Light bounced off the steel, bathing the Queen with a heavenly glow. Her gown was cloud gray, the royal color of mourning in Galland. It gave her pale skin a moonlit pallor. A red jewel hung from her neck, a ruby bright as new fire. As she looked over her knights, her piercing blue gaze snagged on Andry, and she held his stare for a long moment.

Despite the summer heat, Andry felt a cold finger trail down his spine. He dipped his head again, until all he could see were his own feet and the grass between them. The blades rippled like the sea. Andry pictured his mother on a ship, her face turned southeast.

We will go to my mother’s family. There is a ship from Ascal to Nkonabo. She’ll be safe with Kin Kiane, and from there I can return north.

Andry Trelland had ridden to Iona before, and he remembered the way to the immortal city. Up the river, past granite cliffs and the yew forest, deep in the glen. He swallowed, terrified of what must be done. To leave his mother, ill and alone, while he returned to the place that doomed the rest? It felt like the height of stupidity.

But what else can I do? he thought, his stomach twisting.

I can tell the Elders what befell us in the hills, what comes from the temple. Certainly they will defend what Erida will not.

And they will know what to do with the Spindleblade.

The service began, but Andry heard little of it. The whispers rose once more, too familiar, his only constant since the slaughter at the temple. In spite of himself, he watched Erida again. The whispers sharpened.

Say nothing; keep your distance, they said, howling with too many voices, all brittle as ice. Shadow the sword; hide its brilliance.

The summer wind blew cold, catching the flags of Galland. The Lion seemed to leap in the sky. At the pavilion, the Queen and her ladies clutched at their gowns. Andry shivered down to his toes.

Spindleblood and Spindleblade.

This time, the voices were as one: an old woman, rasping like a knife through silk. It almost sent Andry back to his knees. Shock kicked him in the gut, but he could not react, not here before a hundred eyes. Before the Queen, still watching him with her sapphire stare.

Even while willing the voice away, his hands fisted at his sides, Andry strained to remember it. But the voice was like smoke, twisting through his fingers, impossible to grasp. Disappearing in one breath of wind while flaring in another.

It curled again, seemingly all around him.

A new hand comes, the alliance made.

9

CHILDREN OF CROSSING

Domacridhan

Domacridhan saw so much of Cortael in her. Beneath her mother’s influence there was Corblood in her veins, as vital to Corayne’s being as roots to a tree. And just as tangled. She struggled with it, grappling with what she could not understand.

Cortael was the same, in his youth, Dom thought, remembering his friend when he was a boy. Restless and searching, hungry for a place to belong but hesitant to drop anchor. Such was the way of Old Cor: humans born of travel and crossing, conquest and voyage from one realm to the next. It was in their bones and blood, in their steel, in their souls.

And she does not understand, for there was no one to tell her.

He watched as Corayne haggled at the Lemarta stables, negotiating for three horses. The trader was eager to see them both gone—his eyes darted to Dom standing at her shoulder, and to the sword hanging at his side. Dom kept still under his scrutiny, trying not to draw more attention than need be.

She easily bargained the trader down to half his price, handing over a purse for reins.

There were two stallions and a mare, fully tacked with filled saddlebags, all common bays with brown bodies and black manes. Dom thought of the fine horse that died beneath him in Iona. It was like comparing a hawk to sparrows, but he did not complain. The horses would serve their purpose, and their destination was only a few days’ ride away.

Corayne smirked as they walked, leading the horses from the stables clustered against the western gate of Lemarta. Their shadows were short beneath them, the sun high in the sky.

“I don’t suppose I could convince you to work with me when this is all done?” she said.

There was laughter in her voice, but he could not fathom why.

“I do not follow,” he said, the words stilted.

She shrugged. “Merchants are easier to bargain with when they’re terrified, and you seem to terrify them.”

Dom felt strangely self-conscious. “I’m terrifying?” he blanched, glancing over himself.

Well, there’s the sword, and my daggers, and my knives, and the bow and my quiver, but that isn’t much, he thought, taking stock of his weaponry. He looked from his polished leather boots to his finely made breeches and tunic, and then his belt, his cloak, and the embossed bracers laced from his palms to elbows. Everything he wore bore the antlers, worked in muted colors, green and gray and golden brown, like the misty glens of Iona. His fine steel and mail, his master-woven silks and surcoats, lay forgotten at Tíarma. I look like a pauper, not a prince.

She looks even worse.

Corayne’s loose tunic frayed at the hem, there were stains no washing could remove on her breeches, and her boots cracked at the knee, wrinkled like a mortal’s aging skin. She had stuffed her dark blue cloak away, not needing it in the heat. She bore no weapons but an old dagger, and her eyes seemed oddly open, as if they could drink in every step forward. He knew she was young, barely more than a child, but she still seemed so small and weak alongside him. Most mortals did.

“Oh,” he offered. Again he glanced down, trying to comprehend himself through a mortal’s eyes. It felt impossible, like translating between two unknown languages. “That was not my intent.”

Those words are becoming uncomfortably familiar.

Corayne didn’t mind. “Well, keep it up. That scowl will serve us well on the road.”

“I do not scowl,” Dom said, scowling. He tested the corners of his mouth, pulling his lips into what he hoped was a less foreboding expression. “Do you expect trouble?”

The west road out of Lemarta wound further inland, with the cypress forest thickening up the hills. Dom could see clearly for miles over the cliffs and the Long Sea. Even the Tempestborn did not escape his gaze, a black speck with purple sails moving merrily into deeper water. If there was any danger ahead, he would sense it a long way off. But he had little concern this far south, in the sleepy lands of Siscaria. It had been long centuries since Old Cor had ruled these shores.

“I don’t suppose bandits will bother you much,” Corayne admitted. She watched not the water but the road as it wove away from the cliffs, pale pink stones giving over to a packed earth track, rutted by cart and carriage wheels.

Dom could not imagine what fool of a bandit would try his blade, but then mortals weren’t terribly intelligent to begin with. “Because I am intimidating?”

She nodded, pleased. Her eyes were still black, even in the sun of high noon.

She has Cortael’s eyes.

“Even when you aren’t trying.”

“So why can I not simply intimidate a ship’s captain to deliver us to Ascal directly?” he mused, looking back at Lemarta. Fishing boats bobbed like jewels among the shoals. “Why bother riding to the Siscarian capital at all?”

Scoffing, Corayne eased her mare to a stop. “Because, frightening as you might be, my mother is more feared in these waters.” With a sigh, she hoisted herself up into the saddle. Mortals were graceless beings, but she was particularly clumsy in this.