by Mary Taranta
“We,” he repeats, lowering his hands, not looking at me. “There was a girl who knew a boy.”
“His name was Thaelan.”
“You loved him.” Not a question, just a fact. North rubs at his chest, still looking at the ceiling.
“I wanted to marry him,” I say softly.
North nods, swallowing hard. “I was never going to love the woman I married,” he says. “It would be too much of a liability.” He struggles to sit up and I kneel to help, sliding my arm behind him until his back rests against the frame of the bunk. He grunts thanks and winces, adjusting his weight.
“You remind me of him, a little,” I say, as the samovar begins to steam. Grateful for the distraction, I pour a cup of hot water and pass it to North.
“Only a little?” he asks, not meeting my eyes.
“More than enough. I wouldn’t want you to be the same.”
North’s ears turn pink as he looks into the cup, tipping it back and forth before his eyes meet mine, dark and shadowed. “No sugar?”
“If you can find any,” I say with a forced laugh, gesturing to the mess around us. But there’s nothing funny about a life reduced to rubble, and I immediately sober. “Try to sleep,” I say, voice cracking. “Baedan and Perrote might still be looking for Bryn, if they haven’t already found her. We’ll leave as soon as you’re able.”
“Faris.”
“I’ll take first watch,” I say, ignoring the way he looks at me.
“Faris,” he repeats.
“Don’t,” I warn, but it’s too late. He touches the back of my hand, swollen knuckles and sandpaper skin.
Closing my eyes, I curve into his arms and they fold tight around me, pulling me in against the hard edges of his chest and the rattling hum of his breath. I clutch the back of his shirt, inhaling the smoky-sweet-sweat smell of his body, counting the wild beats of his heart. Tears fall, soft and silent, prompted by the simple act of being touched, of being human.
“I have to let you go,” North says softly. His voice echoes in his chest.
I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. “Why?”
“I can’t—the poison inside me feels the magic inside you and it wants to spread,” he says. His fingers thread through my hair; despite what he says, he doesn’t let go. “I can’t hold it back forever, Faris. Not now, not like this. I’m not strong enough. Or maybe you’re too strong and it makes me weak. I don’t know. My head hurts.”
Forcing a laugh, I release his shirt and pull back, drying my cheeks on my shoulder. Avoiding his eyes, I press a hand to his chest. “Sleep.”
“Stay,” he says, fingers caught on the sleeve of my coat.
I stare at Darjin, at North’s swollen hands, at the way his shirt clings to his body. “I need to keep watch.”
“The wards will hold for a little longer. Miss Dossel made them strong.”
“North—”
“Please.”
I duck my head. “What about these wards?” I ask softly, touching the crook of his elbow.
His eyes are liquid fire. “They’ll hold.”
I should argue; I should be strong.
Instead, I retrieve North’s coat and help him back into it, an extra layer of separation of my skin from his. North shifts his weight to make room and I curl beside him.
“Sometimes falling makes us stronger,” North murmurs, half asleep.
But sometimes when you fall, it’s because you’ve been defeated.
• • •
When I wake, it’s dark outside, later than I expected. I don’t move at first, transfixed by the way North traces the back of my hand with the barest tip of his fingers before his little finger curls through mine.
“You let me sleep,” I say at last.
“I’m a bastard,” he replies. His cheek rests on top of my head but I can hear the smile in his voice. “You can’t expect anything better.”
I briefly tighten my finger around his, content to sit another moment, locked together like this. But then North sighs and releases me before any damage is done. “The wards have started to fray,” he says. “It’s time to go.”
Reluctantly, I stand, pulling faces. My body feels as craggy as the mountains. “How far to the city?”
“Half a day by horse,” he says, picking through the detritus on the floor, scanning the spines of his books as he separates them into piles on the table. When he picks up my mother’s, he adds it to the stack closest to him.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I look toward the door, to the glow of the Burn backlighting the landscape. Half a day’s ride in the dark is a long time with no perimeter stones. “Can you reuse the wards at all?”
“No. The spell is too loose. I wouldn’t risk it.”
I don’t miss the way his tone shifts, turns guarded. The wards are gone and so is the magic.
I roll a stone in my hands. “You know the magic I carry is meant for Corbin. For you.”
“And you know that as I am now, if I tried to take anything from you, the infection in me will likely bleed back into you,” says North. He pulls his bag from its hook on the wall and starts shoving books inside. “You haven’t had a chance to recover yet, and if I flood your veins with poison again, even if I extract as much as I can afterward, your body will have a much smaller chance of fighting it back on its own. You could be infected for the rest of your life, meaning anytime you come in contact with magic”—his movements turn sharper, more hostile, and I wonder if his thoughts are the same as mine: anytime I come in contact with him—“it could be aggravated. You’ll need to be excised again and again and again and it is not easy, and it will hurt, and I will not do that unless you fully understand what you’re offering me.”
“Spoken like a gentleman,” I say, forcing a smile to hide the unease his warning brings.
He scrubs his face with one hand before sighing, his own smile incongruent to the shadows darkening his eyes. “A handsome one?”
“A misguided one,” I say. “What difference does my blood make if you’re dead before we reach New Prevast?” Giving him a withering look, I slide his father’s ring off my thumb and set it on top of the table. The magic under my skin brightens immediately, no longer muted by the iron, before sinking back out of sight.
“Make me an offer,” I say.
He rests his hip against the edge of the table, fingers tangled around the strap of his bag. “You and Cadence will have the best rooms in the palace.”
I shake my head.
“All the books you can read,” he offers. “All the maps you can carry. Fresh fish every morning, and blackberry tarts with coffee. And sugar,” he adds. “We have sugar in New Prevast.”
“Not good enough,” I say. “I want more.”
“Greed costs, Miss Locke.” Arching an eyebrow, North folds his arms across his chest and rocks his weight back on one foot, appraising me. He lifts his chin. “Name your price.”
I wait a beat, but I don’t wait longer or I’ll lose my nerve.
“A kiss,” I say. “Just one. Just once.”
Surprised, his arms unfold even as my heart stutters. Heat floods my face and I look away, feeling stupid. “Never mind,” I say, “I was just—”
He kisses me, cautious and uncertain: He hasn’t had much practice. His lips are shy, timid, and the kiss is soft as a whisper, short as a sigh.
“Was that good enough?” he asks, worried as he pulls away.
“Perfect,” I say, but not nearly enough for my greedy heart.
I steal the second kiss; the third is mutual. North follows my lead and I lead him through four, five, six, and seven until it doesn’t matter anymore, all that matters is the way his hands fold against my hips and the way his lips part beneath my tongue and the way his breath catches when I trace the gaunt lines of his body as it presses eager into mine.
Skin is the perfect conductor and I devour the secrets painted across his, ignoring the warning spread of heat as his poison seeps back into my body at the places whe
re we overlap: fingertips, wrists, his mouth to my throat as he murmurs foreign words against my skin. Fire ignites in my veins and it’s perfect, this kiss, this feeling, like a satisfied quiet that fills my soul after months of silent screaming.
Beneath our shared desire is the rhythmic trumpet of our hearts. Mine thunders like a roar of water but his is no more than an echo half a beat behind, hollow as footsteps through a mountain. All at once, the taste of blood floods my mouth and North draws back, eyes wide as he presses a hand to his chest. Magic glows silver through the fabric of his shirt—the spell that guards his heart.
But my own heart sinks when I realize what’s happening.
The edges have started turning black.
Twenty-Four
EVER THE GENTLEMAN, NORTH USES stones he finds scattered around the wagon to excise some of the poison now spreading through my body, spreading through his. It hurts, as promised.
I welcome the pain.
North works silently, head bowed, and I bite the inside of my cheek, wondering if I should apologize or if that would only make it worse. His hands shake by the time he’s done, and he pockets the poisoned rocks, avoiding my eyes.
You promised me, Thaelan accuses at the back of my head. I want to protest, to defend my honor: I haven’t stolen anything.
But I have. I’ve stolen the Prince of Avinea’s only defense, the careful guard he’s made of his heart. As someone who’s taught herself how to fight, to deflect, to be the last one standing, I recognize the moment the fight turns against you. In kissing me, North allowed his heart to be weak and his desire to become a map for the poison to follow. If it moves any further before he repairs the spell, he could turn hellborne and he won’t be able to stop it.
I asked for a kiss and it could kill him.
“It’s not your fault,” North says at length. His voice is husky, rattled; it startles me. “I swore my heart to a higher purpose a long time ago. And anything—anyone—who threatened that purpose had to be excised long before they could take root in my blood.” He looks at me, through me. “Your strength was my weakness, Miss Locke. The fault is entirely my own.”
I don’t answer, staring numbly out the door.
North edges around me, rummaging through the spill of drawers from his apothecary’s chest. “You’ve done nothing wrong,” he says, sliding supplies and several rocks into his bag. “It didn’t get far; the damage is minimal.”
“Having a heart is not a weakness,” I say softly.
“A weak heart breaks, a broken heart bleeds, and blood can be poisoned.” North slams a drawer back into place before exhaling softly. “That is how a king becomes a coward and how a country becomes a graveyard.”
I worry the edge of the table with my thumb, but as the silence stretches, I look up to see its source. North watches me, desire warring with self-recrimination, his swollen hand clutching the strap of his bag so tightly the knuckles are white. If I asked, he would kiss me again.
If I asked, he would risk falling.
This is not the North I know, fierce and unflinching with a duty forged by blood. This is the North who would choose me over Merlock.
So I must choose Merlock over him.
I back toward the door. “I’ll get the horse,” I mumble. Without waiting for a reply, I turn and thunder down the stairwell, grateful for the cold night air to bite color into my cheeks, to jolt me back to my senses. What was I thinking? What was I doing? The poison runs through my blood too: Kissing North could just as easily kill me as it could kill him. My life might not be worth much, but there’s still Cadence to consider. No one else will fight for her the way I would.
On impulse, I rock my head back to the stars, needing their weight to pin me back into place. Only clouds tonight, but the sky is full of gold colors thrown out by the Burn.
And something closer. Torches.
The hellborne.
They approach on horseback, Baedan in the lead. Her bone white hair streams behind her as she urges her horse faster, teeth bared against the night, flanked by half a dozen brutes dressed in plated armor that covers their chests and exposes their arms. Each one carries a torch or a weapon that looks as if it was pulled from the walls of Alistair’s execution room.
Swearing, I unhitch the horse and haul myself onto its back, calling for North. He appears, features shadowed. When he sees Baedan, he grabs Darjin and runs, passing Darjin into my arms before he swings himself up behind me. We’re barely settled before he kicks the horse into motion.
Someone shouts behind us and North swears, veering the horse hard to the left to avoid a blast of hot, indigo-colored magic. We move off the road and aim for the swelling foothills, but there are no easy paths and we’re not nearly fast enough. Another blast of light knocks the horse off its feet and we hit the ground hard, a tangle of arms and legs and howling tiger. Darjin bolts out of my arms as the horse rights itself with a whinny of protest, disappearing ahead of us.
“Go!” North pushes me away as he staggers to his feet, wincing with pain. White threads of magic begin spooling along his fingertips as he turns toward Baedan.
I grab him by the back of his coat, yanking him behind a rock. “There are a thousand girls like me in the world,” I say, “but only one Prince of Avinea. Supply and demand, your majesty! Don’t be stupid!”
Still holding his coat, I start pulling him through the labyrinth of channels and valleys, buying us distance.
“We can’t run forever,” says North.
“But we can reach higher ground,” I counter. “And we can make her come to us.”
“You have a plan?”
“My plan was to run,” I admit, “but since that didn’t work, this will have to suffice.”
Another crash of magic splinters a rock above us. North pulls me under the protection of his arms until the fragments have settled before we continue, winding further from the road, deeper into the lava fields.
“Your majesty!” Baedan calls in a mocking singsong some distance behind us and far to the left. “Your heritage does not excuse your cowardice. Either fight me or surrender.”
Satisfied that she’s lost track of us, I pull North into an alcove. Water seeps through the cracks, dampening our coats. “That spell you used the night we met,” I say. “Can you cast that again? That would kill any of them that don’t have protection spells. From there, we pick them off one by one until it’s only you and her. If you can disarm her . . .” I pull Kellig’s knife from my pocket. “The only cure for a hellborne soul is a carved out heart, and I don’t need magic for that.”
North stares at me in amazement.
“Previous life,” I quip to his unspoken question, before I half smile, hoping forced confidence will outweigh my fear.
North pulls me closer and kisses me, fierce and fast and breathless. “If we survive, you owe me that story.”
Pulling the bag from around his shoulder, he drops it on the ground and rubs his hands dry down the front of his thighs. “Baedan will have to cut my heart out to kill me; magic won’t suffice, not with the spells I wear. I’ll have to let her get close. When she does . . .”
“I’ll be there,” I say.
North hesitates, guilt warring with something else I’m too terrified, too selfish to name—a look he can’t afford to give anyone until he’s safely crowned king. “If something happens to me,” he says, “find Captain Benjamin Chadwick in New Prevast, at the Saint Ergoet’s Monastery. Give him this”—he reaches into his coat and retrieves a small stone with a hole worn through the center—“and he’ll understand. Do you understand?”
Another nod, a sudden desire to cry. I clutch the front of his shirt, thrown back to that night four months ago, to the last time I saw Thaelan alive.
“Good-bye,” I whisper, voice cracking. “Just in case.”
North embraces me. “Good-bye,” he murmurs.
My fingers find his and I hold on tight. “Take every last thread,” I say.
I know what to
expect this time, and brace for the discomfort. But North is as gentle with his magic as he is with his kisses; the only pain I feel is entirely my fault as my heart starts to break.
Within an instant, the magic is gone and I’m hollow again as North releases me without looking back. I allow myself a moment of grief before I follow, nearly stumbling with surprise when a bolt of magic splits the sky and webs it like lightning. Cries of pain ring out and I clench my knife tighter, gratified.
He hit his marks.
I scramble higher for a better view. Half a dozen hellborne fight through the lava fields, unsteady on their horses. Baedan has abandoned hers, her fury evident even from here as she spins a circle, searching for North. She casts a spell of colored light, obliterating a rocky outcropping.
“To think,” she calls, “all those nights we shared campsites, North. All those mornings we haggled over each other’s leads. I could have slit your throat and ended the competition years ago.”
“Temperance leads to impotence,” North calls from somewhere behind her.
She twists toward his voice, gesturing several of her men to follow. They do so reluctantly, and rightly so: A moment later, they scream as North’s spell burns the flesh from their bones.
Only four left.
I use the distraction to dart behind another rock, wetting my lips. A woman dismounts from her horse a few yards away, clutching a curved spear in one hand. She wears a leather vest that exposes her upper body, and for a moment, I allow myself to doubt my abilities, my conviction. She’s huge, built to withstand the Burn. For the first time, I don’t think of Loomis’s pistol as a nightmare but a blessing. One shot and we’d be down to three.
Guaranteed victory.
Baedan growls, casting another spell that scorches the air with the smell of rotted carrion. “Why waste magic? Face me like a man. Like a prince.” She snorts. “Face me like the king your father never was.”
Crouching, I grab a pebble from the ground and toss it toward the woman. She twists, eyes narrowing, and takes a step closer. My saliva dries, swelling my tongue, but I tell myself it’s no different than a fight back home. As she draws nearer, I brace my weight and steel my nerves: strike first and strike fast.