more vulnerable than they’d been before. Ivo did not think it a coincidence that the attack had come after Bayr had gone.
“Word has spread that the Temple Boy has left the mount. We will have to be more vigilant than ever before, and I will petition Banruud for better protection.”
Ghisla felt as though she teetered on a ledge, unable to breathe deeply, to step left or right. To simply balance over the abyss was her only goal. To exist without falling. She sensed the same in the faces around her. Strain. Tension. Unease. It permeated the air and the keeper song. It billowed in the wind. She wondered if Hod could hear it in his cave, hissing with the insects and humming beneath the soil. Mayhaps they had cursed the land with their fear, created a truth from their belief.
For weeks she considered what she’d learned the night Bayr left and the advice Hod had given her. She vowed to tell Master Ivo about Desdemona’s blood rune only to second-guess the wisdom of her decision moments later.
Dagmar walked the halls of the temple in a grief-stricken daze. One evening, she offered to sing to him, to sing to all of them, eager to comfort but also desperate for the direction she might get from seeing their thoughts. She ended up holding Dagmar’s hands, singing senselessly while he showed her his memories. She saw a tiny babe, bloodied and newly born, clutched to Dagmar’s chest, the babe’s dead mother lying on the forest floor. The babe became a toddler who scaled walls and hoisted rocks bigger than he was. The toddler became a boy not much older than Alba who tackled a bear in the wood and stuttered a tearful promise that he would “always p-protect you, Uncle.” Then the boy became Bayr, surrounded by warriors from Dolphys, who had not looked back as he was sent away.
Ghisla had ripped her hands away and fled the room when her song was done, leaving Dagmar to his terrible pain and her sisters and Ghost to wonder if she was as unfeeling as she seemed. Dagmar’s images brought her back to where she’d started from, convinced someone had to protect Bayr, even if it meant the drought in Saylok continued. Bayr had protected everyone else . . . and she must protect him.
The king left the mount not long after Bayr was taken to Dolphys. The borders of Ebba and Joran were overrun by Hounds from the Hinterlands, and warriors from every clan joined in the battle to beat them back. When Banruud returned months later, snow was on the ground and ice hung from the temple eaves. Ivo had blocked the tunnel from the sanctum to the throne room. He did not want the king’s guard, which had grown continuously less circumspect in their dealings with the temple and the keepers, to be able to enter the sanctum at will. That didn’t stop the king or his men from entering the temple.
The night Banruud returned, he sent a guard named Bilge to retrieve Ghisla. She awoke with fetid breath in her face and a hand over her mouth, and she was thrown headlong into the nightmare she’d experienced in the cellar.
“The king is asking for you,” he whispered. He pulled her from her bed and told her to walk. The fact that he knew exactly where to find her was almost as alarming as being found.
The other girls were motionless shapes around her, but Ghisla saw Ghost peering out from beneath her covers, as if she feared Bilge would see her. Ghisla felt a flash of outrage that she would not intervene but tamped it down as she left the room. Ghost was hiding from the king, that much was clear, and Bilge was the king’s man.
Ghisla just hoped she would fetch Dagmar or Master Ivo when she was gone.
“The temple mutt is gone, isn’t he? No matter. I’ll watch out for you, girl,” Bilge said, patting her bottom like she was a mare. She lashed out at him instantly.
“Don’t touch me. Keep your distance.”
“Spirited, aren’t you? Not demure and sweet at all. I didn’t think so. Too much fire in those eyes.” He tried again, brazenly palming her breasts, and she let out a shriek that made her own hair rise.
He slapped her.
“Stop that. Shut up!” he sneered. “Now your nose is bleeding. The king won’t like that.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“Bilge!” the king grunted from where he lay, sprawled across his bed,