But they tormented my mother.
Tiptoeing on eggshells, I approached. Up close, the tree’s pillar contracted like a human lung. As my lips parted, someone threw another log into one of the neighboring blazes. The fire thrashed, flames whipping about.
The oak groaned, its leaves shivering. My lips closed, a tender sensation clamping onto my chest as I imagined Briar prostrating herself to this tree. I thought of Rhys and this army burning Summer tinder to prevent the oak from snapping them in half with its roots.
I thought of Autumn, the land of mercy. I thought of The Dark Seasons, where our environments reigned supreme, equally cruel and kind.
My palm settled on the trunk, and a gasp lurched from my mouth. Wood brimmed under my touch, the hum of its breath radiating.
This mythic life-force had issued a severe punishment on Mama. That was the way of nature and humanity. Allies sometimes, victims other times. Either way, the tree hadn’t beenabsently vicious. No, it had been protecting itself, like it was doing now against this camp.
The oak wasn’t a villain. The real monster stood twenty feet away.
My fingertips caressed the trunk. “I won’t let them harm you.”
The branches stalled, then relaxed. The trunk’s internal humming gentled as an acorn rolled to the tip of one bough. Unfurling, the branch extended the nut to me, the way it once gifted Briar a strand of golden leaves for her hair.
That same warmth spread to my hand as I took the acorn and stored it in my pocket.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Rhys brayed louder than a mule, the noise abrasive enough to strip paint. That meant I had ten-ish minutes before he charged to his tent.
Flitting in and out of shadows, I stole beneath the rear flap. The stench of arrogance, misogyny, and xenophobia imbued the space like a pathogen. Outside, muffled threats spewed from Rhys’s oversized mouth. Inside, a bead of sweat trailed down my back. I rifled through his coffers, lifted chests and trunks, searched every bag and leaf of parchment.
No incriminating documents. No compromising maps.
Nothing the clan could use.
After seven years of manipulating this bigot, I fisted my hips. It wasn’t so much that he wouldn’t leave valuables lying around in the obvious places. Rather, this monarch thought about himself more than other people.
“Rhys wouldn’t store prized possessions somewhere inconvenient for him,” I muttered.
Adding insult to arrogance, a smug ruler would stash an object in a location that gave the illusion of superiority. He’d useit as another opportunity to congratulate himself, presumably for being smart.
Twisting to his desk, my gaze landed a gold crescent. Supplementing a quill and inkwell, the crown rested atop a mahogany box like a holy shrine, attempting to compensate for the fact that he rarely did anything scholastic. If that stick of furniture had ever seen Rhys accomplish more than licking his scrotum or signing a death warrant in blood, I’d hand over my axe.
Hastening to the crown, I plucked the garish thing off the tabletop. Encrusted in jewels larger and heavier than Rhys’s brain, it weighed down my hands. As a precaution, I checked the fastenings and elaborate band.
I wasn’t a goldsmith like Vex, who led the Masters to their downfall. But I was the daughter of a carpenter.
Setting aside the crown, I went after the real target. Snatching the box, I tested the hinges, flipped open the casement, and traced the interior lining. And then I pressed on the dovetail joints.
One of them popped downward, triggering the lid’s underside, which cracked open. A slender bottle dropped into my palm. Milky liquid swam inside the glass, the contents tinted with dusty strings of rose gold.
I’d seen this fluid before. Back in The Phantom Wild, Jeryn and Flare gave a tour of the palace ruins. The excursion included an ominous trip through the secret catacombs of an ancient society, plus Jeryn’s makeshift laboratory and its collection of rainforest medicines. Among a batch of remedies, this had been one of them.
Except Jeryn hadn’t described what it did. He wasn’t able to test this mixture in the rainforest, and I had no clue which samples he brought back to Winter.
Either way, Jeryn would never hand anything over to Rhys. Which meant Summer had obtained this drug by some other means.
Knights. Ambushes.
Commoner tools intended as weapons. Reaper’s Fest.
Rhys’s enigmatic secondary informant. A bottle containing who the fuck knew what. And a secret heir to Summer’s throne.
How the hell did this add up?
