The Glass Spare

by Lauren DeStefano

Wil looked to the guillotine, though she knew the horror waiting there was something she could never take back.

  But the blade was still suspended high in the air and Zay still had her head to show for it. Even she seemed surprised by this, and she raised her head just as the sound of metal ripped over her a second time.

  The king’s guard stumbled back. Blood dripped from daggers lodged in either of his arms. The crowd gasped and shrieked and scattered.

  The next blade hit the king in the left shoulder. His guard was immobilized and there was no one else willing to give their life to shield him.

  Espel growled and ran into the clearing. “Show yourself, you coward! You traitor!”

  Masalee hovered around her like a shark circling prey, her eyes darting in all directions as she tried to anticipate the next attack.

  Zay saw her opening and jumped to her feet. Wil ran to her.

  Another dagger ripped through the air, and Wil’s stomach lurched as she heard it land in flesh. “Who’s doing this?”

  “Who do you think?” Zay said. Her grip was like iron on Wil’s wrist.

  Wil raised her eyes to the stone overhang, two stories up. There was Loom, his skin gleaming bright, his stance broad, unbreakable, beautiful in its defiance. He raised his arm, and another blade shot from his hand like a shard of sunlight.

  Something pulled at Zay and she let out a cry as she was ripped away from Wil’s side. Her father pinned her to the sand, his knee on her stomach, one of the fallen daggers brandished in his fist. “I won’t betray my king for you, girl,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Zay tried to kick at him, but her eyes were pleading. “Father,” she said. Her voice took on a gentler, plaintive tone. “Father.”

  He silenced her with a slash to her cheek. A red gash appeared, clean and straight, and then began to bleed.

  Wil knocked him away with a clean kick to his temple. He fell away, mystified with pain, and covered his ears to stop the ringing.

  Zay only stared at him, astonished.

  Wil grabbed her with a gloved hand and tore her to her feet. “We have to run. Now. Come on.”

  Nodding, Zay stumbled after her. She wiped at her face, smearing blood across her cheek.

  Someone grabbed Wil’s wrist, and instinctively she twisted free.

  “Don’t let them escape,” Espel was shouting to the kingsmen. “If you hurt her, I’ll have your heads! I’ll have your families’ heads!”

  Wil dodged another arm that tried to snare her, and with her gloved hands she shoved Zay forward. Zay stumbled, dazed, and Wil wondered if the blade that cut her had been poisoned. But no, that wasn’t illness or fatigue in her eyes. It was astonishment. Shame. Hurt.

  Espel came running for them, Masalee at her heels, a rush of fury.

  Another blade shot across the divide and sliced the back of Espel’s ankle. Wil heard the tendon tear, and the princess was down in a pile of bloody sand, gritting her teeth, screaming. Masalee knelt beside her. “Your Highness!”

  “Get them.” Espel’s voice was strained. But Masalee, stubbornly loyal, wouldn’t leave her side. She was tearing the fabric of her sleeve to make a bandage even as Espel hit and shoved her.

  Wil and Zay raced across the sand that reduced their speed by half and made it into the city square. There should have been a wall of guards to stop them, but King Zinil’s ego had dictated that they be present for Zay’s execution. He wanted them to witness what happened to his perceived traitors. He wanted them to see that he would have a father kill his own child.

  They raced past vendors and down an alleyway, stopping at last to catch their breath.

  Zay doubled forward and dry heaved.

  Wil rubbed circles on her back with her gloved hand, and for once Zay didn’t spurn her closeness. She spat and shuddered and let out something like a sob.

  “Zay . . .” Wil began and then trailed off. What could she possibly say to comfort her? That she understood? That she feared her own father would have done the same if she ever returned home? That she still, knowing that, loved him so much that she wished she could cut his memory out of her heart and bleed him away?

  Zay stood and brushed Wil away from her. “Loom will catch up to us at Rala’s house. I’m sure that’s where he left Ada. There’s no one else he trusts. Must have figured out we were captured when we didn’t come back. And we’ve witnessed enough morning executions for him to know what was going to go down.” She shook her head.

  Nothing more was spoken after that. Zay trudged onward with her head high, but her gaze was on something that only she could see. Some memory of a time when the arms that had shoved her onto the guillotine had held her.

  When they left the alleyway, they blended easily into the crowd. No one had the luxury of knowing what went on in the palace. They didn’t know that Zay had nearly lost her head, or that Wil was set to become the princess’s new plaything.

  “Rala?” Zay stepped inside the house, and Wil lingered in the doorway. This place still smelled of Gray Fever and the death it brought.

  “Ada?” Zay called, and the boy stirred on a blanket on the floor where he’d been dozing. “Ada!” She swept him into her arms and clung to him like the world itself might come to take him away. He giggled and buried his hands under her hair.

  Wil backed away from the door and out into the sunlight, away from the quiet and the sick.

  A hand brushed her bare forearm and she jumped.

  “Miss me?” Loom’s voice was cocky as ever, but when Wil turned to face him, her eyes grew wide with alarm.

  He hadn’t bothered to conceal his tattoos, he must have been in such a rush, and a sweaty sheen coated his face, which had turned a purpled shade of pale. His eyes were sunken, the bones in his cheeks pronounced, his lips quivering and bleeding. His skin looked as though it could slide from his bones.

  “Don’t stare at me that way. I can’t look as bad as all that,” he said.

  He fell forward, and Wil wrapped an arm around his back, shifting his weight against her shoulder. “I’ve got you,” she said.

  She touched his forehead and then his cheeks. Dangerously hot. “We have to go,” she called to Zay. “Now.”

  “Hells,” Zay muttered at the sight of him. But her false anger didn’t mask her fear. She put an arm around his waist and together she and Wil hauled him toward the outskirts. His head swayed and dipped and darted back up as he tried to remain conscious.

  “You know better than to get that close to the palace,” Zay said. “Are you listening to me? Wake up!”

  He drew a sharp breath and rolled his hazy eyes in her direction. “But if I’d let them take your head, my dear wife, how would you be able to yell at me?”

  “Idiot.” She kissed his cheek. “That’s what you are.”

  His knees buckled.

  “What is this?” Wil demanded, hoisting him back up. “What’s happening to him?”

  “Curse,” Loom muttered. His lids were heavy.

  “What curse?” Wil asked.

  “I told you, no good can come from meeting Pahn.”

  “Hells,” Zay swore. Blood stained the back of her hand, her cheek, her collar. “We don’t have time for this. We need to get you home so I can figure out how to undo this.”

  “Can’t go back there.” Loom’s breaths were becoming more labored with each step. “That’s the first place the king will look for us. They’ll kill us now, you know that—kill us and take Wil.” He looked at Wil, desperation lighting his tired features. “If you’re brought back to that palace, you’ll never escape again. For as long as Espel has her way she’ll—she’ll—”

  “Shh,” Wil said. “That won’t happen. Just save your strength.”

  It was with great difficulty that they managed to drag Loom over the rock embankment.

  A few yards from the water, with his modest ship in sight, he collapsed into an unconscious heap of fevered skin and dead limbs.

  Zay swore and knelt beside him. Ada mimic
ked the gesture and dropped down next to her. Her cheek hovered over Loom’s parted lips. “Still breathing, but he won’t be for long if he stays here. Help me lift him onto the ship.” She hoisted him by the shoulders and Wil grabbed his feet.

  Loom let out a feeble groan as they laid him on the deck of the ship. Zay doubled forward to rest her forehead against his. His hair was gathered in her fist. “I’ll fix this,” she whispered. “Hang on, ansoh.” My husband.

  Zay ran for the stairs, dragging Ada by the hand. “Take care of him while I steer us out of here.” She looked over her shoulder at Wil, and her eyes were misty and red. “You keep him alive.”

  She was gone, and seconds later the boat was moving.

  “Loom?” Wil undid the buttons of his sweaty tunic, hoping the cool sea air might bring some relief. His arms fell heavy against the deck as they came from their sleeves. Lifeless. “Open your eyes,” she demanded. “If you think I’m going to let you die now after everything you’ve gotten us into, you truly don’t know the first thing about me.”

  His lashes twitched, and she saw his eyes again, glassy but comprehending. “Good.” Her shoulders dropped. “That’s good. I’m going to go belowdecks and find some lyster to cool your fever.”

  “Sharp memory,” he rasped. His eyes rolled back as they closed. “It’s in the kitchen. You have to get the leaves wet.”

  She was gone and back in seconds, the potted lyster plant in one hand and a canteen in the other. She plucked a leaf in her gloved fingers, doused it, and pressed it against his forehead.

  He looked at her, his chest heaving as he breathed. “How could you ever believe you were a monster?” he whispered.

  She pressed another leaf to the side of his neck. “Is this helping at all?”

  He nodded, then let out a strangled sound and gagged up a mouthful of frothy white vomit.

  “Winds.” Her voice was frustrated. She had tended to enough sickness in her life to know that this was the work of something cruelly unnatural. Something that even her genius brother wouldn’t find in one of his books. She turned him onto his side as he coughed and shuddered. Don’t lose it, she was telling herself. You can’t lose it now.

  “Loom, stay with me. Tell me what we’re dealing with. Tell me what to do.”

  She put his head in her lap and applied more leaves to his fevered skin.

  He squinted at her, blinded by the sunlight. “It’s a curse. There’s nothing to do.”

  “Curse,” she echoed. “What curse? What are you saying?”

  “After all I’ve demanded from you, you deserve to know.” He closed his eyes and then forced himself back awake. “It was a year ago that I tried to murder my father. After that, he ordered Pahn to curse me so that I could never inherit the throne under any circumstances. I enter the palace walls, I die. My heart will stop beating and there will be nothing—no doctor or herb or machine—that can revive me.”

  “But—” Wil’s voice caught. “You didn’t even go inside the palace, and you’re away from it now. So you should be getting better, right?”

  He laughed, a low, creaky sound and shuddered with pain. “I got too close. The damage is done.”

  She laid another lyster leaf against the side of his neck, and one to his forehead. He sighed with relief at their coolness, but his skin was still sallow and hot. His eyes were all pupil.

  “It’s meant to be a reminder,” he murmured. “A reminder that my home can never love me the way that I love it.”

  “Why don’t you just let it go?” She was desperate to keep him conscious. “You don’t have to be king. The burden’s been lifted.”

  “No,” he whispered. “Those hunks of land, those people who are sick and dying and afraid—they need me.”

  “You won’t be able to rule any kingdoms if you’re dead.” She reached for another leaf, and he caught her hand, and pressed it hard against his heart. He wanted her to feel it beating under his skin, steady and stubborn as the rest of him. And she did.

  “I’m not dead.” His voice was fading, even as he fought to look at her. “And that is my kingdom.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THE MAINLAND GLITTERED IN THE distance as they sailed away, its mountain palace reaching skyward like a beacon of power. There were no ships trailing after them. There were no guards in pursuit; no king calling for Loom’s head. They didn’t have to, for they all knew that the curse had done its work. The banished prince was going to die.

  Loom was lost in an unreachable sleep by the time the mountain palace disappeared from view. He didn’t stir even as Wil and Zay carried him to his bunk.

  After they’d laid him atop his sheets, Zay knelt down and pushed the sweaty hair from his face. “I love you, you idiot,” she whispered, and kissed his temple. He shifted with a quiet groan.

  Wil’s jealousy was sudden and stinging. It wasn’t just the gesture, but the certainty of it. Zay knew this boy. Knew all his secrets, the lies he told and why he told them. She had known him when they were both small and innocent, before he became this banished, breaking, and unbreakable prince. When she said that she loved him, it was the truth, because for each other they withheld nothing.

  Wil was not sure she was capable of loving anyone in such a way. Love itself was not a word she was accustomed to hearing in the castle where she grew up. It had seemed like such a small thing to Wil anyway. Just a word. So what was this feeling in her stomach at the sound of it?

  “Where are we taking him?” she asked. “Do you know a healer who can help him?”

  Zay stood from Loom’s bedside and placed her hands on her hips. “You should be happy now,” she said. “We’re taking him to your precious Pahn. He’s the only one who can undo this.”

  Pahn. “He’ll help?” Wil asked eagerly. “Loom made it sound as though they were enemies.”

  “Loom is well beyond the capabilities of a healer,” Zay said. “Pahn is the only choice we have.” She touched the back of her hand to Loom’s forehead. “I have to go set our course. You stay with him. Use the lyster to keep his fever down.”

  She couldn’t be out of the room fast enough. Down the hall, the door to the control room slammed shut.

  Wil turned to Loom, who was gasping and spent. After everything, his suffering would be the thing that brought her to Pahn.

  “This is your own fault,” she said, though she knew that he was beyond hearing her. It was the truth. If he hadn’t stolen her away to do his bidding, none of this would have happened, and she would have found her own way to Pahn.

  She would not allow herself to feel guilty for his misery or the stroke of good fortune it had just granted her. She would not feel guilty for being the daughter of his kingdom’s enemy, or for hiding it from him. He did not deserve her secrets, she told herself. After what he’d done to her, he barely deserved her kindness.

  Still, kept vigil at Loom’s bedside for hours, until the day gave way to a dark, placid night. Thoughts of Pahn were lost as she labored to soothe Loom. He murmured and thrashed. His skin burned hot, but sweat no longer beaded his face, which frightened her. It meant that his fever refused to break.

  As he slept, Wil told him her mother’s tales that she’d picked up in her travels. She told him of the Singing Wolf and the Gold King. She told him that he was foolish to have returned to that mountain palace, knowing it could be the death of him.

  And in the silence of Loom’s sleep, she began to wonder if she would still be on this ship if it weren’t headed straight for Pahn, or if she would have left him to search for Pahn herself. She wondered if Loom meant more to her than simply a means to be rid of this curse.

  “Our families want to kill each other, and maybe one of them will succeed,” she told him. She doused her fingertip with water and traced it along his lower lip. Reflexively, he drank it. “We’re enemies, you and me. You just don’t know it.”

  Down the hall, Zay was singing Ada to sleep, and then the ship fell silent for a while.

  “Hey.” Z
ay’s voice was hushed as she appeared in the doorway. “How is he?”

  “I don’t know.” Wil studied him. His skin was a tarp draped loosely over his bones. “So far he’s kept water down. If all goes well, I can mash one of the rations into a paste so he’s getting something in his stomach.”

  “You’re good at this bedside manner thing, aren’t you?” Zay said. “Never would have expected it, given your violent streak.”

  Wil was only violent when she was being threatened, and these two had been a constant threat. But she didn’t say that. “He doesn’t seem to be in pain, at least,” she said. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m no marveler.”

  Zay frowned worriedly at him.

  “Come outside with me.” Zay held up the bottle that was in her hand. “The night air will do us both some good. He’s not going anywhere.”

  Wil felt guilty leaving his side, but Zay was right. The tiny cabin was heavy with sickness; she was beginning to lose her mind in there.

  When they stepped onto the deck, it was illuminated by starlight. The sky was perfect and clear, no clouds or land to be seen. Zay took a drink from the bottle, cringing as she swallowed and then offering it up to Wil.

  Wil took a swig. She’d had spirits before—sparkling champagne and ciders during the celebrations she and Gerdie snuck their way into, and sometimes shots of a sharp amber liquid to help with the pain when a bone needed to be set. This liquid, though, burned even more harshly than that.

  “You the praying type?” Zay asked, taking the bottle.

  “No,” Wil said.

  Zay laughed. “You’re all rich up north. Rich people don’t need gods.”

  “Didn’t you grow up in a palace?” Wil said.

  “Well, I wasn’t born there.” Zay took another swig. “Nothing in that palace was ever mine.”

  Still, Wil supposed Zay was right. Her own father never seemed to have use for any gods, only his council, and her mother found religion in compulsions and superstitions. Owen found it in the freedom of the open world, and Gerdie in the science of things. There was no talk of blaming their misfortunes on gods, or turning to them for mercy. Wil had not felt the presence of any gods when Owen died; the only thing with them that night had been the stars, and the spitting river water, and her curse.