They ran.
Up the stairs and into the house.
When they stood before the fireplace, Emeline swung down the trapdoor with aslam!
“Go, go, go!” said Grace, already out the door, down the path, racing for the horses waiting in the silver trees. Emeline kept close on her heels, heart pounding, adrenaline making her run faster than she’d ever run in her life.
They swung themselves up at the same time, then kicked the horses into a gallop. The ground thundered beneath them, hooves pummeling the earth, taking them far away from the Song Mage’s estate.
They rode hard all the way to the city.
Only when they were safely inside the walls did Emeline realize they hadn’t found the missing pages.
STILL ON HORSEBACK, PROTECTEDnow by the city walls, Grace led Emeline through a quiet neighborhood overlooking the king’s vineyards. They stopped before a large black gate, its wrought-iron bars forged to look like roses climbing upwards, their blooms getting fuller the closer they grew to the top.
Grace dismounted from her speckled roan mare, then unlatched the gate. Emeline swung down from her borrowed horse—one of Sable’s—and followed Grace through.
A flagstone path lay before them, cutting through lush green grass. At the end of the path sat a two-story house. Dusty roseshutters bordered its windows and a white dormer jutted over the front door.
Emeline’s mouth hung open. This gorgeous house was where Grace lived?
In answer to her unasked question, Grace led Emeline around to the back. A stable stood in the distance, its pasture bordered by weeping willows. But it was another building that Grace moved towards, one made of white stone.
The air around it shimmered with heat, and it smelled like smoke and steel.
At the sound of their horses’ hoofbeats, someone strode out through its open door. Her russet hair was a wild tangle, barely scraped back off her face, and her face was red from the heat.Sable.When her strange eyes alighted on Grace, she wiped her soot-stained hands on the leather apron tied around her waist.
Letting go of her horse’s bridle, Grace ran for Sable, nearly barreling the girl over upon impact. “I’m sorry,” Emeline heard Grace murmur as she burrowed her face into the shiftling’s throat.
Sable’s brow creased, but she said nothing. Only looped a protective arm around Grace’s waist, pulling her snug, then slid a hand into her dark curls with startling tenderness.
It was then that Emeline noticed the iron band on Sable’s ring finger. An exact copy of the one on Grace’s.
Oh,thought Emeline.Oh.
I tithed the most powerful thing I owned,Grace told her.For love.
The softness of Sable’s embrace, the desperate way Grace clung to her … Emeline couldn’t look away from them.
She’d never held anyone like that.
Suddenly, she was back on the road this past summer. Thattoo-familiar ache of longing, ofloneliness,haunting her. Roaring to life at the most inconvenient of times. In the green room, up onstage, at the bar with other musicians. It was what drove her into Joel’s arms last summer, and the arms of countless others before him.
The ache had always been there. A sign of something missing.
You don’t need someone like that,she told herself.
She had her music. She had a rising career. That was all she needed.
“What’s this?” came a mischievous voice.
Rooke stepped out of the forge. His hands, too, were creased with black soot. As if he’d been helping in the forge.
Behind him were Hawthorne and Aspen.
Emeline’s stomach squeezed at the sight of the tithe collector.
Something sparked as their gazes collided. The air turned electric, like the moment before a lightning strike, forcing Emeline to remember their kiss in the hall. The heat of his mouth against hers. The strength of his chest beneath her palms. The way she’dthrownherself at him, sick with desire.
