He was so lost in his nightmare that he didn’t hear Espel coming up beside him until she spoke.
“She’s going to be all right,” she said. “Masalee is a skilled healer. She’s in good hands.”
Of course Masalee was skilled. Their father had been so paranoid about an assassination that he had spared no expense to protect himself. As Espel’s guard, Masalee was trained to use her marvelry both to kill and to heal. It was a precaution meant to save Espel’s life should she ever find herself impaled on an enemy’s blade. But why would she focus her efforts on Wil, a girl who meant nothing to her?
He shouldn’t have been thinking this; he should only have been grateful. But still he couldn’t help asking, “Why did Masalee try to bring her back?”
“Because she hates suffering,” Espel said. “She’s never been able to bear it.”
“She could have fooled me,” Loom said.
“That’s the idea, isn’t it?” Espel said.
Loom was beginning to understand what had drawn Masalee and his sister together. Even in a palace where love was a weapon and happiness was forbidden, his sister had managed to find both of those things. He very much wanted to know this Espel who had been hidden behind their father’s precious monster.
“This isn’t your fault,” Espel said.
He looked at his sister, for the first time noticing the blood that stained her tunic, her trousers. She was leaning against the door frame as though standing upright was too painful. Whatever injuries she’d sustained in her fight with Pahn, she hadn’t allowed Masalee to squander her precious energy healing them.
For once, they weren’t rivals. There was no suspicion or pretense. She was being earnest. She understood nearly losing someone she loved.
“It is my fault,” he said, and his voice was hollow. “When I said I would trade Wil’s heart for my kingdom, I sealed her fate.”
“You didn’t seal her fate,” Espel said. “Or she would be dead.”
“Our father always knew exactly what to take away from us,” Loom said. “He knew I didn’t have what it took to be heir.”
“You have never been what our father thinks an heir should be,” Espel agreed. “I’ve always envied you for that.”
Envy was not a sentiment to which Espel had ever admitted. Under different circumstances, Loom would have cherished the small victory of having anything his sister wanted. But his eyes hadn’t left Wil, and as her life hung uncertainly in the firelight, so did his own.
Wil’s heart stopped at dawn, just as the cool blue light of a winter morning stole in through the window to touch her. Loom felt it, even before Masalee’s concentrated expression gave way to exhaustion. She had done all that she could. She’d kept Wil alive longer than the most skilled medic would have been able to do, but all those painful hours had prolonged a predetermined outcome.
“No,” Loom said. The word had become his mantra by now. For the last hour of Wil’s life, he’d sat at her feet, afraid to touch her or leave her side, but now he was crawling over her and taking her face in his hands. He could feel the heat from her cheeks. The bright pink of her fevered lips was already beginning to fade. He couldn’t breathe. The world shook, or maybe it was him.
“No.” It was a cry, and then it was a whisper. “No.”
“I tried,” Masalee was saying, as she collapsed against Espel’s shoulder. She looked so defeated. “I tried to keep her heart beating. I tried.”
“Wil.” Loom said her name with insistence, as though that would wake her. Death was not her destiny. This enigmatic creature who had tumbled into his life, all fight and sweat and blood, was destined to outlive them all. Still holding her face, he leaned close. His lips were shaking when he touched them to hers. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for all of it.” And he was. He was sorry that he had ever spotted her in Brayshire, trading gemstones for coins. He was sorry that he learned of her power and tried to use it to save his kingdom. He would give everything back—every argument, every kiss, all the hollows within himself that had been filled by her warmth—if it would mean that she was still out in the world somewhere. That she was alive. That she was safe, even if it meant they never found each other.
Wil’s chest rose with a breath, and Loom drew back, startled. But it was not the true breath of a living girl; Masalee had resumed her efforts with renewed fervor.
Zay was at Loom’s side now; she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and drew him back. When he broke with a sob, she began to rock him back and forth, the way they had done for each other when they were children. He tried to look at Wil. Maybe there would be life in her face again. Maybe she would come back. But Zay took his face in her hands and she forced him to look at her instead.
She was the only one who still looked the same. Everyone else looked evil and wrong.
“I couldn’t stop it,” he blurted.
“Shh.” She put an arm around him. She was all gentleness. He was too weak to protest. “I know you couldn’t, ansoh. I know.”
Zay went on shushing him, not bothering with platitudes. She didn’t let go of him, and Loom thought that if she did, he might somehow disappear entirely.
“I take it back.” Loom was still muttering to Wil. “I take it all back. I don’t want my kingdom if you’re the price.”
A gasp commanded his attention. He went rigid with fear and with that wretchedly cruel thing called hope.
Wil shuddered. Blood burst from her mouth when she coughed. A terrible moan came out of her, anguished and barely human.
Loom was watching Wil, only Wil. She twisted with pain. Her brow furrowed and she tried, as ever, to fight her way back.
“Get your sleep serum,” Masalee commanded Espel through gritted teeth. “Put her out or the pain will throw her into shock and we’ll lose her again.”
Wil’s fists unclenched when the serum passed her lips. She sank into unconsciousness. But she was breathing. Loom saw the rise and fall of her bloody and torn chest. He heard the rattle of blood in her lungs.
Masalee was sweating now. Dark stains bloomed from under the arms of her robe. Wisps of hair clung to her face. It wasn’t just Wil’s heart she was coaxing life into, but her lungs as well.
“What did you do?” Espel asked. “How did you bring her back?”
“I don’t think that was me,” Masalee said, breathing hard. “Loom was the one who stopped her heart so that he could be heir, and you heard what he said. He gave it up.”
Daylight filled the room now, relentlessly bright. There was the sound of birds, faraway at first and then rising in a crescendo of scattered song.
Loom was scarcely aware of any of this as he took Wil’s hand in both of his. He could feel her pulse thrumming in her fingertips, strong and forceful now. He was afraid to clutch her hand any tighter. He was afraid to speak and break whatever force had brought her back.
Wil’s teeth were gritted. Her legs moved against the floor, as though it were at all possible for her to get up.
“Stop fighting,” Loom said. He brought his face close to hers and he felt her breath against his lips. “Rest,” he said. “For once in your life, you have to rest.”
The Wil he knew was returning, though, and she didn’t know how to be still. “Loom?” Her eyes opened, cloudy, far away. He could see the frustration knotting her brow as she tried to focus on him. As she tried to wake up.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Sweat washed across her face; her fever was starting to break. She was still so fragile, gasping when she tried to move. Loom was fearful that death would be back to claim her. He had the sense that death hadn’t truly left the room.
“What are . . . you doing?” Wil managed to cough out when he buried his face in her hair.
“You once told me that death smells like the dirt after a long rain,” he said.
There was a smear of blood on one side of her mouth, and when he brushed it away, she tried to smile. “Do I smell l
ike death?”
“No,” he said. “Just dirt.”
Her laugh turned into a cough.
Masalee stood abruptly. She clutched at the hilt of her sword, which brought Espel to her side. “What is it?” Espel asked.
“Something is coming,” Masalee said. “Could be a threat.”
“Pahn?” Espel asked. “When I tried to kill him earlier, all I hit was an illusion. Could that have happened a second time?”
Masalee shook her head. “Pahn is dead, unless he’s concealing his energy so well that I can’t feel it. This is something else.”
Wil struggled in her delirium; her eyes had closed and she was beginning to fade. “Baren,” she murmured.
“King Baren?” Espel said. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“That’s who the cloaked figure was,” Loom said. “He killed Pahn and then he disappeared, as though he’d never been there at all.”
“You might have mentioned that,” Espel snapped. “Our kingdoms are at war; he could be on his way to kill us.”
She was right, Loom knew, but looking back on it now, he hadn’t possessed the cognizance. He had been dazed, still, by Pahn’s spell, and focused only on Wil. And he had been the only one to see Baren, besides. Espel had been fading in and out of consciousness as she bled onto the snow, and Masalee was tending to Wil. Zay had still been on the ship.
“We should go back to the ship before he finds us,” Zay said as she knelt to scoop a still-sleeping Ada up from the floor.
“Wil shouldn’t be moved,” Masalee said. “She’s too weak. She wouldn’t make it that far.”
“I’m not leaving,” Loom said. “If he comes, I’ll fight him.” A plan was beginning to form in his mind. Wil was alive and the world made sense again. Things had a purpose. “Zay, you fire up the ship. It’ll be safer for Ada there, and if we need to make a fast exit, we’ll be ready.”
“I’ll conceal it for as long as I can,” Masalee said, and it astonished Loom that she was still standing after all she’d done the night before.
Zay brought herself close to Loom. “Don’t do anything foolish,” she said.
He smiled. “I can’t promise to meet such an outrageous demand.”
All night, Wil had dreamed that she was trapped in the lens of her brother’s monocle. Aleen was screaming from within the darkness of an old train tunnel, and Wil couldn’t find her. She couldn’t find anyone, and she had no voice. The snow had melted, turning the ground into mud, and the mud rooted her in place.
When the light of day reached her eyelids and turned the darkness the color of flesh, at last she found her voice. She screamed, not for Aleen, but for Baren. He was the one who had trapped her here, she knew. He was coming back to finish her off.
Sound hardly left her mouth at all. The voice that answered her was not Baren’s. Loom’s presence filled the dream up with light, until the tunnel broke away and the dream shattered.
Loom. He knelt over her now. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot. For a moment, Wil didn’t understand where she was, and then the servants’ kitchen came into view. Behind Loom’s shoulder hung rows of copper pots and wooden spoons. A fire was crackling beside her, and she shivered in spite of it; the warmth didn’t seep through her skin, and when she tried to move, her limbs were sluggish and heavy.
“Welcome back,” he said.
“Are we still dreaming?” she asked. It was the only explanation that made sense. She recognized the servants’ kitchen around them; she couldn’t remember returning here.
“No.” The word came out eager. He hadn’t expected to ever hear her voice again, and he was grateful now for the sound of it. Even her rattling breaths were their own sort of blessing. “No, we’re both awake. What’s the last thing you remember?”
He waited for her face to change with understanding. She remembered all of it now. Her hand went to her hip, where her dagger was missing, because Loom had used it to tear a hole through her chest.
“You were different.” Her voice was scratchy. Her throat burned with the taste of blood. “Your eyes were all black.”
She tried to push herself upright. Pain lanced her and she gasped.
“I’m going to fix this,” Loom said, as he eased her back against the floor. “All of it. I promise.”
The promise was too lofty for any of them just then. Wrestling with the marvelry that Masalee used against Wil so many times had given Wil a sense for it. She felt the presence of it now, coming through the trees. But the sky didn’t darken, even as the unease became so palpable that Loom and Espel and Masalee felt it too.
“Help me up,” Wil said.
“You can’t—” Loom began, but she interrupted.
“If my brother is coming to kill me again, I won’t die lying down.”
“Hells,” he swore, but as Wil struggled to sit upright, he guided her with his arm under her back. She clutched his shoulder. Blood leaked from the stitches of her wound, adding a fresh bloom to the red stains on her tunic. Her lips were blue, her skin drained of color, and her shallow gasps for air echoed against the stones.
Her vision briefly darkened, but when it cleared, she realized just how bright the light was as it stole through the kitchen window. There was none of the cursed gloom she had come to expect; Arrod was familiar again.
It was then Wil noticed the trail of blood that led to her. There would have been no sense hiding now even if she wanted to. Baren was going to find her. Perhaps he would tell her how he had managed to claw his way back from the dead before he attempted to finish her off.
But it was not Baren’s frantic voice that filled the great room. “Wil? Wil!”
Wil knew that she was delirious. She could see the blood she had lost; it was staining the floor and her clothes. She could feel her strength waning. But she was sure that the voice calling out to her was Gerdie’s.
She fought to stay awake. She had to know that she wasn’t dreaming and that this was real.
The door opened. Espel and Masalee drew their weapons. “Stop,” Wil said, or tried to say. “Don’t hurt him.”
Over their heads Wil saw him. He wasn’t wearing his monocle—he had left that for her to find, but he was alive. He was here.
Loom’s grip on Wil’s arm tightened protectively. He didn’t trust what he was seeing, and who could blame him? Wil didn’t understand it herself. But her brother had broken death’s rules countless times, and Wil had never cared much how he managed to do it.
Gerdie saw that the trail of blood ended where she stood.
“You’re alive,” she managed to gasp out. Not only was Gerdie alive, the entire kingdom was alive. She heard the faraway trill of the clock towers over distant churches, and winter insects and birds chirping and singing and flying through the trees.
Every muscle of her body screamed for reprieve, but she refused to sink into darkness just yet.
Gerdie ran to her. He knelt before her, and the braces on his legs creaked loudly the way they always did when it was cold.
She leaned back against the table leg for support, and her head lolled against her shoulder. “You’re alive,” she said again. “And we aren’t dreaming.”
“Why did you come here?” He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead; it was an old habit from all the times she’d returned to the castle broken in some way or other. Maybe he forgot the risk. The kingdom must still have been cursed, Wil thought, because he was unharmed from her touch. Or her heart was just too weak to muster up any adrenaline.
“I heard about the attack.” Her speech was slurred. She blinked through her exhaustion, frustrated. “I thought you were dead. I saw—” Her eyes narrowed. “I saw your body. You were dead. Cold.”
“It wasn’t real,” he said.
“Yes it was,” Wil insisted, fully aware that she was arguing with her brother about whether or not he was alive. It was an absurd argument, and she was grateful he was here to listen to it. “It wasn’t alchemy. I know your handiwork. I know all the chem
icals that could be combined to smell like blood. It was real.”
“It was Baren,” Gerdie said.
Wil’s eyes were closing. She felt her heart rate slowing. It had to be Masalee, putting her out because she was stubbornly refusing to rest. But how could she rest when Gerdie had come back from the dead?
“Is Baren still alive?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Mother?” she asked.
She couldn’t stay awake to hear the answer.
Thirty-Three
LOOM HAD ONCE TOLD WIL that she looked like royalty.
She had been barefoot at the time, her callused heels crusted with sand, her boots hanging over one shoulder by their laces. They were standing in the grand foyer of his broken castle, and she had been furious with him, he remembered. Her fury was especially beautiful, because anything Wil felt, she felt with her whole body—her jaw, her fingers that had clutched the banister, the tension in her lean biceps. And her eyes. Her dark, wide eyes that took the world in and tore it apart in turn.
As she stormed up the stairs, her footsteps carrying in the wide, empty space, he wondered how she couldn’t see it. Didn’t she know she commanded more than just his heart? Didn’t she know that the world was always hers where she stood?
Now that they were in Northern Arrod, Loom saw Wil in her own castle, and he understood why she did not want to be identified as royalty. She fit into a castle as easily as she fit into a fight with a marauder in a town square. Royalty was just a skin she wore from time to time as a means of survival.
He was the one to carry her this time. She was unconscious and ashen. Her head hung over his arm, and he moved slowly so he wouldn’t jar her injury.
If Wil’s brother hadn’t told Loom which chamber belonged to her, at a glance Loom never would have guessed it.
There was a large four-poster bed netted with white lace, and a massive iron chandelier that looked to be an ancient candelabra that had been updated to outfit electricity in candle-shaped fixtures.
He eased her onto the mattress. She moved instinctively for the center, as though even in sleep her body recognized where she was.
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