by Mary Taranta
I clutch his arms, terrified. “Perrote,” I say, all miserable apology.
Darjin mewls in pain, and North bundles the tiger into his coat as I grab his crossbow, swinging it high. The tiller cuts through a line of crows, useless against the smoke; one of them hits me on the chest and heat blisters through my coat.
North takes my arm and we race downstairs, stumbling, nearly falling. More birds pour into the watchtower, chasing us down until the sky disappears behind a cloud of smoke and feathers and the shrill pitch of a thousand golems with one objective:
Guaranteed victory.
We burst out of the watchtower, to Bryn and Tobek standing in the courtyard outside, gaping at the sky.
“Don’t just stand there,” North snaps, setting Darjin down. “Get the horses secured!”
Tobek moves to obey but Bryn throws her head back, hands balled into fists. She stands unguarded, unflinching, unafraid.
“How appropriate,” she snarls. “He sends magic spells instead of soldiers!”
It’s a false bravery as I realize with a sickening lurch: She doesn’t know the crows are soldiers. She doesn’t know they can hurt her, and by extension, me.
I call her name in warning as a crow dives, followed fast by the others.
Ignoring me, she throws her arms out wide in challenge. “Do you hear that, Daddy!? Little birds can’t bring me home!”
North reaches Bryn before I do, shielding her body as crows slam into his back, shredding his coat before breaking apart. Inky feathers scatter as they wing back to the sky; embers rake across the cobblestones. A few crows fly too close to the campfire and implode, slamming into the walls of the wagon. The faded paint ignites and flames begin to spread.
Tobek notices, pausing in his struggle to lash one of the horses to a column of stone. The horse pulls back, eyes wild as crows nip its flank, leaving shallow scratches through the glossy pelt. It bucks, knocking Tobek flat on his back. He rolls out of the way half a second before the horse lands, narrowly missing his head.
“Take Miss Dossel and get in the wagon!” North orders, loading a bolt in his crossbow.
I pretend I don’t hear him, breaking for the campfire where I kick out a stick burning on one end and fall back, keeping close to Bryn. Months of fighting in the ring taught me patience, but fear edges out all my training and I swing too early, the flame of my torch grazing only a few birds. They burst with pops of light before others batter me in quick succession, forcing me to cower, covering my head. Beside me, Bryn shrieks in pain as a thin scratch appears, running from her chin to her scalp. A moment later, it dissolves and I feel it burning down my face. She stares at me, hand pressed to her cheek, expression incredulous as she finally makes the connection: Her father didn’t send spies, he sent monsters.
And they’re not here to bring her home.
Shock fades into determination. Falling back a step, Bryn balls her skirt in both hands and hurries to help Tobek with the horses. Only then does Tobek run back to the wagon, recklessly batting at the fire with his arms and hands.
Ahead of me, North abandons his crossbow and crouches, flattening a hand to the cobblestones, leaching magic from his ward. His skin turns a bright and deadly white, and cracks of poison appear almost instantly, still hungry from Sava’s transference. I buy him time by fighting off the crows who angle too close, but there’s too many, with even more arriving.
North staggers to his feet and casts his spell. Overhead, silver light cuts down the center of the crows; beady black eyes turn dull and polluted. Several begin to fly erratic, favoring one wing over the other, before a series of muted pops fills the night. Their spelled hearts shatter midair and stone fragments clatter to the ground around us, followed by the birds themselves as their bodies hit the cobblestones and implode into half-moons of embers and feathers.
Silence. Jarring and surreal, broken by the hitch of my breath and a soft grunt as North sags to his knees, shaking. Pain tightens his face, and his hands curl across his chest, crammed under his arms. Darjin approaches, sniffing his smoldering coat with caution.
I stare at him as Tobek pushes past me, stamping out smaller fires around us. Bryn stands by the horses with her chin raised to the sky in search of any more sign of her father. Feathers cling to her red hair and spill down her back; thin scratches lace her arms and her face before fading. She looks small in that instant. Fragile.
Adrenaline ebbs and I bend forward with a grimace as Bryn’s and my injuries combine. Sticky heat spreads down my back: another dress ruined.
“We should check the stones,” North says numbly. “See if there’s any left—”
“Forget the goddamn stones!” Bryn spins to face him. “My father just tried to kill me! Once he finds out he failed, he’ll try again! If you can’t defend me, then get me to the palace like you promised so someone else can!”
“Every intuit and hellborne in the area will start swarming,” Tobek cuts in, bloodied and raw. “Sir, we have to move to better ground. You—” He stops and reconsiders, choosing his words with the same delicate care I’ve learned to speak with Bryn. “The ward is broken,” he says. “We can’t stay. You don’t have enough magic left to recast it and still risk the pass tomorrow.”
“There’s enough magic,” North growls, stumbling to his feet and advancing on Bryn. She backs away from him but he’s faster. “A binding spell that strong, and a father with a flock of golems to spare?”
He lunges for her and she throws a wild punch that North easily ducks. “Don’t touch me!”
He squints at her, breathless and ragged, his hands splayed across his knees. “New agreement,” he says. “Payment upfront or I leave you out here for your father to find.”
Her features are wild, framed by tangles of feathers and hair. “If my father finds me, he’ll find you too. All of you. We adhere to our original agreement—”
North lunges again, catching her off guard. She resists but he pins her to the side of the wagon, angling his tattered sleeve against her throat, careful to keep his bare hand from grazing her skin. “Three to one,” he says savagely. “I could just rip that spell out of you and leave your carcass to rot.”
Bryn snorts before tipping her head back. “But you won’t. You need me.”
I stare across the courtyard, into the muddy shadows of the empty buildings that pen us in. “No you don’t,” I say. My heel grinds through a layer of grit and ash as I turn to face them. “This wasn’t a first line of attack, it was a final defense. He’s getting desperate.” My eyes meet North’s, begging him to believe me. “He’s not a king, North. There’s no magic to inherit.”
Bryn stares at me. “What are you talking about?”
North’s jaw clenches, his need for an alliance warring with the doubt that I planted. “Tobek,” he says at last. “Find out where this binding spell originated.”
Tobek hunches forward nervously, tugging on the rumpled waves of his hair. “Sir—”
“Do as I say!”
Tobek flinches and Bryn laughs, eyes narrowed. “So sainted North is too much of a gentleman to touch a lady with his crippled hands. Though I suppose your apprentice comes more in handy on those cold mornings when you can’t even dress yourself.” She bares her teeth. “All those little buttons.”
North looks at Tobek in accusation, and he ducks his head with a flush of guilt. “I already looked,” he says. “Earlier today, when I read her blood, I also tried to read the spell, but it—it was scraped clean, North. It’s old magic, recycled from somewhere, but I couldn’t tell where. Whoever cast that spell did so anonymously. They didn’t want credit.”
North’s nostrils flare; he shifts his weight, arm still pressed tight against Bryn’s throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried to talk to you, but you wouldn’t listen to me! You—” His eyes fall to me in recrimination. He’s not the only one who’s been distracted lately.
“No king casts a spell anonymously,” North says. “Only cow
ards and thieves do that when they don’t want anyone tracing it back to them.”
Bryn smiles, but I can see the cracks in it, the second-guesses: She’s not as invincible as she thinks she is. “Do you know that for an absolute fact?” she asks. “Are you willing to risk Avinea on the opinion of an unpaid apprentice and the treason of a servant? And you”—her eyes slide to me—“are you willing to risk your sister’s life for this? Without my alliance, Prince Corbin has no reason to save anything or anyone in Brindaigel.”
“You can’t kill your father, Bryn,” I say softly, lifting my hand so she can see the spell she stole from him. “No one can.”
Her expression stiffens as my words sink in. Her father didn’t spare her his attack; going home an innocent is no longer an option. Despite everything, I feel half a heartbeat of sympathy for her, but beneath that is relief: She doesn’t own me anymore. I have control again.
Bryn twists, grabbing North’s hand and pressing it against her wrist. I gasp, dropping to my knees, and North looks back, anger dissolving into immediate fear as he realizes what’s happened.
He jerks away from Bryn, but it’s too late. Tiny ribbons of poison fan across her arm from where it bled out of his skin, drawn by the magic in hers. The ribbons sink out of sight but reappear moments later, twining up my arm like jasmine shooting up the kingdom walls.
At first, euphoric pleasure threads through my veins, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Better than a thousand kisses, a bottle of barleywine, a stolen night beneath the stars with Thaelan’s body pressed to mine. Tears of wanting flood my eyes and I hear my heartbeat, erratic and impossible, a whisper-crash that hangs in silence before repeating again, harder, like a pounding fist beneath my skin. The world unravels around me, fallen stitches and hanging threads as the sky melts into a river of silver and smoke.
And then pain.
No, agony. Like scissors scraped up my veins, flooding my body with anger and hate and greed, my vices laid bare as the infection marches through my blood like banners of war. The poison burns like a rash now, fiery and getting worse, and I resist the urge to scratch, to look, to confirm what I see reflected in their faces.
It’s spreading.
“How can it possibly move that fast?” Tobek asks, incredulous.
North takes a step toward me but falters, looking down at his shaking hands still riddled with poison. If he touches me now, if he tries to withdraw the infection, he could spread it even further—either through me or through him. He stares at Bryn and she stares back, defiant.
“You’re an amplifier,” he says weakly. “That would explain why the binding spell is strong enough to read a mile out, and why Miss Locke—”
“I warned you not to touch me,” she says.
Swearing, North breaks for her but Tobek intervenes, holding him back.
“North,” I say. Or maybe I only think it; the world feels diluted, as if I’m sinking underwater.
Tobek looks between us, frantic. “What do we do?”
North stares at me, haunted, before his expression hardens. Throwing back his shoulders, he tears off his coat and begins cuffing the sleeves of his shirt. His arms are peppered with blood and scratches from the crows. “Stones,” he says.
“Sir, your blood—”
“Damn it, Tobek!”
Tobek gapes at him, wounded, before he bolts for the wagon. Drawers open and slam from inside as North sinks beside me. “I’m so sorry,” he murmurs.
“No!” Bryn darts forward. “My magic, my servant, my rules.”
“If we don’t extract the poison, it will grow roots and infect her blood.” North balls his coat beneath my head. “At best, she’ll die, at worst she’ll turn hellborne. And if she dies, your binding spell won’t protect you anymore, princess.” Scorn colors the word. “And it’s still a long way to New Prevast. Tobek!”
Tobek flies out of the wagon, dropping rocks that he doubles back to retrieve. When he arrives, his face is flushed and he cowers, terrified of North.
North doesn’t even notice. Grabbing a stone, he presses it to my forearm, where the skin has already started to split apart. He hesitates, eyes meeting mine.
I clutch his shoulder before nodding my agreement. Go.
Mother of a sainted virgin.
Excision feels like a hundred million of Alistair’s needles scraping the underside of my skin. I open my mouth to scream but nothing comes out, only a choked, muted gasp that shimmers like oil in the air above me. My back arches off the ground and every nerve inside me coils tight, ready to snap. Tobek pins me down, but I feel the infection beginning to fray at the edges and sink even deeper, hiding where North can’t reach it.
North grunts and pulls harder. Ridges begin to form under my skin, mimicking the mountains around us. Too fast—he’s moving too fast; he’s tangling the threads and creating knots. My heart races forward, galloping into rhythm like drums of war until there’s nothing in me but noise—
I claw at him. “Stop,” I cry, as threads of poison snap, recoiling up my arm like lashes.
North growls and rocks back to his feet, twisting away from me and hurling the stone as far as he can. It disappears against the sky before he presses both hands to his forehead, pacing an agitated line between me and the fire.
“You amplified the infection,” North says, shaken. “At this rate, it’ll reach her heart within a few hours. I can’t stop it, not—not while I’m like this. Not while my infection is so close to the surface.”
Ash sticks to my lips and I struggle to swallow. He speaks so clinically, impassive, but I know what it means.
I’m dying.
North looks at me, helpless, before his gaze shifts to the wagon. A debate plays across his features as he straightens. Resolved. “I’ll take her to Revnik,” he says. “There’s a transferent there who can draw out the infection. He’s clean, there’ll be no risk involved.”
Tobek shakes his head. “No. We can’t split up, not now.”
“Continue toward New Prevast,” North says, already angling for the horses. “Ride through the night; we’ll meet you in the morning.”
“I can’t fight the hellborne on my own! And if her father attacks again—”
“Take the wagon. I’ll recast the remaining ward. It’s not ideal but it’s sufficient.”
“The wagon is too slow! I’m sorry, sir, but she’s—” Tobek’s eyes meet mine in apology before he looks away. “We’re wasting time,” he says softly.
“Wood holds magic better than a horse can,” North says. “Miss Dossel will be able to make the spell stronger than it would be on its own. And once you reach the pass, Lord Inichi promised an escort.” Sucking in a deep breath, he releases it slowly, chin dropping toward his chest.
“Or,” says Bryn, and he looks up with a frown. She holds a hand above my chest, her hair hanging above my face. “I amplify that infection again and it goes straight to her heart,” she says.
North doesn’t move.
“You want this magic,” says Bryn. Her hand hovers, trembling, showing her nerves. “You need it to save this pathetic kingdom. But even if she dies, I’m still an amplifier with a binding spell strong enough to make a case for myself with the prince. With someone like me, your prince’s supply of magic could last two, three times longer and be that much stronger. I don’t need her anymore. So you want to save her life?” Her hand dips above my heart. “Make me an offer for it.”
Nobody speaks. I stare at her palm, blackened with ash and dirt, and her face, fierce as the fire behind her. She knows she can’t go home now, not without an army, and there’s a hint of unfamiliar desperation in her eyes.
North breaks the silence, his voice thin. “What do you want?”
Tobek swears beneath his breath, hands folding behind his neck as he spins away from us.
“My father’s throne,” says Bryn, triumph spreading across her face. “I win my war, Corbin wins his.”
“You have a plan, even with the loyalty
spells?”
Bryn lifts her chin and smiles. “I know how to kill my father.”
North looks to me and I shake my head, pleading with him. Her throne is worthless.
But her magic isn’t.
“Prepare the horse,” he says to Tobek.
“Sir. Please don’t do this. After all we’ve done . . .”
“It is not your choice,” North says.
Tobek stares at his master, the young man who saved his life by giving him a second chance. It’s a look of finality, of farewell, of knowing that tomorrow, the world will have shifted an inch off course and the sun will never rise the same way again.
“Yes, sir,” Tobek finally says, all formality. He retrieves his crossbow and stalks toward the horses, shoulders rigid.
North watches him leave with his own sorrow etched in the shadows of his face. Rubbing his mouth, he inhales sharply and lowers his hand. “I agree,” he says.
Bryn doesn’t lift her hand. “To what?”
“The resources you need to overthrow your father in exchange for the magic and your amplification abilities to find mine. But in return, Miss Locke’s life belongs to me. The binding spell will be dissolved in New Prevast, and her sister brought to the city as soon as possible.”
My blood runs cold, fire and ice colliding beneath my skin. Beside me, Bryn lifts her hand a fraction of inch. “Your father,” she says.
“Yes,” says North. He doesn’t look at either of us.
Bryn’s voice is no more than a hum. “Good god, you’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“But that would mean—”
“Yes,” says North, and a rueful smile crosses his lips. “My real name is Corbin Andergott. And I’m the Prince of Avinea.”
Twenty-One
THE PRINCE OF AVINEA.
The words burn like the ash that rolls across my skin as North and Bryn retreat to privacy, haggling the price of my rotting body where I can’t hear the terms of my worth. Bryn’s voice rises with emotion, countered by North’s steady hum. He leans closer, emphatic, and she stares at him, silenced. After a beat, North inclines his head and Bryn drops into a mocking curtsy.