“Are you sure?” He frowned, starting toward her. “If you’re not feeling well—”

“I said I’m fine!” She bared her teeth in a ferocious, forced smile. “Why don’t you keep singing? I can listen to your new song.”

He paled behind his freckles. “Ros!” he yelled. “There’s something wrong with Cordy!”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Rolling her eyes, Cordelia pushed herself to her feet. Every muscle in her body ached with the effort she’d been through … and when she looked down at the grass where she’d lain, she spotted a single white starflower poking its head up through the green.

She jerked backward as if it were an adder preparing to strike.

“What’s wrong with Cordy?” Rosalind rounded the hill at a run.

Giles pointed at Cordelia accusingly. “She said she wants to hear me sing.”

Snorting, Rosalind slowed to a halt. “Has she lost her hearing? Or only her mind?”

“Oh, shut up, both of you!” Cordelia backed hastily away from the telltale flower. “Let’s just get moving.”

“Can you? Already?” Rosalind frowned, catching up and peering into her face suspiciously. “I thought you needed more rest than that. Horses—”

“I can’t carry either of you,” Cordelia mumbled, “but I can walk on my own two legs. And it’s not as if we’re far from Mount Corve. So there’s no point waiting any longer, is there?”

Giles looked more than ready to offer several points, quite possibly set to music, so Cordelia turned her back on them both and started forward without letting her brother’s loud groan of frustration—or her own aching legs—stop her.

She could feel that starflower waving mockingly in the breeze behind her.

As they trudged farther and farther up and down the rocky paths through the bumpy foothills, the voice of the land beneath her feet stopped subtly scratching at her ear and started hammering outright at her head instead. She clenched her jaw tight. La-la-la, I can’t hear you!

Her triplets were talking again now, in low, worried tones, about what dangers might lie ahead. She tried to listen to them—she really did. But the voices of the land formed an angry blur in her ears, all demand and distress and something sharp at the edges almost like a warning, and—

“What do you think, Cordy?”

“Sorry?” Breathing hard, she blinked out at her siblings. Only one more slope rose before them now until they would reach the real mountain at last.

… Where everything would change.

Giles stared at her. “Who were you listening to just then?”

“Nobody,” she snarled—then caught herself. “I mean, you?”

Rosalind let out a huff of a laugh. “Nice try. She was off in her own world, as usual.”

“No!” Cordelia said. “I’m right here. With you.” She forced herself to meet her sister’s gaze full-on, even as the voices in her head rose to ear-piercing screams. “I just—”