Time to heal what has been broken.
Time to make things right.
Cordelia’s body moved down the long hill, flanked by her triplets. At least, she thought it did. It all seemed very far away. Her vision was blurred with memories not her own, flashing past in uncontrollable succession. Every part of the fractured land was shouting at her at once, sending her visions of past horrors and past promises.
Her right foot slipped beneath her on the dirt path …
Rosalind grabbed her closest arm and pulled her upright. The shock of contact cleared Cordelia’s vision for just a moment.
The mass of soldiers in the barren field below was rippling like an agitated swarm of bees, both armies reassembling to face the hillside and the three children. Swords and pikes glinted before them, under the gray and cloudy sky. Beyond the high city walls, Cordelia sensed even more frantic movement taking place.
“Well …” Giles’s laugh shivered with nerves. “At least we have their attention now.”
“Good,” Cordelia said with an effort. “It’s your turn.”
“My—?”
“Oh, Giles.” Through her blurred vision and the dizzying rush of green power racing through her veins, Cordelia managed a smile for her gangly, rumpled triplet. “Haven’t you always wanted a real audience?”
“You told all of us you’d sing for kings and queens one day,” said Rosalind. “Just look at everyone waiting to hear from you now!”
Shoulders hunching, he shook his head. “They’re not waiting for me. I’m not the Raven Heir. I’m useless. I—”
“I can’t do this without you,” Cordelia said. It was the truth, and she’d finally come to understand it on their journey. “This only works—all of it—if we do it together.”
Heart. Spirit. Fierce protection.
All the old contracts had finally been renewed in the form of three newborn babies lying together in one cot … and now it was time to prove it.
“Do you really think Cordelia’s going to talk them into seeing sense?” Rosalind demanded. “Have you ever met our sister?” She snorted loudly. “She can shake those high walls to the ground if she likes, or turn into a lion and eat some soldiers. But you’re the only one who knows how to talk to people.”
It felt good for Cordelia to roll her eyes. It reminded her, for a startling moment of clarity, that she was still Cordelia after all, not just a walking, talking vessel for the land around her.
Vessels probably didn’t feel so tempted to poke their sisters, hard.
“You’re not useless,” she told Giles. “You have your own powers, and it’s time to use them. All of them.”
Giles stared at her for a long moment. Then he straightened. His shoulders pulled back and his chin rose high for the first time in days. “You’re right,” he said as he brushed off his dirty blue doublet. “You do need me.” His lips stretched into a fierce smile. “And I have just the right song for this moment!”
Rosalind groaned. “I said talk, you—”
“Shh!” Cordelia shook her head, riding waves of dizziness, as Giles stepped forward and drew a familiar deep breath. He threw out his arms in greeting to the staring soldiers below. “Let him sing first,” she murmured.
Then Giles sang out a high, clear note, and both of them were stunned into utter silence.
That single note sang around the field from a dozen different angles at once, rising up into unearthly harmony.
Giles had grasped full control over his own sorcery in their frantic flight past the soldiers at Mount Corve … and now his voice echoed from everywhere at once. It swirled through the landscape, piercing the air with its purity.
Commanding. Inescapable.
Singing the truth:
Burned-out houses
Broken land
Where our homes
Should all still stand …
His words were rich, golden bells that pealed down the hillside, into the city and across the field into every soldier’s ear. It was an incredible, unheard-of, magical performance—and Cordelia recognized his haunting, melancholy tune immediately. It was the same melody he’d hummed for days as they’d traveled through the blasted landscape, witnesses to devastation.
A loud, wet gulp sounded beside her as his song pealed over the hillside. Cordelia turned and stared as Rosalind wiped a glistening stream of tears off her face.
“Shut up!” Rosalind hissed when she caught Cordelia looking. “Don’t you dare tell him. I just …” She trailed off, brown eyes still suspiciously bright in her reddened face.
She wasn’t the only one. A strange, hushed silence had fallen over the sea of adult soldiers. As the three triplets walked together down the wide dirt path into the valley, the armed men and women ahead watched in openmouthed silence …
… And Cordelia spotted more than one of them surreptitiously rubbing their own eyes.
The land was listening, too. Cordelia felt it tremble, deep at its core, as Giles’s voice rose and fell, filled with a pain and yearning that resonated perfectly with the earth below.
His song carried the same message that the land had screamed for decades, desperate for anyone to listen:
Broken. Broken. Broken. Heal us!
Land in pieces
Families lost
So much death
Too high a cost …
A soldier at the front of the line dropped his pike to the ground as he toppled to his knees, scrubbing his fists across his lowered face.
“Up!” His commander’s face was screwed tight and angry, her shoulders held martially tight. “To your feet, man!”
But all around her, dozens of other men and women fell to their knees like broken leaves from autumn trees, dropping their weapons as Giles’s song curled in lapping, wistful waves around them.
There was a time—
Could come again—
When our cousins
Were our friends,
When the land
Was ours to tend.
If fighting stopped,
This all could end …
Soldiers all across the field gave physical starts with the shock of sudden silence as Giles’s magically directed voice cut off, leaving them all stranded. His final word still hung in the air, a dissonant note waiting for resolution.
He had left the song, like his message, wide open. Hurting. Begging them:
Heal us—and stop this madness!
Sobs sounded all the more startling when they came from deep, adult voices all across the crowded field; so many different kneeling, weaponless bodies crying out under different flags. The land shivered beneath Cordelia’s feet … but not in protest this time.
It was gratitude that rose in a great, green surge through the ground and streamed through her veins.
But not everyone had fallen under the spell of Giles’s song. All across the field, scattered leaders barked at their weeping subordinates, haranguing them to get back into formation. In the center of the field, a small group of armored men and women had gathered together to head purposefully toward the three triplets.
“They’re the pretenders to our throne!” bellowed a tall, ferocious duchess with a boar on the shield that she raised into the air. “Don’t let them trick you with their mother’s magic!”
She had to be the famous duchess of Solenne, ready to attack them at long last—
But the rest of her words were cut off by a long, groaning creak as the massive, iron-banded wooden door in the city walls swung open, revealing the dukes of Arden and Lune within its entryway.
The bearish duke of Arden strode forward, fully armored, massive and bristling with weaponry and fury. The duke of Lune paced beside him, poised and ready, like a lean wolf waiting to leap upon his enemies.
Behind them, with hands locked together by metal cuffs, flanked by two red-robed sorcerers as prison guards …
“Connall!” Giles’s powerful voice turned into a squeak, all his sorcery falling away in shock.
“Your Majesties!” cried the duke of Lune across the field. “I believe we have a hostage here who you would prefer to see unhurt.”
Rosalind raised her sword with murderous fury, ready to charge through all of the hundreds of soldiers who still stood in between them and their older brother.
Connall’s voice shot into all their heads at once: Don’t listen to him, any of you. Run! Keep yourselves safe!
Cordelia looked across the crowded field of soldiers at the brother whose long arms had scooped her away from so many dangers in the past. She shook her head at him as the last of her fears fell away. This time, Connall, it’s our turn to protect you.
She reached into the makeshift sack that she’d carried all the way from Raven’s Nest and pulled out the broken pieces of the Raven Crown.