Chapter 39

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Chapter 39

Oriane awoke on fire.

It was some strong, sharp relative of the feeling that usually woke her before dawn. The warmth that preceded her song was always gentle, pleasant. This was not warmth but heat. Not pleasant but painful. And it was consuming her, like the fire had consumed her cottage, and her father's body with it.

She struggled to stay calm, to breathe. She studied her surroundings. As her skylark's senses adjusted, she could hear noise from the distant palace. Shouting. Confusion.

Something was wrong.

‘Oriane?'

She nearly fell from the branch to the leaf litter below. Had that sound been real? Had that been her name floating through the black woods, or was it only in her mind? The voice was familiar either way, and the timbre of it only made her heart blaze hotter.

‘Oriane!'

Who was it that called for her? Whose voice floated above the distant din, rising as if in song, inviting her to answer?

Oriane knew. She knew that voice, and she knew what she had to do. Some part of her had known it from the moment she had woken with a fire in her heart. 292

She needed to sing.

She feared she had forgotten how. Her song felt distant, hidden, tucked away inside her like treasure buried and long abandoned. She felt she could have left it there forever – let it wither under miles of earth, let it calcify and fade. Because to dig it up, to sing again … That would cast light upon a world without her father, a world where she was utterly alone.

‘ Oriane.'

The voice called to her with something more than her name.

‘ Oriane ,' Andala called – Andala, the woman who had become her friend, who had danced with her at the solstice ball and cared for her in the throes of her grief. There was something in Andala's voice that reached out for Oriane's song. It was a question to answer, a fear to assuage, a need to fulfil. It was a hand outstretched in hope, and Oriane found herself wanting to take it.

So she focused on the heat of her heart. Imagined that it cleansed rather than burned. Spread her wings and took to the air. And even after so long in the quiet, in the dark, Oriane found she remembered how to sing after all.

It was, she thought, like being reborn.

It was frightening, too, the way it must have been frightening for an infant to leave the safety of its mother's womb and greet the strange, harsh world beyond. But Oriane swallowed her fear. She was done with it now.

And there was somebody she needed to sing for.

The sun filtered prettily through the waking forest as Oriane flew. She stayed low in the canopy, unwilling to rise where she might be 293 seen now that the world was lit up again. Her dawnsong was done. It had streamed from her freely, as if she'd never locked it away. The burning at her breast had lessened, but a dull glow still lingered there, like a gentle hook beneath her ribs: some tiny, cautious, distant echo of the connection she felt to the sun itself. And it was somehow leading her towards Andala.

Sure enough, it was not long before the sounds of footsteps crunching through the brush echoed up from the undergrowth. But … that was more than one set of footsteps. And that was more than one voice she could hear as she dipped cautiously lower.

‘I don't understand why you're here , Girard—'

Andala. That was Andala's voice, at least – the one that had called for Oriane in the everlasting dark, coaxing her song from her for the first time in skies knew how long. But she didn't dare reveal herself, not yet.

‘To find you. And thank the skies I did, before …' Another voice – a man's, one Oriane didn't recognise. ‘We have to go. While everything's still in an uproar.'

‘We can't go yet,' Andala protested. Oriane dared to flit down to a lower branch, so she might see her. ‘I need to find—'

‘There's no time!'

Oriane knew that voice, too – that one belonged to Kitt. If she were human, she would have smiled to hear her friend once more. But she had never heard him use this tone before. It was sharp, urgent, frightened.

‘I'll find Oriane and make sure she's all right,' he continued, ‘but you need to go while you can. Now they know you're the nightingale, Andala, they'll never let you—'

The world seemed to tilt on its axis.

They know you're the nightingale, Andala— 294

The heat in Oriane's heart flared, no longer painful.

Now she knew why it had felt like a message, before. Now she knew why it had led her here. There was a sensation of things slotting neatly into place, making sense, of the world being set to rights.

The winged goddesses who make the world turn . That idea – the thought that there was someone like her, a nightingale to her lark …

Could it really be Andala?

It seemed too good to be true, and more than she deserved.

Oriane tilted her head to the canopy above. Perhaps she should just go, before they saw her, before she could endanger them again—

But when she looked back down, Andala was looking up. Directly at her.

She saw through the lark, saw Oriane herself; the real Oriane beneath the feather and song.

‘There you are,' Andala said softly.

Oriane stayed where she was. Kitt turned his face upwards, searching the branches. The stranger beside Andala – a tall man with long hair and suntanned skin – craned his neck as well. ‘There who – oh .' His eyes went wide as they landed on her, then shot back to Andala. ‘Is that …?'

Perhaps the stranger's presence was why Oriane did not transform at once. Or perhaps she was not sure if she still could. She had spent so long in this body now, had compacted and moulded her grief to fit its form; if she changed back – if she let that grief grow with her, fill out its full shape once again – she did not know if she would survive it.

Andala seemed to understand. She looked up at Oriane a moment more. Oriane could not place her expression – it wasn't quite a smile, but there was light in it, as if Andala's face were backlit by the sun that wheeled ever higher above the trees. 295

‘They're right,' she said, just loud enough for Oriane to hear. ‘We need to go. Come with us if you want to.'

‘I'm staying here,' Kitt called up to her. ‘Before I came out here, Tomas's men were close to taking back the palace, but I need to go back for him and Hana. Perhaps you should go, Oriane. I don't think it's safe here for either of you.'

He gave her a thin, apologetic smile, then turned back to Andala and the stranger. The three of them began murmuring hurriedly, giving Oriane a blessed moment to think.

Perhaps you should go … Come with us if you want to. Oriane was free now. She could go anywhere, fly as far away as she liked. But would any place be far enough to escape the pain of what she'd done? Should she go back to living away from the world – start her life over again, entirely alone this time?

Perhaps. Perhaps that was what she deserved, what she was destined for. But perhaps she would go with Andala first.

If she truly was the nightingale, then Oriane had to know for sure.

And so she flitted down into the lowest branches, following from a safe distance as Andala and her companion pushed forward, away from Kitt, who was tearing back towards the palace. Oriane trained her focus on the back of Andala's head, her onyx hair shining like a beacon in the resurrected light.

Girard. That was the stranger's name. Oriane learned that as she flew behind the pair, just close enough to hear them speak.

She learned other things, too, as they surged through the woods – things that had happened while she was locked away inside that cage, 296 inside herself. Andala told Girard how the seneschal, not the king, was the one to be feared now. Terault had amassed a band of strange followers and tried to stage a coup of sorts. But it hadn't been the king's power Terault sought. It had been Oriane. And when he'd found her gone, smuggled out by Kitt and replaced by a mechanical replica, he had threatened them all – Tomas, Hana, every person in the palace, including Kitt, once Terault had learned what he'd done.

And so, to spare her friend and the princess and every other innocent he'd harm until he found the skylark, Andala had offered up the nightingale instead.

Had offered up herself.

It almost stole the breath from Oriane's tiny lark lungs to hear Andala say it. That there was a nightingale. That it was her . Oriane had to force herself to focus on the rest of the story.

‘But what does he want with you?' Girard asked. ‘With either of you?'

Oriane noted that he showed no shock or surprise at the fact that the woman beside him was a living creature of legend. So he'd already known she was the nightingale. Who was he, that he should know such a secret? Something no one else at the palace – not even Kitt, it seemed – had known until today?

I was married. My husband and I parted ways.

Who else could he be but the man Andala had once shared a life with, once loved?

It did not end happily.

Oriane flew faster, closer to the pair. Andala had paused before answering Girard's question, slowing her pace, as if waiting for Oriane to catch up. When she neared, Andala glanced at her briefly, an unreadable look in her dark eyes.

‘He wants our hearts,' she said quietly. 297

‘Your hearts ?' Girard had continued ahead, but now he spun back to Andala. He didn't seem to notice Oriane flitting behind them. ‘What in the skies does that mean?'

But Andala was still looking at Oriane, head canted slightly to one side, as if she were pondering something.

‘Girard,' she said, ‘I wonder if you might give us a little space.'

He frowned, then seemed to realise her meaning, turning to seek out Oriane in the trees – but she was half-hidden within the branches, and his eyes skipped over her and away. He turned back to Andala. Something seemed to pass between them, an unspoken conversation, a flicker of understanding that need not be voiced. Then Girard nodded.

‘Stay close,' he muttered. ‘Stay where you can see me. We can't stop until we reach Fenbrook.'

‘I know,' Andala replied. ‘And Girard – thank you.'

Close as she was now, Oriane could see the bob of his throat as he swallowed. Then he nodded once more and continued on their path through the woods, leaving the bird and the woman behind.

Andala looked back up into the trees. Unlike Girard's, her eyes found Oriane in an instant, as if there were nowhere else they could land. Are you ready? they seemed to ask. And Oriane found that she was.

She flew down to land on the ground before Andala, steeled herself, and changed.

It was as easy as it had ever been; that at least was a relief. There was the familiar sensation of morphing, growing. She stretched her limbs as they expanded and settled. It did feel odd, becoming herself again after so long as the lark, but it also felt right.

For a long moment, they stared at one another. Oriane felt simultaneously unmoored and anchored by Andala's gaze. It had 298 always had that effect on her. Was that because they were drawn to each other, skysinger to skysinger, like to like?

What else could it be?

‘Is it true?' she said in a rush, before she could stop herself. Her voice felt rough and odd after weeks of disuse. ‘Are you really …?'

She'd heard Andala say it herself, but she needed to make sure of it now that they stood here on even ground, face-to-face.

Andala nodded.

Oriane couldn't help it; a thrill of excitement went through her. But still … She could not ignore the dark thread of doubt that wove its way through her thoughts. She needed to see.

‘Can you show me?' she asked quietly.

For the first time since Oriane had transformed, Andala looked away. She seemed to deflate, her shoulders drooping. ‘I can't,' she murmured, so quietly Oriane could barely hear. ‘I can't … control it, like you.'

That sick sense of doubt coursed through her again. Perhaps Andala was lying. Perhaps her companion was playing along. They might all be in this together, some grand conspiracy to trick or trap Oriane again.

‘I can show you tonight, though,' Andala went on. ‘When it's time.'

She said it like a promise, not a lie. And so Oriane nodded, and side by side, they began to walk.

They fell into a quick rhythm, the sounds of Girard's crunching boots drifting back to them. Oriane felt unsteady. She was still in her golden gown from the solstice ball, and it fell quickly to ruin as it dragged and caught on the brush, its hem a mess of twigs and clumps of dirt. Her feet had begun to ache – the delicate slippers she still wore had been made for dancing, not hiking. 299

‘You cannot transform on command,' she said eventually, ‘but you managed it – to give yourself up.'

‘Yes,' Andala conceded. ‘Just that once. It's the only time I've ever been able to. I was … desperate. I was thinking of …' She paused a moment before she went on. ‘I thought that might be the key – wanting it badly enough, being desperate enough. But I feel …' She shook her head. ‘I know I won't be able to do it again, somehow. I suppose … I suppose it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.'

They pressed on. The woods had fully awoken around them now, and after so long in the quiet dark, Oriane was overwhelmed by the scents, the soundscape, the abundance of life.

‘You can do it, though,' Andala said. They both looked to the side at once, then quickly back to the ground as their eyes met. ‘You have so much control over it that you stayed in lark form for weeks. And stopped your song.'

‘I'm sorry I did,' Oriane replied. ‘I wish I had not been able to.' The longer she spent back in her body, the more remorseful she felt – for everything she'd put people through, all the trouble she'd caused by withholding the light.

‘I understand why you did it, though. I don't blame you.' Andala came to a halt, turning to face her. ‘I don't know if you remember me saying it before, when I came to see you, but … I'm so sorry, Oriane. For your father. For all of it.'

The air seemed to disappear from Oriane's lungs. The chasm of loss inside her yawned wide, expanded, and the weight of what had happened pressed in on her again – violent, crushing. It threatened to leave her gasping on the ground, unable to go on. But she could not give in to it now; not yet. Not here.

‘I remember,' she said finally. ‘And I'm grateful.' 300

She and Andala smiled at one another then: two sad, weary shadow-smiles, faint as waning crescents against black skies, but smiles nonetheless. They resumed their walk, and Oriane's eyes burned with tears, her heart a wound inside her. Yet for a moment longer, her smile remained.