He mmms in reply. “Wish you had.”
“Am I really that repulsive?” I wonder, crossing my arms. “I came here to help you. Why have you already decided that you hate me?”
Wes narrows his eyes. “I think the council should have voted to kill you.”
Well, that’s never nice to hear. “Do you think I’m a spy?”
“I don’t know. But I know that something’s up with you. You have no aura, and you walked right into our headquarters with nothing to protect you, and I’m pretty sure you were praying to Nixa during the council meeting.”
“What, is that not allowed?” Bad answer, Keira.
Wes raises his eyebrows at me. “So you’re a Nixa-worshipper who wants to help us fight the Nixa-worshippers.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I say. “Look, I don’t know about the aura thing, but I came here because I want to help you guys put Duke Fenris in the ground. I hate him more than I’ve ever hated any Warden.”
“Why?”
“He’s ruined a ton of people’s lives, mine included, and I think he should pay for it.” It’s not really much of a lie.
Wes snorts. “Yeah, well, he’s screwed up mine pretty bad too.”
“You see? I’m on your side. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?”
“That’s a Sen proverb.”
“So what? You Wardens are into Sen stuff, aren’t you?”
“You know what? I’m going to sleep now.” Wes flicks off the lights, and the room instantly goes pitch-black. “And don’t you dare keep me up. I’m used to sleeping alone.”
“So I’m sleeping on the floor, then?”
“That’s right.”
The floor is hard and cold and not meant for sleeping on. I know as soon as I lie down that I’ll be waking up to stiff muscles and backaches. I manage to bundle up the coat I have hanging from the form chain and use it as a pillow, my cheek squashed up against the wallet left inside one of its pockets.
I shouldn’t be able to fall asleep; not like this, a few feet away from someone who would give anything to run a knife through me and without the little mind-link voices in my head that I have grown disturbingly accustomed to. But I haven’t had a chance like this to rest in days, and there comes a time when your body decides that it can find sleep even in the infernal pits of hell if you give it the opportunity.
Ten more days, I think, wrapping a hand around Cass’s pendant. Then my eyes close, and I’m out cold faster than the world’s best shifter could shift.
Two Years Ago: Keira
“You look beautiful,” I told Cass as I smoothed out the sides of her dress. She really did—the lavender gown I’d picked out fell perfectly down her figure, and the braided bun I’d given her was probably my best yet.
“I don’t care how I look,” Cass snapped. “Not today.”
“You should. You have that Sylvan ball thing tonight.”
“And you might be dead before it’s over.”
I tried for a smile. “I don’t think they kill us off that fast at the Sentry trials. I’d have to be pretty bad.”
“Don’t be funny,” Cass growled. “How can you be funny right now?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. Internally I was fighting just to keep myself together. I’d been dreading the day that I’d have to leave for the Sentry trials ever since I was old enough to know about them.
Cass swallowed, examining the two of us together in her mirror—a lady in a gown and a terrified teen girl in tattered jeans. “I have something I want to give you,” she said. “Before you go.” She dug around through a box of her most valuable jewelry and pulled out an old necklace with a pendant I knew all too well.
I gawked at it. “Cass, that’s your mother’s. It’s ice-glass.” The rarest, most powerful, least-understood type of stone in the world.
Cass nodded. “The city priests gave it to my mother when she first got sick. They told her the ice-glass would bring Nixa’s blessing to her, give her strength and help take away her pain. She always said that it helped her; maybe it’ll help you, too.”
“I can’t be wearing an ice-glass pendant around, Cass,” I said. “It’s illegal for anyone who’s not a priest. Maybe they made an exception for your mom and you, but they definitely wouldn’t for a random shifter girl.” Only Nixan priests could actually channel Old Magic through ice-glass, but the rest of us were still not allowed to own any of it.
“Then hide it,” said Cass. “Just take it, please. For me.”
I nodded. Cass ducked behind me and fastened the clasp around my neck, just like I’d done thousands of times before for her. I tucked the pendant under my shirt and coat, leaving only the chain of the necklace visible.
Cass squeezed my shoulders, looking me right in the eyes. “You have to promise me you’ll make it through, and come back to New Fauske after.” Her lips trembled a little as she spoke.
“I promise.” I couldn’t really promise anything, even with a special ice-glass pendant, but I had to sound confident for Cass. “I’ll be back here in two months, ready to offer my condolences to the unfortunate seven-year-old picked to take care of you.”
Cass snorted, a tiny bit of amusement seeping back into her eyes. “I already told my father I won’t have a seven-year-old maidservant again. All his servants are only a year away from trials. He gets a new one every summer.”
I shrugged. “Either way, she has my sympathies. You aren’t exactly low-maintenance, you know.” Cass cuffed me on the ear in reply.
“Keira.” A ginger shifter girl named Nessa rapped on Cass’s doorframe to get my attention. “The carriages are leaving in five minutes.”
I checked my watch—she was right. Five minutes till seven. “I’ll be there,” I promised. Nessa curtsied to Cass and ran off as fast as she could.
I hesitated, my hand hovering over the watch, before undoing its strap and holding it out to Cass. “Here. Take this.”
She shook her head. “I can’t. It’s your mom’s.”
“Yeah, exactly. You gave me your mom’s pendant, so I’m giving you my mom’s watch. An eye for an eye.” I waved the watch in front of her face.
“I can’t wear it, though,” she said, stepping back. “My father would kill me.”
“You don’t have to wear it,” I insisted. “Just keep it with you. I won’t need it at the Sentry trials.” I laid it flat against her palm. “Its cheapness shouldn’t rub off on you too much if you keep it hidden away.”
Cass ran her fingers across the watch face. “Thank you.” She looked up at me, and I saw that her eyes were full of tears.
“Don’t you dare start crying, Cassatia Loraveire,” I fake-scolded. “You’ll mess up your makeup. I spent half an hour on that.”
“Screw my makeup.” She wiped away the tears, smudging the mascara I’d applied so delicately to her lashes. “This might be the last time I ever see you.”
“I told you, I’ll be back in two months. No need to be so melodramatic. I’m not going to kiss you goodbye or anything.”
“Can I get a hug, at least?” She held out her arms.
I stepped into her embrace and squeezed her back tightly. “Whatever you want.” Cass buried her face in my shoulder, her skin cool as ice against mine. She’s taller than me now, I realized. We’d always been the same height growing up.
“Just be careful, all right?” she murmured. “Don’t do anything too stupid.”
“All right.” When we broke off the hug, her makeup looked even worse than before. I wished I had time to fix it. “But I really do have to go now. This isn’t something I can be late for.” Cass nodded, biting her lip.
Rhody barked at me from where he lay curled up on Cass’s pillows. “Bye to you too, mutt,” I called, reaching for my suitcase. “Try not to get too much hair on the bed, okay? Cass’s next servant might not be as tolerant as me.” Rhody cocked his head and made a little growly noise at me.
Cass had to give me another hug before she�
�d let me leave. “If you aren’t here in this exact spot two months from now, I’ll hunt down your rotting corpse myself and burn you to ashes like a Warden infidel. And I’ll take my pendant back from your undeserving shifter neck.”
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” I told her, giving her one last tiny half-smile. “Goodbye, Cass. See you in two months.”
26 September: Cassatia
I open the access hatch at the top of the north tower, as always, a few minutes before midnight. Keira arrives early too sometimes; tonight she doesn’t, which means that I get a few minutes to myself at the top of the world.
I lean out over the tower parapets, draping the coat I brought for Keira across the smooth marble stones. Up here, I have a bird’s-eye view of New Fauske. The night sky is cloudless, and the full moon hanging low above the trees gives off enough light to see the city below: the Great Temple and Royal Academy flanking the castle, the skating pond, the little Nixan shops and homes stretching away in all directions, the Sentry guard towers marking the city borders far out in the distance. And all of it is covered in an eternal layer of thin, dry snow. New Fauske is beautiful, for sure—I just wish I were allowed to leave it more often.
Beneath my feet, I hear the faint chime of the castle bells: twelve rings. “Late,” I mutter. I turn my eyes up to the sky, looking for one of Keira’s bird shifts to come swooping in overhead—a kite or an owl or a little sparrow. As soon as she’s here, I’ll have to open the access hatch so we can head down to the room below before she shifts. I wish we could stay out here, but there’s always the risk of off-duty Sentries or shifter servants flying around and seeing us, the daughter of Duke Fenris and a Sentry girl together on top of a tower in the middle of the night. And there’s not much I could say to explain that kind of thing away.
Keira and I have met here every Saturday night since she became a Sentry. No one has their rooms in this tower, and there are no guards stationed near it, so for the most part we can be as loud as we want without having to worry. Sometimes I’ve even brought up my violin.
I drum my fingers against the parapets, sighing. Time ticks on, minute by minute by minute, and still no Keira. She’s been late before, but never like this.
A rock settles in my stomach, growing larger the longer I wait. Was she sent on an emergency patrol? Maybe another Shade camp decided to revolt and Keira was sent out without warning. The last time that happened, she came back nearly dead.
I glance down; a layer of ice has spread from my fingertips across the marble of the parapets. I grab my coat before it slips off and wave away the ice. It vanishes as quickly and silently as it appeared.
I’m being stupid. Keira must have fallen asleep without setting an alarm. Or maybe she had a late-night guard shift she couldn’t get out of. Or maybe she forgot.
“I actually had something to tell you about this time,” I murmur. “Of course this has to be the night you decide not to come.”
I wait until one before heading back down to my room. Keira will probably be at my window tomorrow morning with some elaborate excuse for not showing up, and I’ll have to think up a suitable punishment for making me lose half a night of sleep for nothing.
Four Days Ago: Keira
I was off-duty, propped up in my bed in the communal Sentry ward and messing around on my phone like a normal teenage girl, when a voice wormed its way into my head. “Hey, Keira?”
It was Salene, my best Sentry friend. “What is it?” I asked back through the mind-link.
“I just ran into the duke.”
I smirked. “What an honor.”
“He wants to see you in his throne room. Now.”
I sat up, clicking off my phone. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. Evana’s with him, and they looked pissed.”
I climbed out of bed and threw on a coat, my heart pounding. A few other Sentries hanging around the ward shot me confused looks, meaning that my sudden apprehension had leaked up to my face. The duke asking to see a Sentry other than Caphian wasn’t exactly typical, and couldn’t mean anything good. “Is this something I need to get dressed up for, you think?”
“I think it’s more of a get-your-ass-in-there-as-fast-as-possible kind of thing.”
“Gotcha.” I grabbed some shoes, zipped up my coat, and ran downstairs as fast as if there were a charging Warden army behind me.
❄❄
Duke Fenris was not on his throne, a towering golden seat that gleamed imposingly from the back of the entrance hall; he stood instead at the base of the marble steps that led up to it, flanked by Evana the High Priestess. Salene had been right: both of them looked pissed, with crossed arms and tight lips. Uh-oh. Had I done something? Something really, really bad? Or….
Nope. I was not going to jump to conclusions like that. Stay calm.
Finding it impossible to manage a curtsy, I gave a little bow to the duke instead. “Your Grace.”
“Keira Serasul.” Fenris spat out my name like a profanity—not a good sign. I swallowed, and forced my feet to make the trek up to him and Evana. By this point, my heart was beating so loudly that all of New Fauske could probably hear it.
As soon as I was within reach, Fenris grabbed me by the shoulders and yanked the zipper down my coat. He snuck a hand under the neck of my shirt; my body went instantly numb, my thoughts jumbling themselves into an incoherent mess like: Oh no oh no oh no oh Goddess please Nixa no not this please no.
Fenris pulled Cass’s pendant out from under my shirt and turned it over in his hands, studying it. I stood frozen, watching him helplessly.
Sometimes, unfortunately, you do jump to the correct conclusion.
“Well.” Fenris released the pendant and turned to the Priestess. “You were right. This was Elise’s necklace; now, it is supposed to be my daughter’s.” When his eyes returned to me, cold and hard and even angrier, I nearly fainted.
“I kept that hidden for years,” I blurted out. “How did you know?”
“The priests and priestesses of Nixa can sense the presence of Old Magic,” Evana replied. “I sensed your necklace when I ran into you leaving yesterday’s prayer service.”
“Did you steal this?” Fenris asked, grabbing the pendant again. I nodded, for Cass’s sake.
But Evana quickly laughed off my lie. “If she’d stolen the necklace, Cassatia would have reported it missing.” Evana stepped closer to me and leaned in until I could feel her breath on my cheek. “The shifter didn’t steal it. It was a gift, for a friend.” Her lips curled up in a beautiful, sinister snarl. “It is illegal for a Sentry to possess an artifact of Old Magic. And befriending a Nixan lady is little better.”
“You were Cassatia’s old maidservant,” the duke growled. “I remember it. I should have known better than to trust my daughter with another little girl for a servant.”
At this point, the room was legitimately spinning around me, and my throat had all but closed up. “What are you going to do to me?” I managed to choke out. Kill me? Torture me, maybe? Toss me in the Warden-dustie holding cell?
“I am going to give you a final chance to prove your loyalty to the kingdom,” Fenris said.
I almost fainted again, this time from relief. Thank the Goddess.
“As you know, when I took my title, I drank from Nixa’s spring and received the Goddess’s blessing, like every king and queen and duke before me. And through me, as with all my predecessors, the Goddess has blessed the province under my rule for as long as I should live.” I nodded; my head might be spinning on hamster wheels, but every five-year-old shifter knew that much.
“But there are forms of magic other than Nixa’s.” Fenris unfolded a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. It was a picture of a big black sword, sloppily drawn and spattered with blood. Its name had been scrawled underneath it: Ferignis.
“Have you heard of this?” Fenris asked. I nodded. Caphian had told all of his Sentries about Ferignis forever ago, warning us of how screwed we’d a
ll be if the Wardens ever managed to get it into New Fauske.
“It was a gift from the Indian jnani, given to Fenella Shirey as a reward for her Wardens’ help in holding back our forces when we attempted to enter India twenty years ago. We’ve extracted our information about it from our infidel captives; it’s being kept somewhere in Fenella’s Boston bunker, and if my source is correct, plunging this sword through my heart would reverse the blessing of Nixa’s spring and throw an irreversible curse over the whole province.” He snatched back the picture, crumpled it up and threw it aside. I gulped, guessing now at what he wanted from me. “I am giving you until the day Cassatia turns eighteen to retrieve Ferignis and bring it here, where we can destroy it once and for all.”
October sixth. “That’s fourteen days,” I calculated, my stomach dropping.
“Yes,” the duke confirmed. “That should be more than enough time.”
“Okay,” I said shakily. “So you want me to smuggle a magic sword out of the Wardens’ headquarters. And if I can’t, I’m assuming you’ll have me killed?”
“No,” Fenris said, waving a hand at me. “You wouldn’t be worth the effort to track down. If you fail to get me Ferignis, I will reveal my daughter’s misdeeds to the province. She broke one of our most sacred laws in giving you that necklace; she’ll be exiled from New Fauske. She’ll lose all claim to the duchy, and she’ll never see you again.”
My breath turned sour in my throat. “You can’t punish her for this.”
“I can,” Fenris assured me. “My daughter has willingly degraded our name—she deserves punishment just as much as you do. Aren would make a much more suitable heir to my title; I’ve always thought that.”
I knew that Fenris wasn’t bluffing—he meant what he said about Cass. He really would send her into exile, somewhere she’d be lonely and miserable for the rest of her life, if I didn’t bring him the sword.
I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that happen. I’d never exactly considered myself to be a selfless person, but Cass was my weak spot. I would take a thousand bullets for her, figuratively and probably literally too.
The Sentry Page 4