“You’re not making this easy.” Cilla’s laugh was a nervous one.
“I didn’t realize a lot of the things you’ve told me,” Amara said. “Like that you had no choice but to spend time with Jorn. Like that we played games together because you weren’t allowed to play with anyone else. I grew up thinking I wasn’t allowed to play with anyone else.” She hesitated. “Like that I’m all you have.”
“Of course you’re all I have.” Cilla’s hand touched Amara’s, sending a jolt through her.
She’d wanted to say something else but was no longer sure what.
Noon had come and gone, and it had taken the sun with it, turning the sky bland and the sea dark, then dangerous. The ship was supposed to arrive in Bedam that afternoon. Instead, it moored at Roerte, a southern mainland town, with Captain Olym repeating apologies a dozen times over. “I can’t risk this weather,” she told her passengers, standing by the plank that led to the mainland. She was shaking in her drenched shirt but refused to get out of the rain until everyone left the ship. “The Gray Sea is too erratic. Listen: I know Roerte well. I can tell you how to travel to Bedam by land, or I can arrange a stay at an inn. We’ll head out tomorrow morning if the weather’s improved by then.”
A thunderclap punctuated her words.
She didn’t say the next part, but Amara saw it written on her face: Damn the ministers to every last spirit-abandoned corner of this planet. Storms never came on this suddenly by themselves.
Amara and Cilla made up the rear of the group, not wanting to risk the crush of people. They’d gone by another two islands before mooring here and had picked up at least twenty more passengers. “You two, please come with me,” Captain Olym said when they stepped onto the plank. “I won’t have you staying at an inn, Princess. I have a farm inland. You’ll be my guests.”
Within the hour Amara and Cilla were drying off by the crackle of a fireplace. In the dining room, Captain Olym and her father, who managed the farm in her absence, conversed in singsong Alinean.
Cilla was touching her lips where the mage had struck her. A small, healthy crust had formed, but it was in danger of falling off after getting soaked by the rain. The skin underneath might not have healed enough yet.
“I know, I know, I’m being careful,” Cilla said on catching Amara’s warning look. “It itches, though. I suppose you wouldn’t know. Aren’t we a pair?”
Amara smiled. As long as she kept smiling, the world couldn’t crash down on her. Maart was dead, and she was in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar town, with strangers in the next room, yet she could use her signs openly. She hadn’t heard Jorn’s voice in hours. She wasn’t working, and all of that made her feel jittery and so, so strange. She kept hovering between terror and elation and numbness, and she couldn’t decide which was safer.
She studied Cilla’s lip. “If I find my parents, where will you go?” Amara asked.
“I could find the original royal line on the Alinean Islands. If they know I’m alive, they may help me reclaim my throne.”
Cilla knew as well as Amara did that that would never happen. The Alineans had surrendered their claim to the Dunelands years ago. Wars were bad for business. “The Islands are an ocean away,” Amara said instead. “How would you survive a trip that long without me?”
No answer.
Amara hid a sigh as she squeezed her scarf and rubbed her wear dry as well as she could. She didn’t want to undress in a place so visible. Cilla shouldn’t, either. She’d already revealed her shoulders, which was more than royalty ever ought to do publicly.
“What’s that noise?” Cilla asked. Amara stopped her movements to listen. The rain beat on the windows, and the wind tore at the unsheathed, tied-down sails of the mill outside, but Cilla couldn’t mean that. Through all that noise came voices. Distant laughter.
Amara stepped toward the window. She felt exposed without her scarf, showing bony shoulders and wiry arms and that almost hidden tattoo underneath matted hair, but in this weather no one would be looking in.
Lights shone from a small house across the field.
“Servants,” Amara told Cilla, who sat on the carpet and rubbed her toes dry. Their boots stood next to her, heating by the fire.
Sometimes ministers lent servants to help out farmers in need. That kept the farms running, the food production going, and the ministers earned a decent cut. Amara shouldn’t have been surprised that Captain Olym had servants. She and her father alone could never handle a farm this size.
Amara stared at the flickering yellow of the servants’ windows in a storm-darkened world. The laughter rang out through the rain. The servants were probably enjoying the reprieve from work the storm gave them. They’d be drinking or playing games or telling stories, as she’d seen the older servants at the palace do, or perhaps secretly improving their speech, as some servants managed.
Bedam was the nearest big city, so these servants must have come from there. Their tattoos would match hers. Would they remember her? Would they know Lorres, the caretaker? He’d always looked out for Amara.
She turned just as Cilla was gingerly feeling her cut lip again. Cilla would need protection once they parted ways. Finding other healing mages to help, trustworthy ones, seemed impossible. What Cilla needed was someone like Nolan, someone to heal her before the curse even took hold.
Was that an option? Those pills of Nolan’s had changed so much. If he could travel to another world to possess Amara, couldn’t he possess someone else, too?
It would let Amara go free.
Amara pushed herself away from the window. Even if it were an option, it’d be too dangerous. Amara had been lucky to survive when Nolan’s presence mixed with the spell at the harbor; combining it with Cilla’s curse might kill Cilla in an instant.
Three steps into the room, Amara slowed, then stopped. One hand reached for the bed hatch next to her for support. The movement wasn’t hers.
She hadn’t felt Nolan take over—she never did. She no longer blacked out or slumped. His mind didn’t creep in to shove hers aside. The world went on as usual, except suddenly her breaths seemed out of sync and her body moved in ways she hadn’t approved. Invisible strings tugged at her, and she saw only the effects on a dangling puppet and its wooden limbs.
You promised! she shouted in her mind, knowing Nolan wouldn’t hear.
He’d caught her thoughts. He must’ve stepped in at just the wrong moment.
“I’m sorry,” Nolan said.
Cilla looked up at the movement. Nolan took two confident steps and crouched in front of her. The drenched carpet cooled Amara’s knees. A spark from the fire landed on her hand, but Nolan shook it off. “Amara needs to know you’ll be safe,” he told Cilla. “How much risk are you willing to take?”
Amara wanted to scream.
Nolan explained Amara’s thoughts and the risks involved. Cilla said nothing. Amara saw the same look on Cilla’s face she’d seen on Jorn’s, that way of scanning Amara for what lay underneath. Jorn had been trying to find Nolan. Cilla was looking for a sign of Amara.
“You and me, huh, Nolan?” Cilla finally said.
“I know you don’t care for me—”
“Do it,” she said. “Take over.”
“Like I said, I don’t know if I even can switch bodies. If it does work”—Amara’s lips wrangled into a smile that felt nothing like her own—“you’ll be the first to know.”
He left her.
“Don’t.” Amara stumbled when her body returned to her, then lunged toward Cilla. “There are other options. What if we can’t find my parents? What if we find another mage? The one at the market—if she’d seen your mark, she would’ve believed you. We can find others! Ones who heal!”
“If this works,” Cilla said, “you won’t have to sacrifice yourself anymore. Sometimes … sometimes layering magic has only minimal effect. We might not notice anything.”
Amara felt Cilla’s stare on her lips, her eyebrows, just like before. Their
faces were fingerwidths apart, close enough for Amara to taste the heat of Cilla’s exhales and see a raindrop dangling from her earlobe. They’d toweled off their faces already; she must’ve missed a spot.
Cilla smiled wanly. “You two really are different.”
Amara leaned back to sit on her haunches. “Don’t let him do this. Tell him no. Nolan might listen if you change your mind.”
“He shouldn’t hijack you like that,” Cilla said. “But I like the way his face looks on yours. He looks more relaxed in your body than you ever do.”
No, no, why wasn’t Cilla listening? If Nolan was trying to make this work right now, as they spoke, Cilla might only have seconds left before the spells mixed.
This could be the end of it.
“Now you look even less relaxed,” Cilla remarked. Her voice sounded breathy. Not like her. Everything Cilla did, down to her jokes and laughs, were weighed down by something else. She cared about what she said and did even when she pretended not to. “I don’t mean that I like seeing him in you. It’s just nice to see Nolan be … what you could be.” It was Cilla’s turn to sit upright. She leaned in. Black hair hung in soaked strands along her cheeks. “I’d like seeing it on you far more.”
“Tell him you’ve changed your mind.” Amara’s mind spun. Her knees dug into a soggy carpet she could never afford, and across from her Cilla was speaking nonsense, and she might die right now, or in two minutes or two hours or two days, whenever Nolan figured out how to switch bodies. Amara couldn’t lose her, too. “Please.”
She never said please. Even if a servant was allowed to make requests, there was no point.
“The truth is,” Cilla said when Amara tried to smile, “I like seeing you no matter what.”
And then Cilla’s hand was on Amara’s shoulder, and her lips on Amara’s, and they were hot and full and Amara leaned in before she could stop herself. Her hands found and wrapped around Cilla’s hips. She pressed herself closer.
This wasn’t like kissing Maart. This was soft and desperate and something Amara had wanted so, so badly even when she’d hated herself for it. Her mind whispered stop and wrong and Maart, Maart, Maart. And don’t do it, Nolan, you can’t, don’t and let this work and all the pain she caused and you’ll hate yourself and it won’t last!
But while it did … while the world spun beyond her reach, anyway … Their lips kissed and brushed and pulled and nibbled, and they squeezed each other so closely they heated up even the rain trapped between their bodies.
Cilla’s tongue tickled her lips. Amara parted them to allow Cilla in. She’d never felt this, never once. Her hands held Cilla tighter. And she might be imagining it—might just be wishing—but Cilla tasted like the fennel seeds Captain Olym had given them to chew on.
Fennel and Cilla.
Amara no longer listened to any of her mind’s whispers.
Except she must have, because when Cilla pulled away, Amara was crying. She didn’t realize it until the sudden fresh air cooled the tear tracks on her skin.
Cilla touched Amara’s cheek. “No,” she said. Her hand slid to Amara’s shoulder and clumsily gripped her arm. “No, no no no. Please tell me you didn’t go along with—that you’re not doing this just because I—”
Amara interrupted Cilla by kissing her again. Quick and hot and more.
Interrupting the princess was beyond disrespectful; that would have to be enough of an answer. Any moment Nolan would arrive, to save Cilla or kill her and free Amara either way, and all she wanted was Cilla’s fiery, kissed-red lips. She wanted to taste Cilla’s tongue. She wanted to taste Cilla’s everything while she still could.
The crack of the opening door jolted them apart. They sat there, their breathing heavy, as Captain Olym came in to formally introduce her father.
Fire flickered yellow on the side of Cilla’s face, the silk of her arms, the contours of her chest. It made her so damn beautiful that the pulsing of Cilla’s tattoo in her center stung Amara all the more.
olan reached for his pen on awakening, a habit honed over too many years. His fingers were numb with sleep, but he found the pen without trying. Shit. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He’d promised to warn Amara first. He’d just been so focused on taking over Cilla, trying, straining, and … And now it was close to noon already, and he’d forgotten to close the curtains, making his room sticky with heat. He’d have to plan better. Prevent himself from dozing off accidentally again.
He pushed himself up. His forehead practically stuck to his desk. He bet it’d left all sorts of marks on his skin.
He couldn’t find his journal as easily as his pen.
It’s not working, he wanted to write, but his pen tip floated in midair, scrawling the letters into nothing. He scanned his desk, then remembered Pat waking him up earlier. He’d knocked his journal off his desk. He rolled his chair back, but the floor was empty, too.
He remembered the notebook falling.
He remembered the damn notebook falling, but it wasn’t on the floor, and when he kneeled to check under his bed, it wasn’t there, either.
He burst into Pat’s room. He knew where she hid her own journal, behind the drawers under her desk, but his wasn’t there. He checked under her pillow. Her mattress. Where else? Closet?
Back in his room, he grabbed his cell. Dont read it, he texted her. Pat pls just dont. Im sorry I told you ill explain. A second text: Im writing a damn book Ok?
He waited for five full minutes. No response. The cell’s clock flashed a sixth minute, reminding him it was almost time for the lunch portion of his medication. He might as well take it now, before something else happened to suck him into the Dunelands and make him forget. He’d need to eat, too, but his appetite had gone missing with his journal.
After the last pill wedged itself down his throat, he paused, eying the carefully laid out evening dose on the corner of his desk. He’d only been able to control Amara after increasing his dosage. If he wanted to possess Cilla …
Nolan shouldn’t have taken control of Amara the way he had at the fireplace. He’d felt Amara’s loathing the second he retreated, and he knew he deserved every bit of it.
He’d just—he’d thought he’d found a way out.
Maybe he still had.
Nolan realized he’d made a mistake roughly around the time Pat came home. He’d cracked open a new journal to write in, snapped awake when he heard the front door unlock, and lurched off his chair. He’d meant to go downstairs to talk to her. He found himself stumbling against the desk, his stomach pounding left and right as if fighting to escape. His balance was shot. He groped his way along the wall. By the time he stepped into the bathroom, his arms gave in, and he slammed to the floor, hipbone landing against a cabinet. He muffled a cry.
He spent the next hour slumped by the toilet. He couldn’t breathe right. His vision twisted and dove and climbed. He emptied his stomach and then just felt it spasm and push out painful spikes of air. He couldn’t keep his thoughts straight, and he lay dazed, as if stuck in a dream.
Pat came up at one point. Knocked. Nolan managed to push out one word: “Nauseous.”
“Should I call Mom?” she asked quietly. Nolan made a sound. He hoped she took it as a no.
Taking control of Cilla still didn’t work. He should tell Amara that. He couldn’t. Captain Olym had stuck close ever since the kiss, eager to play host to Princess Cilla.
“Sure is nice you can take action now, Nolan,” he slurred in Spanish at one point. “Sure is nice. But maybe, just maybe, you should think first.” His head lolled the other way. It gave him an excellent view of the toilet plumbing. He drifted into a haze, then woke without being sure he’d ever fallen asleep at all.
Only near dinnertime did he dare push himself up. His head still pounded. His hands shook. His stomach had calmed, though, and he could breathe again, and he vaguely remembered Mom coming home after the worst had passed and checking on him once or twice.
If Mom had seen him earlier, she’d
have called Dr. Campbell or even Poison Control or 911. She’d probably have been right to.
“Occasionally, I am kind of an idiot,” he murmured, in English again, and dragged himself up. A bruise pulsed on his elbow. With his foot, he nudged open the bathroom door, welcoming the fresh air. The sound of the vacuum cleaner and voices from the TV drifted upward—one of Pat’s Michelle Rodriguez movies—and he sat for a minute, calmer now, his head clearer though no less painful.
After a while, Pat’s hesitant voice came from downstairs: “Mom? Is he really OK?”
The vacuum cleaner went silent. “He’s still getting used to the increased dosage. The side effects should wear off soon.”
There was a minute of silence. “Who’s Amara? Nolan said that name in his … his sleep.”
“You should ask Nolan that.”
“He’s being a jerk about it.”
Mom chuckled, sounding tired. “It’s his dream. He’s allowed.”
“So it does mean something?” Pat pressed. “What about Cilla? Jorn? Maart?”
Nolan winced at the last name. Hearing anyone say it was wrong. The dead couldn’t rest if you kept calling on them. But hearing Pat say it, and all those other names, wasn’t just wrong but bizarre beyond anything. Even the weirdness of Amara thinking or signing Nolan’s name didn’t compete. Everything in that world had long since moved past “bizarre”; this world was real life, or at least his crappy imitation. It’d been years since he’d heard Amara’s name in his world except in his own whispers.
Pat didn’t get the pronunciation right. The r needed to roll deeper in her throat, the a’s needed to be more Spanish than English. Slowly, he climbed upright. He hopped to the sink for some water, steadying himself with a still-shaky hand.
“He said all that?” Mom said. “Chatty. I’ve never heard him talk in his sleep.”
“Strange.” Pat tried too hard to sound innocent. She hadn’t nailed that part of acting yet. Nolan did a better job. No one suspected window dressing.
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