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The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
Theyknowyou’rethenightingale,Andala—294
The heat in Oriane’s heart flared, no longer painful.
Now she knew why it had felt like a message, before. Now she knew why it had led her here. There was a sensation of things slotting neatly into place, making sense, of the world being set to rights.
Thewingedgoddesseswhomaketheworldturn. That idea – the thought that there was someone like her, a nightingale to her lark …
Could it really be Andala?
It seemed too good to be true, and more than she deserved.
Oriane tilted her head to the canopy above. Perhaps she should just go, before they saw her, before she could endanger them again—
But when she looked back down, Andala was looking up. Directly at her.
She saw through the lark, saw Oriane herself; therealOriane beneath the feather and song.
‘There you are,’ Andala said softly.
Oriane stayed where she was. Kitt turned his face upwards, searching the branches. The stranger beside Andala – a tall man with long hair and suntanned skin – craned his neck as well. ‘There who –oh.’ His eyes went wide as they landed on her, then shot back to Andala. ‘Is that …?’
Perhaps the stranger’s presence was why Oriane did not transform at once. Or perhaps she was not sure if she still could. She had spent so long in this body now, had compacted and moulded her grief to fit its form; if she changed back – if she let that grief grow with her, fill out its full shape once again – she did not know if she would survive it.
Andala seemed to understand. She looked up at Oriane a moment more. Oriane could not place her expression – it wasn’t quite a smile, but there was light in it, as if Andala’s face were backlit by the sun that wheeled ever higher above the trees.295
‘They’re right,’ she said, just loud enough for Oriane to hear. ‘We need to go. Come with us if you want to.’
‘I’m staying here,’ Kitt called up to her. ‘Before I came out here, Tomas’s men were close to taking back the palace, but I need to go back for him and Hana. Perhaps you should go, Oriane. I don’t think it’s safe here for either of you.’
He gave her a thin, apologetic smile, then turned back to Andala and the stranger. The three of them began murmuring hurriedly, giving Oriane a blessed moment to think.
Perhapsyoushouldgo…Comewithusifyouwantto.Oriane was free now. She could go anywhere, fly as far away as she liked. But would any place be far enough to escape the pain of what she’d done? Should she go back to living away from the world – start her life over again, entirely alone this time?
Perhaps. Perhaps that was what she deserved, what she was destined for. But perhaps she would go with Andala first.
If she truly was the nightingale, then Oriane had to know for sure.
And so she flitted down into the lowest branches, following from a safe distance as Andala and her companion pushed forward, away from Kitt, who was tearing back towards the palace. Oriane trained her focus on the back of Andala’s head, her onyx hair shining like a beacon in the resurrected light.
Girard. That was the stranger’s name. Oriane learned that as she flew behind the pair, just close enough to hear them speak.
She learned other things, too, as they surged through the woods – things that had happened while she was locked away inside that cage,296inside herself. Andala told Girard how the seneschal, not the king, was the one to be feared now. Terault had amassed a band of strange followers and tried to stage a coup of sorts. But it hadn’t been the king’s power Terault sought. It had been Oriane. And when he’d found her gone, smuggled out by Kitt and replaced by a mechanical replica, he had threatened them all – Tomas, Hana, every person in the palace, including Kitt, once Terault had learned what he’d done.
And so, to spare her friend and the princess and every other innocent he’d harm until he found the skylark, Andala had offered up the nightingale instead.
Had offered up herself.
It almost stole the breath from Oriane’s tiny lark lungs to hear Andala say it. That there was a nightingale. That it washer. Oriane had to force herself to focus on the rest of the story.
‘But what does he want with you?’ Girard asked. ‘With either of you?’
Oriane noted that he showed no shock or surprise at the fact that the woman beside him was a living creature of legend. So he’d already known she was the nightingale. Who was he, that he should know such a secret? Something no one else at the palace – not even Kitt, it seemed – had known until today?
Iwasmarried.MyhusbandandIpartedways.
Who else could he be but the man Andala had once shared a life with, once loved?
