The closer the triplets came to Mount Corve, the more the landscape rippled with obstacles, like giant shoulders rising from the earth to shrug off irritating human invaders. Every time Cordelia made it to the top of one slippery, loose-soiled hill with her triplets still safely clinging to her back, she found yet another hill waiting between her and that high green mountain like an endless series of tests that she had to pass.

But she couldn’t keep moving forever. As the sun blazed in a cloudless sky above them, they all stopped, yet again, to eat and rest for a solid hour. They were so painfully close to Mount Corve by then that Cordelia could have wept with frustration at the delay—but her legs were trembling uncontrollably. Her endurance as a horse was so paltry!

She dutifully filled her stomach with fresh grass but then turned girl, flopping back against the rocky hill where they’d stopped while Giles and Rosalind wandered off to forage. They’d left behind the last signs of human habitation well over an hour ago, and for once, there was no sign of any devastation to explain it. Apparently, no humans had ever dared to build this close to Mount Corve, much less hold any battles here.

The land felt dangerously unsettled beneath her body. All across the kingdom, as hard as she’d tried not to pay any attention, she had felt the transition in each patch of land they’d crossed, like multiple pieces of a larger patchwork quilt—all of them sewn together into a whole, but each one of them individual and distinct. Each area held its own particular chorus of voices … and its own vivid history of pain.

This chunk of land, just by Mount Corve, wasn’t screaming like so many others had along the way. It wasn’t even calling for her attention. Instead, it felt somehow as if it were … waiting.

Holding its breath?

As she lay on the sloping grass and dirt, her eyes shut to bask in the warm sunshine, she found herself scratching again and again with one finger at the side of her head. There was a subtle tickle of sensation there, inside her ear, like a squirrel trying to sneakily scratch its way through a door, or …

No! It was the land itself trying to wriggle through her defenses. She sat up with a jerk, shaking herself off vigorously. I’m not listening! I won’t hear you!

“… was a time … could come agai—Cordy!” Giles’s song cut off as he rounded the hill, his eyes widening as he watched her shuddering movements. “Is everything all right?”

“It’s. Fine.” She gritted out the words, using all of her energy to hold her inner defenses strong.

She wouldn’t let the land distract her now, wouldn’t let it separate her from her triplets in these last few hours before the truth came between them.