Page 66 of Skysong

‘I’m afraid I don’t have the patience or the intellect for games like those,’ Girard answered, looking confused.

She smiled. ‘Sometimes it isn’t patience or intellect that helps you win. Sometimes it’s something else. Sometimes it takes—’

‘Sacrifice.’

Andala and Girard both looked to Leilyn, who had finished Andala’s sentence for her. She was staring at her daughter, her eyes wide in understanding. It was another of those occasions Andala usually so hated, where Leilyn knew precisely what she was thinking. But she found she did not hate it as much this time. It was a relief, actually, to know that it been so easy for Leilyn to come to the same conclusion she had. It made her feel like she was on the right track.

‘I’m sorry – sacrifice? What does that mean?’ Girard had not yet realised it. He glanced between Andala and her mother. But it was Leilyn, still staring at Andala, who was the one to say it aloud.

‘She’s going to give herself up to the king.’

‘What?’ Girard demanded. ‘You mean – tell him you’re the nightingale?’ When Andala nodded, he looked at her the same way her mother was doing – as if she’d lost her mind. ‘Andala –why?’

‘It’s the only thing I can do,’ she explained calmly. ‘At first, it will buy us some time. Distract Tomas from Oriane and whatever awful things he’s planning to do to try to get her to sing. Then Kitt can work on a plan to free her – that’s the safer option, I think, than keeping on with trying to somehow replicate her song.’

Girard folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. ‘And what then?’

‘Well,’ Andala said slowly, ‘I have heard that perhaps … perhaps the king has a plan. To end the so-called curse of night – a plan that involves me.’

It took a moment for Girard to realise what she meant, but when he did, his narrowed eyes went wide.235

‘And I think,’ she said loudly, over the protests he had begun to voice, ‘I think it would work. If it came to that, the cursewouldend. Without me, the night would cease to exist, so the day would have to come back.’ She shrugged. ‘Better to have eternal sunshine than eternal dark, wouldn’t you say?’

‘What of Amie?’ Leilyn cut in. ‘Would your power not pass on to her the moment you left this world?’

At any other time, such a question from her mother might have enraged her, a thousand scathing retorts leaping ready to her tongue. But not now. Andala was calm and entirely certain as she replied, ‘No. That’s not how it works, not for us. I can make sure it doesn’t happen. I know I can.’

Girard was shaking his head. He pushed back his chair with a scrape and stood, moving away to pace in front of the stove. ‘This is ridiculous, Andala. You’re talking aboutdying.Putting yourself at the end of a sword to try to get the sun to rise.’

Andala threw up her hands. ‘What is the alternative, Girard? Would you prefer that I wait here to die in the darkness with you and everybody else? Because that is what will happen. The night will keep getting colder. Our food will run out. Thousands of people will die, rather than just one who could have saved them all.’

Girard seemed to have no answer to this. He turned to Andala’s mother. ‘Leilyn, what do you have to say to this? Surely you aren’t going to let her do it?’

Andala turned to Leilyn as well. Her mother’s focus was still trained on her; it seemed not to have strayed the whole time. Andala wondered what she would say – whether she would join Girard in protesting, or offer no opinion at all.236

It surprised Andala when Leilyn did not respond in either way. Instead, she was shocked to see tears form in her mother’s eyes, as Leilyn lifted her chin in a sad yet unmistakeable show of pride.

‘I know that when my daughter has made up her mind about something, it is near impossible for anyone to change it,’ she said. ‘But even if I could try, all of us know that she is in the right.’

‘In theright? Leilyn, I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous. There’s nothing right about this. There has to be another way.’ Girard paused, then repeated himself, quieter. ‘There has to be.’ But he was sounding less sure with every word he spoke. When he finally looked back at Andala, she could see in his face that he knew she was going to do this, and that he could not stop her.

‘It’s for the best,’ she said. The words were as much for herself as they were for him.

Girard’s shoulders slumped. ‘At least – at least stay for a little longer, Andala,’ he pleaded. ‘Spend some time with us, with Amie, before you go.’

Instead of answering, Andala looked at her mother. Leilyn knew what she was thinking. Again. Andala could see it in the regret and the acceptance in her eyes.

They both knew she had to go now. It would only make things worse if she stayed. With every minute that passed, there was the chance of her resolve slipping, of it getting harder and harder for her to leave. Andala could not risk that. She felt strong in her decision now. She needed to use that feeling. To take her horse and run.

But she also knew Girard would keep trying to talk her down, so Andala decided to pretend – like she had five years ago with him, and five years before that with her mother – that she would stay. She got up from the table and embraced him with all the love they237had once shared, and the new form of love they shared still. Then she went to her mother and embraced her, too. They had never been affectionate with one another. It felt strange, but also right, to be so now. This was no longer just the woman who had sealed Andala’s fate and changed her life without her consent. It was the only woman in the world with whom she had shared that fate and that life, and Andala had never felt closer to her.

‘I’ll stay for a few hours, maybe sleep a little,’ she said as she let go of her mother and stepped away. ‘I’ll just go up to see Amie.’TosaygoodbyetoAmie,she thought. Leilyn and Girard watched her go. Andala felt a flicker of guilt at the lie, but she pushed it away.

This time, when she stole away in the dead of night, she would be surer than ever that it was the right thing to do.

Amie was sleeping when Andala slipped into the room – her own bedroom, much the same as it had been when she’d left it ten years ago. Her daughter was a bundle under the covers of Andala’s old bed. A book lay discarded on the ground beside her. A covered lantern burned low on the little side table.

A lump rose in Andala’s throat as she looked at it. Perhaps Amie was afraid of the dark, just like her.

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