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Once more, she was struck by the bitter urge to laugh at the way things kept playing out. She might have, had she not been breathless from the steep walk back up to the palace and the pain that had snaked its way through her body as she climbed.
The sun was setting. It had sunk well below the tree line by the time Andala reached the woods on the outskirts of the grounds and slipped into their dusk-shaded depths. She soon found her usual spot. It was tucked away in a hidden clearing, invisible from the woods’ main path.
This was the part of each day she dreaded most. She lived in a state of discomfort at the best of times, a fog of perpetual pain at the worst. But nothing – almost nothing – hurt more than this.
It started with an ache in her chest: a chill, as if a winter wind had made its way inside her ribs and taken root. The ache soon87morphed into pain, sharp as a spear of ice. And just before it became unbearable, just when she felt as if the spearpoint would pierce her heart clean through, Andala would change.
How she hated being the nightingale.
Even after the transformation she hated it. She was so small, so fragile. Unable to control her own body as it sent out a stream of song to summon the night. She had no more control over it when she changed back, no power to prevent the cold that seemed to line her bones or the sporadic fits of pain that wracked her limbs. And the fact that darkness was her legacy – the thing she had always feared so deeply – she hated that too.
If only she were more like Oriane. Oriane, who was so comfortable as the skylark, who found her task a blessing rather than a burden. She controlled her power. Transformed with ease. Changed back when she was ready. Perhaps even took command of her song. Andala could never hope to have that kind of power. The nightingale ownedher. Controlledher. Not the other way around. She could no more influence its workings than she could reach out and pluck the moon like a fruit from the sky.
She could do nothing about it now as the time arrived, the transmutation upon her before she’d even had a chance to catch her breath.
Her heart seized. Her lungs protested, constricting, frosting over. Her limbs jarred with the awful compressing sensation of her form shrinking smaller and smaller. Too soon, not soon enough, the change was over, and she was a bird. Nightsong spilled from her beak. The sound was grating and incessant, as sharp and unmelodic as a blade scraped over stone. She flew erratically around the clearing, barely in control of her feeble wings, barely able to land in time to transform again on solid ground.88
Back in her body, Andala remained there in the dirt, posture fetal and fragile, allowing herself a moment to shut out the world. Gradually, her racing heart slowed; she forced her breathing from sharp, shallow bursts into something more even. Beyond the canopy of trees, she knew the moon would be rising, readying to take its place as the jewel of the freshly forged night. Its cold light would guide her back to the palace, where everything – everyone – that she wanted to avoid was waiting.
Run. Run. Run.
The word pulsed in her aching head, just as it had the day she’d learned the king was searching for her.
For so long, the nightingale had been more myth than truth – a fireside story told less and less often, by fewer and fewer people, as the years went by. That suited Andala well. She did not want people to believe in her. But King Tomas did. Young, impressionable Tomas, who had not yet managed to gain the esteem his late mother the queen had enjoyed. Maybe that was why he had determined to find the nightingale. Maybe he believed it would win the affections of his people if he could prove to them that magic existed, and that he had found it. Foundher. And if he found her, he would surely find—
Andala closed her eyes, curled up tighter, put her hands to her throbbing temples.
She had intended to leave; to take a month or so to plan her next move, and then go. Sing for the night, then steal away beneath its cover, getting as far from the palace as she could.
But just a few weeks later, the skylark had come.
And perhaps, Andala had thought, as she’d stood in these woods and stared at that unconscious form, perhaps if the king believed in the nightingale, then he believed in the skylark as well.89
Perhaps it didn’t matter which skysinger he found, as long as he found one of them.
Get up.
Her inner voice carried the tone it always did when she succumbed to the pull of her pain, buckled beneath the weight of her mistakes. The voice sounded a little like her own, a little like her mother’s, a little like a stranger’s; perhaps it was the voice of the nightingale itself, its song translated into speech, using the same commanding power that summoned the night to compel her to keep going.
Get up.
Andala did. Slowly, her movements laboured and stiff, her fingers clenching in the dirt, she pushed herself to her feet. By the time she crossed the threshold of the woods, she had drawn herself back together, posture upright and spine full of steel. By the time she reached the palace grounds, she felt almost ready to face whatever would come next.
But even before she made it inside, she could tell something was wrong.
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Chapter 12
The ride back to the palace was quiet. Night was falling outside, and Oriane stared at the growing shadows beyond the carriage window, her thoughts tumbling over one another in a fast-flowing, never-ending stream.
‘What’s going on?’
Kitt’s question broke her reverie as the carriage pulled up. Out the window, a crowd of servants rushed about in the palace courtyard, lanterns in hand, as if they were searching for something in the encroaching dark.
‘She’s here,’ cried a young woman in an apron, pointing Oriane’s way as she emerged from the carriage. ‘She’s here!’
A dozen people swarmed towards them, others dashing back up the steps into the palace. Oriane exchanged a worried glance with Kitt.
