Feolan shrugs. “If you’re going to stir up trouble with the Nixans, I’m happy to help.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket; I pull it out to find a message from Naira. They’ve found tapes of you past the station. Know you crossed.
Immediately after comes one from Fenella: Well done. Hope you realize how many lives will be lost because of you.
“What is it?” Baz asks.
“Nothing.” I quickly click off the phone and stuff it back in my pocket. Hope you realize how many lives will be lost because of you. I swallow, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach.
“We’re wasting daylight,” I say, forcing myself to think of Freya. Nothing else matters, as long as we can get to her. “Let’s get back on the road.”
5 October: Cassatia
Twenty minutes before dinner, Phoebe raps on my door, startling the dog asleep on my chest.
“Come in,” I call, scratching Rhody behind the ears to placate him.
She steps inside, timid and flighty as ever. “Did I wake you, princess?”
I flinch. “No, I was just resting.” I sit up in bed, letting Rhody slide off onto the blankets. “What is it?”
“Your father wants me to help you get dressed, princess.”
Great Nixa. “Please don’t call me that,” I groan. “Stick with my lady, if you have to.”
“I’m sorry,” Phoebe says quickly, backing up.
I push myself out of bed and indicate my current outfit, the simple white frock I usually wear to sleep. “I’m already dressed for bed, Phoebe. I was going to have my dinner brought up here tonight.”
“I—I don’t know, my lady, I was just told I had to dress you.”
“All right,” I sigh, wondering what this could be about. “Pick something out, then.”
Phoebe helps me into a fancy ice-blue dress, complete with a diamond necklace and earrings—the kind of thing I’d wear to a dinner with some bigwig Sylvan leader. She brushes out my hair after, weaving it into an elegant crown braid. I don’t say anything the entire time, instead examining my new bond-ring.
“Is something wrong, my lady?” Phoebe asks eventually.
I quickly drop my hand. “Nothing’s wrong,” I assure her. “Just my father.” My eyes flit to the fake-gold watch I’d set beside my vanity mirror last night—the watch Keira gave me before she left for the Sentry trials. Swallowing, I take it and fasten it around my wrist.
“Cassatia.” It’s my father, calling from out in the hall. My head snaps up; without waiting for a response, he pries open my door and steps inside. “Cassatia, you have visitors.”
Following him in are King Aknes and Prince Iven—my new bond. Phoebe drops my comb, her mouth gaping open.
I stand up quickly, brushing down the skirt of my dress. Phoebe gives a deep curtsy, and I follow her lead. Rhody, a little less concerned with decorum, leaps off my bed at the sight of the newcomers and bounds over to sniff the prince, going up on his hind legs to get at his butt.
Great Goddess, no. “Rhody,” I hiss. My father shoots me his most disapproving look yet.
But Iven only laughs, squatting down to Rhody’s level. “This is the dog you were telling me about?” he asks me, smiling. I catch the glint of a bond-ring on his finger—the ring my father gave to him without my knowing.
“Yes,” I say, my voice shaking from the surprise of it all. “His name’s Rhody.”
“Stand, Iven,” the king orders gruffly. The prince obeys, giving Rhody one last pat on the head.
King Aknes clears his throat. “Cassatia,” he says. “I hope you are feeling better today.”
“Yes, King Aknes,” I say with another curtsy. “Much better, thank you.”
He nods. “Your father and I decided that, for your comfort, we should hold the bond-lock ceremony here,” he tells me. “Tomorrow, on your birthday.”
“That sounds perfect, Your Majesty,” I say, swallowing back the bile rising in my throat. “Thank you.”
“We’re going to head downstairs for dinner now,” my father says. “Afterwards, you can show the prince around the castle. He’s never been to New Fauske before.”
Iven comes over to my vanity and offers me his arm. “Ready?”
I slip my arm into his, feeling the cool metal of his bond-ring as my hand skims across his. My bond, Prince Iven. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.
I let Iven lead me down to our banquet hall, my head held high, feeling less like a princess than I ever have before.
5 October: Keira
We spend a full day and a half driving through the bowels of Flyover Country, stopping for the night in a grimy Indiana motel along the way. During the drive, whenever Wes and Baz become particularly annoying, I am tempted to open up the mind-link and call in some of the local Sentries to take care of them, but my innate sense of laziness compels me to let them chauffeur me around as long as possible. In the meantime, everything we buy en route to New Fauske—food, gas, the motel—goes onto my debit card, a silent assurance to Fenris that I’m heading back his way.
I still don’t know what to make of everything Feolan had said. He can’t have been telling the truth about Old Magic and Ferignis; it made no sense. But for some reason I can’t stop his words from replaying themselves in my head, over and over again.
Though I know it will slow us down, I really do want to meet the girl he told us to find. I don’t know anything about her—Feolan was very light on the details—but maybe she’ll be able to help clear some things up. I want to talk to her first—then I’ll call in the Sentries.
It’s about eleven at night on day two of driving when Basil’s phone GPS announces that our destination is on the right. Unfortunately for us, “the right” is a Shadeless expanse of grass and trees a few miles off the highway.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Wes growls from behind the wheel, tapping the aura detector beside him. “There are zero Shades showing up on this thing.”
“Feolan probably made the whole Shade camp up,” I mutter. “No one actually lives in North Dakota; not even Shades.”
“Just keep driving,” Basil says. “There’s zero reception out here—maybe my phone’s just confused.”
Two minutes of driving later, a shrill shriek of a beep fills the car, loud enough for all of us to jump to cover our ears and for Wes to almost run the car off the road. Once it’s over, a little black dot pops up on the detector, almost straight ahead of us.
“Black is Shades, right?” Wes asks.
“Yes, black is Shades,” I say. “I thought you would’ve learned that in your Nixan-killing classes.”
“Wardens should get to be black,” Basil sniffs.
Wes puts the detector on silent and we continue on down the road, more and more Shade auras popping up onscreen. He pulls off when the mass of black dots is half a mile to the right of us; out here in the middle of nowhere, the roads only go in one direction. “Guess we’re walking from here,” he says.
I jump out of the car to be greeted by a frigid blast of North Dakota night wind. “Great Nixa.” I reach back inside to grab my blood-spattered jacket, shrugging it on and shivering.
Wes turns off the car, grabs his bag from the back, and leads the way off into the woods. I feel like the three of us are in a horror movie—no one around for miles in any direction, the moon darkened by clouds, the wind battering tree branches against each other and filling the woods with ominous noise. Even though we’re half a mile from the Shade camp, there are no lights shining through the trees like you’d expect near a place of human habitation; when the Shades say they like the dark, they mean it.
Wes and Basil whip out their phones to remedy the lack of light, sweeping their flashlights across the undergrowth to reveal all the roots and thorns and branches in our way, patiently waiting for us to trip over them and embarrass ourselves.
“Uh-oh.” Wes stops in his tracks, looking down at his aura detector.
“What is it?” Basil asks, coming up behind
him.
“There are a couple of Shade dots,” Wes answers, “right on top of us.”
“That’s right,” says a voice from the brush. Two phone lights immediately flash in its direction, revealing a pair of Shade men stepping out from the trees, guns at the ready. They flinch away from the light, their guns swiveling over to its source. The Warden boys lower their phones and back away submissively.
“What are you?” one of the Shades demands. “You don’t have auras, and there aren’t many Senex who carry around detectors.”
“They’re Sentries,” the other one says. “The girl has a mark on her arm.”
I quickly pull down my sleeve, the guns whipping over to point at me. I find it quite unfair that the Shades can see a tattoo on my arm with no light while I can barely make out their figures.
“I’m not,” I say. “Not anymore, at least.” Unfortunately, my assurance does not lead to a lowering of the guns. I throw an arm out to the figures of Wes and Baz. “Look—I’m walking around with a couple of Wardens.”
The Shades’ attention returns partially to the Warden boys. “They do look like Wardens,” one of them says.
“It could be a trap,” warns the other. “Meant to test our loyalty or something.”
Wes holds out his arms, and balls of fire blossom in his palms. Both of the Shades jump back in shock. “No trap,” he promises.
“What do you want from us?” the first Shade asks, his tone a whole lot less accusatory after the fire trick.
“We want to talk to your camp leader,” I say. “Can that be arranged?”
The two Shades exchange glances, gesturing silently to each other. “Yes,” one of them says eventually. “Come with us.”
The Shades press the three of us into a single-file line and direct us through the woods, one in the lead and the other bringing up the rear, the muzzle of his gun pressed against the nape of my neck. “Don’t you think about pulling anything,” he hisses to me under his breath. “I don’t have any qualms about killing shifters.”
“I believe you,” I whisper back.
We emerge from the woods into a large clearing, where the moon gives us enough light to make out some industrial buildings and the shack-like homes and tents that surround them. The dark figures of Shades at work and play flit around talkatively from building to building, though the conversations die down significantly as our group heads for the center of camp.
“We have guests,” our Shade line leader announces, bringing us to a stop beside a big rock statue of King Aknes. A crowd of Shade silhouettes gathers around us, jostling their friends to get as close as possible.
“Who are they?” a woman calls from the back; the crowd parts to let her through. She stops an arm’s length away from us, entirely undaunted. A beam of moonlight falls across her face, allowing me to make out its features: thin, arched eyebrows, crisscrossing scars, hollow eyes. She has three white dots painted on one cheek, marking her as camp leader.
“The girl’s a Sentry, Anese,” the man with a gun to my neck says.
“A former Sentry,” I correct before more Shades’ guns can come out.
“And the boys are Wardens.” Wes does the fire-in-hand trick again, and this time Basil joins in too. A collective gasp goes out across the crowd, but Anese the camp leader only frowns.
“How did a couple of Wardens end up in North Dakota?” she asks.
“With a lot of help,” Wes says. “And hidden auras.”
“We’re on our way to New Fauske,” I say, “to cause some trouble for the Nixans. We were told that this camp would be sympathetic to that.”
Anese’s frown deepens. “Told by whom?”
“A shifter named Feolan.” I throw out the name in case it sparks some recognition, but no dice.
“I don’t know who that is,” Anese says.
“Well, okay, but he knows you, apparently.”
“What are you looking for?” a man calls out behind her.
That’s a good question. “We just need a place to stay for the night,” Wes says.
Instantly, hisses and shouts break out from the crowd. “Quiet!” Anese yells. When the noise has died back down, she says, “We’ll talk about this in our meeting-hall. Come with me.” She turns her back to us and beckons for us to follow; the majority of the Shades come as well, with a few grumbling and heading back to their shacks disapprovingly.
We are led through the camp, skirting past dangerous-looking metal tools lying around in the dark, into one of the largest huts onsite. It’s windowless and fireless—once the door is shut, the darkness is as complete as if we were blind.
“Could we have a little bit of light, please?” Wes asks.
“If you must,” Anese’s disembodied voice says from somewhere out in front of us.
Wes turns on his phone, shining its light around at various chairs and tables and obstacles in the hut. Baz finds a big stick on the ground and lights its tip to produce a makeshift torch, giving us enough light to see the large cluster of Shades ahead of us.
“We can’t have Wardens in our camp overnight,” one of them says. “We’re already having enough trouble as it is.”
“Trouble with the Nixans,” someone else says. “Our quota gets bigger and bigger every month, and our payments get smaller and smaller; we know we can’t live like this much longer. Our missionaries already left to report to New Fauske—there’ll be a bunch of Sentries here out for our blood in a few days anyway.”
“So why give them more of a reason to tear us apart?” the first guy snaps back.
“Is this really necessary?” Basil whispers to Wes. “I think I’d rather just sleep in the car at this point.”
Wes shakes his head. “We need to find the Shade girl Feolan was talking about. There’s no way we’ll make it into New Fauske if we can’t turn invisible.”
“Keira said she could get us in, and she can’t turn invisible,” Baz points out. He looks to me expectantly.
I grit my teeth. “I’ll get them to let us stay here,” I promise. “Just give me a second.”
Baz shrugs. “Go for it.”
I step forward, clearing my throat obnoxiously enough to get the arguing Shades to shut up. “Look, all of us here want to see Fenris’s head on a stick, okay? But no Shade revolt in the entire history of the Western Province has actually succeeded in overthrowing the Nixans. Not even close. If you try to rise up against them, you’ll be sentencing half your camp to death. More than that, if the Sentries are feeling a bit less charitable.” A couple Shades nod their agreement, filling me with a miniscule amount of confidence. “But the three of us have got a plan to get Fenris’s head on a stick that not only has a legitimate chance of succeeding, but also will keep all of you out of a deadly fight with the Sentries. If we get this right, the Nixans will have much worse things to worry about than a Shade camp not meeting their quotas.”
“That sounds great,” a woman says; “but harboring a couple of Warden fugitives isn’t exactly risk-free for the camp.”
“We don’t have auras,” I say. “Your guards can attest to that. So even if a random Sentry patrol were to pop in for a chat tonight, they’d have no idea we were here unless you led them straight to us. The risk of you keeping us here for one night is basically zero. And the reward could be a whole lot of your lives saved.”
There’s silence for a minute, filled with some quiet whispers and muttering. “Well,” Anese says eventually, “we have been hiding another illegal Novan here for the past two months. Though she may blend in a little better than a couple of Wardens, I see no problem with allowing them to stay with her if it’s just for the night. Come forward, Iraine.”
A young Shade girl pushes her way through the crowd to Anese—she looks sixteen or seventeen, maybe. I perk up a little, wondering if she’s the one Feolan was talking about. “Would you be willing to let these three spend the night in your tent?”
“Of course, Anese,” the girl says, dipping her head.
&nbs
p; “Bring them there now, then.” Some of the Shades around Anese grumble their objections, but she shuts them up with a quick look.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “We’ll be gone first thing tomorrow morning, I promise.”
The girl Iraine ducks wordlessly past us and nods for us to come with her. We follow her out into the camp again, Basil lighting the way with his stick of a torch. I keep right at Iraine’s heels, waiting for her to say something about who she is or why she’s here, but she never does. Anese called her an illegal Novan—does that mean she’s a faedra, like Feolan? I can’t make out anything about her appearance thanks to the darkness, but the way she navigates around without relying on Basil’s torch tells me she must be a Shade.
Iraine brings us to a tent on the outskirts of camp, a good distance away from everything else. “Jesus,” Wes mutters as we climb inside. “It’s freezing in here. And dark.”
“They’re a couple of spoiled brats,” I explain to Iraine. “Would you let them start a fire in here? They’ll put it out if it starts to get too big.”
“What are you, our mother?” Baz asks. The truth is, I’m just as cold and would also love if we could start a fire, but I decide not to say that out loud.
“Sure,” Iraine says, her silhouette giving a tiny shrug. “Just make sure the tent flaps stay open.”
We root around for sticks and branches in the woods outside the camp until we’ve got enough to start a nice little indoor fire we can all sit around. Iraine and I rub our hands warm in its heat, while the Warden boys stick their whole heads into the flames. I kind of wish I could do that without killing myself.
Now that I can finally see her properly, I take the chance to study Iraine. I’d been right earlier: she definitely looks more Shade than faedra. Her skin is darkish, and I can make out a little bit of color in her hair—in full sunlight, I assume it would be just as blue and purple as every other Shade’s. She’s got a jewel-encrusted ring on her right middle finger, where a Nixan’s bond-ring would be. Aha.
“You’re the girl Feolan sent us to find,” I say. “The one he says knows Old Magic.”
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