Hours later, after practicing how to speak with the royalty, merchants, and nobility of all Gruidarid's allies, even Sydney was tired of talking. They'd trekked past pastures full of yellow, dying grass and flocks of sheep too thin to face a winter, past forests full of crumbling tree trunks and soil that was losing its color, and past cottages that appeared to be abandoned. It seemed the only part of Gruidarid that wasn't dying as a result of Elinor's magic were the rivers. They were coming up on another cottage without smoke curling from its chimney when Alvie suggested they stop for lunch.
Sydney pulled out the last of their oat bread. Mildred took a canteen from her pack and began moving toward the cottage, searching for its well. She was walking past a line of brittle rosebushes that edged the south side of the cottage when a thin, high-pitched scream pierced the air, raising the hair on the back of Mildred's neck and sending a jolt of magic burning down her veins. The scream was coming from the backyard.
Mildred dropped the canteen and ran, her palms stinging with magic. Skidding around the corner, she saw three small children, bellies distended with hunger, lying motionless on the frigid ground behind the cottage. A woman with sunken cheeks and desperate eyes was standing over a fourth child, holding a bloodstained knife in her hand.
Mildred's heartbeat thundered in her ears as icy fingers of panic closed around her chest.
"Stop!" Mildred shouted, but it was too late. The woman, her arms trembling, her face white with strain, plunged the knife into the fourth child's chest. The little girl slumped to the ground while the woman stood holding the knife with shaking fingers.
Mildred raced over the grass and threw herself to her knees beside the child. The girl's blue eyes seemed to beg Mildred for something, and her mouth moved as if she was trying to speak.
"It's all right." Mildred's voice trembled as she pressed her gloved hands to the wound that was pouring blood out of the girl's chest with alarming speed. Her words were a lie—already the girl's heartbeat faltered, and her body shuddered with the effort it took to stay alive.
Sydney raced past her to the other children who lay silent and still, blood soaking into the ground beneath them.
"They're dead." Sydney's voice was a whiplash of anger as he looked up at the woman.
"I had to." The woman's lips were cracked and pale against her haggard
face, and her bones stood out in sharp relief. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she gripped the knife tightly. "My babies . . . my poor babies."
Beneath Mildred's hands, the little girl's chest went still, and her blue eyes
became dull and lifeless. Mildred whispered, "She's gone."
Her throat closed over the words, and she had to swallow past the sudden ache of tears. She climbed to her feet, her gloves still covered in the child's blood. "How could you do this?" Her voice trembled with horror as magic gathered in her palms like lightning. She wanted to rip off her bloodstained gloves and speak an incantor that would punish the woman. That would hurt her the way she'd hurt her children. It would be justice.
No one else will give you what you want, Mildred. You have to take it for yourself. You have the power. Use it.
Shuddering at the memory of Elinor's words, Mildred tugged her gloves toward her wrists.
The woman shook as she looked down at her children lying silently in the brittle grass. Her voice was hollow as she said, "I had nothing left to feed them. My husband died weeks ago—starved to death so that our food would last a little longer." She sank slowly to her knees. "It was an awful way to die. Slow and lingering."
She reached a hand out to smooth the tangled blond curls out of her baby's face. Sobs tore at her, and she curled over the baby's body. "I had to. I couldn't watch you suffer. I had to."
She repeated the words over and over while Sydney stumbled away from her, his face pale and stricken. Alvie wrapped his arms around the prince, but his gaze was on the woman.
"How can we help you?" he asked, but the woman didn't hear him. She was crawling from child to child, repeating her chant, smoothing their hair and kissing their faces.
When she reached the oldest girl, Mildred crouched beside her. Keeping her bloodstained gloves behind her back, she said softly, "I'm sorry. Will you let us help you?"
The woman looked at Mildred as if suddenly remembering that she wasn't alone with her children and said, "There is no help left in Gruidarid. Not for the likes of us."
Mildred opened her mouth to reply, but if words existed that would ease the mother's pain and offer hope, Mildred couldn't find them.
How many of their people were facing the terrible choice between watching their children starve to death or killing them quickly as an act of mercy? The twelve bags of food she'd taken from the treasury wagon yesterday weren't enough for a need this big. They were a bandage on a
wound that needed a tourniquet.
The woman made an awful, keening noise and then turned the weapon toward her own chest. Sun glinted sharply against the blade as it plunged toward the woman's heart. Mildred lunged for her, but she was too late. With a soft groan, the woman slumped over the body of her daughter. Mildred snatched her shoulders and pulled at the weapon as if she could someone save her, but the woman had buried the knife deep beneath her sternum, and blood was a river that poured into the parched soil beneath her. It wasn't long until the desperate pain on the woman's face eased into stillness.
Mildred's eyes stung, and her throat closed on the rusty-sweet smell of blood in the air. Wiping her gloves clean on a tuft of grass, she gently closed the woman's eyes and prayed that in death, she'd found the peace she couldn't find in Gruidarid.
Sydney and Alvie joined her as she closed the children's eyes, tears streaming down her face. When she reached the baby, she sank to her knees and pressed her gloved hands to the dying ground. Sydney knelt beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders while Alvie stood behind them, a hand on each of their shoulders.
"We have to do more." Mildred's voice broke, and she looked at Sydney. "We have to help them. We can't wait another eighteen months like I'd planned, or there will be no one left to rule even if I do take the throne. We have to do something now."
His eyes burned with determination as he nodded.
"They need food. They need hope. We have to do something that makes a statement—something that will grow beyond rumors and into the kind of story that becomes a legend. Something that will give people like this mother a reason to turn away from . . ."
"From this," Sydney finished for her. "I'm with you." Alvie's hands tightened on her shoulder. "As am I." "What's the plan?" Sydney asked quietly.
The knowledge that she would have to face Elinor earlier than she'd anticipated was a stone in Mildred's stomach as she lifted her gaze from the baby's silent body, over the field of dying grass, past the dusty cobblestoned road, and looked east toward the carpet of evergreens that covered the mountain and the treasure they hid from her view.
"We're going to rob the queen's garrison."