Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(84)

Daylily, smiling softly, listened to this speech, saying nothing but shaking her head so that her hair fell over her pale face. Only when his words finally trailed into nothing did she pat his hand and firmly remove it from her arm. Then she drew herself up.

“I do not wish to return to Southlands. And I’ll not marry anyone.”

Foxbrush felt his stomach drop. He saw the truth in her face.

“You go home, if you can find the way,” she said. “You go home, and you save Southlands, and you do what you like with your kingdom. But I have a place here now. You see, I too intend to save Southlands.”

She rose, clutching the Bronze to her stomach with both hands, and stood over Foxbrush, looking down on him. “I have no use for the poisoned country of our time. But this Southlands, this Land is rich, and thriving, and full of life. It’s—”

Mine!

“—where I’m meant to be. I came here to escape, but I know now that it was for a much greater purpose. Powers beyond our knowledge drive us, Foxbrush. They always have. First the Wolf Lord, then the Dragon, and now, here, beyond the Wilderlands, greater powers still! We cannot always fight them. We must join them and be—”

Mine!

“—made whole.”

With that, she lifted her hand and, to Foxbrush’s unending surprise, caressed his cheek. “I wish you well, crown prince, and I hope you’ll find your way home. But this is my home now, and I’ll not return with you to poison.”

He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. When he spoke, his voice came in a sad crackle. But the words themselves surprised him as much, perhaps more, than they surprised Daylily. “What do you know of the missing firstborn?” he asked. “Of the missing children?”

Her hand still resting on his cheek went suddenly cold. Behind her eyes something moved, something desperate and struggling. But her face was an unyielding prison.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

Even as she spoke, a shudder passed through her body. Her face, already pale, whitened as a new wave of pain washed over her. Foxbrush scrambled to his feet in time to catch her before she fell, and he eased her back down onto the skins, clumsy but careful of her shoulder. She did not resist but drew many shallow breaths, closing her eyes as a sheen of sweat dampened her body.

“We’ll discuss this later,” Foxbrush said, gently touching the back of her head as though it might catch his hand on fire. “You’re sick now, and you must rest. I’ll . . . I’ll get help.”

He stood up and left the room in a hurried, shuffling gait. He thought he heard something whispering behind him:

We must find him. We must go. . . .

He shook off the chill that reached after him with those words and made his way through the dark passages of the Eldest’s House. He could still hear the murmur of voices in the great stone room of the Eldest’s council, and again shivered at the thought of what those people might do if they knew one of those they so feared even now dwelt under the same roof.

He found Lark in the children’s room, sitting upright on her pallet though her siblings were all fast asleep. She saw him and got up without a word, leading the way back to his room. When they neared the door, she whispered, “I did not think she’d wake so soon. I thought I’d given her stronger medicine.”

Foxbrush shook his head and held back the curtain for Lark to pass through. The girl stopped in her tracks in the doorway. Slowly she turned to Foxbrush, her dark eyes wide and stricken.

“I was right,” she said. “Da’s going to kill me.”

Foxbrush bent his head to look through the low doorway. “Dragons eat it all!” he cursed.

There was a gaping hole in the mud-and-wattle wall, and not a sign of Daylily, save for a few strands of her red-gold hair.





3


I TOLD YOU, I FELL,” Prince Felix explained for what felt like the hundredth time. “I was trying to get a better look at the commotion, and I tripped.”

“Over a chest-high railing?” The apothecary binding Felix’s wrist in tough bandages with herbs to keep the swelling down gave the prince what could only be described as “a look.” It wasn’t a questioning look or even a disbelieving look. It was more of a “I’ve bandaged up too many idiot young men to be surprised at anything by now” sort of look.

“Well, maybe I didn’t trip so much as slip,” Felix muttered, avoiding the apothecary’s eye.

Following his mad pounce upon the guardsman below, Felix had lain for what felt like hours upon the floor, his hands over his head, as guardsmen trooped over the top of him and hurled themselves against the tower door. He’d not managed to get to his feet by the time the dignitaries of Parumvir reached him. But they’d quickly swept him up and hustled him back to his chambers in the midst of the uproar in the Eldest’s Great Hall, fearing more kidnappers might burst from the wings to snatch other future kings for hostage or ransom. No such kidnappers emerged, however, and still Felix was stuffed away in his chambers, guards mounted at the doors, separate from all that was interesting and happening in the outer world.

In the heat of coursing adrenaline, Felix had not immediately noticed the damage he’d done to his wrist. It had taken him even longer to admit that his injury might need medical attention, longer still to convince one of his guards to fetch the apothecary. By the time the apothecary arrived, his wrist was swollen to a good three times its normal size and very painful to the touch.