If I could drive my knife between the Lady’s shoulders before she turned … I reached for the blade.
“I would not try that, Liza.” The Lady didn’t look at me. “Let your hand fall now, else the animal speaker will be under my control and gouging out his own eyes before you can draw iron.”
I released the knife’s hilt. Kyle edged behind the quia tree, Johnny beside him.
Karin raised her glass but did not drink. “Much has changed indeed. Truly, Mother, I did not expect to find you whiling away your time playing with humans.”
The Lady shrugged, an eloquent gesture. “We all must have our entertainments.” Her gaze flicked to Elin on the quia branch. “And what of you, Granddaughter? Have you brought me what I asked for? Or do you disappoint me yet again?”
The hawk made a mournful sound. The Lady extended her arm, and Elin hopped obediently down from the branch onto it. She was trembling, though, both wings drawn close to her body.
The Lady’s fingers brushed her feathers. “We shall talk about your failures later.” She set the hawk back on the branch and turned to me. I backed into a defensive crouch. “I believe, Daughter, that your student holds something which is mine.”
Karin stepped around to put herself between us. The Lady smiled and sipped her wine. “And so you play your own games with humans, do you not?”
Karin’s eyes didn’t leave her mother. “I have never played at anything.”
The Lady laughed. “Ah, yes. As I recall, that caused us both a fair amount of trouble at court. But I do not ask you to play today. I ask only that you return the leaf to me, as is my right.”
Behind the quia tree, Kyle sang softly. Dying grasses rustled at Karin’s feet. “I do not believe it is,” she said. “Or have you not heard that Kaylen, too, yet lives?”
The Lady’s smile was cold as starlight. “That he has not returned to the dust from which we all rose is clear enough, lest the leaf would have crumbled into that same dust. That he has long since broken every bond that ties him to the Realm is also clear, and whatever existence remains beyond that hardly matters. He chose a human over his people and his land, and the price paid for the Uprising that resulted was great. That is what happens when one ceases to play games.”
Caleb had saved Mom’s life. He saved lives in his town yet. But they were human lives, and no doubt beneath the Lady’s notice.
She traced a finger along the rim of her half-empty glass. “I would hope, Daughter, that bonds of love and loyalty would be enough for you to do this thing. Even so, I offer you this: command your student to give me the leaf, and I will go on my way and leave you this human town to play with as you will.”
My hand went to my chest. “No.” Caleb’s town needed him, too, and if Caleb’s life was truly bound up in the leaf—I couldn’t buy the lives in my town at such a price, even if spring came and I was able to call them from their trees. I couldn’t save this town only to leave the Lady free to destroy other towns instead.
The Lady’s fingers tightened around her glass. “Your student speaks out of turn.”
Karin smiled grimly. “My student merely speaks my mind. We will not barter one life for another.”
“Kaylen bartered away the lives of all our people. And so summer ends and unending winter takes hold in both the Realm and the human world. There is no plant speaker strong enough to stop this dying, just as no fire speaker could control the fires the humans sent, nor any healer stop the poison that tainted air and soil when the fires burned out. The worlds wind down, Daughter, yet justice will be done before the game is through. Give me the leaf, and let Kaylen and his human toy pay for their foolishness at last.”
“No amount of justice will bring back the dead,” Karin said. A breeze rattled the quia’s branches. “I offer you this instead: leave the few surviving human towns alone, and take me in their stead.” She dropped to both knees and emptied her glass at her mother’s feet. “Punish me for Kaylen’s mistakes if you wish, or demand that I return to Faerie by your side—whatever you command of me, it shall be done.” Dark liquid sank into the ground as she held out her hands.
“No.” I moved to Karin’s side, meaning to say I wouldn’t let her barter her life for another, either—but I couldn’t say it. Karin wasn’t offering herself to the Lady to save a single life or a single town, but to save my entire world. I would do the same in her place, and do it willingly.
“You disappoint me, Daughter.” The Lady drained her glass, set it down in the mud, and walked past Karin, as if her offer were a trivial thing. “No matter. Justice can take many forms.” She gestured toward the forest.
Mom stepped out from among the trees. I froze. Her down coat was open, and the leg of her pants was torn, as by a wolf’s teeth, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. She held something in one hand—my father’s knife. Matthew paced into view a step behind her, his gray wolf’s eyes as dull as the skeletons of the winter trees around us.
I longed to run to them, but I didn’t. There was more than one kind of trap. They were both still alive. I held to that as I tensed, waiting for a chance to act. Karin rose to her feet beside me.
“Tara, pet, come here.” Mom obediently climbed the hill to the Lady’s side, and Matthew paced after her. The Lady reached out a hand. Mom took it, trusting as a child. “Your mother and I have had a very interesting talk, Liza.”
Ice trickled down my spine. Mom was under the Lady’s glamour as surely as Matthew—the glamour she had never stopped fearing. The Lady whispered in her ear, and Mom tested the knife against her hand, not drawing blood. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been weeping, but she wasn’t crying now. She waved the knife through the air as she walked toward me.
Karin’s hand reached out to squeeze mine—a warning.
I pulled away to step forward. “Mom.”
“Liza?” Mom’s voice was fuzzy, as if she spoke through layers of wool.
“Tara, dear, remember what we discussed.”
Mom’s eyes focused, as if she were seeing me for the first time. She drew me, one-armed, into a hug—a child’s hug, seeking comfort, not giving it. “I’ve missed you, Lizzy.”
I drew away to reach for her knife. Mom smiled, a secretive smile that reminded me of Kyle. She stepped back, as if to give the knife to me.
Then she darted behind me, pulled me close, and pressed the steel blade to my throat.
I didn’t move. I barely dared breathe. “Mom?” I reached for her knife hand, and she pressed her blade against my throat, biting skin.
Mom drew the knife back. I heard her take one step away, then a second, and a third. My neck stung where the blade had been.
There was a blur of motion—I whirled to see Karin knock the knife from Mom’s hand and sweep her feet out from under her. How had she moved so fast? Mom fell into the mud. I drew my own knife and lunged at the Lady.
She stepped lightly away from my blade, toward Karin. I stumbled and spun around.
“I do believe that was a direct challenge to my magic and my power.” The Lady’s voice was soft as silk, sharp as steel. She smiled as her fingers closed around Karin’s wrist. “And so you forfeit the protections of kinship and rank.”
Karin slipped from her hold—too late. She began to
“I deny you, Arianna.” Bark flowed over Karin’s chest and neck, through her hair. “I deny you, and your games, and every last claim you have on me.” The last words came out with a gasp as her eyes and mouth disappeared within the thick bark of a winter oak. A spark of life reached for me from within that tree, then pulled
