by Lori M. Lee
“What now, Sirscha?” His voice resonates across the distance, echoing about my shoulders. I hate the sensation. “All your allies are gone.”
“If anything happens to them—”
“By your own actions, you have lost them all. The Nuvali princess, the Kazan hlau, the Evewynian prince, even your best friend.” His voice softens to a whisper. “Who will you turn to now?”
The truth is a knife in my gut, and I fall silent, unable to find any words. The Soulless’s gray robes trail behind him, the frayed hem collecting earth and brambles. His feet are bare, blackened by dirt and tree rot, threads of spiderweb still clinging to his heels. He hasn’t yet shaken off his time in that cocoon.
“You remind me of him. My brother. He was never comfortable with his magic either. He always felt a bit cowed by it.”
I turn away from him, searching for an escape, but there’s nowhere to go in this dreamscape. There’s only destruction and decay.
“Fighting for the Empire helped him to focus his magic. It gave purpose to his ambitions.” His voice grows hard with the taint of bitterness. “For all the good that did him in the end. It had been a false purpose. They taught him how to push his magic beyond its natural boundaries, without thought of what it would do to him or what it had done to others. And why would they care, when there were others to take his place? Tell me, Sirscha. Would you have sacrificed all that you are for your queen? Or your prince?”
Maybe. But now, I would be willing to give of myself, not for a single king or queen, but for Evewyn and its people. For the only home I’ve ever known, a home that a part of me still hopes to belong to again. And for Saengo, and all of the unexpected friends I’ve come to care for.
His lips stretch into a feral grin as if he can see my every thought playing out in my eyes. “Make all the world your home, Sirscha, and you will never feel adrift again.”
A guard feeds me twice daily, assuming my internal clock is correct, which means I’ve only been here for a handful of days. But in the dark, with only the silence, the cold, and my own thoughts for company, it feels like far longer.
I waste a few hours feeling around my cell, searching every cleft of fractured stone, every moldering stretch of floor, and every rusty patch on the iron bars, but there is nothing that might be of use. Afterward, I curl tight against the wall, trying to find a position that will ease the damp chill burrowed beneath my skin. My jaw aches from the chatter of my teeth. My craft burns, but there’s no true heat. It’s only a sensation, which does nothing to relieve the cold.
Since Yen’s visit, the only person who comes to my cell is the guard who delivers my meals. He doesn’t carry any keys on him, so it’s useless to attack him. The only other souls are too far away for my paltry control to reach.
But with each passing day, my resolve weakens. Each time the guard returns, his soul beckons like a candle in the dark, asking to be taken in hand. His tether is weak, and if I just reach out and nudge it loose, I could make myself stronger. The urge scares me enough that I begin to murmur the old prayer of the Five Sisters, hoping it will drown out the eager rush of my magic.
On the fourth day, I dream of a memory. Saengo and I are children again at the Prince’s Company. We lie in my bed, facing one another with our fingers laced between us. The soft breathing and occasional snores of our roommates fill the quiet.
“I miss Falcons Ridge,” Saengo confesses in a whisper. We’ve only just begun our second year, and she’s recently returned from spending her break on Phang lands. “I try not to. I should be used to it by now, but the Company is just so different.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what it feels like to miss home. I hated the orphanage and the monks, and I’m glad to never have to set foot there again. I suppose I miss some of the younger children, although I may see them again when it’s their turn to join the Company.
“What do you miss most about it?” I ask, hoping to understand.
Saengo’s voice wavers. “My family.”
At this, something inside me aches, like a fist squeezing around my stomach. For the first time in my life, I’d begun to feel like maybe I’d found a family in Saengo. We’re not real sisters, but could this be what it feels like? Saengo’s words cut into me. She wants to leave me for her real family. My fingers tighten around hers, unwilling to let go just yet.
“My mother keeps a garden thick with flowering trees. I used to hide there while she and my father took their afternoon tea.” She releases a quiet sigh. “I miss that too.”
“Tomorrow,” I say like I’m making a proclamation. “Tomorrow, we’ll sneak into the gardens after dinner. We’ll hide beneath the bushes so we won’t be able to see anything but flowers and earth, and you can pretend you’re back home in your mother’s garden.”
Saengo laughs, low and warm, and her hand squeezes back.
The dream fades away, lost to the ocean of my mind, and then I’m standing once again in the ruins of Spinner’s End. The Dead Wood presses all around, the scent of decay and things long-buried thick in my lungs.
“You’re sad,” the Soulless says from behind me.
I spin on my heel to find him mere feet away. His dark hair is tucked behind the sharp taper of his ears, and his luminous eyes watch me with intense curiosity. A spider wanders from the folds of his gray tunic, leaving a trail of sticky thread.
I lift my chin. “It’s none of your business what I am.”
“There’s no need to worry. The queen wants you weakened and malnourished, but I won’t stand for it. Your imprisonment at the Grand Palace will end soon, and then we can discuss what must be done in person.”
If it were up to the queen, she would either execute me or leave me in her dungeon to die of starvation, as other shamanborn have before me. That the Soulless should be the one to speak for me is bizarre, but not something I’ll protest if it gets me out of this cell sooner.
“But that’s not it, is it?” He crosses his arms, fingers tapping against his sleeves. “If your concern isn’t for yourself, then it must be …” A small smile pulls at his lips. “Your friend. The familiar. How does a nameless orphan become friends with the heir to an ancient House? Or is it former heir now?”
As he walks, his gait is slow but sure. They’re not the quivering steps of our first dream together.
“Saengo’s father will come for her,” I say, infusing my voice with false confidence. “By taking her prisoner, all the queen has done is start a civil war.”
He looks amused by this. “The beloved heir to House Phang. You must have felt so inadequate. She could’ve been friends with anyone, but she chose you.”
I resist the urge to shrink beneath his words. I won’t be made small by a single truth.
“Could it be that you needed her far more than she needed you?” he muses softly.
I wonder what would happen if I punched him. Would it hurt him, or would he vanish into shadows and vapor?
“And now she’s a lowly familiar tied to the life of a shaman. Quite a fall from grace. Maybe in the deepest parts of your heart, you’re glad of it? Now she needs you just as much as you need her.”
The suggestion stuns me. Then white-hot rage fills me. I stalk across the dry earth and grab fistfuls of his ragged robes. The course fibers prick my skin, and the remnants of webbing lace my fingers.
“How dare you suggest such a thing,” I hiss. “You don’t chain the people you love to you.”
“Oh, Sirscha,” he says softly. Heat pushes up my neck at the pitying way his brows pinch together. “People like us—we can’t help it. It is the nature of our magic. With every soul we touch, we either tether it to us or we destroy them. There is no middle ground.”
“You’re wrong.” Maybe I don’t know what I want or where I belong, and maybe all I can do with the magic within me is fumble along and hope, but I do know this—he is wrong.
All his pretty lies, all his poisonous whispers, and ugly temptations fall away. After drownin
g for so long in uncertainty, the sudden clarity is staggering.
Saengo is my family. Not one bound to me by blood or obligation. She chose me of her own free will. I would never tie her to me, and I will never be glad for what I took from her.
If only I could stop being so afraid. Afraid of hurting others, of becoming the monster the Soulless wants me to be. I would gladly trade my soul for Saengo’s if I could, but I can’t, and my craft is the next best thing to helping us both out of this situation.
I am a soulrender. And I can either keep running from it or embrace it. If choosing to save my best friend means risking the monster within me, then I can live with that.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The pounding of boots against stone pulls my mind out of that restless place between sleep and waking.
My senses are instantly alert. This isn’t the guard with my meal. There are too many souls. My craft quickens beneath my skin, but I don’t move from against the wall. The flickering light of a torch brightens the corridor, along with the frantic shadows of soldiers.
As the soldiers reach my cell, their torchlight warms the backs of my lids. When I hear the jangling of keys, I open my eyes fully. There are eight of them in all. The one opening my cell looks anxious, his movements quick and clumsy. He nearly drops the keys. The others wait, some glowering, some glancing over their shoulders.
I don’t stand. I want to see what they do. The soldier finally swings open my cell door and makes a sharp gesture at his companions. Two others hurry inside and grasp my arms, hauling me upright. The sense of urgency is puzzling.
Is Queen Meilyr eager to see me gone? Has the Soulless threatened her over the delay in handing me off? Or are these soldiers impatient to be rid of me? I doubt they even know what I am, other than a shamanborn prisoner. The queen keeps her people ignorant, offering no explanations and expecting absolute obedience without question.
The soldiers push me down the corridor. They don’t even bother to secure my hands. If I’m to escape, now is the time, before we reach the queen. But as my craft stirs, fear creeps along my shoulders. I swallow down the sick feeling trying to climb up my throat. For Saengo’s sake, I can’t tolerate uncertainty. Either I do this, or I don’t.
I inhale a steadying breath, my control a frayed, quivering thing. Then my magic unfolds around me, like a hand cupping water, closing around every soul within reach.
At once, the soldiers freeze in place. Slowly, I draw two swords from either soldier ahead and behind me.
They watch me with wide eyes, their pupils wild and frightened. I move past them, one careful step at a time. Sweat slides down a soldier’s temple, her face turning red with the effort of trying to escape my grip.
Their souls feel like leaves in autumn, easily shaken loose with the gentlest of nudges.
Afraid to grip too tightly, I relax my magic. My control wavers and some souls slip through. Two soldiers gasp, stumbling, as their hands fly to their chests to soothe the pain.
With a curse, I turn and run, releasing the others. As they collapse, groaning, the first two draw their swords, tripping over their companions to reach me. I dodge a blade swiping at my back. After days of imprisonment, my body feels weak and unsteady, but the sudden rush of energy gives me the strength I need to ram my elbow into the soldier’s jaw.
A couple of them cower behind the others, shuffling between attacking and fleeing into the dark. But most of them recover quickly, charging down the narrow corridor.
I use the small space to my advantage. They can’t surround me, and they can’t all attack at once. I disarm one, snapping his nose, before pivoting to avoid a punch and plowing my knee into the face of another. The flat of my sword finds the skull of yet another, whose eyes roll back as she crumples. Her companion catches her just before her head can hit the stone.
I gather my breath as the remaining four soldiers hesitate. They know they’re outskilled. Still, they edge closer, weapons held out cautiously.
I raise my swords. The blades are longer than what I’m used to, but I take comfort in their weight as if I can draw the strength of their steel into my tired bones.
When I glance over my shoulder to check the distance between myself and the exit, the nearest soldier surges at me. I disarm her, twisting her arm back and ramming my knee into her spine. She gasps and falls, arching in pain.
“You won’t make it out of the palace alive,” says a soldier hiding behind his companions. I’d stolen his sword.
“I’ll take my chances,” I say.
From behind me, my craft flares to the approach of more souls before I can detect the rumbling of hurried feet. Every ache in my weakened limbs protests the coming fight, but I grit my teeth and flatten myself against the bars of the nearest cell, one sword raised to the soldiers and the other sword at the door, which bursts open.
Prince Meilek storms through. At the sight of me, something dark and savage flashes in his eyes. His Blades follow close behind him. Movement catches in my periphery, and I react on reflex. My sword meets a steel blade as the hilt in my other hand smashes into a soldier’s temple. She collapses into the bars with a grunt.
“Sirscha!”
“Saengo!” I turn my back on the remaining soldiers, leaving them for Prince Meilek and his Blades. Saengo hurtles down the narrow corridor and flings her arms around me. Weakened as I am, I nearly fold beneath our combined weight.
“Are you injured?” she asks, drawing back to get a proper look at me. The torchlight doesn’t offer much, but my condition must be plain because her face tightens with a rare fury.
“I’ll be fine,” I tell her. Now that the surge of energy from the fight is leaving me, my legs shake with the effort of remaining upright, and my head spins slightly. “What about you?”
“Nothing like this,” she assures me. She takes one of my swords and then props my arm over her shoulder. I’m glad for the assistance.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“Well, we’re certainly setting a record for rallying at the last minute,” Prince Meilek says, coming up behind us. Somehow, I find it in me to smile. “The capital is under siege.”
The smile instantly fades. “What?”
“More of a blockade, really, but it’s incredible, Sirscha,” Saengo says, a note of awe underlining her voice. “The ships that disappeared from the queen’s navy. They didn’t sink. They abandoned the fleet and pledged themselves to Prince Meilek.”
My feet stall. Prince Meilek pauses behind me, the corridor too narrow for him to go around. He doesn’t look like a prince who’s just made a major stride toward dethroning his sister. He simply looks tired. Shadows bruise his eyes, his jaw is in need of a shave, and he smells faintly of smoke.
“How did they find you?” I ask.
“They returned to Tamsimno under a flag of peace. Hlau Theyen was able to put us in contact. The ships remained hidden along the Kazan coast until I called them to Vos Talwyn.” He frowns a little as if he still can’t believe Evewynians had placed their trust in him and forsaken their queen.
In truth, when his message to the naval fleet was revealed, I didn’t believe it would work as anything but a distraction. After what she did to the shamanborn, fear of the queen’s reprisal is deep-rooted. I hadn’t trusted my fellow Evewynians to oppose her.
“What about the Valley of Cranes?” I ask, bewildered.
“A trap, as expected. But Lord Phang sent as many soldiers as were willing to support me in defense of the camp. The rescued shamanborn are aboard the ships in Needle Bay.”
Saengo adds, “The siege is to distract the queen’s forces so Prince Meilek could get into the city to rescue us.”
Thank you feels inadequate for what he’s risking, for what everyone aboard those ships is risking. I’ve always had to rely only on myself because no one besides Saengo ever cared. I’m not used to this.
If a family can be chosen, then would it be too brazen to hope that I could choose mine? I’m still not sure, bu
t the thought warms through me.
When we reach the door to the dungeons, we find Theyen waiting impatiently beyond. His arm is in a sling. He gestures for us to get on with it, and then catches sight of me. Although his expression doesn’t change, he hesitates long enough that I imagine he wants to say something rude.
“At least I wasn’t strangled this time,” I say, saving him the trouble.
Theyen’s eyebrow hitches. “No, only half-starved. That’s an improvement, I suppose.”
“Stop it,” Saengo says, glaring between us. “Don’t make light of this. We need to get you both to a healer.”
“No,” I say, withdrawing my arm from around her shoulder. My stomach protests the loss of support, but I steady myself. “I have to get that talisman, or all of this was for nothing. Theyen, can you get us back in the queen’s rooms now that you’ve seen it?”
“Only long enough to be stabbed,” he says dryly. “But it’s possible.”
I turn to Saengo, who grasps my hand tight. “Meet us in the vegetable gardens. You know the one. Where you used to pick me up after I left Kendara’s tower.”
She nods and hands back my second sword. “Please hurry.”
A shadow gate opens behind Theyen. I give Saengo another hug and then hook my arm around Theyen’s.
Passing through the gate makes my empty stomach roil and my head spin. Even after my feet touch solid ground again, my vision remains dark, and it takes a long second for my eyes to focus. Theyen’s hand tightens around my wrist in warning. I grit my teeth, blinking quickly as my other senses attempt to gauge the danger. Get it together, I think fiercely. Kendara taught me better than this. She prepared me for this.
My success might not mean anything to her anymore, but it does to me. Whether I like it or not, she’s one of the most important people in my life, one member of the family of my heart, and that means something.
The door to the queen’s bedchamber is ajar, but the talisman isn’t there. The lockbox on her dresser is open, its edges glinting in the light from the windows. Dawn is approaching, which means Theyen’s magic will soon be gone. We need to hurry.