“There are reasons we’ve had to be so careful. When you took my hand earlier this evening, do you deny wanting to harm me?”
“I had the thought, but nothing more. If I had wanted to harm you, I would have simply done it.”
“And if I’d wanted the half-lives to harm you, I would have ordered it. So here we are.” Joth sighed. “There is only one guarantee, and that is what Lord Endrick will do if you seek him out alone. I heard what that girl was offering.”
“Her name was Celia and she was my friend!” My heart was so heavy with her loss, I’d barely heard anything he said. If only there were a way to go back and redo those last moments with her. I should have tried harder to get her to come with me. I could have helped her, or saved her myself. Why had I just stood there, frozen between the two worlds?
Joth was either unaware of my turmoil, or he didn’t care. He simply shrugged. “All right, I heard what Celia was offering. You must know Endrick will not keep his promises.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to stay here. I’ll find another way out of the forest.”
“What do you think Endrick will order now that you’ve been seen? I’ll place half-lives around the forest to keep his Ironhearts from coming in, but he already has the forest surrounded. You will not escape.”
“I’ve heard those words before, and I always escape.”
“Then what? With no Olden Blade, no army, and, from what I understand, no friends on the outside to assist you in your quest? We may have needed your help to heal this forest, but you need us as well. Let us find a way around the corruption, or better still, a cure for it. Then maybe we can talk about working together.” He offered a hand to me. “Perhaps you don’t feel the cold, but I do. Return with me, please.”
I looked back toward the forest border, wondering how many Ironhearts I could fend off before my strength wore out. Probably not enough to make it worth the risk to my life.
Defeated, I followed Joth back to his little home. It would be warm there, but warmth was not what I needed.
I needed to be stronger. Once again, my thoughts returned to Celia, though even if I’d found greater strength in my magic, it wouldn’t have protected her. Lord Endrick had magic I could not defend against. There was only one solution.
I needed his magic.
Which meant I needed to find the Olden Blade. Desperately.
I would do it for Celia and those Ironheart archers, and for everyone I would have been able to save if I were more powerful.
For now, I entered Joth’s home, sat against one wall, and thought about how much of a villain Lord Endrick was.
Then I tried not to think about how Joth likely considered me to be just as bad.
And for the first time, I began to wonder if he was right. Maybe I was.
Maybe from now on, I would be.
Harlyn and I were on the road again at dawn and, so far, were making good time. She hadn’t said a word about what had happened between us the night before, which was fine by me. The dragon, Rawk, flew overhead, and as usual, I sensed his perception of the land around us, as he warned me far in advance of when to change course to avoid trouble.
Late that afternoon, we stopped in Irathea to rest our horses. While they were being fed and watered, I said to Harlyn, “If we can keep up this pace, we have a chance of meeting up with Captain Tenger tonight.”
“That’s good.” There was a vacancy in her tone. Her mind was elsewhere.
“Is something wrong?”
For a while, I wondered if Harlyn had heard me. But finally, in little more than a whisper, she said, “You believe there are things about Kestra that I’m not telling you. Maybe you’re right.”
I turned to face her so quickly that it startled her back. “What do you know?”
She took a deep breath before she gathered the courage to answer, and she did it with a question. “If you knew where Kestra was, what would you do?”
My temper began to warm. “All this time, and you’ve known—”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But a few days ago, I’m fairly sure that Gerald received a message from Loelle. It was delivered verbally by a
courier and I missed most of it.” She quickly added, “But I know that when Gerald asked to return a message to Loelle, the courier told Gerald he refused to return to that haunted place again.”
“All Spirits Forest,” I mumbled. It wasn’t fifteen miles away from where we now stood, only an hour’s ride. Trina and I had considered whether Kestra could be there. Early in the search, Trina had even explored the perimeter for any sign of life, but her every attempt to enter was blocked by the half-life spirits who dwelled there. We believed that if Trina was not allowed in there, Kestra certainly would not be, so the Coracks shifted their searches to other parts of the country. I had never questioned their decision, and in fact, it still struck me as an unlikely hiding place.