“What?” he groaned. So near and yet so far. As his mind began to cloud over, he realized that soldiers always have colleagues. He should have been more careful. He looked down to see what appeared to be a shard of glass sticking out of his chest. Blood instantly bloomed over his doublet. His eyes rolled up and he fell with an echoing thump onto the branchway.

30 • A REALLY BOARING LESSON

Ark slept through the morning and into the afternoon, in a side room as sumptuously furnished as Corwenna’s. He had no doubt that the mattress was filled with raven feathers. His dreams were easily as dark. There was a nest, high in the cruck of a tree, and two babies cradled within. One was crying for all his worth. But the other was coughing, a little body shivering all over as the wind swirled around them like a hungry hunter….

When Ark finally woke, it was to see Corwenna sitting at the end of the bed, studying him. “I must get back. Little Shiv … the King.” He tried to sit up, to move away from this old crone who’d told him she was his mother! Perhaps it was just a terrible dream. He was still feeling so weak.

“Ark, this is about more than the King. You know that. In any case, what power does he truly hold? The rot is too deep for him to make a difference.”

“I don’t know what you expect from me,” he said angrily. “You said it was up to me. What can I do against trained soldiers?”

“You do not think well of me!” Corwenna sighed.

“What do you expect? It’s not every day the Raven Queen announces she’s my mother!” His heart suddenly yearned for home. To be back with Shiv, to be chatting to his father in his cot. Mr. Malikum, a man who climbed a branch and found a pair of orphans. “Then who is my father?”

The green eyes looked away for a second. “One day I shall explain. If I told you that every tree in this land would hold you in its curling branches like a father would, you might not believe me, yet.”

He didn’t. He couldn’t. Instead, Arktorious Malikum, the foundling boy, son of Arborium, gave a great sob while his new mother held him tight. “And why did you leave me?”

“It was the will of the woods. If you hadn’t grown up as a Dendran, you would not have known what to fight for. But the day that I swaddled you both in that cradle of twigs nearly broke my dark heart. And one day, I promise you will understand why your twin had to go on another, far more perilous journey.”

Ark felt her hurt then. Corwenna was no longer a strange and powerful being but an old woman grieving for all that she had to lose.