“I knew you could do it,” he repeated.
Slowly, Naelin lifted her face from her children to look at her husband. “What,” she said carefully, not yelling, no anger in her voice, but calm careful words, “do you mean you ‘knew’?”
“I didn’t know, but I suspected.” He dropped to his knees beside them, his face alight with excitement. “And it’s true. You have power!”
She stared at him and tried very hard not to let her entire body clench. “Tell me you are not saying you wanted this to happen. Tell me you didn’t ‘forget’ the charms on purpose. Tell me—” She stopped herself. Llor was sobbing into her shirt, and her brave Erian was shaking as if she was crying as well. She hugged her children tighter and tried to think calmly, rationally. The spirits knew what she could do now. They’d come again. How soon? And how many?
Belatedly, she realized Renet was talking again. “. . . the champion will be in Everdale as soon as tomorrow!”
“Is that why you did this?” she demanded. “You think a champion—”
“—is looking for you! Yes! Or he will be, once he knows that you have the power. I heard he’s searching for a candidate, village to village, the way they used to a hundred years ago. Oh, Naelin, don’t you see? This is our chance!”
“Chance? Chance for what—to be the target of every spirit in the forest?” She tried to keep down the anger, her children a reminder that she did love this man. But . . .
“No, no, a million times no! Renet, promise you won’t tell the champion about me. I don’t want to be a candidate. I refuse to be.” Just thinking about it made her squeeze her children tighter. If this champion chose her, he’d take her away from them, from Renet, from her home, from her life. Leaving Erian and Llor would be like leaving her soul behind.
Burying her face in her children’s hair, she breathed in and out, trying to calm herself enough to think. They’d have a little time before the spirits dared return. She’d make as many charms as she could. She’d cover the house with them, not just the nearby trees; she’d shove them in between the shingles and around the windows and in the fireplace. They’d all take precautions. She’d make herb packets for them all to carry. She’d refresh the charms herself and double-check them, in case Renet had any more reckless ideas to “test” her.
Eventually, if they were careful, if she didn’t use her powers again, if they didn’t give the spirits cause to come to them, the spirits would forget and move on. And then Erian and Llor would be safe again. And she would have her home and life back.
So long as her husband promised not to tell.
Calmly, or as calmly as she could, she asked, “Renet, do you love me?”
“Of course! But—”
“If you love me—if you ever loved me—then promise me when the champion comes to Everdale, do not tell him. Do not tell anyone.
“Ever.”
Chapter 6
For four days, Ven and Alet traveled the outer forests: racing along the wire paths through the canopy, then descending to the comfortable towns that sprawled through midforest, and then ferreting out the tucked-away towns on the forest floor, where people lived between the roots of great trees behind barriers of stone and wood. Every town and village had its own hedgewitch, and Ven insisted they see them all. He judged them abruptly and, he knew, unfairly, but he was looking for something very specific: potential. Not undeveloped potential. There was plenty of that at the training schools. What he wanted was something else entirely. Missed potential.
So far, he hadn’t found it.
Alet pointed to a squirrel that was racing up a nearby tree. “There’s dinner.”
Smoothly, Ven drew an arrow, fit it into his bow, and aimed. The squirrel scampered down a narrowing branch. He’d reach the end in three . . . two . . . one . . . As the squirrel leaped, Ven shot. The arrow pierced the squirrel cleanly through the eye, and the squirrel plummeted. Alet raced to catch it, diving from branch to branch, and then snatching it out of the air by its tail before it hit the dirt.
By the time he met her on the forest floor, she had already started a small cooking fire between two rocks. “Getting slow, old man.”
He was forty-one, not decrepit. “I’m neither old nor slow.”
Laying the squirrel on a rock, she began to skin it. “Everything’s relative.”
“You may be half my age, but I have twice your skill.”
Pausing, she arched her eyebrows at him.
“Quarter more your skill,” he amended.
She said nothing.
“Would you settle for ‘more experience and wisdom’?” Ven laid the protective charms in a circle around them. He was sure Alet had been careful to pick only dead wood for the fire, but there was no sense in risking angering any spirits.
“They say the mind decays rapidly as one’s age advances.” She skewered the squirrel with a stick and then wiped her hands on a fallen leaf. “Did you hear what they were saying at that last town? You started a trend. A few other champions are searching the villages too, even ones who already have a candidate.”
He hadn’t heard, but he was pleased. It can’t be that stupid an idea if others are imitating me. “There are many women who don’t appreciate their own power or recognize their importance.” Taking the stick with the squirrel meat, he held it over the flame. “Not every gifted child is sent to a training school.”
“Only the good ones.”
“Or the ones whose parents notice their powers.”
“Everyone who has powers knows it,” Alet objected.
He twisted the stick. “But not everyone who has power wants to be queen.”
Alet fed more sticks to the fire, and the flames shot up, dancing with the smoke. “Why would you want anyone who didn’t want to be queen?”
He didn’t have an answer to that so he changed the subject. “We’ll visit Everdale next. You spread word of our search, and I’ll talk to the local hedgewitch.”
“Word has already spread. I swear village gossip spreads faster than the wind.”
“This time, stress that we’re not looking for children. We’re looking for women who missed their chance. We’re looking for the overlooked.”
“Maybe they were overlooked for a reason.” Flames licked the squirrel meat, singeing it. “Remember the one in North Blye? She could talk to spirits all right, but she also talked to dead twigs, empty puddles, and random piles of dirt. And how about the one you were so enthused about in Cohn? She fainted at the sight of a spirit, not-so-conveniently after she’d summoned a boatload of them. You were lucky you weren’t eaten alive.”
“You were lucky too,” he pointed out.
“That was skill.” Alet shrugged. “Point is, everyone with significant enough power is at an academy already, so that’s where we should be. This is a fool’s quest.”
She wasn’t wrong, especially about that woman from Cohn. But he was also convinced of the futility of choosing a too-young student. The conventional route wasn’t going to work with their time limit.