It wasn’t coming from the air. It was a flute piping directly through her veins, high, eerie, and hauntingly familiar. As if—

“Mother!” Cordelia grabbed both of her triplets at once. “She’s here. Run!” She swerved to the left, tugging them with her. For once, they didn’t even try to resist.

“What are you talking about?” Giles panted.

“She’s here?” Rosalind’s head swiveled as she ran. “Where—?”

“It’s her song!” That was how Cordelia had recognized the melody. How many times had it rocked them to sleep when they were little? It was the same song Alys had hummed in the garden only yesterday—but Alys couldn’t send songs by magic. Only Mother could.

“I don’t hear anything,” Rosalind said.

“Just trust me!” Those other messages had streamed through the trees and the earth, as if the forest itself were whispering through her skin, but this song was different. It came through her bones with a magic that felt inescapably familiar. She knew it every bit as firmly as she knew that their hunters were nearly upon them now.

“Wait.” Giles was still panting for breath. “I can hear it now, too. Cordy’s right. It’s—”

“Our lullaby!” Rosalind finished on a sudden gasp—and sped up to run by Cordelia’s side, no longer waiting for directions.

Another five feet, over the brink of a large, grassy clearing, and—

Snap! The air closed behind them.

Rosalind whirled around, raising her stick-club. “What was that?”

“We’re safe.” Cordelia slumped to a halt, breathing hard. “Can’t you feel it?” A blurry, translucent wall of air had formed at the edge of the large clearing, closing them in. “We’re shut off from all the rest of the forest now.”

Giles poked one finger at the shimmering air, eyes wide. “I can’t break through this.”

“Neither can they.” She hoped not, anyway.

Six bear-knights hurtled into the trees they’d just run through, followed by a thin, panting man in a strange crimson robe. Cordelia braced to find out if she’d been right.

Their blurred heads turned, visibly searching. Their voices were muffled by the wall of air. The man in the crimson robe shook his head, his gaze skating past the triplets without a single pause. One of the knights scowled and slashed an arm furiously through the air.

All six knights and their companion turned in unison … and ran in the opposite direction.

“You see?” A warm, confident voice spoke just behind the three children. “You’re perfectly safe now, my dears.”

That wasn’t Mother’s voice.

Every sense prickled with warning as Cordelia turned.

In the center of the clearing, where she’d seen nothing but green grass before, a small white cottage rose up before them. Ivy climbed its plastered sides; wide, dark timbers framed the open door.

Standing in that doorway, a tall, dark-haired woman smiled out at them.