“I recognized your knock, of course,” Meredy grins at me from the bed where she sits, the crystal tucked away somewhere out of sight. “What happened in the Deadlands?” she asks, patting the space beside her in invitation, as if she hadn’t just told someone else she loved them. When I don’t say anything or make a move to join her, she points to the recorder in my hands and gives me a questioning look. “Did you find that box in the spirit world? It looks like something of Valoria’s.”
“It is,” I say, hating the way my mouth goes dry and sudden tears prick my eyes. I have a bad feeling about what’s going to happen when I turn the recorder on, but I have to do it. Nothing matters more than Meredy’s sanity. I take a deep breath and release it shakily. “You’re going to hate me, but you need to hear this.”
My stomach writhes as I set the box on the table and fiddle with one of the knobs, hoping I’m doing exactly what Valoria showed me.
As Meredy’s voice crackles from the box, thick with static, the real Meredy asks quietly, “You’ve been spying on me? Eavesdropping with this—this thing?” She rubs her temples, looking as ill as I feel. No, not ill—furious, angrier than I’ve ever seen her. “I’m not a child. I don’t need you looking over my shoulder. I make my own choices and mistakes—and clearly, trusting you was one of them.”
The venom in her words sinks into me, making me sicker, but I have to keep fighting the crystal’s influence if there’s any chance of bringing her back to her senses.
“Death be damned, Meredy, would you just listen? Firiel isn’t in some rock! She’s in the Deadlands. I saw her there the time I came to rescue you from those Shade-baiters—those rogue necromancers. And I saw her again last night, with Jax and Simeon. She doesn’t even remember her own name.” I can barely bring myself to look at her as tears splash my cheeks.
“You’re jealous, and a liar.” Eyes flashing, Meredy leaps off our bed and grabs a bag, hastily filling it with her things. Lysander, sensing her agitation, shakes himself fully awake and crosses the small room to nuzzle her flushed cheek.
“You know whose voice I hear in that recorder?” I force myself to ask over the sounds of Meredy imitating Firiel as the conversation continues to replay. “Yours, and no one else’s. It’s all in your head, Meredy. And when Evander was in my head, remember what you did? You tied me down, and you let me curse at you and be completely horrible until I could see clearly again.”
“Shut up.” Meredy’s voice is quiet but still somehow harsh. “Just shut up. I don’t trust you anymore, not after this, and since you clearly don’t trust me”—she pauses, gesturing angrily at the recorder—“we clearly have nothing left to say to each other. It’s over, Odessa. We’re over.”
It’s hard to speak around the lump in my throat, hard to do anything at all when she’s in the midst of walking out. This is exactly what I was afraid of, but if there’s any chance that hearing this recording could save her, even if she hates me as a result, having Meredy back to herself will have been worth the pain.
She starts toward the door, her overstuffed bag in hand, followed by Lysander. For the first time in a long time—if ever—the grizzly growls at me, his eyes glowing an ethereal green. I know he’s only sharing her quiet fury, but it makes my chest tighten all the same.
“Meredy—”
“No!” she growls, her face suddenly draining of color as the recorder keeps blaring out the conversation she thought she had with Firiel. “Don’t talk to me. I’m going to be sick.”
“Please, don’t go,” I beg as she reaches for the doorknob. I know I can’t stop her. But part of me refuses to give up hope for us. “I want to help you get better. I’d do anything for—”
I’m stunned into silence as the door slams, rattling in its frame.
A soft sob echoes from the hallway, then footsteps fade into silence.
I turn off the recorder and collapse on the bed, curling up in the still-warm spot where Meredy was waiting for me when I came in.
I want a calming potion more than I have in a long time. My fingertips itch to curl around a vial of vivid blue. I don’t want to feel anything. I don’t want to hurt again. I don’t want to lose the person I love again. But it seems I have no choice, all because of the same sort of illusion that nearly broke me once. I know I hurt plenty of people, her included, while I was under the sway of those potions. I don’t think I realized how much until now.
I’d hoped Meredy could learn from my mistakes, but then, she’s not me. She has to learn for herself. Hopefully what she just heard through the recorder will begin to help soon.
Wishing I could sink through the bed and disappear, I call Nipper’s name, and the dragon climbs up beside me. She starts shaking—or maybe that’s me—as I cling to her back and try to shut out the world.
“I love her,” I mumble to Nipper, who gently chirps. “I don’t know what to do. I still want to be with—”
From somewhere down the hall, Meredy screams. And even though she just broke up with me, even though she destroyed my heart in the span of a few moments, I do what I always have and always will when Meredy is in trouble—I run to her.
XXV
Even though it’s still morning, the palace hallways are darker than usual as I race through them, heart beating out of control, in the direction of that awful scream.
I find Meredy sprawled at the bottom of a staircase just past the kitchens, looking stunned but otherwise unhurt. Gasping for breath, she struggles to sit up. She must have had the wind knocked out of her by a fall.
Lysander worriedly licks her face, but after realizing his master is going to be just fine, he bounds up the stairs in pursuit of something. A flash of pink darts past the spot where I kneel beside Meredy—Nipper, dashing after the bear.
“Someone pushed me down those stairs,” Meredy wheezes when she can finally take a breath. I’m relieved that she doesn’t seem to need a healer, as she shrugs off my attempt to help her up. “Two men—I’ve never seen them before. There might be more. Come on.”
We start up the stairs, but we’re only halfway when Lysander’s loudest roar fills the halls, sending the whole palace into chaos.
Meredy and I are the first to arrive at the scene in the upper hallway, a windowless place with few torches along the walls. This particular path isn’t often used, I suppose. In the dimness, we’re greeted by the strangest sight I’ve ever witnessed.
A fair-haired man whimpers and writhes, lying prone on the floor with Lysander’s front paws pinning him down. Every time the man moves too much, Lysander opens his mouth and drips thick, fishy drool onto the man’s face. For a heart-stopping moment, I think the man is Devran—they have the same haircut, the same narrow face—but this man’s eyes are a pale blue, not hazel, and he doesn’t have Devran’s traces of a beard, either.
I still trust Devran about as much as I trust this stranger, but for Valoria’s sake, I’m relieved it isn’t the rebel leader under Lysander’s paws.
Several feet away, a second man struggles against Nipper, who’s wrapped her tail around the man’s neck like a scarf. His trousers are filthy and ripped, and I’m pretty sure I recognize the bite mark in his left leg. He’ll be starting to sweat any moment now, if I’m right.
The whole situation would be almost comical, if not for the vials of liquid fire potions stashed inside the baskets the men brought in—no doubt posing as farmers making a delivery. I check the vials for cracks, then carefully put the baskets in a corner where no one will trip over them until the potions inside can be properly stored.
They were going to set the palace on fire.
“Who let you in?” I demand of the criminal watched over by Lysander. The other is about to be rendered useless by Nipper’s poison unless someone intervenes, and I don’t make a point of saving people who want to kill me and my friends—at least, not saving them from a little pain. “Are you one of Devran’s m
en? Or do you work for someone else—the group that tried to set fire to the school?” I press, though I doubt I’ll get answers without a little help from my grizzly friend.
As if on cue, Meredy says calmly, “Lysander, you have my permission to bite his arm. Just a little one. Go ahead.”
The man shrieks, not unlike a Shade, as the bear opens his mouth obligingly.
Meredy stops Lysander with a quick motion of her hand. “Got something to say to us after all?” she asks as Valoria, flanked by Bryn, Sarika, and a host of guards, comes running into the hall.
What little color there was in Valoria’s face when she found us quickly drains away as she spots the baskets of liquid fire.
“Explain,” she says frostily to the men, ignoring the discomfort of the one in Nipper’s grasp even as sweat rolls down his face and soaks through his shirt. She nudges one man’s leg with her cane impatiently—the leg Nipper bit—and it’s enough to make him start talking. Or at least babbling somewhat coherently.
Our suspicions are quickly confirmed: They’re some of the arsonists who tried setting fire to the temple. They tell us repeatedly that Devran’s demonstrations are too docile, pathetic, and that the person who let them in was one of Valoria’s maids. But they won’t tell us what else they were planning, or whom they were working for. Valoria’s face regains color as she listens—too much color, even, until the red in her cheeks looks downright dangerous.
“Are there more of you here? Anyone else lurking about?” the queen demands.
The men shake their heads, but she seems unconvinced, and rightfully so.
“I could have Lysander take a couple nibbles out of them,” Meredy suggests sweetly. “That’s what got them feeling chatty in the first place.”
No one but me seems to notice the worried look Valoria gives Meredy, not even Meredy herself. Valoria finally shakes her head in answer, though disgust for these intruders is evident in her gaze as she directs her guards to free the men from our beasts’ hold. “Let them rot in the dungeons until they’re ready to talk.”
She nudges one of the men with her cane again, this time out of spite.
Danial steps forward to direct the guards. “After a few days in solitary, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, they’ll be ready to talk . . . even to me.” He frowns, lingering near Valoria as if debating saying something more.
“What is it?” she asks, adjusting her glasses and looking at him with concern.
“My wedding is a few days from now. Or it’s supposed to be. But now . . .” He spreads his hands in a helpless gesture. “Maybe we should wait. Maybe this isn’t the right time.”
“If you don’t have your wedding when you planned it, you’re just letting them win,” I cut in, thinking of how crushed Simeon would be if his big day doesn’t happen when he’s expecting it to. “Right, Valoria?”
“Right. General, you’ll recruit extra security for the wedding—guards you hand-select, ones you trust, and I’ll do the same with the cooks and the serving staff. This celebration will happen on time, as you deserve,” Valoria says, although a bit wearily, as she watches the two would-be arsonists get dragged away. “I haven’t even had a chance to take the soldiers apart with Noranna, or else I might suggest using them for—”
“Majesty,” a woman in a courier’s uniform calls, sounding slightly winded. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I bring news from Lyris.”
The woman holds out a wrinkled scroll, which Valoria hastily reads.
Once again, all the color recedes from her face as she whispers, “Ezoran ships have been spotted on their way to Lyris. There’s no denying it—they’ve been making their way east for some time now, and if they stay on their current course, their next stop will be Karthia.”
Meredy and I are shocked into exchanging a look.
“I’ve got to go now. I—I’ve got to summon the council and see how quickly we can put together our army. We’ll have to resume training despite the quarantine. I have to ask Devran if he can convince his people to fight for me when we haven’t even reached an agreement. I . . .” Valoria swallows, wearing an expression I’ve rarely seen on her: uncertainty. “I’ve got to protect my people, even the ones who are trying so hard to kill me.”
Before she can go anywhere, I grip her shoulders and hold her gaze for a long moment. “I’d say be careful, but there’s no point pretending we’re not terrible at that.” Right now, with the new scar on her neck and her skin so pale she almost glows, she doesn’t look like a queen. She looks like a beautiful, breakable creature, and I’m afraid to let her go when it seems danger lurks down every corridor in this place lately.
“I will be,” she assures me as Bryn and Sarika hurry to her side. “I may not be Karthia’s favorite leader, but I’m our only leader. I have no intention of coming that close to a spear ever again.” She steps back, squaring her shoulders and looking regal once more, all traces of vulnerability hidden behind her sharp gaze.
When I first met them, I never thought I’d be saying this, but I’m glad Valoria found Bryn and Sarika. With their newly acquired swords drawn, they lead her ever-growing escort down the hallway, and I find I can breathe easier knowing they’re beside her.
As Valoria leaves, I sneak another glance at Meredy while she checks Lysander and Nipper over for any signs of injury. She’s so tender with them. Getting over her seems impossible to contemplate, as impossible as a spirit somehow entering our world.
* * *
* * *
Standing in front of a floor-length mirror in Valoria’s rarely used formal suite of rooms, I hold up a red gown while she and Meredy look on.
Meredy shakes her head. After frowning thoughtfully at a rainbow of gowns spread across her enormous bed, Valoria passes me another, this one in shades of blue. Meredy’s eyes light up as I hold it against myself.
I wish she wouldn’t look at me like that. Not anymore. It makes being around her that much harder, especially when we’ve hardly spoken since the breakup.
Still, Simeon and Danial’s wedding is tomorrow, and Valoria insisted that we all take a quick break from training with the volunteers so the two of them can help me choose the right gown for my first time serving as Witness in a wedding ceremony. “You’ve got to help me keep an eye on her, no matter how much you two would rather avoid each other,” a grim-but-determined Valoria reminded me when she showed up at my door earlier.
Ever since Meredy moved to another wing of the palace, Valoria and I have taken turns randomly passing outside her room. We haven’t heard any voices from within, even when we stop by in the middle of the night. Still, until I know the crystal has been destroyed, I’ll find it hard to believe Meredy is herself again. All we can do for now is watch her closely.
Three days have passed since Valoria began sending word of the Ezorans’ impending attack to other parts of Karthia, and we officially resumed our training with the volunteers despite the threat of the black fever; three days since the intruders were locked in the dungeons; three days since their companions, still free, retaliated by burning one of the still-boarded-up Temples of Change, destroying precious knowledge that might have been inside.
Three days since my heart was shattered.
As I hold up a peacock-green confection of a gown with a feathered skirt, Valoria grimaces. “Definitely not that one.”
I reach for the one in shades of blue again, this time to properly try it on. Valoria oohs and Meredy nods stiffly in approval. At that, Bryn and Sarika peer into the room from their posts outside the door and flash smiles of approval as they inspect the gown.
“See any new colors you’d like for your hair, Sarika?” I tease, mostly to take my mind off of Meredy.
The deepest of the hues in the gown’s full skirt reminds me of the Deadlands’ icy lakes, a sight I never expected to see again after we put the Dead to rest. Jax, Simeon, and I have been t
empted to go back every day since we saw the frozen spirits, but with the Ezorans on their way, we have other, more pressing issues to attend to—like training the new volunteers arriving from the farthest reaches of Karthia.
“I hear Kasmira wrote to Simeon this morning,” Valoria says, grabbing a strand of pearls from one of her dressers and slipping it over my head. After scrutinizing them from a distance, she frowns and declares, “You need more sparkle. How about—?”
“What about Kasmira?” I demand. From the letters she’s written me and the things I’ve gleaned from writing to Meredy’s sister, Elibeth, Kasmira is slowly making a full recovery. Still, having seen the vicious effects of the black fever, my heartbeat quickens every time I hear her name.
“She might come to the wedding!” Valoria gushes, tossing a cluster of sapphire and diamond pendants over my head. She seems extra determined to make conversation since Meredy and I are barely capable of exchanging two words these days. “Now if Elibeth is well enough, and we can just pull Zee away from her research, we’ll have everyone together to celebrate!”
“What research?” I pull the heavy gemstones from around my neck and pile them on Valoria’s instead, to everyone’s amusement, as I wait for her answer.
“I’m not sure yet. She won’t say.” Valoria’s lips twitch in a rare grin. “But researching something, whether you’re an inventor or not, is a touchy business. We tend to build up the reveal in our minds, so . . .” She shrugs. “I haven’t pushed her. She only told me about it because I caught her snooping in one of the healer’s storerooms, taking a pinch of this and that.” Winking, she adds, “Knowing her, she’s probably concocting some potion for growing giant vegetables or making flowers sing.”
“She hasn’t seen a single Karthian festival since she got here, thanks to the black fever,” Meredy adds thoughtfully. “Tell her she can’t miss this.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along,” Valoria says. “I don’t see how anyone could refuse an invitation to eat cream swans and drink until there are too many moons in the sky.”
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