The Forest King’s Daughter

7

Azpians crave darkness and small spaces.

To be in air and sunlight is their greatest agony.

—E XCHARIAS, S YLVAN POET

A S C ASSIA STARED AT THE PLACE WHERE THE doorway had been, she put her hand to a tree trunk, craving something solid and familiar. The rough bark helped ground her, but she couldn’t sense these trees the way she could in Thirstwood. It made her nervous and a little hollow inside. This forest was another unknown. And there was an eerie sense of waiting, as if the forest had eyes that watched them in silence.

She glanced at Zeru, his face a paler blotch against the greenish black of the forest. Though the moon was full, scant light made its way through the canopy. There was a golden glint where the amulet hung around his neck. If she placed the gemstone in it, would it open a doorway back? It would be comforting to know she had an exit. But an exit to where? Back to the Cryptlands, most likely. Anyway, that wasn’t the problem at hand.

There was no discernible path, no direction that looked safe or inviting. She turned in a circle until she spied a break in the growth. Zeru must have seen it, too. Knife drawn, he pushed his way through the tall underbrush. As she watched him disappear among the trees, her lips parted at this evidence of his arrogance. He just assumed she would follow.

As he moved farther away, she could breathe and think. The forest was her realm, not his. She didn’t have to trudge along after him, following his every order like one of her father’s hounds. She could search for answers on her own, maybe even lose him in the woods. If the Ancients were on her side, he’d be hopelessly lost while she found… whatever it was she was looking for here.

She threw herself into the undergrowth. The plants were dry, not as thick as they first appeared. This might not be her forest, but it was similar enough that she moved with efficiency. In a minute, she was yards away and widening the gap with every step.

Rustling was followed by a howl of rage. She moved faster.

It was hard work moving through the thick plants, especially in the gloom, but Sylvan instincts, her experience in the woods, and a hearty dose of fear of the Dracu who was crashing after her made her keep pushing on. She had a flash of memory: running through Thirstwood with her hand in Zeru’s. Now she was running from him.

After a few minutes, the noises behind her faded. She’d lost him.

Gradually, the trees grew farther apart, and morning light filtered in, though everything seemed strangely gray. Twisted pines and oaks gave way to a stunted, near-dead orchard. Past the withered apple and pear trees, a dilapidated stone wall begged to be explored.

She had made it… somewhere.

The celebratory feeling lasted until she heard a clearing throat. Her breath caught as she turned. Zeru stood in the shadows at the edge of the tree line, leaning against an elm. Her shoulders slumped. He must have been moving with equal speed along another path, and they’d both ended up here. She was on the balls of her feet, ready to run, when she realized he wasn’t moving.

Dawn. The rising sun would prevent him from leaving the shadows. She let out her breath. Then, deeming it safe, she smiled.

His face registered the taunt with a silent, angry glare.

Matching his stance, she leaned against a withered pear tree. “Good morning.”

His eyes went heavy-lidded. “Your sense of safety is misplaced.”

“I don’t think so.” Either he would step out into the light and fall to the ground writhing in pain or he’d have to stay in the forest until dark. The sky was brightening by the moment. She’d have a whole day to explore without him. She lifted her face. “Looks like it’ll be sunny today. Sylvans can survive for weeks on sunlight and water alone, you know.”

“Good for you,” he muttered, levering himself off the tree. His hands were fisted, but still he didn’t step forward.

She knew it was ill-advised to continue taunting him, yet she couldn’t help herself. It was too delicious, this reversal. She watched the angle of the sun with anticipation.

He was watching it, too, his eyes flicking from the growing brightness to her. “If you’re hoping to slit my throat while I’m laid low, think again.”

She raised her brows, disappointed in herself that she hadn’t thought of that. “What I’m thinking is, I don’t need to stand around while you hover at the edge of your greatest fear.”

His jaw firmed. “I am not… hovering.”

She took a few steps away, keeping him in her peripheral vision. “I’ll leave you to it.”

He slammed his hand against the tree so hard it made Cassia wince. “You are not going to explore while I’m trapped here.”

“It seems like that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

With an angry noise, he stepped out of the trees.

She gasped. She hadn’t expected him to do something so stupid.

He tensed as sunlight fell on his face, the warm rays of dawn unhindered by shadows. She waited for him to cry out, to fall.

They blinked at each other.

He breathed audibly as he lifted his hands, looking at one, then the other. “It was a theory,” he said in awestruck tones. “Your ring never affected me. I always wondered, but…” He shook his head. “I can walk in sunlight.” He said the words reverently, like it was something impossible that had come to pass. And then he chuckled, low and satisfied. It made her stomach turn.

“No,” she muttered. The one small advantage she’d had, taken away. She squeezed her eyes shut, wondering if the Ancients were against her.

When she opened her eyes, he was moving toward her, each step more relaxed and self-assured than the last. She looked around for an escape.

“Please give me a reason to hunt you down,” he said.

She crossed her arms. She would not run. She waited for him to grab her, yell at her, something.

He looked her over, then nodded in the direction of the wall. “You first.”

Shakily, she led the way, telling herself at least she’d had a few minutes out of his company.

The stone wall was more decorative than protective, perhaps, with an arched opening leading into a courtyard. Clay pots littered the area, some broken, others full of weeds. Spindly trees and climbing plants poked between the flagstones, twisting this way and that as if searching for sun. A haze hung in the sky like a blanket of cobwebs. Maybe that was the reason Zeru had not fallen from the sunlight.

Or maybe there was something very wrong with this place.

On the other side of the courtyard, a set of steps led to a building covered in vines. It was so overgrown, it took a second to take in the extent of it. To Cassia’s surprise, it appeared to be a castle with four towers, each topped with what once might have been gold spires. The haze in the air must have prevented them from seeing it from a distance.

Zeru climbed the steps, pulling away vines to reveal a set of double doors, each bearing feathers made of copper, silver, and gold. Together, the two doors made a beautiful pair of wings. He grabbed one of the handles and the door opened with a grudging creak.

Cassia looked around. Again, she considered running. But if Welkincaster held answers, they seemed likely to be inside this place.

Following Zeru, she found herself in a dark entrance hall. Dust filled her nostrils, gray light creeping through gaps in shutters that covered the windows. Doors led off into dark rooms and a staircase led up to a balcony. She could barely make out a chandelier hanging from the rafters. The flooring looked elegant underneath its layer of dust, wooden inlay painted copper and gold in a diamond pattern. A cracked mirror hung above a massive hearth.

Cassia headed for the stairway. Zeru followed on her heels.

On the second floor, they found various empty rooms including a ballroom darkened by shutters. On the third floor was a portrait gallery. Cassia stopped to stare a painting of a distinguished-looking man in yellow robes. Sprouting from his back were dark wings that looked like those of a bat, with a claw at the end of each segment. She shuddered—they reminded her of an imp. Every painting seemed to show the same type of creature, a winged being of unknown variety.

“We shouldn’t be here,” she murmured, voicing a bone-deep uneasiness.

Zeru’s voice close behind made her jump. “You sound scared.”

She opened her mouth to deny it but found she couldn’t. Of course she was scared. Turning away, she continued down a hallway, the floor creaking with her every step.

“I have spent only a few hours in your company,” Zeru said as he walked next to her, his footsteps somehow making far less noise than hers, “and already I have no fear of you. I expected the Deathringer to be a hardened soldier, as cold and efficient as the rest of the Huntsmen, her senses honed by training and battle.” He gave her a once-over, insultingly dismissive. “It seems all you have is the ring. And even that doesn’t work on me.”

She considered whether she was fast enough to grab his dagger and skewer him before he could stop her. His words stung. She reminded herself she’d been abducted, subjected to the magic of a powerful Seer, and sent to a strange, neglected landscape with no idea how she’d get home, all in one night. But that did not change the fact that she had done little to try to best this enemy. What would her father think? He would expect her to show strength and cunning, to make the enemy fear her. If only she knew how to do that.

“There’s something wrong with you,” she said, striding after him as he continued on. “Every other Azpian falls under the ring’s blast.”

“That ‘something wrong’ has saved me every time you used the ring.” His mocking laugh grated on her nerves. “For all the fear your name brings, you have nothing without the ring.”

Give me a dagger, and then we’ll see , she thought. What he didn’t know about her was that she never gave up. She might not be Thea, able to kill with her bare hands, but her determination was boundless. She would let him underestimate her, she decided, and wait for her chance.

At the end of the third-floor hallway, they found a dilapidated set of stairs. Treading carefully, Cassia reached the top to find a door to a tower room with windows facing the barely visible outlines of the forest. A wooden four-poster bed dominated the chamber, its mattress bare but for a blanket of dust. She stepped in and looked around, sneezing as dust assaulted her nose. She turned in time to see the door slam behind her. She grabbed the handle and pulled. Locked? She wasn’t strong enough to budge it. She pounded on the door. “Dracu, you are not leaving me here!”

“It seems that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he replied, his voice muffled by the door.

Furious, she pounded on the door until her hands ached. Until it was clear he had gone. She slumped against the door. She’d let her guard down, and this predicament was her own cursèd fault. If he kept her locked in here, she’d never find a way to master the ring’s full potential. She needed to be able to move freely about the castle to search for information. Without any immediate ideas for how to achieve that, she assessed her surroundings.

In a word, disgusting. Cobwebs everywhere, dust an inch thick. Something in the corners that might have been animal droppings. She moved to the window. The rusty latch gave way, and fresh air poured in. The stone sill was wide enough to sit on, so she hopped up, putting her head outside. The drop was vertical and far. She eyed the moldy curtains. Even if she tied them together, they wouldn’t be long enough to make a rope. For a while, she watched the scene from the window, noting the twisted, sickly trees and wishing she could speak to them, ask them for help.

The click of a key turning in the lock came a second before her door opened. As Zeru strolled in, a pulse of fear tore through her, making her fingers and toes tingle, the bargain not to harm her insignificant with the open window at her back.

“Please, Sylvan,” he said, leaning against one of the bedposts, “you’ll only dash your brains out. Surely it hasn’t come to that.”

“I wasn’t going to jump.” She gave him a dark look and hopped down. “Worried I’ll scratch the Solis Gemma?”

“If it could be scratched, I’m sure you’d have managed it by now. Can you read?”

She blinked at the unrelated question. “Of course I can. I had excellent tutors.”

“Can you read Runic?” he asked. “I understand that’s a requirement for higher born Sylvans.”

She frowned. Having good tutors did not mean she’d been the best pupil. “A little.”

He gave her a knowing look. “A very little, I’d say, by the look in your eyes. What about Old Sylvan?”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Yes. My father insisted his daughters be able to read the old myths and histories. Why?”

“I found a library.” Without another word, he strode out.

It took a second to sink in. That could be what Selkolla had sent them to find! She hurried after him, down the tower stairs, along third-floor hallways until she caught up to him at the foot of another set of twisting stairs that led to a chamber filled with books.

She had a sudden, quicksilver pulse of hope. Information about the ring could be in this very room! She marveled at the floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with scrolls and codices. Scarhamm had a library with dark-paneled walls, cubbies jammed full of maps and scrolls, and a dented wooden table for reading them. Her father’s purpose there was always practical: researching his enemies and planning how to destroy them.

But this was cozy and inviting. An upholstered seat stretched below the arched window. White and gold side tables held dusty piles of books, and a red velvet chair sat in one corner. She turned in a slow circle, taking in the shelves. “It’ll take months to look through all these,” she murmured.

“That’s why you’re here.” Zeru was studying the room with a look she could only describe as acquisitive awe, as if all of this belonged to him. “By the glint in your eye, Sylvan, I can see I need to spell out what I expect from you.”

She was growing tired of his contemptuous tone. “Yes, please tell me what a person is supposed to do in this room. Juggling? Winemaking? Perhaps some light swordplay?”

He ignored her. “I expect you to read every day until it grows so dark that your Sylvan eyes fail you, and then I’ll ask for your report. When I ask if you’ve read anything relevant to the ring, you’ll answer me truthfully. It’ll be a yes or no question, with no room for prevarication or Sylvan deception. If you say yes, I’ll look through what you’ve been reading, and I’ll find the information myself.”

“Oh, I see.” She shook her head at his arrogance. “What if the book is in Old Sylvan?”

“Then you’ll translate it for me.”

She leaned in the doorway, crossing her arms. “And if I refuse? You can’t hurt me. Your own word prevents you.”

He dropped into the red chair, picking up a book from the table next to it. “Then I’ll consider how best to strike at others you care about.” He turned a page. “Your family, perhaps.”

Protective rage roared up inside her. But his threats were empty. He couldn’t get at her family.

“You can’t force me to share information,” she said, clipping each word out like a poisoned dart. “You can ask, but I won’t answer.”

He watched her for a minute, his frustration palpable. A muscle moved in his cheek. “Then go.” He motioned her out, returning his attention to the book. “You’re no use to me.”

You’re no use to me.

Her eyes burned as she remembered her father saying those words. A Deathringer who brings no death is no use to me.

She looked down at the Solis Gemma, which sat dull and innocuous looking on her finger. It was the reason she’d come here. The Dracu was making no concessions, but what did that matter? She’d find a way to take what she needed. In her own time, in her own way, despite his insults.

Blinking hard, she walked to a shelf. Grabbing two books at random, she stalked back to the door, preparing to sweep out.

Zeru spoke sharply. “You’re not leaving with those. They stay here.”

She turned slowly to face him, meeting his eyes and hoping he could see the fury in hers. “You expect me to sit here with you and read? As if it’s nothing.”

He stared back, green glare implacable. “If I can do it, so can you.”

She swallowed her anger. It was a challenge. A test of her strength. She could not show weakness.

She went to the window seat and made herself comfortable, or as much as possible with tension tightening the muscles of her spine. The book was written in Old Sylvan. She relaxed a fraction. Maybe it had the answers. Regardless, she would get to leave this place soon.