Sidra was silent for a long moment. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your apology or pity,” Moray said in a low voice. “What I want is to know how long I’m to be imprisoned here. I want to know how long you plan to keep me away from my only remaining sister. My twin.”
Sidra stood, ignoring the twinge of pain in her foot. She held his gaze for a long, disquieting moment.
Once, such a story would have softened her, even if it came from an enemy’s mouth. It would have roused her empathy so much that she would have felt compelled to take action, to be of service. But ever since Torin had left . . . ever since she had felt the blight creeping under her skin, turning her veins to gold . . . she had been faced with no other choice but to harden herself. To turn her soul into something strong and unyielding as stone.
“Days can feel like years, can’t they?” she said. “I remember that very feeling when my daughter was stolen from me. How every day felt like a decade as I wondered where she was and worried about her. Missing those hours with her that I will never regain. And for my daughter, knowing the fear of that moment will be imprinted in her memory.”
The confidence in Moray’s expression faded. His posture drooped, and his breaths hissed through his teeth. He was silver-tongued, Sidra knew. She had heard him tell a story before and knew that he could string words together like spells. Maybe in another life he could have been a bard, putting his skills to good use instead of wielding them for his own selfish purposes.
“Perhaps you should have thought of that consequence, Moray,” Sidra said as she turned away. Her voice echoed through the prison, cutting through both shadows and torchlight. “Your sentence is ten years.”
Torin arrived at the blighted orchard angry, hungry, and not at all amused by the thought of solving the spirits’ riddle. The world around him continued to thrive in this dusky landscape—sun setting, moon rising, stars gleaming like crushed diamonds. There was one snippet of blue sky, streaked by clouds, but the northern horizon, Torin noticed, looked stormy, darkened. He could see lightning dancing in the faraway clouds.
“He comes at last,” drawled a familiar voice, and Torin turned to behold the hill spirit again, standing a safe distance from the orchard.
“Where is this riddle?” Torin asked.
The hill spirit, vines and flowers tangled in his long hair, smiled at his curtness.
“Do you remember the apple tree that was struck by lightning when the bard played for the orchard?” the spirit said.
“How could I forget that night?”
“The king’s riddle is written in the split wood. Come, I will read it for you. But take care in the orchard; if you touch the blight here, you will also fall prey to it.”
Torin nodded and carefully followed the hill spirit as they approached Rodina’s orchard.
Torin had already scrutinized the trees from his side of the realm, and now he could see the spirits who were ailing. The sight made him pause, stricken. Maidens of the orchard sat at the foot of their appointed trees, their long hair dry and snarled like burnt summer grass, their faces wan and beaded with amber sap. The apple blossoms that graced their hair and drifted from their fingertips were wilted, and their skin was dappled from the blight, in purple hues with veins of gold. One maiden sitting against a very sick tree looked to be the most severely affected.
He came to a halt near her, and while he knew he shouldn’t approach any closer, he felt a terrible weight of sadness in his heart.
“That is Mottie,” the hill spirit said. “She is the lady of this orchard. She was first to fall ill.”
“What did she do?” Torin asked in a low voice, but then instantly regretted his question when the hill spirit gave him a sharp look.
“She refused to obey an order of the king, an order that would have plunged your realm into famine.”
“Your king . . .” Torin hesitated.
“You can speak his name here, only do it carefully,” the hill spirit advised.
“Bane.”
“The very one.”
Torin drew his hand through his hair, conflicted. “He doesn’t sound like a worthy king.”
“I must refrain from adding my own comment to that, mortal laird.”
“How long has he reigned? Can he ever be . . . defeated? Can you not rule yourselves?”
The hill spirit’s mouth bent with a tragic smile. “There must always be a ruler in our realm. The same with yours. Bane has reigned for nearly two centuries now. A long time by mortal reckoning. The price of defeating him would be very steep, and most are not willing to pay it.”
Wanting to ask more, Torin drew breath and was sifting through his store of questions. But the hill spirit, who seemed tired, was quickly leading the way to the cloven apple tree, the very ground where Jack had once played in the storm. “Come, mortal laird. Here is the riddle.”
Torin remembered Mottie and nodded to her, but the lady of the orchard hardly responded. Her eyes were glazed as she watched him approach the split tree, its trunk lying in pieces in the grass.
“This tree was once Starna, but she is now lost to us. When the king lashed out and broke her in response to the bard’s music, he left behind these words, scorched in Starna’s heart. Can you read them, mortal laird?”
Torin stood before the tree, squinting. He saw nothing but whorls of wood, red and chestnut brown, and the vein where lightning had blasted. A white, merciless streak.
“I don’t see anything.”
“Look closer.”
Torin stifled a sigh and squatted to study the lines of the wood. It took him a moment, but he finally saw the words. “It’s not in my tongue. I can’t read it.”
“As I suspected,” the hill spirit said. “That is why I am here with you.”
“Read it to me then,” Torin said, and when the silence stretched long between them, he added, “Please.”
“The riddle goes as follows: Ice and fire, brought together as one. Sisters divided, united once more. Washed with salt and laden with blood—all united will satisfy the debt you owe.”
Torin continued to squat, listening. But that was the end, and he found he was more confused and frustrated than before.
“What does this mean, hill spirit?”
“Even if I knew, I could not tell you.”
“Read it again.”
The spirit did so, in a steady and calm voice, and Torin ruminated on the words. But they made no sense to him, and he stood up with a groan.
“This is impossible,” he said, throwing up his hands. “How am I to solve something like this?”
“If you were unworthy of this challenge, we would not have chosen you,” the hill spirit replied. “Were we wrong, Torin of the Tamerlaines?”
Torin stared at the wood, the smooth edges of a language he couldn’t read. A mystery he had no idea how to solve. Ice and fire, sisters divided, salt and blood.