Nodding, I picture the prince, smiling at me as he brought me into his ice cave. He’s handsome, and nice, and as adventurous as I’ve always wished I could be. He certainly isn’t the worst person I could end up with. And yet I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of spending the rest of my life at his side, raising his children.
I wish more than anything that I could talk to Keira about it. But even if she were here, I know that she would agree with Evana. She’d want me to marry the prince—she would call me selfish for refusing to, just like she did last time.
“You should really get some rest,” Evana says. “I can give you something to help you fall asleep, if you’d like.”
“That would be great,” I tell her, closing my eyes. Sometimes the best solution to a problem is to just stop thinking.
Four Months Ago: Cassatia
My mind reeling with thoughts of my father and marriage and Ainsil Fayeren, I let the man with the cigarettes drive away until we reached a little stretch of woods on the outskirts of Coeur d’Alene, when I decided that I could not deal with the loud music and nauseating smell any longer. A thin covering of ice was beginning to eat away at the stained leather of the back car seats; I waved it away before my driver could notice. “Pull over here,” I said.
The man pulled his cigarette from his mouth and turned to me in surprise. “Here? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Just pull over. I want to get out.” He shrugged, and pulled his car into a length of grass off the side of the road.
I tried to open the door, but he stopped me with a hand. “I want the necklace first. And the earrings.”
“Yeah, fine.” I yanked them off and shoved the jewelry into his hand. As soon as he pulled it back, I ripped open the door and stepped out into the fresh Idaho air with relief. The man gave me a lazy wave, inspecting the jewelry, then slammed on the gas and headed back up the road with my door still hanging open.
I walked a little ways back into the woods, and once I was satisfied that I was out of sight of the road I collapsed against the nearest tree and buried my head in my hands, trying my hardest not to start crying. Ice and snow, thicker than when I was in the car, crept out in a circle around me, snaking up the tree behind my back until even its leaves were encased in ice.
My father was right; I knew that I would have to marry soon, and I’d always known that he would be the one making the arrangements. But having Ainsil Fayeren staring me in the face like that, and his father talking about our bond-rings, had made everything feel a thousand times more real.
And then, just to make things worse, the last person in the world I wanted to see emerged from deeper in the woods. “You’d better hope there are no Senex wandering around out here,” she said, indicating the snow cover around me and the frozen tree. “Even in Idaho, snow in June is a little bit peculiar.”
“Keira,” I said, lifting my head while a thousand emotions swarmed my brain. “How did you find me?” Great Goddess, why her?
“Well,” she explained, “I’m off-duty all day today, so I decided to follow you on your first visit to Sentown. What I did not expect was to see you take off in the car of some creep, and for Caph to order all the Sentries in the area to help search for the missing Nixan lady.”
“So what?” I growled. “You want to drag me back to New Fauske? Pick up some easy kudos from Caphian?”
Keira disregarded the idea with a flick of her wrist. “Screw Caphian. I’m more interested in finding out what the hell is wrong with you, and, you know, why you drove off with a random Sen guy.”
I shook my head. “I had to get away from there.”
“From where?” Keira crossed her arms, stepping closer to me. “Would you mind filling me in a little?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, my manipulative asshole of a father tried to set me up to marry Professor Fayeren’s son today.”
“Wow.” Keira plopped down beside me, shivering a little in the snow. I wished she wouldn’t sit so close to me. “Okay. But, I mean, you knew he’d be pairing you off with someone pretty soon, right?”
“Well…yes.” I shivered, too, and inched away from her. “But I didn’t expect him to sit me down with someone I’d never seen before and start making plans for a bond-lock ceremony.”
Keira made a little noise of commiseration. “Was the guy an asshole?”
“What?”
“Professor Fayeren’s son. Was he an asshole?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I barely talked to him. But that’s not the point.”
“Well, your dad’s not gonna let you get out of something like this, so as long as he’s not a complete douche I say you go along with it.”
“And marry him?” She didn’t understand; she couldn’t. “Some guy I don’t even know?”
Keira shrugged her shoulders. “Isn’t that what Nixan nobles do?”
“Not my parents,” I protested. “They’d known each other since they were kids.”
“Well, what were you planning to do to avoid it? Run away?” I didn’t answer.
“Cass,” Keira said, looking me right in the eyes and holding me with her gaze so I couldn’t turn away, “one day your dad will be gone, and you can do whatever the hell you want. You’ll be in charge of the whole province, and you’ll have the power to ditch the Fayeren boy if you want to. You’ll be able to make things better for everyone here, and fix all the crap that’s going on. But you won’t ever get there if you go running off into the woods like a scared little girl.”
I shook my head. “I never wanted to run the province.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, Cass, but you were kind of born for it.” Keira grabbed at my hand, but I pulled it away. “Don’t you get it? You can change everything once you’re in charge. You could get Wi-Fi installed in the castle; you could work something out with the Shade rebels; you could get rid of the Sentry trials, even.”
“That’s what you want,” I said darkly. “You want me put in charge because you think I’ll change everything. You want me to marry Ainsil Fayeren so I can take over the province from my father and do whatever you want me to do with it.”
“Isn’t that what you want, too? You said you want the Sentry trials to be fixed, and that you wish we weren’t fighting with the Shades.”
“Of course it’s what I want. Sentries shouldn’t have to fight for their lives when they don’t need to.”
“If that’s what you think, you’d be a selfish prick not to marry Ainsil Fayeren and take over for your father.” Keira stood up. “But I know that’s not what the real problem is.” I tensed. “The real problem is what happened that night in the stables last year, and why you haven’t let me get anywhere near you since.” She touched my shoulder, and I shuddered, handily proving her point.
“That was a mistake,” I told her firmly, as snow and ice spread farther into the woods to betray my distress. “I’ve told you a thousand times, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well,” Keira said, “I do, because it’s the whole reason you don’t want to be with Fayeren. You’ve been holding it in, making it worse and worse to the point that you’re scared to death of yourself. And me.”
“Shut up,” I insisted. “Please, Keira.” Snowflakes flashed by in the wind—I could taste them. If it weren’t for Keira, I could have been happy with Ainsil Fayeren, or anyone else.
“You can marry him for your father and not love him, Cass. Once you’re in charge, you can get rid of the one-bond-per-life rule and dump his ass.”
“This is all your fault,” I said. “This wouldn’t even be a problem for me if it weren’t for you.”
“It’s not my fault,” Keira insisted. “It’s you, Cass—you just refuse to accept it. You hate yourself for something you won’t even admit you feel.”
Something snapped inside me. “Get away from me,” I growled, extending a hand and sending a jet of snow and sleet flying for Keira’s face. She jumped out of the way and scowled at me, raisin
g her hands.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll leave. But you can’t hide from yourself forever, you know. You might as well own up to it.” She changed into a bird and flew off into the trees, leaving me alone.
I let out a sob, burying my head in my hands. I can get over her, I told myself; I can get over anything. But the more I had to repeat it to myself, the more it felt like a lie.
4 October: Westrey
Thanks to the vamp attack, we end up spending the night in the mountain cabin.
After Keira and I explain what happened to Baz, he goes out again to buy some gauze wrap for Keira’s arm. I do my best to clean the blood off the floor and collect the shards of glass littering the ground near the bullet hole in the front window. Keira insists on looking around the woods for some sign of her stolen ice-glass necklace, “just in case,” and I follow her warily with my fire-gun, bracing myself for the moment she shifts and disappears before my eyes. But she never does; after twenty minutes of looking Keira gives up her search with a frustrated sigh, and the two of us go back inside to finish tidying up the cabin.
After Baz returns with the gauze and fixes up Keira’s arm, we go out to the grill behind the cabin and cook ourselves some burgers and hot dogs, which we eat alongside the chips and candy Basil brought back with him. It’s not until four in the afternoon that we settle into the cabin’s moth-eaten bed, Baz and I right-side up and Keira sprawled across our legs. I keep my fire-gun tucked under my pillow, just in case.
Keira wakes us up just before daybreak, jumping on our backs and grabbing at our hair. “Wake up, you lazy fire-breathers! Do you know how long you’ve slept?”
I pull myself up with a groan; Baz stays still beside me. “About as long as you did, I think,” I yawn, rubbing the back of my head. “Otherwise you would’ve been pulling our hair out earlier.”
“We needed sleep,” Baz mumbles, refusing to open his eyes. “We’re not driving off onto Nixan turf when we’re not at a hundred percent.”
“Fine.” Keira sits back, crossing her arms. “Let’s wait here for the next batch of hungry vamps to show up—I don’t care. I’m not the one with a sister locked up in New Fauske, getting beat up by Nixans while you guys catch up on your beauty sleep.” I think of Freya, bloody and screaming two thousand miles away, and swallow. Keira’s right—Freya shouldn’t have to endure a second more than she has to in the hands of Fenris.
I shake Basil by the shoulder until he opens his eyes. “Let’s get moving.” Keira rolls her eyes and slides off the bed, muttering something under her breath.
We eat a quick breakfast of Pop-Tarts and dry cereal, then pack up our things and head out to Basil’s car. The sky has begun to lighten, coloring the tops of the trees to the east. So much for crossing the border in the middle of the night like I’d wanted.
“Let me fly ahead,” Keira says, “and deal with the border guards. They won’t see me coming, but if your auras pop up on their detectors they’ll kill you before you get another fifty feet.”
“Your aura’s come back, too,” I point out.
She shakes her head. “Your detectors only pick up Nixa-worshipper auras; ours only pick up infidel auras. They’re not gonna see me.” She holds out a hand. “Give me your detector so I can find the guard station. I’ll take the guards out, and you’ll get by without a problem. I promise.”
I raise my eyebrows at her. “That’s your big plan?”
“It’ll work,” she insists. “Trust me.”
I pull the aura detector from my belt, turning it over in my hands nervously. I don’t want to trust Keira. But something about yesterday, whether it was the conversation we had about our screwed-up lives or Keira saving my ass in the vamp attack, has made me a little more willing to. Plus, we don’t have much of a choice; Keira can fly off whenever she feels like it.
I look at Baz. He shrugs, leaving it up to me.
“Fine.” I hand Keira the detector. “We’ll give you a five minutes’ head start. Go do your thing.”
“Yes, sir.” Keira pockets the detector, shifts, and takes off, scaling the tree line and heading due west, faster than any bird I’ve seen before.
Baz and I watch the retreat of her dark smudge of a shape until we can no longer make it out. “You know,” Basil says, “she kind of reminds me of Freya.”
I punch him on the arm. “Freya would rip you to pieces for saying that.”
“Probably.” Basil shrugs. “Still, that doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
I use my phone to count down the five minutes I promised Keira. Then Baz and I hop into the car, tossing our backpacks in the back sans one pack of beef jerky for the trip. Basil yanks the car into reverse and pulls out onto a narrow vein of road, twisting and turning through the woods until his GPS leads us onto a nicer two-lane highway.
Now that it’s light out and I’m not half-asleep, I can appreciate the fall foliage: red and orange and yellow, dotted here and there with green. Early fall leaves dance and spiral to the ground around us, fluttering in the breeze. It’s like we’re driving through an enormous, living fire, bright and colorful and always in motion.
“Now I understand why people come out here to see the leaves change,” Basil says, nibbling on a piece of jerky with one hand on the wheel and no eyes on the road. “You don’t see trees like this in Boston.”
“You’re a terrible driver, Baz,” I tell him.
“I don’t hear you volunteering,” he says, but he turns some of his attention back to the road anyway.
I sigh, glancing back behind me. “This is weird without Keira. I’ve gotten used to intermittent complaining coming from the backseat.”
“I’m surprised you let her go off on her own,” Basil says. “One minute you were following her around with a fire-gun, and the next you’re letting her fly off to her Sentry friends.”
“She could’ve flown off anyway if she wanted to,” I point out. “And besides…I don’t know, I’m starting to think she might actually be what she says she is.”
Basil snorts. “Hope you’re right,” he says. “We’ve pretty much put our lives in her hands at this point. And, you know, the lives of every other Warden in the world.”
“If you want to make me feel guilty about trying to save my sister’s life—”
“I’m not,” Baz insists. “I would do the exact same thing if Freya was my sister. I’m just saying, this road trip of ours could end up starting a war all across the continent.”
“We’re already in a war,” I growl. “And honestly, it’s probably time we started acting like it.”
“Well, maybe, but—oh, shit.” Basil’s voice quickly drops down to a hiss, and he clenches the steering wheel.
“What?” I demand, going tense.
Basil points a thumb behind us. “It’s the freaking Sen police.”
“Seriously?” I look back to find two men on police motorcycles tailing us; Basil makes an abrupt left turn to lose them, but they swoop in right behind, unmistakably after us.
“Are we speeding or something?”
“No,” Baz protests. “I’m not even going fifty.”
One of the men holds out his right arm, gesturing to the side of the road. “I think they want us to pull over, Baz.”
“They’re Senex,” Basil says; “we don’t have to listen to them. We could burn them to the ground if we wanted.”
“Just pull off,” I sigh. “It’ll be easier.”
Basil rolls his eyes. “Fine.” He slows down and stops the car in the long, weedy grass beside the road. The policemen pull off right behind us and dismount.
“My license is in my bag somewhere,” Basil says. I reach behind my seat to grab the bag and begin fishing through it.
Baz rolls down his window as an officer steps up to the car. “What’s the problem with—oh.”
I look up. The officer has a gun pointed directly at Baz’s forehead, and a finger hovering over the trigger.
I sit up quickly and reach for my own gun—
but before I can pull it from my belt, the barrel of the other officer’s gun taps against my window, daring me to move. The officer has removed his helmet; his eyes are bright purple.
So much for Keira being trustworthy.
“Get out of the car,” one of the Sentries says. “Now.”
4 October: Keira
It kind of sucks to be a Sentry—no family, always on call, the prevalent kill-or-be-killed attitude. But if there’s one thing that makes it all worthwhile, it’s flying. There’s nothing better—riding the wind, swooping and diving to your heart’s content, feeling the lift of thermals under your wings, watching the ground flit by underneath you in more detail and clarity than any human could ever hope to see.
But I don’t have time to enjoy myself right now; I need to explain my situation in-person, which means that I have to get to the border guards before Wes and Baz do. I can fly faster in my kite form than they can drive through these winding little mountain roads, but still, a five minutes’ head start is cutting it kind of close. And the vamp wound I’d gotten yesterday has translated over into an aching wing, making it harder to fly as fast as I want.
I feel a little bit guilty, turning the Warden boys in like this, but it’s not like there’s another option. They took the bait by following me all the way out here—they deserve what’s coming to them. Right?
I keep low, flying just above the treetops; when I come upon a little clearing I dive down, folding back my wings and letting the wind skim my feathers before unfurling them with a whoosh and landing on my knees in human-girl form.
I stand, stretching my legs and taking a quick look around to check for company, then pull Wes’s aura detector from my jacket pocket. I see the two Warden boys’ red dots coming up behind me, a few miles away, and two gray Sentry dots towards the rim of the detector’s screen, almost directly ahead of me.
Perfect. I’ll have the sword delivered to New Fauske in no time.
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