At the crest of the hill, a fortress crowned the city, gleaming like ivory in the starlight.
It was just as Tom had described it.
“The Wood King’s palace,” she whispered.
NINE
AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENSflew overhead as Rooke escorted Emeline through the dark and winding streets of the King’s City. Few people were out at this hour of the night, but those who were kept stealing glances at the mud-coated shiftling and his human companion.
Am I dreaming this?
Maybe she hadn’t escaped Bog. Maybe she was still back in the swamp, unconscious from blood loss, and all of this was a hallucination.
Except her hand throbbed from where she’d sliced it with Pa’s ax and she could feel the mud hardening and cracking, drying out her skin. She couldn’t hallucinate those details.
When they neared the palace, the path turned to shining white pebbles bordered by rows of weeping willows as high as three-story houses. A white wall encircled the palace, creeping with lichen and moss and rising to twice Emeline’s height. It was set with a copper gate, shut tight. The ravens flew towards it, their black forms settling on its copper ligaments as Emeline and Rooke approached. In the middle, a crest was cast in silver portraying a crowned willow sprouting from a seed.
Four armed guards—hedgemen,Rooke told her—stood outside the entrance. Their hammered bronze helmets were shapedlike milkweed pods, and the halberds gripped at their sides rose ominously upwards, the steel tips shimmering strangely.
“This borderlander requires an audience with the king,” a muddy Rooke explained.
The guards exchanged cautious looks. “Is he expecting her?”
Rooke ignored their question. “I suggest you don’t delay her.”
Two of the guards crossed their arms, their gazes narrowing. As if they were well acquainted with Rooke and didn’t trust him for a second. “And why’s that?”
“She has something the king desperately needs.”
This was news to Emeline, who turned to study the shiftling beside her. His expression was opaque as marble, giving nothing away.
Was he lying to get her inside?
Rooke held up a hand, studying his mud-encrusted fingernails. “You know how unstable he is these days.Iwouldn’t want to cross him. But perhaps you—”
The creak of copper interrupted him as the gate slowly swung inwards.
“This way,” said one, leading them both inside as another followed at their backs.
They swept down alabaster hallways lit by candles, their flames burning like fireflies as wax dribbled down their sides. Rooke fell silent beside her, chewing his lip and tapping his fingertips anxiously against his thigh. When he glanced at Emeline, his expression turned apologetic. As if he was suddenly having second thoughts.
Emeline, who had heard the gate shut and lock behind them, knew it was too late to turn back. Not that she wanted to. She’d made it this far; she wasn’t leaving until the king gave her grandfather back.
Emeline reached inside her cardigan pocket and squeezed the cold tithe marker. Yesterday, she didn’t believe in a king of the wood, or that her grandfather had been tithed. Didn’t believe in ember mares, or shiftlings, or earth spirits. Pa was simply an old man with dementia who sometimes wandered at night.
And today?
She wasn’t sure what she believed today.
Emeline couldn’t remember when, exactly, things changed. Only that a moment ago she was walking down palace halls and now she walked a dirt path beneath a midnight sky. Tulip trees lined the path, their flowers unfolding like burning yellow crowns among their green leaves.
The farther they walked, the taller the trees grew, until they were impossibly tall. So tall, they seemed to brush the stars.
The path ended in a grove of silver birches. Moonlight pooled in from the canopy above, illuminating a bone-white throne and a man seated upon it. Atop his head sat a crown of rosebud thorns.
His skin was sunbrowned, his hair moon pale; and instead of robes, water adorned him. It flowed in rivers from his hair, over his neck and shoulders where it began to gush, like a waterfall, down the rest of his body. Emeline could see no glimpse of skin beyond the cascade, but at his feet water pooled and sank into the brown earth. Wherever it touched, gray and purple thistles grew.
The Wood King.
