“I’ve always known my duty, changeling. And I’ve never had any choice in it.” His voice rang hollow. “So I still have to do whatever I must to free Eala.”
A root of sorrow wrapped around my chest and crushed my ribs, making me gasp. I fought sorrow and helplessness and guilt. Was this truly how the story ended? The hero prince ground to dustbeneath the boot of duty? The changeling witch made to betray the truest parts of herself? The shining princess so caught up in her own schemes and manipulations that she had lost sight of her own light?
As the sun rose and birds awakened, we walked through the golden forest to Dún Darragh.
There were only two months until Samhain, until the Ember Moon. Only one full moon, as the world slackened, the trees crowned themselves in glory, and winter gnawed at the metal bones of an aging year.
I didn’t know what I was going to do. I only knew two months wasn’t enough time to decide.
Chapter Forty
Muin—Vine
Early Autumn
With a sigh, summer turned cool and golden.
After the warm season’s sweet lull, I was busy in the garden once more. My list of chores expanded as the days cooled. There was weeding and raking and pruning. Next year’s bulbs to plant. Pricking out seedlings for the winter crop. Planting new roses, hardy climbers, shrubs, trees, and perennials while the ground still held summer’s heat.
Why bother?whispered a tiny voice in my head. Samhain was in two months. Whatever happened, I would soon be gone from here. And without my ministrations, this place would return to the way it was before. The greenhouse would decay, its glass panes splitting and its metal slats warping. The spring-fed grotto would clog with leaves. The flowers would die, and the vegetables would rot in the ground. The earth would go fallow and the forest would creep in, returning this place to nature.
To balance.
But after all the time and effort I’d poured into it over the pasteleven months, I couldn’t abandon it. Not yet. So I kept working, savoring these last cool sunlit afternoons in the garden. Burying them like acorns to be unearthed later—when frost grew cruel.
For Rogan’s part, Eala’s dubious revelation was a load lifted from his shoulders. He mended fences and trimmed hedges, bending blackthorn branches and weaving hawthorn. He unearthed a scythe from some forgotten corner of the dún and, after an afternoon spent sharpening its blade, mowed great swaths along the paths and groves. His sun-browned muscles rippled with each stroke, but I didn’t like to watch him. Each stalk of golden grass falling before his scythe felt like the moments I had left—moments of sunlight, moments of summer. Moments to decide what I was going to do.
The year was growing old. I was running out of time.
“Careful, changeling!” Rogan called up to me. “If you fall from that height, you’ll break every bone in your body!”
I looked down from my perch near the top of the overgrown apple tree, then ignored him, swinging higher.
The days and nights were almost equal—soon, the year would hurtle perilously toward winter. Leaves had ignited like tongues of flame as trees scattered seeds upon the wind. And the orchard had put forth a bumper crop of crisp, shiny apples. Which was why I was up here and Rogan was down there. Trying not to panic, which was the first funny thing to happen to me in weeks.
“Fia, honestly! Please come down.”
“How did I not know,” I shouted at him, “that the brave princeling was afraid of heights?”
“Anyone who’s not afraid of heights just doesn’t have a very good imagination!”
I grinned, grasping the gnarled branch where the sweetest sun-ripened apples stubbornly clung.
“Chiardhubh, chiardhubh,” sang Corra, merrily scampering from winking leaf to knotted boll. They teased willing breezes to bend apple-laden twigs closer to my hands. “She’ll make us apple pudding and apple pies, apple arms and apple thighs. Teach us the hows and show us the whys!”
“Me, make apple pie?” I snorted, plucking the last few apples and tucking them into my pockets before swinging lower. “Rogan, do you remember the time—”
I landed on solid earth with a thump, my words catching in my throat. Rogan wasn’t looking at me—he stared into the bright-dark line of trees, the apple basket forgotten in his arms. I followed his gaze but saw only dying leaves, red as strawflower and yellow as rose mallow.
“What is it?” I laid my palm on his bicep. His skin flinched like a horse’s hide beneath a fly. I let my hand drop.
“I thought I saw—” Rogan’s hands tightened on the wicker basket.
“What?” I stepped toward the painted forest, my eyes combing through gathering shadows.
What I saw there chilled me.
Leaves crunched as I fell to my knees beside the body of a fawn. Or what was left of it. The juvenile doe’s head was perfectly intact, if appallingly lifeless—her slender snout half-parted, pointed ears limp, amber eyes glazed. Her chestnut coat had already begun to thicken for the winter, obscuring the parallel lines of white spots curving down her back. Her front legs sprawled, delicate and disjointed.
