Chapter 40

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Chapter 40

It had been seven years since Andala last set foot in Fenbrook.

Girard had been at her side then, too. They had met here, a year before that. Fallen in love here. Run from here to start their own little life together. Just the sight of the village at the foot of the hill brought an echoing memory of those feelings swirling back.

They'd been walking for hours now; the afternoon was growing old. She wished they'd been able to ride here, but Girard's horse had been exhausted after racing to the palace. There hadn't been time to steal mounts from the stables, and even if they had, Andala wasn't sure Oriane would have been able to ride. She still looked bone-weary, like a shell of herself.

‘We'll be safe at the inn with Nell for a while,' Girard said beside her.

‘Nell's still there?' Andala was glad to hear it; she'd always liked the old, weathered innkeep. Nell had let her pour ales at the inn to earn some coin, despite the fact that Andala had been barely old enough to drink ale herself.

‘Says she'd sooner burn down the Book and Bottle than leave the running of it to some other fool,' Girard said.

Andala smiled. Then she glanced cautiously at him. ‘Do you … 302 Are you living there again, now? You and …?' She trailed off, unwilling to say the name aloud.

‘We live in the next village over, other side of the river,' Girard said, as they reached the bottom of the hill and the path flattened out before them. ‘It's called Enderford. Lots of children there, for such a tiny little place. Amie has more friends than she can count on both hands.'

Andala kept her focus on the path ahead. ‘Good,' she managed to say, finally. ‘That's good.'

They reached the little brook that marked the beginning of the village proper. Beyond it lay the buildings Andala knew so well – the mill and the cottages, Nell's inn and Brantis's forge and Gael's healing hall. There were people everywhere, some she recognised and some she didn't. It seemed most of the village was outdoors, celebrating the return of the sunlight. The sight of them constricted Andala's airway. What was wrong with her today? She couldn't control her emotions as she usually did, couldn't tamp them down and close them off the way she always strived to do.

‘Andala,' Girard said, waving to people here and there as they made their way towards the Book and Bottle.

‘Yes?' Her tone was brisker than she intended, in her effort to keep her voice even.

Girard slowed as they approached the inn's entrance. ‘There's something I didn't tell you, before.'

Andala said nothing, only eyed him warily as she slowed to match his pace. Whatever he was about to say, she had a feeling she didn't want to hear it.

After a moment he said, ‘Amie and your mother … They're here. In Fenbrook.'

Andala whipped around to face him so fast that her head spun. Or perhaps it was his words that had that effect. Amie and Leilyn. Here. 303

‘Why?' she asked.

‘After you left … Well, Leilyn and I talked it over, and we decided that she'd look after Amie and I'd come after you, right away.'

Andala blinked once, twice. ‘Why?' she said again.

Girard gave her a look that was almost pitying. ‘It didn't sit well with us – either of us – that you would have to do what you were doing alone. Your mother wanted to be the one to come after you,' he added, to her astonishment. ‘She was a wreck after you left – kept saying that she'd let you go once, and shouldn't have done it again. But in the end it made more sense for it to be me – I'm the faster rider, and I … I thought I might arrive in time to stop you.'

Andala's throat closed up, her eyes burning. Girard had put himself in such danger, left his daughter and risked so much to come after her , when all she'd ever done was break his heart and leave him behind. And her mother …

‘But why aren't they at my mother's house?' She forced the words out through her teeth, dimly aware that Oriane had paused a few paces behind them, and was watching.

‘We thought it would be better for them to come to a bigger town, where they might be safer while they waited for me – for us – to come back. I thought …' Girard gave a helpless sort of shrug. ‘I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I thought you might not come here, if you knew. That you might go off on your own again.'

He was right, of course. She hated that he knew that – knew her well enough to know it. She looked towards the inn, her heart speeding up at the thought of who waited within.

She'd thought she'd never see either of them again. Andala didn't know how to feel, now that was not the case.

‘Is everything all right?' came a tentative voice. Oriane had caught up with them and stood nervously to the side, her arms wrapped 304 self-consciously around her. Andala cursed herself internally. Oriane was still in the golden gown she'd worn when she last transformed; her face still shimmered with the remnants of the cosmetics Andala had painted there. Naturally, the villagers' eyes were drawn to her, this stranger who looked like the sun itself as she arrived in their town on the day it returned.

‘Everything's fine,' Andala said. ‘Let's get you inside.'

Never mind that inside lay more secrets Andala had kept hidden, laid bare for Oriane to see.

Leilyn and Amie sat together at a table by an open window. There were no other patrons in the inn; everyone who would usually have been there was outside, revelling in the resurrected sun's warmth. It was just the two of them: their skin the same ivory as Andala's, their hair slightly different shades of her own night black – Leilyn's streaked with cool silver, Amie's with a touch of her father's bronze warmth. They were playing some sort of game atop the table, but looked up as Andala and the others entered.

‘ Daddy! ' Amie cried, upending the game pieces as she launched herself from her seat.

‘Andala,' Leilyn breathed, her own piece falling from her hand. For the second time in a handful of days, Andala's mother put her arms around her and drew her close. ‘I thought I'd lost you,' she whispered, her voice thick. ‘I thought I'd lost you again.'

Andala stiffened in Leilyn's embrace, but felt her own eyes prickling too.

‘Who's that lady? Is she a princess?'

Andala and Leilyn broke apart at the sound of Amie's voice. She was staring across the room at Oriane, who had remained at the doorway of the inn, hovering half-in and half-out of it with the nervous air of someone who didn't want to interrupt. Amie's eyes 305 were wide as they took in Oriane's gown of molten gold. Despite its torn and dirty hem, it was easy to see why Amie thought her royalty. Oriane glowed, backlit by the afternoon sun, her hair and skin and gown limned with light.

Girard laughed, though the sound was a little uneasy. ‘Not quite, my love. That's – that's just a friend.' He looked to Andala, swallowed visibly. ‘And you remember Daddy's other friend? Andala?'

Amie turned to Andala. The girl studied her for a moment, then nodded. ‘I remember.'

Andala's stomach flipped. But before she could work out what to say, or how to say it, she curled forward involuntarily, a hand to her chest.

For the first time in weeks, a familiar feeling of ice flickered there.

When she looked up, she met her mother's eyes, which were full of understanding. ‘It's almost sundown,' Leilyn said.

‘I need to go,' Andala muttered. Before Girard or her mother could respond, she crossed the room to Oriane. Andala had only to look at her for something to pass unspoken between them – a question, an offer, an invitation.

Oriane nodded, and after Andala had swiped a lantern and matchbook from behind the bar, the two of them left the inn, emerging into the afternoon's dying glow.

Most of the village was still outside, savouring the last of the daylight. But there was a strange feeling in the air as the hour grew late: a sense of waiting for something, a kind of nervous dread. Andala thought she understood why. The night was soon to fall. And the last time it had done so, weeks without light had followed. They must have all feared the dark now, the way she once had.

She steered Oriane into the hush and shadow of the nearby tree-covered hills. They walked in silence for a while, and soon came to 306 a secluded clearing. A warm breeze stirred up the scent of summer grass and sunblossom. It was as if the brief, unnatural winter had never been.

Andala hovered uncomfortably, the centre of her chest growing colder. She had not missed the pain, the way it made her body feel as if it wasn't her own – but it seemed less severe now, perhaps, its edge a little duller than before. ‘It's almost time,' she said, simply to have something to say.

Oriane gave a tentative smile, but Andala could sense the doubt that lay behind it. Andala didn't blame her. After everything she'd been through, it made sense that she might not trust Andala to tell her the truth.

Andala had never liked transforming in front of anyone. In fact, until the dungeon, she'd barely done so since she was a child. It had not taken her long to shake off her parents at the end of each day, and later, to slip away from Girard when the sun sank low. It made her unbearably nervous to have Oriane watch her now.

Oriane was like her. They were the same. The first time she had seen Oriane transform – the first time she'd seen the bird of day to her bird of night – it had felt … She couldn't describe how it felt. Like the sunrays conjured by Oriane's song had somehow pierced the depths inside her, just for a moment – a light bright and strong enough to reach the ocean floor.

But what would it feel like for Oriane to see her , this creature of darkness, call shadows into her world of light? What would it feel like for Andala to have a witness to the source and symbol of all her hurt and fear and shame?

She closed her eyes. She needed to breathe, to focus on the biting chill in her bones, the frost-rimed blade poised at her heart. Better to focus on familiar pain than this new, fragile fear. 307

When it happened, it was the same as it had always been. Her body shrank, the way it always had; the nightingale's song burst forth, an uncontrollable stream of notes that forced their way like shards of ice from her heart to her throat. Slowly, slowly, the afternoon light began to fade.

She flew once around the clearing, awkward and uncomfortable as ever in this body. How humiliating it was, that Oriane, so graceful and at ease in her skylark form, should see her this way. She probably thought Andala ridiculous – was probably laughing at the sight of the inelegant nightingale, the complete antithesis of herself.

But when Andala glanced down, her song still streaming from her as it called the evening forth, she was shocked at what she saw.

Oriane was weeping.

Tears flowed freely down her pretty face. Like little glittering jewels, they caught the last of the dying light as it filtered through the trees. Andala was concerned, at first – but as she swooped closer, she could see they were not tears of sadness. No; that was joy on Oriane's face. Pure, radiant joy, bright as the dawn she called.

Andala was so startled that she failed to notice her transformation ending. Instead of settling herself on the ground in advance as she usually did, she changed back suddenly mid-flight. Human again, she landed with a graceless crash.

Her face burned with embarrassment, and her body smarted where she'd hit the ground, but the soft grass of the clearing had helped to break the worst of her fall. Oriane was at her side in an instant.

‘Are you all right?' Her voice was brimming with worry as she helped Andala sit up.

Andala brushed a leaf from her hair, trying to ignore her flaming cheeks. ‘I'm fine.' 308

Oriane knelt on the ground beside her. Her eyes still shone, and that brilliant, beaming smile was still upon her face. Andala could not help but smile back at her. It was an instinctive reaction, easier than any of her transformations, like hearing the call of one's kind and calling back in answer.

‘Was that how I looked, too?' she asked Oriane, trying to keep her tone light as emotion flooded through her – relief and gratitude and other things she couldn't name. ‘The first time I saw you transform?'

Oriane let out a laugh in response, wiping away a diamond tear.

Andala had never heard a more wonderful sound.

They stayed in the woods a while longer, by unspoken mutual agreement. Neither of them wanted to go back to the people or the problems that awaited them just yet. Instead, they climbed the tree-covered hillside, navigating by the last splashes of fading light filtering down through the twilit canopy. Andala had spent enough time in these woods – by herself, as a bird, with Girard – to know her way in the dark.

At the crest of the hill was another clearing. It was a wash of silver, painted by the faint sheen of fresh stars. Andala sat on a fallen log, and after a moment Oriane joined her. They looked back upon the flickering lights of the village below.

‘You've been up here before,' Oriane said. It wasn't a question.

Andala nodded. She was conflicted by the swarm of memories that had enveloped her from the moment they'd stepped over the rise that afternoon. She did not trust herself to speak about them yet.

‘That was your family? Back in the inn?'

Before, Andala would have baulked at the thought of sharing any of it, like a creature of the deep shying away from bright light. But she 309 found she could bear the idea of such scrutiny now. The skylark sat at her side, the only person in the world who might begin to understand. If Andala could not be honest with her now, when could she?

‘The older woman is my mother,' she began. Oriane was perfectly still at her side; Andala kept her eyes on the village below. ‘She was the nightingale before me.'

And then Andala was telling her everything.

It was hard, but she kept going, right up until the present. She did not censor the story, did not shy away from the details that showed the depths of her. The weakness. The ugliness. The thousand forms of fear. The choices she'd made, and the way she wondered every day if they had been the wrong ones.

Through it all, Oriane was quiet. There was no sound but the wind, and the soft night chorus of the woods, and Andala's voice, spilling her secrets into the silence.

By the time she was done, the night had deepened fully. The lights of the village glowed brighter below them, burning against the black. Andala lit the lantern she had brought, glad of the excuse to occupy herself for a moment.

‘You must have been lonely, these past few years,' Oriane said.

Andala's head whipped towards her. There was none of the horror or disgust she'd expected in her expression. No – that looked like understanding etched into the faint crease of her delicate brow.

Andala did not know how to respond.

‘It took me a while to learn what it was to be lonely,' Oriane went on. She held Andala's gaze, held it with a look so open that it was all Andala could do not to close her own eyes at the force of it. ‘But you … you went willingly into loneliness, after knowing what it was to be without it. You locked yourself away to spare your daughter from a fate she might not want.' 310

But Andala shook her head, looking away. ‘It's not as simple as that. I should have … I didn't even try, Oriane. I couldn't even trust myself to be in her presence for more than a few minutes without using her to get rid of this – this burden. She's growing up without a mother, all because I'm weak .'

‘I grew up without a mother,' Oriane said. ‘And in my view, it's not so different. My mother had no choice but to leave me, either. But she made sure I would be safe, and loved, and well cared for.' A hand, gentle, tentative, alighted on Andala's knee. ‘You've done the same for Amie.'

Without thinking, Andala took that hand, gripping it in her own as if it were a lifeline and she were drowning.

‘But I still left her,' she whispered. ‘I left them all. Everyone who's ever cared for me – everyone I've ever cared for. My mother. Girard. Amie. Even Kitt, now.'

‘You never left me.'

Andala looked up. The words had been quiet, touched with a hint of hesitance, but there was something like determination on Oriane's face. It flickered there, then flamed.

‘You never left me,' she repeated. ‘Even when I was so lost in my grief that I would have drowned and taken the whole world with me. You stayed. You brought me back.'

Andala wanted to say that she had done nothing, that Oriane had done that herself, but she found her words catching in her throat. She was suddenly sharply aware of Oriane's hand in hers. Of the bare inch of space between them. Of the fact that they were here, the only two of their kind, that they had found each other, that she wanted—

The sound of boots crashed through the woods. Someone was coming their way. 311

Andala leapt to her feet. Oriane did the same beside her. They stared ahead, where the sounds of someone stumbling through the woods were getting louder. Andala whispered, ‘We should hide—'

But before they could, the figure was there, at the edge of the trees. Andala wrenched Oriane behind her, quicker than a thought. The stranger was cloaked and hooded, one hand braced against a tree, their face hidden in the gloom. Had someone from the palace found them? Had someone from the village realised who they were?

‘Who is that?' Andala demanded. There was no use trying to hide now. Miraculously, her voice betrayed none of the fear she felt.

The cloaked figure righted themselves, took another step forward. Lifted a shaking hand and brought down their hood. Andala's heart leapt into her throat.

Then, her eyes adjusting, she saw who was beneath it.

‘ Kitt? '

‘Kitt,' Oriane's voice chorused behind her.

‘Thank the skies you made it,' he panted, the faint flash of a smile gleaming white in the shadows. Then his knees seemed to give way beneath him. They dove towards him as one, hands grasping at his arms to hold him upright.

‘Skies, Kitt,' Andala muttered. ‘What are you doing here? Are you all right?'

‘Are you hurt? What can we do?' Oriane's voice wavered with concern.

‘I'm … fine,' Kitt ground out. His voice sounded rough and exhausted. ‘I'm fine. Fell off my horse – couldn't take Cricket, got stuck with a great violent beast that ended up throwing me clean off the saddle, a mile out of town. Ran the rest of the way myself – found the man you were travelling with, Andala. He told me where to find you.' 312

His breath seemed to be coming back to him now, and he was able to stand unaided. He swiped a hand across his brow, sweat glistening in the clearing's silvered light.

‘Oriane,' he said, focusing on her with sudden joy, drawing her to him in a hug. ‘I can't tell you how good it is to see you. This you,' he added, pulling back and gesturing to encapsulate the whole of her. ‘We missed you when you were gone.'

Andala watched Oriane return his grin, gave them a moment to share it. Then—

‘What's going on, Kitt?' she asked. ‘Why are you here?'

His expression turned grave. Even by starlight, she could see his eyes were filmed with fear.

‘They've taken the palace. Properly this time. We had to flee. And Terault – Terault and his followers …' He stretched out a hand to each of them, squeezing their shoulders as they stared at him in horror. ‘They're coming. You need to get ready to run.'