Finally Lark answered my question. “No,” she gritted out, the barely audible word squeezed from her lungs by sheer force of effort, passing between her still lips as an exhalation of air. “No one can.”
“I recall now why I sat down on my throne and did not rise again for an age.” The Alder King’s voice rolled over the chamber like thunder boiling over the horizon. The air grew heavy, crackling with latent power until the hair on my arms prickled and stood on end. “I grew tired of your squabbling. Your small lives wearied me. Wine . . . embroidery . . . trifles . . . why? You would claw your neighbor’s eyes out for a mouthful of dust. Yet dust is all around you. The whole world is made of dust, and always returns to it. There is nothing else.”
I must have mistaken the fear I’d glimpsed in his eyes. This being did not know fear. He felt nothing at all, I thought, laboring to raise my chin. Black spots swarmed before me like gnats.
“And now the Good Law is broken, and you have failed to mete out just punishment. For what reason does this one . . . and that one . . . yet live? It is no matter what the mortal has done. I do not desire,” he said, “to see either of their faces.”
He had almost reached the bottom of the stairs. I swallowed the bitter taste of ozone and fumbled for my bond with Rook, and into that shared silence I screamed at him.
He staggered as though a rug had been pulled out from beneath his boots. Then he shook his head and, to my dismay, gave the Alder King a crooked smile. The smile was too savage to be called charming. “What a fortuitous coincidence,” Rook declared. “I confess neither of us wanted to see your face, either. In light of these circumstances, I think it best we take our leave.” He folded his arm over his chest and bowed. “Good day.”
The Alder King’s compulsory return bow cut off his darkening expression.
“Quickly, to me,” Rook said, turning and holding out his uninjured hand. A wave of leaves crashed against him as Lark lifted me, hoisted me onto a stamping horse’s back, and pulled my arms around his neck. We took off in a bone-jolting lurch. Powerful muscles bunched beneath my cheek. Faces flashed past, gaping in surprise, shrinking away from the stone chips thrown up by his striking hooves. They stung my own legs, icy pinpricks of pressure without pain. I wondered if I bled.
We clattered up the stairs, Rook’s shoulders heaving as he conquered the too-small steps. The mirrorlike curtain of water grew closer and closer, reflecting his charge in rippling silver, and my own too-pale countenance as I clung astride. He was going to jump through it. I braced myself as best I could.
“This was your plan? Oh, Rook,” I mumbled half-conscious into his warm, rough mane. What he was doing was the last thing anyone would expect. “You’re running away.”
Twenty-one
OUR FLIGHT from the summer court passed in a blur. Only the shock of water streaming from my hair and dripping down my back kept me sensible enough to cling to Rook’s mane. My thoughts lapsed in and out of a stupor, my mind struggling to stay afloat.
At some point early on, Hemlock’s cold voice chased us down a dim hollow lined by half-dead pines. I quailed at their leaning shapes, whose stripped lower branches bent inward over the stream bed like they meant to pluck me from Rook’s withers.
“Oh, do come back!” she called. “We could have tried to take him together, you and I. We could still try. He’s after you, you know. Just think what a battle it would be!”
The horn sounded then, hollow and commanding in the night. Hounds bayed in the distance. The sharp spice of pine resin rose from the needles crushed beneath Rook’s hooves, and his unrelenting pace didn’t falter.
“Please!” Hemlock cried. “I failed him. He’s set them on me. Please—please—please—”
Her screams swirled down with me into the dark.
The next time I regained full consciousness it was to Emma standing in the doorway of our house, holding a skillet in a white-knuckled grip, about to swing it at Rook’s head.
“I don’t care who you are or why you’re here!” she shouted. “You put her down right now and leave.”
“Madam, I—”
“Do you want to know how many times I’ve shoved a man’s intestines back into his body? Fair one or not, I’m sure I can manage it the other way around.”
I tried to speak, but my throat was so dry it closed up. All I managed was a sort of gagging sound.
“Isobel!” Rook and Emma both exclaimed at once.
I coughed, saliva flooding my mouth at the surge of nausea that followed. “It’s all right. Don’t hit him. He’s”—another gut-wrenching cough—“he’s helping me.”
Grim and tight-lipped, Emma lowered the skillet. “Bring her inside and put her on the settee. And then explain yourself, please, beginning with why you were just a horse.”
The walls tilted crazily as Rook carried me through the kitchen and the hall to the parlor, the air redolent with linseed oil, the shapes of the props familiar even in the dark. Home. I was home. An ache swelled bigger and bigger in my chest. I hadn’t expected to be here again—I’d thought I’d die without ever coming back. When he laid me down on the settee, the hot tears spilled over. I had a great deal of other, more important things to say, but my miserable relief hijacked my brain, and all that came out was “Emma” in a strangled wail.
She pushed Rook aside, and he had the good sense to retreat to the foot of the settee and hover there like a scolded toddler. Her arm slid between my back and the settee’s cushions, pulling me against her. I clung weakly, sobbing into her shoulder.
“Oh, Bell, where are your clothes? Why are you wearing a dress that’s shedding petals all over the place? Are you hurt anywhere? Did they hurt you?”
“I’m all right,” I bawled against her nightgown, not because it was true, but because I wanted it to be.
Eventually I subsided into wracking gulps and hiccups, and she laid me back down. I was grateful I couldn’t see the enormous wet spot I’d left on her shoulder in the dark. “I’m going to fetch some water and a lantern. You,” she added, pinning Rook with her gaze, “behave yourself.”
“Er, yes, madam,” he said.
The moment Emma left the room he was before me like a shot, gathering my wet fingers into his hands. He hissed in pain and pulled his left hand back, fumbling around for a handkerchief to cover up his slip. I touched his cheek, and he stilled, the gleam of his eyes intent on my face in the shadows. I marveled at how hot his skin felt, which meant I must be very cold indeed.
“Isobel,” he asked, “are you well? Truly?”
I considered the question. Though I lay motionless, every muscle in my body jumped with overexertion. My heartbeat rocked me slightly, the shell of my ear scraping a rhythmic shuff, shuff, shuff against the cushions, as though I had burned up to a husk as light and frail as paper.