“Rememberwhat I told you. Bring everything to the Barrow Witch, and you might still save Leathen.”
“How?” Rain asked.
“Take him to the castle,” Soren rumbled at the same moment.
The sorcerer’s madness-flecked eyes flared in distress. He uttered a solitary word in his mysterious language and disappeared.Vanished. The guards looked at their empty hands in terror.
Rain gaped. She’d lost him without answers.And she’d never seen such power—not in this lifetime. Just as frightening was the strong, cold echo of magic inside her. She wasn’t a sorceress, though. She was somethingother.
Soren didn’t lether out of his sight until he’d deposited her in the breakfast room and told the king, queen, and Daric about the incident in Upper Ash. Threetimes. In detail. Now, it was Rain’s turn.
“Repeat exactly what the sorcerer said to you,” King Wilder insisted once again.
“Mockweed, Alderbank, the Blood of Braylian. He said to bring everything to the Barrow Witch—whoever that is—and that we might be able to save Leathen.”
“Save Leathen from the drought?” the king asked. “Or from Raana?”
Rain shook her head. “I don’t know.” At this point,the two were the same anyway. “That’s all he said.”
Which wasn’t true. She had no desire to lie, but she kept the odd words the sorcerer had spoken to herself. It was as though they were knocking on a door she knew she could open, but she didn’t yet have the key. If she just heldIsme dolunde vaten crewlocked inside her a little longer, Rain thought she would understand.
“Mockweed grows inthe Wood of Layton,” Daric said. “And if the Blood of Braylian is anywhere, it would be in Layton, too.”
“What is Alderbank?” Queen Marla asked.
The king sighed. “It doesn’t matter. These are the ramblings of an unwell person. Sorcery corrupts the mind, and if this man was as old as Soren and Rain say, then he was at least two decades beyond insane.”
“That doesn’t make what he said false,”Daric argued.
“I know you hope for a way out of this marriage,” Marla said. “But we have a solution for the kingdom. We must persist.”
“A terrible solution,” Daric muttered. His eyes flicked to Rain’s. She saw anger in their blue depths.
She hated to think what this marriage was going to cost him. She knew what it was costing her.
“Nevertheless, it’s the solution we’ve agreed to. We have nochoice.” Wilder sat at the table, having spoken in a way that clearly dismissed the topic.
Everyone sat down to breakfast in a solemn mood and with little appetite. There was no berrybread—perhaps they had no dried berries left?—and the tea was weak, at best.
They ate what they had, and what they could stomach, in silence. Rain fretted over her incomplete encounter with the sorcerer, and sheknew Daric well enough to know he preferred to say nothing rather than let out the fury brewing in his chest. They both knew his parents had only ever tried their best. Wilder and Marla looked sad and defeated, which was as heartbreaking as the rest.
They eventually stood to go about their day, which at this point mainly consisted of emptying the castle and distributing items around the cityof Ash. At the doorway to the breakfast room, however, the king and queen stopped Rain and Daric before they left.
“We have a birthday present for you, Rain,” Marla said.
Rain smiled. She knew it would be thoughtful, even if it wasn’t much.
When the queen took off her ring—the one with the Ashstone that had been in the Ash family since the dawn of Leathen—Rain’s heart stuttered in her chest.“In two moons, we must take the name of Nighthall. We’ve negotiated something for you, though, so that you might keep the name of Ash.”
A sick feeling welled up inside her. Rain knew it was an enormous gesture, but her soul wept for everything her family was sacrificing.
She shook her head, but Marla ignored her silent protest.
“Take it with you.” The queen placed the jewel in Rain’s hand andclosed her fingers around it. “You’ll be Queen Rain Ash, even in Parr.”
Rain had no idea what Marla was talking about. “I don’t understand.”
Daric stared at his parents, his brows drawing down. Then his horrified gaze swiveled to Rain, and his voice dropped, turning raw and rough. “No. She’s coming with us.”
