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Chapter Seventeen

Guinevere

Try as she might, Guinevere couldn’t stay away from Oskar.

No matter how charming Elaras was, in his own rough, earthy manner—no matter how fascinating she found him, the first warden of the forest she’d ever met—her thoughts were never far from the scowling man drifting behind them like a particularly dour thundercloud.

It wasn’t long before she left Elaras to his own devices—not that he seemed to mind, as he was quite happy crooning at Pudding and Vindicator—and she doubled back to walk beside Oskar.

“I’m sorry,” she said ruefully.

He blinked. “What for?”

“I complained again. Right after I promised I would stop.”

Somehow, he looked even grumpier. “You’re going through a situation that you were never expected to face. You’re handling it much better than I would have, had our lives been reversed. From now on, Guinevere, quit apologizing for every little thing that’s not your fault.”

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. Then she realized that she’d apologized for always apologizing, and something in her went cold.

She knew why she did it, of course. She knew where that habit of hers came from. But for someone else to put it into words…it was embarrassing, and awful.

They eventually reached a clearing, where they stopped for lunch.

Oskar attached the feed bags to the horses, then vanished into the undergrowth to hunt.

Guinevere perched on an exposed tree root while Elaras leaned against its trunk, and the look that he subjected her to was so penetrating that she soon began to fidget.

Even the caterpillars in his blond beard were staring at her.

But it eventually became clear that the feygiant’s gaze was fixed somewhere south of her chin. With a start, she realized that her totem had spilled from her bodice at some point, and she hurried to tuck it back in, safely out of sight.

“Wait.” Elaras held up a furry, long-fingered hand. “Watch.”

Guinevere did as he instructed, quietly subsiding while the swamp burbled and thrilled around them.

And, when it happened, it happened like spring sped up—the humid, greenish air took on a brighter tone, the weak sunlight fell in a cloud of gold upon the tiny bird skull dangling from her neck, and the little fern in its hollow rustled amidst a breeze that blew in from another world.

The lacy fronds twitched and unfurled around a new stalk that sprouted from the plant’s center, a stalk that swelled into a fresh green bud that then opened, ever so gently, into a miniature swirl of spiked magenta petals.

Guinevere let out a gasp. She cradled the pointed skull in one trembling palm, her fingertips carefully brushing against the thistle flower that now adorned it. Her veins thrummed with echoes of power. Everything about this moment was too big for her heart to hold.

“So much of magic like ours is this,” said Elaras of the wilds.

“The leap in the sparrow’s pulse as it casts itself into the wind.

The galloping of horses over an open plain.

The sound grass makes when it grows. All you have to do is listen.

” He scratched his shoulder idly. “It’s around us, the song of Exandria. All you have to do is embrace it.”

Guinevere shuddered. “My magic is not like yours.” To say it out loud for the first time—to admit to someone else that she had magic—it felt like sacrilege.

It was an upset to the careful order of things.

Her fingers curled a bit more tightly around her totem.

The petals brushed against her skin, as soft as butterfly wings.

“I cannot create anything. I can only destroy. If you knew what lives inside me—” The words caught in her throat.

If Oskar knew…

“I can hear her, somewhat,” Elaras told her. “The embers. You have never really listened to her before, have you?” Taking her silence as confirmation, he suggested, “You should give it a try.”

“I can’t.” Guinevere swallowed. “If she manifests, she’ll hurt you.”

An understanding smile broke out on the feygiant’s cowlike face. “She won’t manifest. It’s a harmless little chat. And, in any case, I can take care of myself,” he said soothingly. “Just listen to her. Shall I teach you?”

Guinevere knew that she really shouldn’t. Not only could Oskar come back at any moment, but this thing that lived inside her was a sickness. It should not be encouraged.

That was what the rational part of Guinevere believed. The part that was a good daughter and a proper lady.

But there was another part as well. The part that belonged to the wilderness that she’d found last night, in Oskar’s arms, her throat bared to Catha and Ruidus.

Her stable, orderly, well-behaved future lay at the end of the Amber Road, but before she got there, she could be the girl who wanted to see the elven ruins, who wanted to summit the Dunrock.

The girl who had ranted at a troll and lived to tell the tale.

If she didn’t try now, could she really live the rest of her life not knowing?

Guinevere took a deep breath and nodded mutely at Elaras.

It was a rush akin to stepping off a cliff.

The warden taught her how to sit, back straight, arms folded, legs crossed over the grass.

He bade her close her eyes, and she did, the darkness seeping in, the sounds of the swamp roaring to life in the absence of sight.

He guided her through a slow and rhythmic breathing pattern, telling her to focus on the air collecting in her lungs and on the letting go of it. Over and over again.

“Find the connection, Guinevere.” Elaras’s voice was as deep as the moss. It beat on like a drum. “It’s there inside you. Let it all unfold.”

Guinevere tried. She really did. But something about sitting still and quiet made her uncomfortable.

All her little doubts, every unpleasant thought and memory she’d ever had—they rose to the surface, unimpeded.

She felt vulnerable, laid bare—and also like she was doing something wrong.

Any moment now her parents would come charging in from the bushes and yell at her, because why wasn’t she hiding her curse, why was she putting her family’s future in jeopardy—

It was a child’s fear and, thus, bigger than worlds. Guinevere gave a violent jerk, opening her eyes with a panicked exhale.

Elaras was frowning. But it wasn’t directed at her. His hazel eyes were open, too, glazed over with a faint, eerie light. The air trembled, stirred by invisible currents of magic.

“Mr. Elaras?” Guinevere called out anxiously. “Are you quite all right—”

“Someone’s looking for you,” he cut across her, his tone hushed. He looked genuinely afraid for her, and a chill went down her spine. “I’m sensing…a heavy presence. How did you come to make such a powerful enemy?”

“I don’t—I’m—” She tensed, remembering her dream. Her father holding the blade, the figure standing behind him. That hoarse command: “ Do it now. ” Her father’d had to do something, before someone…

There had been a name. She’d heard it as clear as crystal then, but now it hovered frustratingly out of her reach.

Her gaze flickered to the pearwood trunk strapped to Pudding’s back.

Mercenaries always worked for someone else, didn’t they?

Was it the same powerful presence that the feygiant was picking up on?

Dear gods, what had her parents gotten her into?

When Guinevere looked at Elaras again, deep furrows were carved into his brow.

After a while, he shook his head in annoyance, long ears twitching.

“I lost the thread,” he muttered. “You might be dealing with another magic user. Which makes it all the more imperative for you to learn how to wield your magic.”

“But it’s impossible!” Guinevere burst out. “I can’t!”

“At this point,” said Elaras, “I don’t think it matters whether you can. The simple fact is that you have to. You must learn how to protect yourself. And the horses.” He paused, then added begrudgingly, “And Oskar.”

When he put it like that, of course Guinevere had no choice.

She would do anything to keep her little party safe.

She summoned some semblance of determination from deep within herself, and she closed her eyes once more and let Elaras guide her through the meditation process anew.

This time, she tuned out all her niggling fears, and it was easier now that she had a purpose.

Oskar, Pudding, and Vindicator. She would protect them from…well, whoever it was.

The various noises of Labenda settled in around her.

She opened her heart to it all, and it was impossible until it wasn’t.

Something clicked like one last puzzle piece sliding into place, the great chain of being turning over with the song of the seasons.

She gripped her totem, her fingers curving through silver and around bone, the earth of her origins warm and soft.

She found the pathway and she followed it down, into herself, into the ashes.

And somewhere there at journey’s end, Teinidh of the Wailing Embers turned to Guinevere and grinned a mouth of fiery coals, like she had been waiting.

Hello.