by Jodi Meadows
My hands dropped to my lap, and a heartbeat later, cool leather touched my cheeks as he cupped my face in his palms. He kissed me, sweet and sad and full of longing. When I drew back and looked at him, unshed tears glimmered in the corners of his eyes. “You could be telling my story.”
Thunder rolled in the distance, almost a voice. I could half hear my name in the sound, so much evidence of what I created.
I touched my lips, the leather gloves cool against my skin. “Don’t kiss me again.”
Hurt flashed across his face, but he nodded. “I won’t.”
“I said before that there’s only one side of you I want. But that’s not the side that matters. You’re promised to someone else, and you will need to give your whole self to her, and to your kingdom.”
“I know. I haven’t forgotten what I promised my father.” His voice turned cool. A little bitter. “I wish things were different.”
“Wishing has never changed anything for me.” When I climbed to my feet, he followed.
“Where are you going?”
I pressed my lips together. In the prison, he’d asked when I would learn to trust him. After what he’d hidden from me? Maybe never. Not fully. Then again, I’d hidden so much from him, too.
One of us needed to make an effort to be honest. “I’m going up the mountain. To the old palace. East Pass Watch.”
A combination of a smile and grimace pulled at his mouth. “The Ospreys live there?”
“Yes.” I glanced toward the ancient castle, concealed by rock and trees and distance. “I’m coming back to Skyvale. Tonight. But in case I’m not fast enough, or if something goes wrong, you need to be ready.”
Darkness veiled his tone. “What do you mean?”
“Skyvale needs you right now.” I placed my palm on his chest, felt the quickening of his heart as I stepped back. “They need you. Their prince. Their future king. Not Black Knife. Not this time.”
“What’s going to happen?” His features softened as he gazed toward his city below.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But you’ll need your army.”
He nodded, somber. “Before we go, are you ever going to tell me your real name? Or will I have to call you a boy’s name forever?”
“My name is Wil.” I heaved up the bag filled with my belongings. “One L.” Was it stupid to tell him? It was too late to take back the truth.
“Wil.” The way he said my name now was different. Softer, more real, more . . . hopeful. “Please tell me that’s short for something.”
“Good-bye, Your Highness.” I started up the mountain, leaving behind Tobiah and his light.
I WAS THERE when the war began.
I was seven, chased out of bed by thunder shaking the panes of glass in my window. When I went to find my parents, they weren’t in their rooms.
Frightened, but not admitting it, I hurried, barefoot, to Father’s study, where light spilled from the crack below the door and a pair of red-jacketed soldiers stood on guard duty.
Mother’s high, angry voice pushed through the corridor. “Do you really want to throw the kingdom into war?”
“War is inevitable after what General Lien has done.”
“Not if we get rid of him and return—”
“Regardless, I’m not signing the Wraith Alliance. Magic might not be the answer, but it should be considered as an option.” Only thunder rivaled the boom of Father’s voice.
They were fighting. Which meant I wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
I sneaked back the way I’d come so the guards wouldn’t notice me.
Maybe I’d find Melanie. She wouldn’t mind if I woke her up, and we could easily sneak past her parents.
As I walked by a study door, someone groaned. I halted, listened until the sound came again, and peeked inside. Only a low fire lit the long room; a curtained window loomed at the far end.
I shivered. This was General Lien’s office. I did not want to run into him, especially in the middle of the night. But . . . it didn’t look like he was inside. And if someone was hurt, I had to help.
I’d help before the general came back and caught me.
Quickly, I checked the hall. No guards. There was hardly anybody around. Sandcliff Castle was so empty tonight.
Thunder cracked again and I slipped into the room, shutting the door after me.
Another moan came from a chair close to the fire.
“Who’s there?”
When only frantic humming answered, I considered going out to find a guard. But then I saw him.
The person on the chair was just a boy, his nightclothes rumpled and dirt stained. A piece of cloth filled his mouth, and his hands and feet were tied with ropes.
I rushed forward and tugged at the gag. “Who are you? Who did this?” Maybe he was visiting from Northland with his family. The duke had a son about my age. Or maybe he was a merchant’s son, and some of the castle boys were playing a prank on him, like they used to do to Patrick Lien because of his bruises. Before he learned how to fight back.
The gag came loose and the boy scrunched his face, like he could push the bad taste from his mouth. “I’m Tobiah Pierce, House of the Dragon, Crown Prince of the Indigo Kingdom.”
An unladylike snort escaped me as I tried to pry loose the knots in the rope, but the rope was too prickly and hurt my fingers. “Sure.”
“I’m not lying. Who are you?”
“Wilhelmina Korte, Princess of Aecor. And I’m not lying.” I showed him the signet ring Father had given me. It was an exact copy of his, only smaller. “Hold still.” The knots were too tight and the rope too rough. I darted over to the desk to look for shears or a letter opener. Anything sharp.
Papers, pens, wax for sealing letters: there was nothing useful on the desk.
“If you’re the princess, why are you freeing me?” asked the boy who couldn’t be Tobiah Pierce. “After all, your father had me kidnapped.”
“He would never!” I marched back to the boy and crossed my arms. “Take it back. He would never kidnap anyone, not even Prince Tobiah. My father is a good man. Besides, if he had kidnapped you, I wouldn’t be freeing you.” It was a trick, like the time Melanie and some of the others had hidden inside my wardrobe one night, tapping on the wood and groaning like they were ghosts.
“If you say so.” The boy glanced at my empty hands. “Didn’t find anything to cut the rope with?”
“No, but it’s not a problem. This counts as an emergency.” I touched the rope. “Wake up. Straighten out. Carefully.” If the prickly bits hurt my fingers, they must have chafed his skin fiercely.
At my command, the ropes shivered to life and slithered so the knots loosened around not-Tobiah’s wrists and ankles. He gasped and shoved the ropes off him as the lengths moved on their own. “Was that magic? You can’t use that. It’s illegal.”
I frowned at the bruises around his wrists and the raw skin where the rope had cut. “Magic isn’t illegal. You just have to be careful to use it for emergencies only. Don’t you think getting the ropes off you was an emergency?” Whoever tied him up was going to be in big trouble. There were a few boys who might have thought binding a visitor was funny, but I didn’t like bullies. This—this awfulness would be punished.
The boy jumped off the chair and over the ropes as the loops and knots vanished. It was doing as I’d instructed: straightening out.
I knelt and touched the rope. “Go back to sleep.” And then it was dead again, just a scratchy length of fibers.
“You’re an animator?” he breathed. “That’s incredible.”
Not really. My mom was an animator, too. Anyway, I hardly ever got to use my power. Not that I’d tell him that.
“Who are you really? I guess I’ve got to take you somewhere.” No need to get a soldier. If we involved grown-ups, the teasing and pranks would just get worse for him; I’d seen that much when Patrick Lien tried to tell his father about the tricks. General Lien’s response had been cruel, and the o
ther boys getting back at him . . .
I’d have to deal with this myself. And fast, before the general returned.
“I’m Tobiah Pierce, and your father’s men really did kidnap me. My father’s men won’t be far behind.” Thunder shook again, and he glanced at the chair and gag and ropes. “The Indigo Army was following your people. They might be here already, coming to get me.”
“Right.” He needed to stop blaming my father or I’d tie him up.
He glanced at the door I’d entered by. “Didn’t you see the guards? There were two earlier.”
I shook my head. If there ever were guards, which I doubted, they’d taken a break. Tobiah—or whoever he was—had been all tied up, unlikely to escape on his own. “Well, come on. We can’t stay here. This is General Lien’s study and he doesn’t like people poking around.”
The boy’s voice went low. “I know all about General Lien.”
Voices in the hall startled us, making me jump and press my palms to my mouth. The boy’s eyes grew wide.
“We can use him to stop the fighting,” a man said.
“Not yet.” General Lien’s harsh voice stilled me. He’d never hit me—I was the princess—but I’d seen enough of Patrick’s bruises to know I needed to protect this boy. “His Majesty wants the Wraith Alliance pressure stopped, and this will ensure we are taken seriously in the future.”
“His Majesty never approved this—”
“Stuff it.” General Lien made a noise like a growl. “Move the boy to a more secure location.”
I gasped and glanced at maybe-Tobiah. General Lien wanted to move him? Where? And why? I couldn’t believe this was really the Crown Prince of the Indigo Kingdom—my father would never have an eight-year-old boy kidnapped—but neither could I deny that something bad was about to happen.
Unless I took action.
I raced for the window and fumbled with the latch. “If you really are Tobiah, I shouldn’t help you.” I swung the windows wide open. “But I don’t want General Lien to find you, no matter who you are. If you are Tobiah, then I’ll figure out what to do when he’s gone.”
“What are you doing?”
“There’s a ledge. We’ll hide outside.”
Tobiah offered a hand to boost me up just as the study door creaked open.
Behind the heavy curtain, we scrambled onto the ledge, me first, then Tobiah, and he shut the window behind him.
Cold air whipped around us, stinging my hands and face as I sidled along the ledge, Tobiah next to me. The air smelled sharp, acrid. We were high up, high enough to make the city look like a toy. But tonight, everything was different.
Everything was chaos.
Fires burned in every district of Aecor City. People fought in the streets. Screams floated upward. Huge wood-and-metal machines trundled up the main road to Sandcliff Castle, bearing torch-carrying men. They were going to get into the castle. They were going to set fire here, too.
Horror tangled up inside me, pulled tight into a knot. “No. This isn’t real.”
Arrows rained from slits in the castle walls, falling on the tower men. Bodies fell, torches dropping with them, and then there was nothing left of them but their mangled corpses far below.
My stomach flipped. I was going to be sick. I’d give anything to be in my room, sleeping. My parents and their guards would come looking for me soon. What would they think when they found my bed empty?
“Are these people here for you?” I said, but wind snatched away my words. My eyes watered with the reek of smoke and disgust at what my father had done. “You really are Crown Prince Tobiah.”
“You won’t turn me in, will you?” His expression was twisted with fear and sadness.
It was hard to tell from our ledge, but I didn’t think it was my people we had to worry about. His were burning up the city. A wheeled tower filled with people banged against the stone wall of the palace, and men jumped onto balconies and through windows. Were my parents safe? What about Melanie and my other friends?
“Wilhelmina?”
I met Tobiah’s eyes and tried to ignore our great height, the stink of fires, and the cold in my toes. “No. No matter what our fathers are fighting about, General Lien never should have taken you.” Kings and queens were supposed to be good and fair. They always were in stories.
I shivered as thunder crashed again. But it wasn’t thunder. It was buildings exploding in the city.
It hadn’t been thunder that had awakened me.
Tobiah took my hand, his fingers warm around mine. “If my side wins and they ask who you are, don’t tell them your name. Lie. You don’t want to be the Princess of Aecor when they’re coming to retrieve the Crown Prince of the Indigo Kingdom.”
He was right. I didn’t want to be me.
I squeezed his hand and watched as my world burned down and men in indigo slaughtered men in red. When the Indigo Army found us on the ledge, they put me in a group with other castle children. I told them my name was Mina and Tobiah told them I’d saved his life.
I was spared. My parents were not. My kingdom was not.
I was there when the war began.
And when it ended.
THIRTY-TWO
MY BODY ACHED as I approached the gloomy old castle. The bag strap dug into my shoulder, all my belongings weighing me down. Clouds covered the sky, leaving the world in heavy, palpable blackness. The wraithy wind that blew in from the west bore breaths of freezing and destruction.
I had to hurry.
I whistled the four-note signal as I walked through the outer curtain, a hulking, mossy shadow in the darkness. While I waited for someone to disarm the traps around the state apartments door, I knelt and groped through my bag. Black Knife hadn’t lied when he’d said he found all my things. There was the shape of my notebook, my grappling hook and line, my daggers, and several other weapons. Even my stolen sword.
“You’re a pretty poor vigilante these days, Black Knife,” I muttered as I hooked my weapons to my belt and slipped my other supplies—lockpicks, matches, a coil of silver wire—into my pocket. “Though I suppose you probably paid for my sword.”
For a whole three heartbeats, I entertained the image of an ink-cloaked boy approaching a terrified blacksmith, flinging money at the counter. But I remembered our inevitable war, Lady Meredith, and magic: things that would always come between us.
“Wil?” Melanie’s voice came from the doorway. Candlelight flickered as she shoved the stick at someone else, and boots thudded on the ground. Her arms wrapped around me, squeezing tight. “Wil, you’re safe.”
All my aches forgotten, I hugged her back and breathed in the familiar scent of my best friend. “I was so worried about you.”
“You too.” She squeezed and stepped back, holding me at arm’s length. “What happened? I got out of the palace, but couldn’t get back in without being spotted. There were so many guards. I waited around for a while, until I heard they caught Black Knife—a girl—and that she’d killed the king, and she only got caught because she went back to kill the prince, too.”
Who made up these rumors?
“I’ll tell you everything later. But first, there’s something I have to say to everyone. Are the Ospreys all here?”
“Yes.” She grabbed my bag and leaned into me again, voice low. “It was Patrick. You were right.”
My stomach tumbled, and I wished I didn’t know Black Knife’s identity. Then I wouldn’t have cared as much that Patrick had killed Tobiah’s father. Though I had no love for King Terrell, my feelings toward his son were . . . immeasurably different. Immeasurably complicated.
I dragged my gloved fingertips over my daggers as Melanie led me to the state apartments door. Connor waited there, wide- eyed and pale.
“Wil!” He thrust the candle to one side and hugged me with his free arm. “I was so worried. You stopped writing to me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Pretending I didn’t hear his hiccup and sniff, I smoothed back his hair and whisp
ered, “I missed you, too. Have you been strong?”
He gave a stiff nod. “Even when I thought I couldn’t be, I made myself strong. Looking at your old notes helped.”
“Good.” I kissed the top of his head, too exhausted and relieved to hold back affection. “I’m proud of you.”
On the way into the common room, I met several other Ospreys. I traded embraces with Theresa, Oscar, Ronald, Carl, Kevin, and Paige, and finally, as I entered the common room, lit with a roaring fire and candles all around, I found Patrick staring out the window, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Welcome, Wilhelmina.” He didn’t turn around. The fire threw splinters of light and shadow across his back and the short crop of his hair. The set of his shoulders said he was displeased, and again I wondered if a dead queen was easier to fight for than a defiant one. Was he disappointed I’d been set free?
“You assassinated Terrell.”
Patrick turned his head, giving a view of his sharp profile. Light flared, casting his eyes deeper into shadow. “He deserved to die.”
“We’re not murderers, Patrick.”
He said nothing.
“Was this your plan all along?”
Patrick turned and strode around the table. Behind me, the Ospreys scattered into groups of two and three, closer to the hot fire or to the opposite side of the room. “Your mission was more than you knew, Wilhelmina. Yes, I wanted the soldiers freed, the locations and information, and a map of the palace, but anyone could have gotten those. Why do you think I sent you to the palace when I could have sent Oscar or Ronald as soldiers or lords and accomplished everything you did without that detour into the wraithland?”
Behind me, Theresa gasped and whispered, “She went to the wraithland?”
“Hush, Rees,” muttered Melanie.
Patrick wasn’t finished. “Sending you was always a risk. You’re going to be our queen. If they’d discovered your identity, everything would have been for nothing. But I sent you because you deserved to take revenge for what he did to our families.”