The argument still seethed, unresolved among them, as they all staggered and slid down the far side of the hill in the deepening darkness, bumping into stones and roots and brambles along the way. Cordelia’s head was still full of those looming, impossible mountains, and her whole body ached with the remnants of those final screams from the brown land they’d escaped. She didn’t dare turn animal again, not yet—not even to see better in the dark. She couldn’t bear to be separated from her triplets again, not even simply in her shape.

It was a relief to hear birds rustling nearby at their bumbling movements and to catch the soft whisper of a fox slipping past them. At least this part of the land hadn’t broken.

So many burned-out patches across the kingdom …

Would their own forest look like that when the dukes were through with it?

“Oi, Cordy.” Catching up, Giles bumped her arm companionably with his. “Can you guess what I’m thinking about?”

Cordelia rolled her eyes, glad to be shaken out of the dark forest of her thoughts. “Food? As usual?”

“Even better. This would make a perfect ballad. Admit it! The three of us questing to save our family, one of us maybe ending up as the king or queen—”

“No!” Cordelia flinched, stumbling to a halt in the darkness. “No one can stay king or queen while the Raven Crown is broken—and Connall says they’ve all given up on even trying to fix it. Anyone who gets pushed onto that throne now will die.”

“Well, a lot of the best ballads do have tragic endings.” Giles gave a melodramatic sigh, his voice turning into a soft, lilting croon. “I could be the great lost king, the flower of the land, the fairest son who e’er sung—”

Cordelia snarled, “That isn’t funny!”

Bracing herself against the call of the land around her, she shifted into wolf form after all and loped ahead to scout for hidden dangers in the night.

Giles’s voice floated plaintively after her. “Has anyone spotted any berries we could eat yet?”

Cordelia scented no berries on that dark, tangled hillside. Farther down, though, she scented plenty of people—and danger, too, waiting for the triplets at the bottom of the hill.

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

A camp of humans was hiding near the bottom of the hill, taking shelter within a patch of pine trees. They were speaking in whispers too low for Cordelia to catch, but the scent of aggression floating through the air was unmistakable.

“Bandits,” Rosalind pronounced when Cordelia ran back to the others to report. She had been scowling and muttering to herself when Cordelia arrived, but she brightened at this news and started scouring the ground in the darkness for a new sword-stick. “Lying in wait for rich travelers to pass, I’d guess.”