Clearing a gap forty feet above the ground in a running leap, I landed on a branch thicker than any tree for a hundred miles. It was rare for weather of any sort to breach the dense foliage above, and the well-worn path beneath my feet was free of snow. In the cradle of the Grandmother’s arms lay an especially dense patch of vines and leaves—thriving in spite of the cold season. A door, hidden in the very trunk of the tree.
Kas yipped, landing on the branch above me, her glorious tan fur rumpled at her shoulder in a distinct claw pattern that made the scars on my ribs tingle in sympathy.
“Didn’t meet your standards, pretty?” I asked, showing her the flat of my palm when she crouched low, straining to nose-bump me from her lofty perch.
She huffed, laving my skin with the flat of her deceptively rough tongue, then straightened, turning her attention upon herself and groomed the other, lesser lion’s marks flat. Erasing them.
I laughed. “Only the best for the queen, hmm?”
A deep purr vibrated through her.
“Well, I hope you left him alive, you savage thing. Poor boy couldn’t help but be drawn to you, could he?” Placing my palm on the bark beneath me, I asked the forest the questions Kas couldn’t answer.
The other lion was running at full speed, heading for the edge of Kas’ territory. It was early for breeding, but Kas had sent her two most recent daughters to find territories of their own. She was coming into heat and the young male had probably caught wind of her, hoping to sire the next generation of the queen’s children.
But my lady was older and stronger than any lion in the forest—unnaturally so, thanks to her association with me. She could afford to be picky about her consorts, but it was making me twitchy.
And over the next few months, it would do nothing but get worse.
Tugging on her tail, I cracked my neck. “You’d better choose one soon, my love. You were a nightmare last time. And there’s the captain to consider,” I added, rubbing at a spot just above my breastbone. Picking at the brand twisting my right middle finger.Hismark. “Always looking for a weakness.”
Tail twitching free of my fingers, Kas’ teeth flashed, great gray eyes finding my face for an instant before she returned to her preening.
With a snort, I left her to it, pulled the hatch aside, and crawled through the Mila-sized hole in the Grandmother’s trunk. It wasn’t a spacious apartment, but a perfect hideaway made for one. And with a sigh, I hung my satchel of tricks on a tiny branch by the door and knelt beside my compact, insulated stone fireplace. I dumped a handful of walnut shells on the ash, stretching tired muscles with a groan.
“Wake up,” I whispered, tapping the stunted bushes I kept to house my personal night-lights. Grinning when hundreds of glitterbugs rose, flying toward the ceiling, I watched them dance. Flashing lime-green and yellow, twinkling in a sleepy, complicated pattern.
It didn’t take long for the brittle shells to catch a flame and I opened the air vents before smoke filled my bedroom, gazing at the wall before me. It was covered in countless carved marks organized in tidy groups of five and consumed almost every inch of available space. I reached as high as I could, and carved three more marks with my claws, adding to a sea of memories immortalized by notches in the living wood.
Start a rebellion? Leave the forest that had been stained black and silver by my Truth and become a pawn? A weapon?
I snorted. No. It wasn’t safe. Not when the ki of every living thing sang to me, begging me to take what was mine by birthright, to feast and gorge until my bottomless hunger was sated…
Squeezing my eyes shut, I dumped the poison from my heart, letting the Grandmother take away the heinous impulse to feed on the weak—and came up against another intruder. One less welcome than even the slavers infesting my lands.
A Priestess.
Chapter 4
It took two days to reach the northern border of my lands. Two days to find the clearing my unwelcome guest had chosen for our meeting place. A clearing so close to the Canodill Pass, and the glimmering blue shield housed between its mighty walls, that my eyes watered with the bite of burning ozone.
Being this close to the mountain and all its virgin Glaith threatened my access to the Grandmother, and should I be foolish enough leave my perch in the trees to set foot upon the soil, or worse, venture beyond the tree line?
It was a risk I wouldn’t take for so inconsequential a reason as meetingher.
Even surrounded by an entire mountain of virgin Glaith, she did not have the advantage here.
Using Kas’ ki to mask my own, I sent the lion to the opposite side of the clearing, watching from the shadows of my lofty perch. The silver-haired woman below followed Kas’ stealthy movement without err, turning until her back was to me and the lion had hunkered down on a branch, out of sight.
I didn’t need to see her eyes to know they’d gone glassy and blank, for she was a Priestess with access to Ancaster and Alicia’s many inventions. On her brow, a golden diadem with a core of Glaith—enough to enhance a Triloth’s pitiful senses, certainly.
“You’re not as clever as you think you are, Mila. I can sense you,” she said, talking to the lion.
I rolled my eyes. Yet her arrogance did not soothe, but merely drove me to further vigilance. This trick had been played on me too many times to count—and by a much better player thanshe.So with simmering irritation, I plunged my senses into the earth. Looking for her cohorts—and was not disappointed.
The forest whispered of unseen intruders skulking all around us in the dark.
Men. Soldiers ringing the clearing, ready to spring their little trap, their paltry ki disguised beneath the Glaith. Where their life-forces should have been, there was nothing but a fuzzy, gray hole.
