Motion along the shore captured my gaze. In the moonlight’s spell, a bevy of swans were gathered by the water’s silver edge. My breath froze in my throat. Without looking away, I grabbed Rogan’s arm, directing his attention toward the lough.
The swans ruffled bone-white feathers and unfurled powerful wings as they gathered on the pebbled beach. Their movements took on a swaying, hypnotic quality. They surged like ghosts against the darkness of the lake.
The moment fractured. Feathers drifted down to reveal soft, supple skin. Beaks became delicate noses and laughing mouths. Wings unveiled waving arms.
Where the swans had been stood twelve human girls. There was a brief frenzy of activity—sisterly embraces and muted exclamations. Then, almost as one, they danced away along the shore. Their feet seemed to skim the water, held aloft by night’s strange grace. The roaring moon bleached their limbs white as the swans they’d been mere moments before.
Neither Rogan nor I spoke as we crept after the swan maidens. Though they were far from identical—their heights varied, as did their hair, skin color, and features—each carried herself with the poise of a dancer and the air of a mirage. They were sisters—if not in blood, then in the strange curse binding them together.
The maidens paused at the base of the hill beneath the fort.Rogan and I inched as close as we dared, blinking against the brilliance of the flowers carpeting the rise. They shone like fallen stars, and I felt a sudden desire to pluck one, to pluck themall, to weave them into a garland and wear them in my hair and—
I pressed hard against my bracelet of thorns. The flash of pain cleared my head.
I wouldnotlet this place seduce me with illusions and fancies.
The girls crouched down among the flowers, gathering them up. Their fingers began to bleed, droplets of crimson spattering across the ivory blooms. Revulsion scraped up my throat, but the girls only laughed and chattered as they twisted the flowers into necklaces and tucked them into each other’s hair.
One girl didn’t join them. She stood proud, waiting for the other maidens to bring the flowers to her. Before long, they did so, tangling them in the blond waves skimming her spine down to the back of her legs. Soon, she wore a luminous crown of bloody stars.
Rogan shifted in the undergrowth. A twig snapped.
The girl turned at the sound.
Vertigo washed over me. I knew what I would see before I saw it.
My skin, blanched white as a swan’s feather. My mud-dark hair, but frothing pale as fairy flax. My green-and-brown eyes, but blue as dawn. My petite frame, but soft instead of hard, elegant instead of brutal.
She was I, and I was she, and we were neither one of us each other.
Eala.The queen’s true daughter, alive and breathing. She stared a moment longer into the forest as the other maidens blithely continued braiding their glowing garlands.
Rogan was rapt, his attention fixed on his long-awaited princess. He started forward. But I gripped his arm, digging my nails into his skin. He turned, moving as if he were underwater. His eyes glittered deep within the hood of his cloak.
“You’re going to march out there?” I hissed. “Just like that?”
“Isn’t this what we’re here for?” Rogan gestured to Eala.
“What if you frighten her? What if she’s loyal to the Gentry tánaiste? What if she’s on her way to him right now?”
Rogan frowned—clearly none of this had occurred to him. “How am I supposed to convince her to come home if I can’t speak to her?”
“You don’t have to spirit her away tonight,” I reminded him. “She’s been here since she was eight years old. She may not remember you. She may not even remember Mother—hermother.”
Rogan’s shoulders bunched, and his face grew frustrated. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Why don’t you follow them—just for tonight?” The twelve maidens finished picking their bladed posies and started toward the forest. We edged deeper into the shadows, letting them sweep by us like a river of starlight. “See where they go, watch what they do, get to know them better from afar. Then next time, you’ll have a better sense of how to approach them.”
“Fine.” Rogan rose, but when I didn’t get up with him, he paused. “Aren’t you coming?”
Mother had forbidden me from telling Rogan about my half of the mission. I didn’t like the idea of lying to him outright—instead, I flashed him a small smile in the dim.
“What, princeling? You need my help following a dozen pretty girls into the forest in the dead of night? You were born for this.”
His eyes flickered.
“Be back at the Thirteenth Gate before the moon sets,” I reminded him. “Otherwise we’ll be trapped until next month.”
“Would that be so terrible? We’d have more time to save Eala.”
