What the Moonsinger Owes

POV: Lyla pov Three broken tolls of the watchtower bell tore me out of sleep. It was not the steady four count of the watchtower bell that meant the border stood quiet and the night belonged to no one but us. Which made me realize that there was a problem. I was on my feet and moving before I fully understood why, with my bare feet hitting the cold stone, and my heart already slamming against my ribs faster than the bell itself. “Lyla.” Ramsey’s voice came from right behind me, with a blade already gripped in his hand, though I never once saw him reach for it. “That is not the watchtower’s usual count.” “I know.” I said, and my voice came out thinner than I meant it to. “Four tolls usually means quiet. But that was three.” Ramsey nodded. “Which means, there is a problem.” Ramsey replied. We took the corridor together, with his stride matching mine without effort, and the torchlight casting our shadows long on the wall, and broken against the stone walls. A door stood open at the far end of the hall that should never have been open at this hour. Ramsey and I looked at each other briefly in surprise, with our eyes speaking more words than our mouths, and he could briefly read my mind just like I did his. “Nursery door.” Ramsey said it through his teeth and eyes widely opened. It was not a question, but a confirmed fact. He was already bracing for whatever waited behind it or whoever opened it, and I stood behind him like he was a knight in shining armor. I did not answer, not because I couldn’t answer, but because there was no answer or should I say, time to answer. I was moving faster than my legs should have carried me when I burst through that door with my heart climbing straight into my throat. I had fear, and it was fear of the unimaginable. I gasped as soon as I ran through the nursery door, because both cribs were empty. I gulped hard, and it was loud enough that anyone fifteen feet away could hear me. For one terrible second, my mind reached for an easier answer than the one standing right in front of me: someone must have carried the twins somewhere safer the moment that bell rang. I took two quick steps toward Auralie’s crib anyway, reaching down, only to find rumpled blankets thrown back the exact way small bodies get lifted out in a hurry. “No.” The word tore out of me before I could stop it. “No, no, please, no.” Thoughts were rushing in, and my throat instantly became dry. It was not from thirst, but from fear. Ramsey was beside me in an instant, with one hand closing hard around my shoulder while the other moved toward Ronan’s crib, and I watched his face change the moment he found it just as empty as Auralie’s. Ramsey’s face turned pale, and immediately I saw it, I did not know how to be strong myself. “Ramsey.” I called, and my voice did not sound like mine anymore. “The window.” He turned and saw it the same breath I did. The latch had not been simply unlocked, but it was wrenched clean apart, and the metal bent at a wrong angle. A splinter of wood hung loose from the frame where something had obviously forced its way through rather than opened it properly. And whoever did this, used a lot of strength but I couldn’t care less. Cold night air poured steadily into a room that should have held nothing but warmth, and that single detail, the wrongness of that cold, settled into my chest like a splinter of its own that I could not shake loose. “They did not leave through the door.” Ramsey said, and his words came out flat, and controlled in a way that frightened me more than shouting would have. “Someone came through that wall.” He turned and drove his fist into the doorframe hard enough that I heard the wood crack beneath the blow with a raw, wordless sound tearing out of him that was not quite a shout and not quite a growl, but something caught painfully between both. “Ramsey.” I grabbed his arm with both hands. “Look at me.” “I should have been here.” He said. His eyes found mine, and I held his face in my palm, with the fury in them aimed entirely inward at himself. “I should have been standing in this room tonight.” He spoke, blaming himself and feeling guilty. “You could not have known that.” I said with defeat in my voice. My own hands shook as I smoothed the blankets flat, uselessly, as though tidying the fabric might somehow undo everything that had already happened. “They were just here, Ramsey. I fed Auralie myself only hours ago.” A man’s voice cut through the corridor outside before either of us could say another word, sharp and urgent, calling orders to warriors I could not yet see from where I stood. “Seal the east wall!” The voice echoed.“Eyes on every gap in that fence line, now, move!” We followed the sound of it back out into the corridor, and the man rounded the corner just as we reached him, already dressed in half his armor, with his sword belt slung crooked across one hip like he had grabbed it at a dead run. “Lyla.” His eyes found my face, and whatever he read there hardened his expression instantly. “Tell me they are with you.” He said. I could tell that he knew they were gone, but he was in denial. “They are gone, Corwin.” My voice cracked hard on his name. “Both of them,” I said weakly, with my voice so faint. The window is broken, which means that someone took them straight through the window.” “Gods.” He said it low, almost like a prayer, with one hand dragging down over his jaw. “The outer watch heard nothing at all. There was no alarm from the fence line, and nothing until that bell rang three instead of four.” “Then whoever did this knew exactly where our watch runs weakest.” I said. This sparked a suspicion in me, that an insider had done this. Ramsey’s voice had gone cold now, the fury from the nursery banked down into something sharper. “How many men do you have moving already?” “Every warrior I could rouse in the last three minutes.” Corwin’s jaw tightened visibly. “Riders are already checking the tree line, but it is full dark out there, and if they went through the forest instead of the road-” “Then we search the forest.” I stepped past him toward the courtyard. “I do not care how dark it is.” My mother’s instinct came in, and it was bright everywhere. “Lyla.” Corwin called, and his hand caught my arm firmly but not in a rough way. “You are not running into that forest half armed and half dressed, and not like this.” He said, shaking his head gently and his face looking down at mine. He was worried about me, but I was worried about my children. I wanted more than concerns. I wanted my children. “Try and stop me.” I said, and my voice came out sharper than I intended, and edged with something raw and desperate I barely recognized as my own. “Those are my children out there, Corwin, my babies,” I screamed. My eyes burn from anger, and the tears were forming their bricks. “And I intend to help you get them back.” Corwin replied, and his grip did not loosen, though his voice gentled slightly. “Which means we do this smart, Lyla, not fast and blind but strategic “. Ramsey stepped up close beside me, and for a long moment the three of us simply stood there in the corridor’s mouth. The courtyard beyond us was alive with torchlights and shouting, with warriors scrambling onto horses, and someone somewhere calling out for rope alm, and think clearly, but I could not stop myself from panicking, or my thoughts from running wide. Because my poor babies need their mother. We stepped out into the noise of the courtyard, with horses stamping and snorting, and warriors calling orders back and forth across the yard, and torches throwing wild orange light over wet cobblestones. Corwin turned away to shout something further toward a cluster of riders gathering near the gate, and Ramsey’s hand tightened against my back like he could feel the exact moment my knees threatened to buckle beneath me. Then, underneath it all, there was a sound so faint that I almost convinced myself that I had imagined it purely out of desperate hope. But I heard it again: A baby was crying, somewhere past the treeline. I went utterly still, and my heart leaped. “Lyla?” Ramsey’s voice came close against my ear. “What is it? What did you hear?” “Listen.” My hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, holding it there hard. “Ramsey, juitself was simply cruel enough that night, to make every one of us hope that we had it. st listen, please.” For one long, breathless moment, nobody in the courtyard moved at all, with every head slowly turning toward the dark line of trees beyond Thornhollow’s outer wall. They were all straining to catch a sound that none of us were fully certain we had truly heard. Or maybe the nightand lanterns. “Corwin is right.” Ramsey said, and his hand found the small of my back, keeping me steady despite the tremor still running through his own body. “We move together, and we move smart.” “Fine.” I forced the word through my teeth. “We do it together, but we have to go now. I mean this instant.” I said with a firm voice. I knew that I needed to stay calm.