Seen through a swift’s eyes, the world always expanded, exploding with new shades of color. This time, though, all of it had changed—and it looked so wrong that it hurt Cordelia’s stomach.
As she winged over the castle’s high watchtowers, she saw gap after gap ahead where ancient trees had stood for all of her life until now. The first few rows past the moat had all been felled and brutally stripped of the branches and leaves where birds had nested and sung earlier that day.
Some of those long trunks had been stacked to form a set of makeshift walls around two central groups of tents. Others had been chopped up to build campfires that sent trails of hot smoke high into the sky. Each fire sat between another cluster of the smaller cloth tents that lined the enlarged clearing, with tall wolf or bear flags planted by each one.
Even more trees had been slaughtered beyond the tents, then left carelessly abandoned with broken nests and shattered eggs lying on the ground nearby.
If she’d had Mother’s powers, Cordelia would have attacked. But swifts couldn’t rain down magical vengeance upon anyone. The only thing Cordelia could ever control with magic was her own shape—and even now, her tiny, flying body was driven by an irresistible need to explore and understand everything.
So she bottled up her outrage and dived, silent and graceful, over the rippling moat, where snakes bobbed watchfully and the water was flecked to swift-sight with dots of hours-old blood. It beckoned to her—come, sip on the wing!—but she fought the instinct and only nabbed an insect in midair.
Stashing it in the back of her throat, she landed on the ground beyond the moat and hopped awkwardly forward on her three-clawed feet toward the closest fire and the big men who surrounded it. They sat with their massive backs to her, rumbling to each other in words she wasn’t close enough to understand.
Slowly, quietly …
Cordelia forced herself to stop and peck pointlessly at the ground every few moments, just in case anyone was watching, while all of the other birds hid in the trees, out of sight.
The whole forest felt as if it were holding its breath.
Closer … closer … almost there …
That was when everything went wrong.
Today’s attack really had made Connall impossible.
He slammed open the front door and portcullis of their smoke-enveloped castle. Black and purple shadows swirled wrathfully around his lanky figure, which stood utterly alone in defiance of all of Mother’s orders.
“Cordy! Get back here, now!” he bellowed as soldiers leaped to their feet all along the banks of the moat.
He made a quick, twisting gesture with one hand. A tunnel of tightly funneled air formed before him, visible to birds but not to humans. It offered a safe passage across the water, perfectly shaped for one small brown swift to fly through, protected from arrows or any other attacks … just as Cordelia had been forced back to safety at least a hundred times before by his long arms and overprotective spells.
Why did he always have to interfere with her adventures? Snarling inwardly, Cordelia hopped away as his searching gaze swept the clearing. The men by the fires were all shouting loudly. She would hide behind their big bodies until he gave up, and then—
Her older brother’s voice slammed into her ears, magically directed this time and loud enough to make her flinch. Now, Cordelia! Don’t make me get Mother to drag you back. If you come now, I won’t tell her what you were up to.
Ugh! Cordelia spread out her wings in furious preparation to launch back toward her ridiculous brother, who never trusted her to look after herself.
Lightning cracked across the moat beneath the cloudless sky. It came from the clearing full of soldiers.
There were sorcerers among the invaders, too.
If that lightning had struck Connall’s shifting cape of shadows, it would have bounced aside without harm. Cordelia had seen it repel magical attacks before, when Connall had practiced it with Mother in their courtyard. But this sorcerer wasn’t aiming at Connall … and apparently, when Connall had come running to save his sister, he hadn’t expected anyone behind him to need a shield.
The lightning shot over his head and through the arch of the open doorway.
A terrible scream sounded inside.
“Alys!”
It was Connall who shouted her name, whirling around, but Cordelia screamed, too, as she flung herself into the air.
… Too late! The safe tunnel of air her older brother had shaped vanished the moment that his concentration broke.
Black arrows shot in a murderous cloud across the moat, their steady thwack … thwack … thwack filling the air with an inescapable percussion. Connall’s back was still turned, blocking the sight of whatever was happening inside their home. Arrows bounced off his shifting cape and off the smoke-wrapped stone walls of the castle, showering into the moat as snakes hissed and dived for cover. No one even noticed Cordelia’s small brown body amid the chaos, flying frantically back and forth as she searched for any possible angle of approach.
Archers lined the banks of the moat. Even bird-sight wasn’t powerful enough to find a way through their combined attack.
“Why would you ever take such a risk?” Connall shouted at their invaders. Cordelia couldn’t see him anymore through the cloud of arrows, but she could hear him, and his voice was choked with horrifying tears. “You may hate me and my mother, My Lord Duke of Arden, but that’s your sister who was struck just now!”
“Rubbish!” The bear-leader stomped out of the central cluster of tents with a young squire scurrying after him, still fastening the last plates of armor around his enormous chest. “I have no sister anymore. Even if I had, Alys was raised in a fortress. She’d never be fool enough to stand so close to—”
“What have you done?” Mother burst past Connall through the door, throwing out her arms to create a transparent bubble of protection that no arrow could pierce. “You shot a lethal curse into our home?”
Scowling, Arden crossed his arms with a clank of armor. “Lune? What nonsense is she spouting now?”
“There is no need to fear, Duchess.” The wolf-leader, already fully armored, had been standing on the other side of the bank, but he held out his hands now in a signal that finally halted that steady shower of arrows.
As the archers lowered their bows, Cordelia’s whole body jerked with the instinct to seize the moment and fly through the open air. But her mother’s bubble was too strong. It would hold her out, too.
And she needed to hear the answer to this question.
The wolf-leader scooped off his helmet and held it out before him like a peace offering. “We have the spellcaster right here,” he said, “only waiting to remove the curse that she laid. You know we would never choose to cause irreversible harm to anyone. All you need do is ask us to heal whichever poor soul bore the brunt of this unnecessary battle … a battle, I might add, that was brought about by your own treasonous choices.”
“All I need do is ask?” Mother’s voice was flat with disbelief. “And what exactly will happen if I do ask for your help in saving my dearest friend’s life?”
“Why, then,” said the wolf-leader, “we will be more than happy to enter your home and instruct our caster to reverse her curse, healing your friend completely … the very moment you surrender to us.”
“I don’t understand. How could this have happened?” Mother’s strong voice wavered for the first time in Cordelia’s memory. “How was this door even opened in the first place? Connall, if they attacked, why didn’t you call me to deal with them?”
Connall didn’t reply out loud. But a moment later, Cordelia shook in midair with the gale of her mother’s voiceless reaction.
CORDELIA!
She had expected the blast of fury that shot through their connection. She’d braced herself for it. But she had never expected the terror that accompanied it.
Mother wasn’t ever supposed to feel fear.
“Mother,” Connall said, “if we don’t let them in, Alys will die.”
Mother looked across the moat at Cordelia’s small, hovering body, past the line of archers. She looked back inside. Then she closed her eyes.
Run. Her silent order shot through the family’s connection, calling to all three triplets at once. Run as fast and as far as you can. Giles, Rosalind, take the tunnel out the back. Meet Cordelia in the trees behind the castle. Now!
Stay safe, stay together, and stay far from sight. I’ll come for you as soon as I can. I swear it.
I love you all so much.
Her shoulders slumped. She opened her eyes … and then, as Cordelia stared in disbelief, she sank to her knees before the invaders.
“Very well,” she said out loud. “The siege has ended.”