Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(105)

But when he turned to her, all such traces were gone. “It is the best end. It is the only end. Should I be victorious, I will enter the Mound, and you will become Advocate in my place. And you will take an Initiate, and the circle will be complete, never again to be broken. All this Land will be your home. No more Twelfth Night. No more Thirteenth Dawn.”

No more failure. No more searching, searching, searching. No more desolation. We will be home. They will be home.

I will be Home.

“And we will rule,” said Sun Eagle. Daylily realized that her mouth had also moved in time with his, had spoken words that were not her own.

The wolf inside her snarled and tore at her with a fury she had not yet known, and she screamed at the pain of it. Even as she screamed, however, she turned and fled. The wolf drove her, and the Bronze did not burn or try to fight. She fled to the sound of frantic, haunted howling, away from the Mound, away from her Advocate, away from herself. But the wolf pursued, and the wolf would catch and devour her if she did not give in to the call of the Bronze. What escape was there? Death on every side, as sure as when she’d walked the paths of the Netherworld!

As sure as when she’d betrayed Rose Red.

There was no hope. No light burning in this darkness. Even the glow of the Bronze itself was as black as pitch, as empty as a bottomless chasm.

She collapsed. She did not know if she lay in the Wood Between or the Near World or the Far. It did not matter to her then. The wolf worried at her, but she could feel the wolf even now being dragged back in chains. Cren Cru, who had taken her, who had become her, who was more Daylily than she was herself now, would overpower all and drive her to whatever end it saw fit. And she would convince herself that it was her own choice and her own doing. But for this little slice of existence, she knew the truth.

“You’ll have to let it go.”

She shuddered at the voice of the songbird that alighted on the ground before her. In this dark place, his white, speckled breast seemed to glow with his own light.

“What are you doing here?” she gasped, the words scarcely audible.

The bird turned his head to one side, gazing at her out of one bright eye. “I am always near,” he sang.

“You’re following me?” She bared her teeth. “Go away. I don’t want you.”

“You want me more than you know,” said the bird. “But you must let the wolf go.”

“I can’t,” said Daylily. “Not anymore.” She felt the Bronze weighing her down, and for a moment she was the wolf tied to the stakes, brought low by chains and bindings. “It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late,” said the bird. “Not while I lead you.”

“You don’t lead me!” Daylily said. “No one leads me!” And she lunged at the bird, her fingers snatching, but he flew from her grasp, light as drifting smoke, up into the branches of a tree she had not seen standing near.

She stood and realized that what she had thought was the blackness of despair was in fact the deepness of night surrounding her. She even saw a glimmer of fireflies and, up above, between the branches of the tree, stars gleamed in the sky. The bird had disappeared, but she felt somehow that he was near. She smelled sweet things on the wind, the scents of fruits and nectars, contrasting with the smells of rot and spoil.

She turned. And found herself facing Foxbrush.

“Daylily!” he gasped, his voice as frightened as though he saw a ghost.

She could scarcely discern his face in the gloom. But she recognized him at once by some sixth sense she did not know she possessed. She stood a moment beneath the spreading fig tree and the starlight, and she stared at him. He was all the things she had fled; but where had her flight led her?

“Daylily!” he spoke her name again as though he wanted to say something more but could not find the words. He took a step toward her.

Then she fell into his arms.

This could not be Daylily. It must be some phantom or some dream, come to walk the waking world. It could not be Lady Daylily of Middlecrescent! For Daylily never wept as this girl wept, her face buried in Foxbrush’s chest, embracing him in trembling desperation. Foxbrush stood as still as a totem stone, his arms at his sides, and she clung to him and dampened his shirt with her tears. Slowly he lifted his arms and wrapped them around her, holding her close to his thudding heart. All thoughts of what he had just seen and heard—the stone, the broken Lioness, Nidawi and her strange declarations—fled his mind. Everything about him was caught up in this one dreadful, horrible, wonderful moment. He held on to Daylily and he loved her more now than he had ever before loved anything or anyone. He felt strong and he felt weak; he could both move great mountains and be knocked down with a feather.

They stood thus for some time, and time meant nothing to either of them. Many eyes watched: eyes of the bird in the branches of the tree above, and the fireflies darting to and fro, and the fey beasts in the jungle shadows. And yet they were completely alone in that piece of eternity.

At last Daylily stepped back, though she still held Foxbrush by the arms. She could not meet his gaze but stood with her head bowed, weighted down by the enormous pull of the Bronze around her neck. Foxbrush saw it, and he recalled with sudden, gut-wrenching pain what Nidawi had told him about Cren Cru.

“Twelve in all it took, and it melted down Meadhbh’s twelve-pronged crown to give each of them a piece, a binding.”