by Cayla Keenan
“I’m taking you back in the morning,” he said firmly, handing her his coat. “Here, you can sleep on this.”
After a long moment, Maia took the coat and settled on the uneven floor. She curled into a ball, tucking her knees up to her chin just like Jayin used to do. No doubt Maia thought that mattresses were too comfortable as well.
Maddix waited until he heard Maia’s breathing even out before he allowed his eyes to close. His nightmares made for light sleeping and soon a small sound outside woke him. Maddix rose silently, gently tapping Maia to wake her. He pressed a finger to his lips and she nodded, blinking the sleep from her eyes. He couldn’t see anything outside the walls, but he knew better than to allow that to soothe him.
“Get your stuff,” Maddix whispered. Maia handed him back his coat and pulled her pack across her shoulders.
“What is it?” she murmured. Maddix couldn’t answer for sure, but something was amiss.
“Come on,” he said, pushing her in front of him and holding his sword ready. The sun was still low in the sky, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.
“Maia,” he said softly once they were well away from the house. Something was different about her and it took him a moment to realize that the cut on her cheek was gone. Healed, as if it had never existed. She followed his gaze, her hand going to her face.
“I healed it,” she said, answering the unspoken question. “I didn’t mean to, I just—”
Maddix swore under his breath, trying to keep his panic from showing and spooking her. They were in trouble. Maddix handed Maia one of the knives that Jayin had lent him, placing it in her hand so that she was holding it correctly.
“I know how to use it.” Maia’s jaw set.
“Let’s hope you won’t have to,” Maddix said. “Hide the knife in your sleeve and give me your hands.” Maia shot him a questioning look, but she didn’t argue, allowing him to tie her hands loosely in front of her. He looped his necklace over her head, cutting off her magic.
“What are you—?” Maia asked, her voice thin.
“Quiet,” Maddix hissed.
Soldiers came upon them just minutes later, their weapons drawn.
“Can I help you?” Maddix asked, finding the seed of arrogance Hale had planted and bringing it to the surface. He looked every inch a dayri bounty hunter, marching a witch captive to her doom. He surveyed the soldiers coldly, arching a superior eyebrow and wishing for Jayin. She had always been the better actor.
“We’ve been tracking a disturbance,” one of the soldiers said, stepping forward.
“No kidding,” Maddix said, rolling his eyes. He nudged Maia and she took a staggering step forward. “This one got away from me.”
The leader looked him up and down, his lip curling. “And you are? Not Kaddahn, surely.”
“Aestosi.” Maddix didn’t bother to lie. They wouldn’t believe he was one of their own and claiming Vandel as his homeland wouldn’t help the situation any. “She’s worth a great deal of coin to me, so I would appreciate it if you stopped wasting my time.”
“How does an Aestosi witch end up here?” the soldier pressed, clearly trying to trip him up.
“You should get out some more, friend,” Maddix said, adding Evin’s condescension to Hale’s haughty arrogance. The soldier scowled. “The Aestosi king decided to build a wall around the capital. You’re welcome to go take a look if you don’t believe me. It’s enormous, you can’t miss it.”
The soldier hesitated for a moment more before waving them on. Maddix snapped him a single, mocking salute before marching Maia past. For just a moment, Maddix thought that they might get away with it. The air shifted behind them and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
“Move!” Maddix shouted, slicing the rope around Maia’s wrist and pushing her out of the way. One of the soldiers stabbed at his midsection and Maddix whirled, freeing his sword in a single movement. He parried the blow and struck back in kind, forcing the soldier back. His focus narrowed, the world shrinking to his opponent, the screeching of metal, and the bright, hazy instinct to survive. Maddix slashed at the soldier in front of him, severing the woman’s hand from her wrist and ran, plunging into the forest after Maia.
Something slammed into him from behind, and Maddix lost his sword as he collapsed to the ground in a violent tangle of limbs. One of the soldiers pinned his arms and Maddix cursed as his shoulders strained in their sockets. The soldier flipped him onto his back and then there was a forearm pressed against his throat, crushing his trachea. Maddix wheezed, the remains of his breath escaping with a rattle.
“Aestosi scum,” the soldier snarled and Maddix managed to free himself for long enough to suck in a single lungful of air before a fist clipped his jaw and he saw stars. He’s going to kill me, Maddix thought blearily. After all this time, after the Pit and the sahirla and the wall, he was going to be killed by a Kaddahn soldier.
The sky had a cruel sense of irony.
"Get away from him!" a tiny voice shrieked. There was a flash of silver, and hot blood splashed onto Maddix’s face. The pressure against his throat lifted. Maddix’s vision cleared by slow degrees. The man went limp, blood running from his ears and mouth. A knife protruded from his neck. Maddix pushed the soldier’s body off of him and tried to sit up before he heaved. Vomit and bile hit the forest floor in a wet, stinking mess.
“Are you okay?” Maia asked, going to her knees beside him. He felt the unmistakable tang of magic in the air and batted Maia’s hands away.
“Don’t do that,” he said. His voice was a strained whisper. “They can track magic, remember?”
“They already found us and you need help,” Maia said, pressing light fingertips to his neck. Magic prickled under his skin and he could feel the bruises beginning to fade.
“That’s enough,” Maddix said when he felt whole enough to stand. There would be more soldiers on their way. “Come on.” He took her hand they both started running.
“We’re going in the wrong direction,” Maia protested as Maddix dragged her through the woods. “The coven is the other way.”
“So are the people with swords that want to kill us.”
“But we have to go back!”
“If we go back, we’ll lead the dayri right to the rest of them. So stop fighting me and run.”
Miraculously, Maia didn’t argue, sprinting alongside him. There was no way they were going to outrun a whole squadron of soldiers. There was one way they might be able to get away clean, but it was a bad idea. Jayin would’ve smacked him over the head and called him dayri idiot, but she wasn’t there, and they didn’t have any other choices.
“Where are we going?” Maia asked when Maddix started to lead them towards the border.
“Somewhere you won’t get skinned alive for being a witch,” Maddix said.
“We can’t leave,” Maia said, guessing his plan immediately. All the blood drained from her pale face, leaving her skin the color of parchment. “We can’t leave Kaddah.”
“We can’t stay here either,” Maddix insisted, not understanding her hesitation. She wasn’t the one wanted for murder in Aestos. “I will bring you back I swear, but if we stay here we’re dead.”
She looked terrified, but clenched her jaw and didn’t argue.
Making their way across the border wasn’t nearly as difficult as Maddix might have thought—Kaddah simply didn’t have the manpower to fight an underground war against Vandel and patrol every inch of their lands. Besides, Aestosi witches knew better than to venture here, and the superstitious Kaddahn rarely visited Aestos, where sahir were free citizens.
Maddix doubted the soldiers would risk the ire of the King—and more importantly, the Kingswitch—by following them out of Kaddah. If they were caught, it could start a second war, and fighting against an army of witches was suicide.
So was going back to the place where Maddix’s face was plastered on wanted posters and every bounty hunter in the kingdom knew his name, but if there was
any other way, he couldn’t think of it.
This will work, he promised himself. It had to work.
They made it to the Aestosi countryside without incident, but Maddix insisted that they keep moving, wary of soldiers stumbling across them by accident. The one good thing, the single bright spot in the disaster of the last few hours, was at least they were past the wall. Pavaal was only two days’ walk away.
It was the worst kind of tease, being so close to his destination after weeks of travel only to have to go back and start over again.
“Is this Aestos?” Maia asked softly after an hour of walking in silence.
“The one and only,” he replied, not bothering to mask the bitterness in his voice. Home sweet home, where he was a wanted man and the witch who destroyed him walked free. “Just a little further,” Maddix promised. They needed to find someplace to make camp soon or he was going to have to carry her the rest of the way.
Thank the stars for drought, Maddix thought as they came upon an abandoned farmhouse.
"Why doesn’t anybody live here?" Maia asked as Maddix ushered her inside. As soon as he deemed it secure, they split up, looking for supplies. There wasn’t much to find, just a few strips of nearly unchewable jerky and empty tin cans.
“Farms aren’t producing anymore,” Maddix replied, checking the locks and shuttering the windows. “So people have to move.” Farmers who’d worked the land for generations fled the fields as their crops withered and their livelihoods died. Over the past two years, hundreds of people left their family farms to try and find work in the capitol.
He didn’t tell her that there were rumors that witches were killing the land on the Kingswitch’s orders. For years, he’d believed the stories, repeating them like gospels. Maia didn’t need to know how recently he’d hated her people.
“I thought Aestos was supposed to be a safe haven,” Maia said. “Someplace magic is allowed and nobody is afraid.” It was a nice story, no doubt facilitated by Ayrie to boost their standing in the Three Kingdoms. Too bad it wasn’t true.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Maddix said, a muscle jumping in his jaw. He didn’t bother explaining that things were as bad here as they were anywhere. Sahir may not have been hunted outright, but he knew Hale and the other witchhunters were more powerful than they seemed. The wall was proof of that; without support from the Crown, it never would have been built, let alone so quickly.
Maia didn’t push, and Maddix gratefully let the subject drop. There were two moldering mattresses on the second floor of the farmhouse, and he pulled them both into the kitchen.
When that was done, Maddix went to work securing the perimeter, pulling empty cans out of the dusty pantry and stringing them up on the old clotheslines that lined the property’s southern border. The windows in the kitchen let them see out to the front yard and if anyone approached the house from the back, they’d hear them coming. It wasn’t much and not nearly as good as magic, but might give them a head start that could save their lives.
“Maddix?” Maia whispered as they both settled down in the kitchen. Maddix had locked them in and his back rested against the door. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not safe for you here.”
“Just go to sleep,” Maddix said, trying to be comforting. “We’ll wait it out for a few days and get you back home.”
“Maybe Jayin will still be there,” Maia said, sounding so hopeful Maddix fought the urge to flinch. He scrubbed his hand over his face. He hated that Maia had come after him. He hated that he’d left in the first place.
Most of all, he hated himself for hoping the same thing. Jayin had no reason to ever want to see him again. He was selfish, a fool and a hypocrite, and for the first time, he understood why she had so often cursed his optimism. It was going to get him killed.
But even that didn’t stop him from hoping.
Chapter Thirty-Four:
Jayin
Jayin ducked into an alleyway as booted footsteps sounded behind her. She had no idea what had gotten the Kaddahn so rattled, but there were soldiers everywhere, prowling border towns and crossings. Looking for something. Or someone.
Part of her, the tiny part she hadn’t managed to lock away completely, whispered that it might be Maddix. He was a wanted fugitive, and with his fair skin and red-gold hair, he didn’t exactly blend in with the Kaddahn peasantry. The voice urged her to investigate, and Jayin’s heart squeezed at the prospect of finding him. What she would do when she found him, she couldn’t say for sure. Most of her wanted to see how easily he walked away with her knife buried in his thigh.
The tiny voice wanted something else entirely.
In the end, rationality won out and she picked her way around the roaming packs of soldiers. The stone around her wrist allowed her to pass through without her magic giving her away and no one noticed a small girl skulking about. Travelling without her second sight was like walking around with her eyes closed, but she preferred hiding her magic to losing her life.
Jayin crossed into Aestos as soon as she could, unwilling to remain in this starcursed queendom for a minute longer than necessary.
The wall loomed behind her, so tall that Jayin could see it from miles away. It jutted into the sky, an ugly gash in the countryside. Not for the first time, she wondered about the sahirla’s contact in the Palace. They had to have one, or the wall wouldn’t be possible.
Absently, Jayin stroked the ruined skin of her wrist where the Kingswitch’s mark used to be. Stars, she’d thought herself so blessed to receive it. She had been so young.
From the day she’d entered the gilded halls of the Palace, all she wanted to do was belong. She was younger than most of the other witches, all of whom had been recruited from the Academy. The moment a sahir’s abilities expressed themselves, they were educated in magical history and taught how to control their magic. In pureblooded witch families, it usually happened when a child was six or seven.
Jayin had been eleven when she’d been plucked out of the gutter and brought before the Kingswitch. He told her that she was different, unique. He’d filled her head with thoughts of grandeur and promises of a home, a real home. He said that the witches in Ayrie would be her family. She should have known it was all lies.
For years she believed she was special, the Kingswitch’s personal student. At first, Jayin had loved the attention. She was young and powerful, and there was no one in the whole of the kingdom whose abilities matched hers. But as time went on, the glow of being the Kingswitch’s favorite wore off and reality set in. None of the other witches would go near her, whispering that she was cursed and Dark.
Now, wandering through the countryside, she was alone once again, more alone than she’d ever been as a dockrat in the Gull or in the Palace. Maybe it was better that way.
Jayin didn’t waste any time, walking until she could hardly stand before finding a place to sleep. She took off the bracelet the moment she was on Aestosi soil and used her magic to avoid anyone that might be in her path.
She didn’t bother staying in the small towns that dotted the road to Pavaal. In fact, she skirted them altogether, camping in fields where she wouldn’t be spotted. It was best for her to be on her own from now on. Jayin didn’t know if the Kingswitch was still searching for her, but she wasn’t willing to take the risk.
The trip to Pavaal was much faster than it might have been with Maddix by her side, but Jayin stopped as soon as she saw the capitol on the horizon. She’d been away from civilization for so long she didn’t know how to be around so many people at once. Even from the outskirts, she could feel the hum of the city. Jayin wanted one more night of pure air before she started having to filter out half a million civilians’ worth of energy.
Not for the first time she yearned to be back on the Stormwind. If this mission didn’t end with her head on a spike or facedown in the river, she was going to find a ship and never come back to dry land again.
Jayin watched the stars as they rose in the sky, fiddling with the silver cuff on h
er wrist and tugging at it so it hid her scar. She should get rid of it. She should’ve gotten rid of it the moment that Maddix severed the connection. And yet, Jayin couldn’t bear to leave it behind. She dragged her fingertips over the cool metal until she fell asleep with the bracelet tucked under her cheek.
PAVAAL WAS THE same, but only on the surface. Jayin could find her way around blindfolded, but there was something wrong with the city’s energy. Only the smell was familiar, the rotten stench that always seemed to emanate from the rancid river. It took her only a moment to forget what clean air tasted like.
“Hey there, pretty lady,” a low, oily voice came out of the dark. She wasn’t even in the Gull yet. Stars, this city really was rotting if slummers were starting to infest the merchants’ safe streets.
Jayin rolled her eyes, knives in her hands before the man could say another word.
“Do you know how to use those, green eyes?” he leered.
“Come find out or walk the other way,” Jayin said without blinking. After the sahirla, there weren’t many people left in the kingdom that gave her reason to fear. The bald man sneered, advancing with far too much confidence. Jayin ducked underneath his reaching arms, her knife flashing in the sunlight before it severed the man’s hand from his wrist. His scream shattered the air and the man fell to his knees, clutching the bloody stump.
“Next time, think twice,” she said, kneeling beside him and wiping her knife off on his shirt. “Or I’ll be back for the other hand.”
The man sobbed and Jayin walked away without sparing him another glance, leaving him bleeding on the cobbled streets.
“It’s good to be back,” Jayin muttered to herself, twisting the hooked blade in her hands. Some things never changed.
Jayin didn’t go home at first—she didn’t even know if she had a home to go back to. It didn’t seem possible, but she actually missed this place. The Gull was ugly and violent, but she had built something here. Something that was hers and hers alone, without the taint of Ayrie or the Kingswitch on it. If the shop had been looted or her apartment ransacked without the infamous Gulwitch to protect it, she didn’t want to know just yet.