t talk to anyone else along their journey … but then, after everything they saw on their first day, they barely even spoke to one another.
The only sound that accompanied them across the miles, apart from the steady thumping of Cordelia’s hooves along the road, was the mournful tune that Giles hummed to himself over and over throughout the days. For once, neither of his sisters asked him to stop. Its melancholy lilt perfectly echoed the wreckage that they passed.
Rosalind brooded in dangerous silence, her shoulders drawing tighter and tighter with every burned-out castle or farm that they glimpsed. Cordelia stayed animal and tried with all her might to shut out the cries of the land around her … but every night in her dreams, they wrung her out and left her reeling, groggy and half-deafened by endless screams, pleas, and demands.
BROKEN. BROKEN. DO SOMETHING!
And every night as she slept, white starflowers grew beneath her in her true shape, as if to taunt her. We know what you truly are.
This wounded land expected her to somehow fix it. Mother, Connall, and Alys needed her to rescue them from their powerful captors. And with every step toward that highest, cloud-wreathed mountain, she was drawing closer to the moment when she would have to let her own most terrible words out into the air, to fulfill the bargain that her triplets had demanded.
Then they would finally know the truth about her, and—
No!
She couldn’t even let herself think it.
She kept her eyes trained on the thickly forested slopes of Mount Corve as they drew closer with every passing minute. She kept her hooves moving steadily as she trotted up steep, sloping dirt roads and around jutting boulders, and she squeezed her inner ears shut as hard as she could to the cries of the land on every side.
So she almost missed the trap that was waiting for them.
The closer the triplets came to Mount Corve, the more the landscape rippled with obstacles, like giant shoulders rising from the earth to shrug off irritating human invaders. Every time Cordelia made it to the top of one slippery, loose-soiled hill with her triplets still safely clinging to her back, she found yet another hill waiting between her and that high green mountain like an endless series of tests that she had to pass.
But she couldn’t keep moving forever. As the sun blazed in a cloudless sky above them, they all stopped, yet again, to eat and rest for a solid hour. They were so painfully close to Mount Corve by then that Cordelia could have wept with frustration at the delay—but her legs were trembling uncontrollably. Her endurance as a horse was so paltry!
She dutifully filled her stomach with fresh grass but then turned girl, flopping back against the rocky hill where they’d stopped while Giles and Rosalind wandered off to forage. They’d left behind the last signs of human habitation well over an hour ago, and for once, there was no sign of any devastation to explain it. Apparently, no humans had ever dared to build this close to Mount Corve, much less hold any battles here.
The land felt dangerously unsettled beneath her body. All across the kingdom, as hard as she’d tried not to pay any attention, she had felt the transition in each patch of land they’d crossed, like multiple pieces of a larger patchwork quilt—all of them sewn together into a whole, but each one of them individual and distinct. Each area held its own particular chorus of voices … and its own vivid history of pain.
This chunk of land, just by Mount Corve, wasn’t screaming like so many others had along the way. It wasn’t even calling for her attention. Instead, it felt somehow as if it were … waiting.
Holding its breath?
As she lay on the sloping grass and dirt, her eyes shut to bask in the warm sunshine, she found herself scratching again and again with one finger at the side of her head. There was a subtle tickle of sensation there, inside her ear, like a squirrel trying to sneakily scratch its way through a door, or …
No! It was the land itself trying to wriggle through her defenses. She sat up with a jerk, shaking herself off vigorously. I’m not listening! I won’t hear you!
“… was a time … could come agai—Cordy!” Giles’s song cut off as he rounded the hill, his eyes widening as he watched her shuddering movements. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s. Fine.” She gritted out the words, using all of her energy to hold her inner defenses strong.
She wouldn’t let the land distract her now, wouldn’t let it separate her from her triplets in these last few hours before the truth came between them.
“Are you sure?” He frowned, starting toward her. “If you’re not feeling well—”
“I said I’m fine!” She bared her teeth in a ferocious, forced smile. “Why don’t you keep singing? I can listen to your new song.”
He paled behind his freckles. “Ros!” he yelled. “There’s something wrong with Cordy!”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Rolling her eyes, Cordelia pushed herself to her feet. Every muscle in her body ached with the effort she’d been through … and when she looked down at the grass where she’d lain, she spotted a single white starflower poking its head up through the green.
She jerked backward as if it were an adder preparing to strike.
“What’s wrong with Cordy?” Rosalind rounded the hill at a run.
Giles pointed at Cordelia accusingly. “She said she wants to hear me sing.”
Snorting, Rosalind slowed to a halt. “Has she lost her hearing? Or only her mind?”
“Oh, shut up, both of you!” Cordelia backed hastily away from the telltale flower. “Let’s just get moving.”
“Can you? Already?” Rosalind frowned, catching up and peering into her face suspiciously. “I thought you needed more rest than that. Horses—”
“I can’t carry either of you,” Cordelia mumbled, “but I can walk on my own two legs. And it’s not as if we’re far from Mount Corve. So there’s no point waiting any longer, is there?”
Giles looked more than ready to offer several points, quite possibly set to music, so Cordelia turned her back on them both and started forward without letting her brother’s loud groan of frustration—or her own aching legs—stop her.
She could feel that starflower waving mockingly in the breeze behind her.
As they trudged farther and farther up and down the rocky paths through the bumpy foothills, the voice of the land beneath her feet stopped subtly scratching at her ear and started hammering outright at her head instead. She clenched her jaw tight. La-la-la, I can’t hear you!
Her triplets were talking again now, in low, worried tones, about what dangers might lie ahead. She tried to listen to them—she really did. But the voices of the land formed an angry blur in her ears, all demand and distress and something sharp at the edges almost like a warning, and—
“What do you think, Cordy?”
“Sorry?” Breathing hard, she blinked out at her siblings. Only one more slope rose before them now until they would reach the real mountain at last.
… Where everything would change.
Giles stared at her. “Who were you listening to just then?”
“Nobody,” she snarled—then caught herself. “I mean, you?”
Rosalind let out a huff of a laugh. “Nice try. She was off in her own world, as usual.”
“No!” Cordelia said. “I’m right here. With you.” She forced herself to meet her sister’s gaze full-on, even as the voices in her head rose to ear-piercing screams. “I just—”
SOLDIERS AHEAD!
She doubled over, her vision whiting out with pain as the combined voices smashed through her internal walls.
“Cordy!”
“What’s happening?”
“Stop,” she gasped. “Wait! We can’t. Go any farther. Soldiers! Waiting for us.”
Her head throbbed with agony. She clutched it with both hands, desperately filtering through all of the different, insistent visions.
“The mist,” she panted, “a wall of mist; they’re so close now … no, they’re waiting right in front of it. Lying in wait! They know we’re coming.”
“How could they possibly know that?” Rosalind demanded.
“Oh … I know the answer to that question.” Giles’s weary sigh ruffled against Cordy’s tangled hair. “Remember? The very first moment we met those farmers, Cordy asked them how to get to Raven’s Nest. The farmer who reported us to the soldiers must have told them about that, too.”
“So that’s where the real attack is waiting.” Rosalind smacked her sword-stick against one palm with a thwack! “They think we’re walking into a trap.”
“We almost did.” Giles’s voice tightened. “The real question is, how did Cordy know about it?”
She couldn’t answer. She could barely even breathe. Now that the land had forced its way back into her head, that old hook inside her chest was back as well. At home, it had only tugged her to escape her castle walls, to escape into the freedom and the wildness outside—but this time, it had a more specific goal in mind.
It yanked, again and again. A whimper of pain huffed through her throat.
Her right foot moved forward against her will.
Rosalind grabbed hold of her arm. “Wait up! You can’t fight them when you’re like this.”
“Who wants to fight trained soldiers at all?” Giles’s voice spiraled upward in disbelief. “We have to run and hide, like Connall told us. If it’s not safe for us to go to Raven’s Nest—”
“We have to!” Cordelia’s eyes flew open, but she could only glimpse the outlines of her triplets through a thick fog. Mist and flashes of weaponry filled her vision.
And beyond all those …
Raven’s Nest.
It was waiting. No, it was calling to her, promising every answer she had ever sought about her family, about their past, and about the whole broken kingdom that stretched around her.
They were so close. Almost there. The hook in her chest wouldn’t let her turn away now. Not for anything.
She could turn into a bird to fly straight there—no! She dug in her heels and glared at her triplets’ foggy silhouettes.
“We’re all going there together,” Cordelia said stubbornly. “You promised.”
“Argh!” Giles threw up his hands, shifting shadows in her vision. “How are we supposed to deal with armed soldiers?”
“Well, you can probably take care of most of them yourself.” Rosalind’s brisk words made both of her triplets turn to stare. She sounded perfectly calm, though, as she continued. “You’ve been practicing all the way here. Why not just use your sorcery again?”
Giles lurched backward. “I … no, I can’t! I really can’t. Half the time, it won’t even work! That first time, I was just so scared, the magic burst out of me.”
“Well, then, let yourself feel that scared again.” Rosalind shrugged, swinging her sword-stick in lazy, sweeping circles. She bent her legs in preparatory stretches, still holding Cordelia’s arm with a firm grip. “If it doesn’t work, they will definitely capture us. Remember that part, and you’ll be more than scared enough to let your magic free again.”
“But—”
“Look at her!” Rosalind sighed and yanked Cordelia back into place beside her. “She’s not turning around, no matter what we say. Even if we drag her with us, she’ll just turn back and head here on her own the instant we stop holding her. Do you want to let her walk into a group of grown soldiers all on her own?”
Giles didn’t answer.
Rosalind’s voice turned to steel. “I am not running away like a coward again—and I’m not letting any more of my family be taken prisoner! You can leave us both behind if you like, but I’m staying with Cordy.”
“This is ridiculous!” Giles whispered.
But Cordelia’s shoulders relaxed, because she knew they had won. Giles had never turned away from their family in his life, so—at least for now—they would all keep moving forward together.