Gritting his teeth, Otec gave ground. “Tighten up!” A Raider’s sword slipped through his shield, piercing his already wounded arm.

  Another sword pierced his leg. He was losing too much blood. And his reactions were growing slower. Otec backed up, knowing he needed help. A swing came, and he knew he would be too slow to block.

  The Raider froze mid-swing, eyes bulging. By the hundreds, arrows rained down on the Raiders swarming the hill. But the arrows came from behind the Raiders.

  Otec staggered back and his clanmen stepped forward, blocking him from the Raiders. He let his arms fall, his axe and shield too heavy to hold up anymore. He traced the path of the arrows back to the hill on the other side of the rye field. He lifted his telescope and stared through it at a company of Argons. “Where did they . . .” and then he saw Seneth shouting out orders to what had to be two hundred and fifty men. “By the Balance, he’s got at least a hundred boys with him.”

  Otec heard a thunk and turned to see his axe had slipped from his hands. He stared at it, wondering how it had gotten on the ground. And then he saw the blood running like a river down his arm. He staggered back and realized his boots were full of blood. He fell to his knees and turned to see men from the encampment cresting the hill on the south side, Matka leading them.

  He reached for her, but the movement threw him off balance. He tipped over, landing hard on the rocks. Otec stared at the sky, wondering if this was how the leaves felt as they died, their colors bleeding out.

  And then Matka blocked his view. She didn’t say a word, just opened a bag and tied a ripped rag tight on his upper arm.

  Another woman knelt beside her. Otec recognized her—Ressa, Gen’s wife. “This is Otec? Should we move him?”

  “No!” Matka said breathlessly. “If I don’t get his bleeding stopped, he’ll be dead before we get anywhere.”

  Ressa glanced around. “But we’re at the front lines.”

  Matka leaned over Otec, looking into his eyes. “I’ve been on the front lines all my life.” Her words whispered against his lips. “Stay with me, Otec, and I’ll give you anything you want.”

  He looked into her dark eyes, determination rising like a wave within him. “Stay.”

  Tears pooling in her eyes, she nodded. “All right. I’ll stay if you will.”

  He smiled then, for he knew he’d won.

  It took two months and a harsh winter to finally drive the Raiders from the clan lands’ shores. Braving the freezing wind off the ocean, Otec found Matka standing well back from the edge of the cliffs and watching the departing Raider ships. His gaze dropped to the item she rubbed her thumb across. The elice blossom he had carved for her. The stem had long ago broken off, the wood shiny from the oils of her hands.

  So she had held the carving and rubbed it often. The thought made Otec bold. Fighting the dizziness that plagued him whenever he moved, he stood beside her and looked out over the water.

  “They’ll be back,” Matka said without looking at him. “Defeating them though they outnumbered you two to one . . . King Kutik’s humiliation will turn to hatred. And they will be back.”

  “Then we’ll defeat them again.” Otec stared at the ships, wondering if his sisters and younger brothers were aboard any of them, or already on their way to Idara.

  With enormous effort, he pushed the thought out of his mind. “I’ve spoken with Seneth—he’s agreed to marry us.”

  Matka turned to look at Otec. “I didn’t promise to marry you.”

  He realized he should have been more specific, but then he had been dying at the time. “I know you love me.”

  She wet her lips. “You know I can’t.”

  He touched her face—he’d been longing to touch her like this ever since the waterfall. “I won’t live my life in fear of curses. I see what I want. And I’m going to take it.”

  “I can’t do that to our daughter.”

  Otec stepped closer to her, unable to stand the distance between them. “Who says we’ll even have a daughter? All our children could be boys. Or we could die tomorrow and have no children at all. All I know is that we have to seize what happiness we can while we can.”

  Matka closed her eyes as if the thought were physically painful. “Otec . . .”

  Her hair had grown nearly to her chin. She was kind and good and strong. Most importantly, she held Otec’s heart, and he held hers. “No,” he said. Her head came up as he stepped closer again. “You are my light,” he continued. “Without you, the darkness would swallow me whole. I will not give you up. I will not allow anything else to be taken from me.”

  She stared into his gaze with watering eyes. “But the fairies are tricksy and cruel.”

  He tucked a lock of hair behind her ears. “And we are strong and brave.”

  Matka gave a sad smile. “I wish you could be that innocent man again. That the darkness had let you be.”

  Otec took her face in his hands. “But then I would never have appreciated the light. Marry me?”

  She tipped her head back, the sunlight touching her cheeks. A smile spread across her mouth. “I will.”

  Otec kissed her warm lips—lips that tasted of sunshine.

  With the cool spring breeze blowing across his back, Otec finished hammering the last shingle on the clan house’s new roof. He took a moment to look around his village. Most of the homes that could be saved were nearly finished. The rest were being knocked down, the salvageable stones to be reused in building new houses. Still, the village was only about half the size it had been, and the number of burial mounds behind the clan house had nearly doubled.

  The dirt was still fresh, the mounds an open wound on the face of the land. None of the graves held Otec’s loved ones; the right of burying them had been stolen from him too. Over time, grass and flowers would grow over them. The dirt would compact. But the graves would never completely fade.

  As his eyes strayed to Shyle Pass, he thought of his sisters. Storm’s baby would be crawling by now. He wondered if it was a boy or a girl. If his sisters had survived. If Holla’s spirit had been broken. How he could possibly be happy when they were slaves.

  Otec tried to push such dark thoughts away, but it was not easy. So he did what he always did when the darkness threatened to cripple him—he went looking for Matka.

  He found her in the barn, covered in hay and blood. She was smiling as she cleared the birth sack from the lamb’s face. “She came out backwards, but I managed to save her.”

  Through the darkness that haunted him, Matka had become his light. When the night came and neither of them could sleep, they held each other, the child growing in her belly a wonderful, terrifying lump between them.

  She went to the bucket of rainwater and washed her arms, chatting about the ewes and the new lambs—gifts from the other clans. She sobered when she told Otec that Dobber was so deep in the drink he had accidentally gone to the Bends’ home last night instead of his own. They couldn’t wake him to get him out, so he’d ended up sleeping on their floor.

  As Matka chattered on, Otec felt a swelling within him, a lightness that threatened to burst. And then she suddenly went silent, her hands going to her enormous belly. He stepped toward her, arms out to catch her if she fell. “Matka?”

  She grimaced and tried to cover it up with a smile. But her face was dark red, and she was holding her breath. She gripped his hand and hunched over.

  “Has your time come?” When she still didn’t answer, he wrapped an arm around her and helped her to the clan house. “How long have the pains been coming?” Otec knew more than most men about birth—after all, his mother and sisters had brought most of the Shyle’s babies into the world.

  Matka let out a long breath. “All morning. I thought they might go away like the others.”

  He set her down in the kitchen and hurried up the ladder to fetch blankets and pillows. “I’m getting Enrid.”

  “No, I—” Matka’s voice cut off. She pinched her eyes shut and nodded.

  Otec sprinted through the village and shoved open the door to Enrid’s house. She took one look at him and simply grabbed her bag.

  Not waiting for her, he ran back to the clan house. Matka had squatted in front of the empty hearth, both hands resting on the rock fireplace. He crouched beside her. “What do you want me to do?”

  Enrid stepped through the doorway. “Get outside with you. This is woman’s work.” Otec looked at Matka, his eyes begging her to let him stay. Enrid rolled her eyes. “You won’t want him here, Matka.”

  Matka nodded for him to go.

  Jaw clenched, he paced outside the kitchen door, wearing a pathway through the weeds. When his wife let out her first moan, he stopped and dropped down by the door. For the first time in a long time, he wanted to carve something, take all his nervous energy and create something beautiful with it.

  While Matka moaned and panted, Otec went in search of a piece of wood. His knife sawed through the rough exterior, cutting away until he reached bright, virgin wood. He sliced away one layer at a time, leaving beautiful whorls that piled up around him. Once he had the basic shape, he added details—the legs, the ears, the tail—until he had a magnificent stallion, ears perked, face proud. He wished he had the paint to make it black, with a star on his forehead, for that’s what he envisioned.

  A wail rose up from inside the house—an infant’s cry. Otec’s eyes welled with tears at such a familiar sound, one that had been severely lacking from a home that used to echo with the cries of children.

  He stepped inside to see Matka holding their child and staring at a scrunched-up red face below a tuft of wild blond hair. Tears streamed down Matka’s cheeks as she smiled brightly up at Otec.

  Enrid stepped past him. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Barely hearing her depart, he dropped to his knees and unwrapped the blanket a little. A grin broke across his face. He wrapped the child again and touched his forehead to Matka’s. “You see. I told you they could not control us.”

  She chuckled, opening her mouth to respond, when a flurry of wings made Otec’s head jerk up. The owl fairy flew into the room in her human-like form, gazing at his child. Otec put himself between them—he didn’t even want the creature to look upon his baby.

  “I see you have your son,” the fairy said smoothly.

  He took his carving knife in hand, wishing it was his axe. “Yes, a son. Not a daughter.”

  She tipped her head. “Foolish human. I do not set the board, only the players. Your son is important to the game—just not as important as his sister will be.”

  Otec launched the knife, but the fairy spun, wings whirling. She landed in a crouch on the kitchen table, her eyes glittering with rage.

  He pointed to the door. “Get out and never come back. Or I will kill him myself and destroy your games once and for all.”

  She bared her teeth at him. “Liar.”

  Otec turned and took hold of his son. Matka held on, her expression fierce. He met her gaze, his eyes asking her to trust him.

  She reluctantly released their baby. Otec took his son, love swelling within him as the boy blinked up at him. Otec held him over a bowl of water, hoping his face didn’t betray the lie. “I’ll drown him.”

  The fairy stepped back, her talons scraping against the table. “Enjoy your happiness, little human. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  She flared her wings, shot through the open door, and disappeared from view. Otec sagged, holding his son to his chest. Matka sobbed behind him.

  He crouched next to her and deposited his son in his wife’s arms. “Only an infant, and he freed us from her presence.”

  “But what she said . . .”

  Otec kissed her forehead. “She said we would have a daughter, and we had a son. She can’t know the future—no one can.”

  Enrid barreled into the room. “Was that an owl?”

  Otec ignored the midwife. “What will we call him?”

  “Bratton,” Matka said at once.

  Otec pushed back her shoulder-length hair. “Why Bratton?”

  She shrugged. “Because I like the way it sounds.”

  Otec had wanted to name him Hargar, after his father. But Matka’s eyes were haunted, the bright joy of before overcome with shadows. He could give her this. “I like it,” he said.

  She took his hand. “Do you really think we can beat them?”

  He rested his hand on his son’s forehead. “We already have.”

  Continue reading for exclusive bonus content of the next book in the series, Winter Queen.

  Ilyenna’s horse danced nervously beneath her, the animal’s hooves clicking against the snow-covered stones that coated the land like dragon eggs. Reaching down, she patted her mare’s golden neck. “Easy, Myst. What’s the matter, girl?”

  “There.” Her father pointed at the base of a forested hillock not fifty paces beyond the road. Ilyenna saw the shadowed form of a large animal.

  Bratton soundlessly pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it. “Bear?” He directed the question at their father.

  The word stirred currents of tension in Ilyenna’s body. The cold stung her cheeks and formed a vapor no matter how shallowly she breathed. As she glanced up and down the road, her hand gripped the knife belted around her bulky wool coat.

  “I think it’s a horse,” Bratton finally said.

  Ilyenna eased her mare forward for a better look. It was a horse—a bay. “Then where is his rider—” The words died in her throat when she spotted a motionless gray lump at the horse’s feet. Without thought, she rammed her heels into her mare’s ribs.

  “Stop!” her father cried at the same time Bratton called, “Ilyenna!”

  But the healer in her couldn’t be denied. In three of the horse’s strides, she was in the forest. She pressed herself flush against Myst’s muscular neck. Still, larch trees managed to slap her, leaving the sharp scent of their needles in her hair and clothes. Clumps of snow shook loose from their sagging boughs, falling across her horse’s mane and into her face. Yet Ilyenna barely registered the icy shock.

  The other horse shied away. Myst tossed her head and balked, but Ilyenna didn’t have time to hesitate. She jumped from the saddle, and her heavy boots sank into drifts up to her thighs. Grateful for her riding leggings, she struggled toward the man, whose face was blue with cold.

  Her heavy riding skirt spread around her as she knelt beside him. Strangely, even in this frigid weather, he wore no coat. Beneath him, the white snow was stained crimson. An arrow shaft stuck out of his left side, and his mouth was coated with bloody foam.

  A quick assessment revealed the arrow head had passed completely through his chest, but the shaft was still lodged inside him. Ilyenna couldn’t imagine riding in that kind of pain. Each of the horse’s strides would’ve reopened the wound and spilled more blood.

  Fear rose in Ilyenna’s gut, and she wondered what had driven this man to ride himself so close to death. The lump rose higher when she recognized the knots in the stranger’s clan belt. “An Argon,” she announced as her brother and her father reined in behind her. Instantly, her mind went to the Argon clan, and her brother’s best friend, Rone.

  At the mere thought of the boy from her childhood, a hundred memories came unbidden. Memories she wished to banish forever. But over the last six years, that had proven impossible. She bit the inside of her cheek, forcing herself to concentrate as she pulled her sheepskin-lined mittens from her hands and probed the man for additional wounds.

  “You can’t just run off,” her brother growled as he dropped beside her. “What if his attacker was still here?”

  Ilyenna kept her expression neutral. Even though she was seventeen, her brother would never see her as anything but a child—one incapable of caring for herself, let alone their clan. Thankfully, the calm sureness that always accompanied her healing steeled her voice. “He’s not breathing well. Get him on your knees.”

  Despite his obvious annoyance, Bratton quickly obeyed.

  “Why would an Argon appear in Shyle lands with an arrow in his side?” she murmured as she worked to stop the bleeding.

  Bratton’s grip tightened around his axe hilt as his gaze probed the forest. “Only Raiders would attack the clans.”

  Ilyenna suppressed a shudder at the mention of the Raiders, men who survived by pillaging and enslaving those they conquered.

  “Raiders don’t come this far inland,” her father said. He handed his coat to Ilyenna, who draped it over the man. Her father pointed to the arrow that rose and fell with each of the Argon’s labored breaths. “Besides, I saw a Raider’s arrow as a boy. This isn’t one.”

  “Then whose arrow is it?” Bratton asked.

  Ilyenna eyed her brother carefully. There was something odd about his expression, as if he suspected more than he was saying.

  Her father frowned. “It looks clan made.”

  Neither Ilyenna nor Bratton had a response for that. It was an impossible thought. The Clans didn’t fight among themselves; they banded together to fight against outsiders. Pressing her ear to the injured man’s chest, she listened to a sound like the gurgling of a gentle stream. She sat back on her heels. “His lungs have filled with blood. He’s drowning.”

  Even as she said it, the urge to fight against death pulled at her, though she knew all too well how useless fighting it was. All things served the Balance. Life and death were no different. Though Ilyenna’s calling was to battle for life, without death, there would be no birth.

  Her father bent down and gently shook the man’s shoulder. He moaned softly before settling back to his labored breathing. The death rattle. Her father looked at her questioningly. “Should we take him to the clan house?”

  She shook her head. “You know he won’t make it.”

  With grim determination, her father leaned over the man and shook harder.

  Had something happened to the Argons? To Rone? Ilyenna had to know. She applied pressure where the wounded man’s thumb met his palm. His lids fluttered, revealing the whites of his eyes. She pinched harder. His eyes opened wide.

 

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