Reign of the Fallen

by Sarah Glenn Marsh

  I press my lips together to hold in a groan. “Of course this was your idea.”

  The princess shakes her head. “Meredy’s. But I wish I’d thought of it days ago.”

  I can’t believe this is happening. I’d pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming, but I can’t move my hands. And with each passing moment, what little patience I have is fading.

  “Valoria. Take these off right now,” I demand through gritted teeth. “I have no chance of finding your mother if I’m locked up.” When she doesn’t show any sign of relenting, I lower my voice to a hushed calm. “Fine. You win. I’ll never touch a drop of that potion again. But Jax and Simeon need my help tracking down the missing Dead and a very dangerous man who’s already tried to feed at least one person to a Shade.” A man who’s apparently quite good at hiding, if yesterday’s search is any indication.

  “Jax and Simeon know what we’re doing here. And we have their support.” Valoria leans closer, frowning down her nose at me. “They don’t want you going back to the Deadlands, or anywhere else, until you have a clear head and aren’t a few potions away from death.”

  I try to ball my hands into fists, but of course I can’t. Instead, I give Valoria my widest, most pleading eyes. Of my two captors, she’s the one I’m sure has a heart. The one I know how to wound with words. “Please, Highness. There’s no time for this now!”

  “Oh, but there is, Master Necromancer.” Valoria squares her shoulders and stands taller, looking every bit like the leader I know she could be. I just wish she wasn’t directing her fiercest stare at me, forcing me to glower back. “Do you have any idea what this is doing to us—your friends? You’ll be more of a danger than a help to Jax and Simeon if you keep drinking that potion. Grenwyr needs you.” Her gaze and voice soften as she adds, “I need you. The real you, not the one who’s been spending half her time in an imaginary world of monsters.”

  Meredy’s words are so quiet, I almost miss them. “There are enough real monsters in Karthia to keep you busy, if you’d just look around.”

  I exchange a glance with her, wondering if she’s thinking of yesterday’s rogue necromancers. She smiles wanly, and a flickering image of Evander hits me like a knife in the gut. I turn my back on her, focusing all my attention on the princess.

  “Meredy obviously wants to see me suffer.” The shaking in my hands spreads to my knees, but I’d rather fight to keep standing than sit on the bed beside her. “That much I understand. But, Valoria, why are you doing this to me?”

  “You brought me out of my tower. You helped me realize I have a voice, however small, that deserves to be heard.” The princess puts her arms around me, hugging my rigid back and filling me with unexpected warmth. “And now I want to lead you out of the darkness.”

  “What if the darkness is where I belong?” I fight to keep my voice steady as I think of all the times I walked the palace halls with Evander, when my biggest worry was how to convince him we should move there. “What if I spend every potion-free day wishing I’d died in the Deadlands with him? What if the pain of being alone is too much?”

  An image of Master Cymbre’s face as she pulled me from the flames in a faraway field flashes to mind, knotting my stomach with guilt.

  “You won’t wish that.” Valoria squeezes my shoulder. “Because you won’t be alone. You’ll have me, and we’ll fight the pain and the darkness together.”

  I open my mouth to ask her how I can fight anything with my hands chained, but my knees buckle and I sway. Frowning, Valoria steadies me, then pushes me gently down onto the bed. Resigned to my fate, I sink onto my unmade sheets.

  When I wake up some time later, Meredy is gone. For a while, as the sun makes its ascent in a clear blue sky, I watch Valoria as she sits by my feet, scribbling in a leather-bound notebook of yellowed parchment.

  “What are you working on?” I manage to ask. Beads of sweat collect on my forehead, but when Valoria pours me a glass of water, I’m too nauseated to drink.

  Valoria makes a soft disapproving sound, but she doesn’t force the issue. Instead, she holds up her notebook. “This is my air balloon.” She taps the drawing at the center of the spread pages, a giant loopy thing with strings coming out of the bottom and what looks like a large basket dangling from the strings. “Fire should make the balloon rise, but I’ve got to figure out how to contain the flames so they won’t burn the people sitting in the basket. A flying balloon could be a new way to travel.”

  I lick sweat from my lips and surprise myself by laughing. The image of several Dead looking on in awe and fear as Valoria ascends into the sky in a flaming balloon is just too much. “Where do you come up with these things? What is it your Sight shows you that inspires you to want to, well, fly?”

  Valoria’s cheeks turn rosy pink. “They’re not all my ideas. I found the air balloon and several other designs for flying machines in a book. There’s a section of the palace library that used to hold books from before Eldest Grandfather’s second reign began, books full of all sorts of ideas people started but never got a chance to finish.” She tries to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose, though they’re already in place. “He thinks all those books were burned, but I saved as many as I could in my tower. When I read them, I see ways to improve the designs. There’s just the matter of getting a chance to try . . .”

  I smile, leaning back against my pillows and wondering what Evander would think of a flying balloon. He’d probably volunteer to be Valoria’s first victim—er, passenger. I bet he’d consider it an exciting way to see what lies beyond Karthia’s borders.

  Maybe someday, I can sail the skies for him. Even if the thought terrifies me.

  “Why don’t we take your air balloon down to the beach one night?” I gasp between shaky breaths. I’m sweating so hard now, my blankets cling to me like a second skin. “Where the Dead won’t see it. Maybe we can get it working.”

  Valoria’s expression shifts from one of shock and gratitude to complete horror as I start to convulse.

  “Have some water,” Valoria says meekly, dropping her book to dab my sweaty face with a cool, damp cloth.

  “Evander,” I gasp as I writhe, unable to keep my traitorous body still. Without the potion, I won’t see my perfect illusion of him anymore. And if I can’t see him, over time, I’ll forget what he looked like. Without the potion, I’ll truly lose him. “I can’t see him,” I sob as Valoria presses the cloth to my forehead. “I can’t—I can’t . . .”

  Moments later, my screams echo off the walls.

  XIX

  I don’t know how much time has passed since I last opened my eyes, if it’s been days or just a few hours, but the moon hangs low in my window like a curious spectator, and Valoria is nowhere to be seen.

  My throat is dry, my lips rough as old parchment. “I’m thirsty,” I croak to no one in particular.

  “Would you like some goat’s milk?” Meredy asks, emerging from the shadows dragging a chair toward my bedside. “I’ve brought sage water as well. If you’d like, I could make coriander water instead. It’s popular in Lorness.”

  Every sound, from her voice to the chair scraping the wooden floor before it catches on my rug, hurts like someone is jabbing tiny knives into my ears.

  “Stop talking,” I beg as she holds a slender glass bottle to my lips.

  I try to pretend she’s not there as I drink down the sage water, but it’s nearly impossible to avoid gazing into her eyes when she’s so close. I focus on the scar across her cheek, the four jagged lines that must have come from a large paw.

  When I’ve finished with the water, my head is throbbing a little less. “Why a grizzly bear?” I ask.

  Meredy settles into the chair she brought over. “What?”

  “Beast masters choose the animal they study and bond with, don’t they?”

  “They do. It helps to have a choice, because you wind up spending
years in the wilderness with that animal.” A rare smile lights Meredy’s face, and for the first time, the resemblance to Evander doesn’t hit me like a blow. Perhaps because my body’s too exhausted to ache any more than it already does.

  “I grew up watching Elibeth and her greyhounds. She was always bragging about how amazing their connection was, and what majestic animals they were,” Meredy continues, slipping further from her usual calm as her face darkens. “It’s not easy being the youngest of three siblings. Being the smallest often meant being overlooked. So when I learned I’d been selected to train as a beast master, I chose the most fearsome animal I could think of. Life hasn’t been the same since I met Lysander.” She bows her head. Hiding something, I’m sure. “He’s the one thing I’ve never regretted.”

  “Not even when he gave you that scar?”

  Meredy raises her eyes to mine again as she touches her scarred cheek. “Not even then. It’s a good reminder that wild things can never truly be tamed. Only respected.”

  I wiggle my fingers as they start tingling, but my gaze keeps wandering back to her curtain of dark red hair.

  “Are you hungry?” she asks, apparently mistaking my listless stare for something else. “I can send for something from the kitchens.” When I shake my head, she pulls a small sack from inside her cloak and tosses it toward me. Her face is unreadable, but I have the strangest feeling that she’s pleased with herself. “You’ll at least want these. Kasmira sends her regards.”

  The sack hits my leg and rattles as it falls onto the bed. I blink at Meredy. “I haven’t given you enough credit, young beast master,” I grit out. She purses her lips as I raise my bound hands. “But how am I supposed to open them?”

  “Oh.” She leaps up and grabs the bag. “Right.” Maybe it’s a trick of the moonlight, but for a moment a hint of flush appears beneath her freckles.

  As the bag falls open, the wonderful aroma of coffee beans fills the room. Oh, how I’ve missed them. The calming potion had put my former addiction well out of mind, but now that they’re being held to my lips by Meredy’s long, slender fingers, I don’t know how I’ve gone without for so long.

  Her eyes hold mine. Their rich green is flecked with amber. She blinks slowly. I lean in and catch a coffee bean with my lips. Her breath hitches, and a slight flush rises in her face.

  “This doesn’t mean I like you all of a sudden,” I tell her. “Or that I ever will, after you’ve made me a prisoner in my own room.”

  Her cheeks are still bright, but she says, “All right,” in her usual serene manner. “I’ll learn to live with myself, somehow.”

  My lower lip brushes her thumb as I take another coffee bean, and a shiver races through me.

  “You . . . you should try one,” I offer.

  Meredy arches a brow. “Me, eating illegal goods?” She sounds slightly out of breath at the thought. Figures she’d be that virtuous. A moment later, she pops one in her mouth and crunches down. Her eyes widen, and she smiles.

  A tremor suddenly grips me as my body clamors for something stronger.

  Something blue in a glass vial that left me comfortably numb.

  Something that could keep me floating above this swift, searing pain.

  “How do you do it?” I ask as Meredy sponges my forehead with the cloth Valoria left. “How do you handle thinking about Van and Firiel without falling apart?”

  Her movements with the cloth are careful, her fingers never once grazing my skin. “I don’t,” she says after a while. “I try not to think of them at all.”

  My smile is tight with pain. “What do you think my potions were for?” I try to laugh, but it sounds more like a groan. “I wish I could be numb like you without them. I’ll deny I ever said this when I’m better, if I get better, but: You’re strong. Stronger than me.”

  A wave of pain makes me arch my back, my hands curling in their shackles.

  Meredy’s eyes narrow in concern. She dabs fresh, cool water across my brow. “Thanks. But you’re the stronger one. I wish I could let myself feel as much as you do without falling apart.”

  I shake my head. “What do you call what I’m doing now?”

  Her fingers slip over the edge of the cloth as her eyes meet mine, and clumsily, as if she’s not quite aware of what she’s doing, she smooths back my hair. “Surviving.”

  Her touch is the best thing I’ve felt in days—cool against my burning skin. I close my eyes, not wanting to startle her into realizing what she’s doing for fear that she’ll stop. But when a vicious tremor grips me, my body screaming for the potion, there’s nothing that can ease the pain.

  “Tell me a story,” I beg as I writhe on my sweat-dampened quilt. After all, whatever dignity I once possessed is long gone. “The happiest one you can think of.”

  Meredy’s eyes widen. For an agonizingly long moment, the only sound is my ragged breathing. At last, she says stiffly, “When I was nine, Evander squished my pet caterpillar by accident. I suppose he must’ve told you about it, because the first time I met you, you brought me a whole jar full of them—green ones, black-and-yellow ones, and a huge white one. You named it Pearl, remember?”

  Some expression flickers across her face—amusement?—but fades as her voice becomes a whisper. “You looked like a princess that day, standing on the manor step with mud on your boots and leaves in your hair and all those caterpillars you’d found for me. I remember thinking I’d never met anyone as in love with the world around us as I was, until you.”

  I can’t answer, not with the pain stealing my breath, but I’m sure I return her smile for a moment before the darkness pulls me under.

  * * *

  I’m losing track of the days. Or I was, until earlier this morning when Valoria gave me a piece of charcoal to make a slash on the wall for each potion-free night I survive. Now I draw my sixth mark above the bed, then munch on a piece of dry bread as Valoria frantically scribbles something in another notebook.

  “Working on the air balloon?” I rasp. Aside from my dry throat and a dull headache, the potion’s absence hasn’t made me want to leap off a cliff or brought any fresh nightmares of Evander’s final moments in the last few days—much to my surprise.

  “Mmmm, no,” Valoria murmurs. It’s a wonder she’s talking to me at all, after the names I called her and Meredy during the worst of my potion withdrawals.

  Even yesterday, my body faintly shook through most of the day and night. But this morning, as I curl and uncurl my hands, checking for any hint of trembling, I mostly feel tired. Worn, like the leather of my necromancer’s belt. And restless. I’m ready to rejoin the world beyond my window, but Valoria insists we wait the full seven days, which means one more day at her mercy.

  At least they finally removed the shackles so that I can feed myself again, although it’s clear that if I try to make a run for the apothecary, Lysander will stop me cold.

  The sun slowly climbs higher in the sky as Valoria’s quill scratches the page.

  “Have Jax and Simeon been by again?” I ask, interrupting her scrawling. They’ve come to see me every day, and each time I’ve had Meredy and Lysander turn them away. I don’t want anyone else witnessing my humiliation, but now I’m feeling ready to face them.

  According to Valoria, they still haven’t found any trace of Vane, but people in the Ashes certainly know him by reputation. It’s only a matter of time before Jax finds someone he can bribe or intimidate into giving up the rogue’s whereabouts. But if he hasn’t made progress by tomorrow, I’m taking over.

  I’d use Lysander to track the man’s scent, which should still be on Meredy’s bloody cloak. Jax and Simeon didn’t want to borrow the bear on their own, knowing the damage he could cause if he got loose in the Ashes. He may be the most civil bear in existence, but there’s wildness in his blood.

  Valoria rubs her eyes, drawing my gaze back to her. She always loo
ks tired, her stare vacant, like she’s been up all night working on something or other. But I’ve never seen her like this, fighting back a yawn every few moments and staring at the same page in her notebook for an hour at a time.

  Her mother is still missing. Every search for the nobles who vanished on the night of Hadrien’s party has ended the same way. There’s no sign of what happened to any of them, though everyone agrees they were dressed for the celebration when they disappeared. All King Wylding has done is increase security. Even Valoria and I are out of ideas as to where to look or who would’ve kidnapped a random assortment of Dead nobles and dignitaries without demanding a ransom.

  “Here,” she says suddenly, holding out a torn page from her notebook. Her voice quivers slightly. “So you can see him whenever you like.”

  I struggle to form words as I run my fingers delicately over the page, careful not to smudge the likeness of Evander grinning up at me. She even remembered the little scar above his eyebrow. “This is incredible, Valoria. Thank you.”

  “It was nothing,” Valoria insists, her cheeks coloring. But we both know that’s not true.

  By the time I finish tacking the drawing on the wall above my bed, the princess is already immersed in another work of art. Waving doesn’t get her attention, so I cross to her chair by the window. She doesn’t seem to notice until I lean forward, blocking the light.

  Gasping, she closes the notebook with a snap.

  But not before I see the painstakingly detailed illustration on the back page.

  “That’s a very handsome drawing.” I try and fail to hide a grin as I plop down on the rug by her feet. “Jax will be thrilled when you show him.”

  Valoria shakes her head, her face turning tomato red. “I’m not going to show him,” she squeaks. “I just—I draw people whenever I need a break from my work.”