Genevie drew a deep, shaky breath. “Merci, Sonya.” She took my hand, despite the muddy mess it was. “You are a true friend.”
Her words settled deep inside me, a space I held for Pia and Yuliya. I blinked back the moisture collecting in my eyes and finished applying the poultice. Once it had set, I wrapped it in an anchoring cloth for the night and extinguished the lantern.
Genevie fell asleep close beside me. Between the acrid smell of the dye and my impatience to reach the castle, sleep was a long time in coming for me. My thoughts swirled between Genevie and Madame Perle, then, at some point, Sestra Mirna. My grief at losing her tended to surface like this, when my exhaustion stole my ability to lock away my sorrow.
As my pulse slowed and I began to drift off, I imagined meeting Madame Perle, but she had Sestra Mirna’s wise eyes and careworn wrinkles. I threw my arms around her and wept against her shoulder . . . and finally fell asleep.
What felt like two short hours later, a small hand covered my mouth. I startled at the petite figure above me. I couldn’t make out her face in the darkness. She wasn’t Genevie. I heard my friend beside me, her breaths rising and falling in deep slumber. “Kira?” I asked, my mind hazy. What was she doing here?
The girl lowered her mouth to my ear. The bell-tone of her voice, even in its whisper, splintered ice through my veins.
Dasha.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“SAVE ME, SONYA!”
I struggled to breathe, even though Dasha had removed her hand from my mouth. “Where’s Valko?”
She pulled upright, her dark and wispy hair settling over her shoulders. “I ran away from him.” I couldn’t see the gray in her eyes. They looked black in the darkness. “He’s following me.”
My heartbeat crashed. This could be a trap, I realized. I shouldn’t go with her. I glanced sidelong at Genevie, but Dasha’s aura hadn’t awakened her. She must have been sleeping deeply, rest she desperately needed. “All right. Let’s go outside.” If Valko was indeed coming, I needed to alert Anton. I hastily grabbed my flintlock pistol, after Dasha exited the tent, and threw on my cloak to conceal the weapon.
The crescent moon provided little light, especially past the grand firs of La Forêt Royale. The night air, eerily absent of any breeze, amplified our footsteps. Strange, since my feet barely touched the ground. I felt like I was flying.
Dasha and I glided around pillars of shadowy firs. I’d already forgotten why we’d come out here. Soon she was grinning and running, just out of my reach. I laughed as I tried to catch the fold of her snow-white dress. It blazed in and out of sight, trailing behind her.
Some buried part of my mind begged me to ask, Aren’t you in trouble, Dasha? But I couldn’t stop smiling and chasing. I caught up the hem of my nightgown and ran faster.
She disappeared, but her bright voice still echoed back to me through the forest. “See if you can find me now, Sonya. I dare you!”
More laughter pealed out of me. “I’ll sniff you out by your aura!”
“You can’t feel my aura,” she singsonged.
I pressed onward, craning my head around the endless columns of trees. A massive fir loomed ahead. I slowed when I reached it and peered around its fat, moss-covered girth. Beyond it, the earth recessed into a gully rimmed with fog. Its white puffs frothed and undulated, like a brew in a cauldron.
“Almost here!” Dasha beamed from the opposite bank. She kicked up a swirl of fog with her pointed toe.
I plunged into the gully, but my feet didn’t brush the ground. I really was flying. The fog swelled to my waist, and I skimmed my fingers across its surface as I sailed through it.
When I came to the middle, a figure cloaked in imperial red rose up, the fog cleaving around his ice-encrusted crown.
My smallest finger twitched with a current of fear, but my overpowering awe eclipsed it. I would have knelt before him, but my legs went suddenly numb.
Valko’s wolf-gray eyes gleamed as he swept nearer. “So you’re alive,” he said.
Pain blasted through me. Red bloomed over my stomach and drenched my nightgown with blood. I remembered being shot. How I hated him. What he’d done to me. I wasn’t flying anymore. I plummeted to the thorny ground. “I’m not so easy to kill.”
Valko tilted his head. “Maybe not. But he is.”
I followed his gaze, and a shock of dread lanced my belly, cutting even deeper than my gunshot wound. “Anton.”
The man I loved hung from a rope like the two Esten Auraseers had, his hands bound behind his back, another frost-laden crown on his head. He didn’t thrash, but he was still alive, eyes sharp and alert and tight with fear. For a moment, his aura pierced mine. I gasped, reeling from the jolt of my awakened awareness. Then, just as quickly, the feeling was gone.
“Save me, Sonya.” Anton’s voice rang desperate and clear, not strangled from the rope’s chokehold. Still, I knew he was dying. That certainty was as real as my racing heartbeat, as real as my inability to intervene.
I turned desperate eyes on Dasha. She had power. “Do something! He’s your brother.”
A thin green snake dipped from the tree and slithered onto the slim shoulder of her dress. “Valko says Anton deserves to die.”
“He’s wrong. Valko is the one who should die. That’s the only way to end the war.” I suddenly remembered my pistol and withdrew it with fumbling hands. But when I blinked, it was gone, replaced by the crystal dagger that once belonged to Nadia’s mother.
“Sonya, Sonya.” Valko clucked his tongue and swaggered closer. “You can’t kill me. Dasha won’t let you. In fact, she’s the one who can kill you.” His eyes glittered darkly. “How about we stop her breath together?” he asked his sister. “Ready?”
“Always,” Dasha replied, though her voice trembled.
I lunged forward, trying to stab Valko, but he grabbed my wrist and twisted my arm back.
“Now!” Valko commanded Dasha.
My body went limp with staggering fatigue. I dropped the dagger.
Valko let go of my arm and deftly caught me around the waist. His other hand braced the back of my head. I couldn’t draw air; I was too tired to muster the strength.
“Know this before you die,” he told me. “After you, I will kill my brother, and all that was left of your revolution will die with him.”
He clamped a hand over my mouth, a final seal of my death.
The white fog rose, enshrouding us. Black stars darkened my vision. My heart pounded through the length of my dangling body, screaming for air despite my weakness to fight. I needed to sleep.
As if Valko sensed my desire, he lowered me to the ground and cradled me in his arms, smoothing back my hair.
Several feet above him, Anton kicked as the noose tightened around his neck. He ripped apart the rope binding his hands and reached for me. But it was too late. His thrashing slowed. His face purpled. I watched him helplessly through a veil of tears. Neither one of us could save the other.
The frost cleared from Valko’s crown just as Anton’s fell away and smashed to the ground in icy shards.
A moment before my vision fully blackened, Anton shut his eyes.
And death came for both of us.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EVERYTHING WENT BLACK. COLD. MY BODY TWISTED, TANGLED in a dark cocoon. I thrashed, desperate to loose myself. I tore away Valko’s cloak, or my own, or whatever was binding me. I felt his body at my side and shoved him hard, then scrambled to my feet. Air sucked into my lungs with such force that a fresh wave of dizziness assaulted me.
“Help!” I rasped, clawing my way past the tangible darkness, ripping through its cloth-like walls. I burst into a circle of trees. “Help me!” My eardrums shuddered with my cry.
“Sonya?” a girl called. Her voice didn’t have Dasha’s bell-tone ring.
I jerked around and found Genevie peering out of our tent. The cloth around her dye poultice had fallen away, exposing the caked mess of her hair.
“What is wro
ng?” she asked.
I shook my head, my hands pressed to my temples. I didn’t understand. “Where—where is he?”
“Who?”
Disoriented, I glanced up. The moon’s light shone brightly. Nearly round, not crescent.
“I sense no one here besides our regiment,” Genevie said.
A hand touched my back. My heart flared, and I spun around. Anton. He stood before me, not hanging from a noose. “Everything is all right. You’ve been dreaming.”
“No, we’re in danger. Valko and Dasha . . . they were here.”
He gently gripped my shoulders and lowered his face to mine. “It was a dream.”
I blinked hard. A hoarse sob escaped me. Anton wasn’t dead. I fell against his chest, and his arms came around my back.
Four soldiers raced out of their tents, their muskets gripped midbarrel in haste.
“Valko isn’t here,” Anton said. “Lower your guns.”
Their eyes darted to the forest. Their disheveled hair and unbuttoned shirts flapped in the breeze.
“Sonya had a nightmare,” Genevie explained.
The men relaxed, though I was still shaken to the core. Perspiration flashed across my breastbone and soaked into the loose neckline of my nightgown.
Anton guided me back to his tent, not the one I shared with Genevie. I stumbled forward on trembling legs. Valko’s voice spun on a vicious loop in my mind. After you, I will kill my brother, and all that was left of your revolution will die with him.
Anton laid me down on his bedroll and came to rest behind me, holding me in a tight embrace as the worst of my tremors quelled.
“Do you believe dreams can foretell the future?” I asked, my teeth chattering.
“I don’t know. Why? What did Valko do in your dream?”
Killed you. Killed me. “Conquered Riaznin.” I pictured the ice melting off of Valko’s crown while I suffocated and Anton hung from a noose. My fingers clenched around his forearm and anchored him to me.
“Half of our nation must have that same nightmare.” He smoothed back my hair. “I know I do. It isn’t prophecy, but only our fears that rattle through our heads.”
I tried to draw comfort from his words and his calming scent of musk and pine. Maybe he was right.
But maybe he wasn’t.
What if my dream had been a warning from Feya—a sign that if I didn’t regain my power, Anton and I would die and Free Riaznin would fall? “I need to speak to Madame Perle as soon as we arrive in Alaise,” I said. Which would be tomorrow. My heart broke into a wild canter.
“I know you’re anxious to see her, but you’ll have to be patient for the right time to present itself. As far as King Léopold is concerned, you’ve joined my delegation as my Auraseer guardian. When he requests me, you’ll be expected, too.”
I released a slow exhale, tamping down my anticipation. “Of course.”
He sighed. “I’m afraid much of our time at the castle won’t be pleasant for you, Sonya. The Estens hold little regard for Auraseers.”
“I know.” I only had to look as far as Genevie to understand that.
He pulled me closer and kissed the nape of my neck. “We have to promise each other to remain strong. I fear the next few days are going to test our relationship.”
I shifted around to see him. Moonlight permeated the tent, but not enough for me to see his eyes clearly. “How do you mean?”
His lips feathered across mine. “Our time in the castle will be limited—barely sufficient to obtain an alliance. I won’t be able to defeat Esten prejudices, as well. So what I do in Alaise—how I present myself—it will have to be in the best interests of Riaznin . . . which may, at times, be at odds with what’s best for you and me.”
I began to understand. “You have to conceal our relationship.” I wasn’t surprised, but a flicker of disappointment chased through me just the same.
He found my hands and threaded our fingers together. His voice dropped to a vulnerable whisper, shuddering warmth across my skin. “Will you remember how much I love you?”
I smiled softly. “Of course.” I wasn’t about to let a few days in Estengarde rekindle my old insecurities. “But since we are speaking about remaining strong for each other, I should be frank with you, too.” I took a long breath. “Genevie is going to help more of her Auraseer friends escape Alaise, and I’ve promised to help her.”
He stiffened. “What?”
“It’s been her mission from the beginning—why she traveled to Riaznin in the first place, why she came back to Estengarde. Seeing her friends dead in the forest only strengthened her resolve.”
“Sonya . . .” The groan Anton released scraped from a deep well inside him. If this had been any other time, if I hadn’t still been trembling from the echoes of my nightmare, he might have lost his temper. But when he spoke next, the tender scratch in his voice sounded, above all, concerned. “I can’t do what I need to in Alaise if I’m worried for your life. What you’re talking not only risks our chances of achieving this alliance, but is also grounds for execution.”
“I know that”—I squeezed his hands—“but Genevie is my friend, and Auraseers are my people. I need to do what I believe is best, too, even if it’s at odds with what is best for you and me.”
He fell quiet at his words thrown back at him, although I’d said them as lovingly as possible.
“Trust me.” I kissed his mouth, trying to soften its worried edges. “I’ll be wise and careful.”
His body finally yielded against mine. “I trust you. Trusting Genevie is harder. How do we know she won’t let her emotions blind her?”
I couldn’t resist grinning, despite all the toil of the night. “Not every Auraseer began as recklessly as I did.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GENEVIE BLANCHED, CLUTCHING HER STOMACH AS WE turned onto the main thoroughfare of Alaise the following afternoon. Its castle appeared in the distance. “Do not think less of me if I vomit.”
I rode closer to her. “You’re going to be all right; just breathe deeply. I’m right here with you.”
She nodded, fanning her face with a hand and dabbing the corners of her newly red-stained mouth. In addition to her black-dyed hair, she’d darkened her brows and eyelashes, dusted light powder over her freckles, and applied rouge to her cheeks. She wore one of my Riaznian sarafans, and the bell-shaped dress helped complete her transformation. She truly looked like a different person. Once the color in her face had returned, I looked back at the castle, doing my best to keep my jaw hinged.
I’d felt a similar sense of wonder when I first set eyes on the palace in Torchev, although this place looked vastly different. Instead of brightly painted tiles and tall, gold-leafed domes, Alaise’s castle spread wide across the land in monochromatic cream stone. Its majesty and staggering size stole the air from my lungs. As we traveled nearer, I counted one hundred and six windows across its front façade, including those wrapping around its four wide towers.
Did any of those windows belong to Madame Perle?
The city dwellers gaped at us as we progressed farther down the road. I couldn’t help gaping back. Except for Genevie, the only Estens I’d ever seen were aristocrats and their finely dressed entourages. These peasants wore much simpler clothes, the little ruffles on their collars, puffed sleeves, and mop caps the only embellishments.
“Stop staring,” Genevie whispered. “They think you are rude.”
“But they’re staring at me.”
“You are Riaznian and riding in the company of a prince they admire. I hear their whispers. Word has spread about Anton’s coming.”
Anton’s icy crown blazed to mind, and a shock of fear gripped my heart. In my dream, his crown had shattered the instant before he died. “They need to stop thinking of Anton as a prince.” I eyed the peasants, doubting how well they truly admired him. “He’s a governor.”
“They do not distinguish the difference,” Genevie replied. “Power is power.”
Th
e throngs of city dwellers thickened. I held my breath, tense in case they made a move for Anton, and at the same time bracing myself for the jolt of several hundred auras. He glanced back me, his brows raised in concern. Was he trying to warn me? Did he know he was in danger?
But as his gaze searched my face, I realized he was worried about me. An old habit. I’d never done well in large crowds. I nodded reassuringly and tried to relax. No auras would bombard me, I reminded myself. I turned to Genevie. She wasn’t so fortunate. “How are you faring?”
Perspiration beaded through the powder on her brow. She flinched and shifted sideways in her saddle. A moment later, a man with a pock-scarred face stepped into the road. “Auraseers,” he hissed at us. The gaunt woman beside him spat on the ground.
Genevie’s shoulders hitched up in a protective stance. We rode faster, putting more distance between them and us. “I wondered how long it would take the people to realize what we are,” she said, glancing in all directions. “Word must have spread about our coming, too. You are lucky not to feel their disdain.” She winced, as if deflecting a physical blow.
I remembered the near hysteria I’d experienced when traveling to Torchev for the first time. The countless people in the packed streets had assaulted my awareness, their auras thrashing at all my defenses. “I’ve felt it before. I’m sorry you have to endure it alone.”
More heads turned our way, more mouths twisted into snarls. When Anton wasn’t looking, a teenaged boy threw a handful of sharp pebbles in front of Raina, trying to make her buck. I yanked her reins, and she sidestepped the hazard just in time.
I stared back at the boy, shocked he would try to hurt a stranger, but he only sneered and picked up a fist-sized rock. I galloped away before he had the chance to hurl it. Genevie kept close, riding alongside me as we wove around people and carts and tried to catch up to the rest of our regiment.
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