Shimmer and Burn

by Mary Taranta

  A bloody, savage hate fills me with an overwhelming need to hurt her, any way I can, no matter the cost to me. Likewise, the black pulses turn into bold lines as North fights against his own rising fury. “If you think—” he starts.

  “You stand on the brink of war,” Bryn says, her dark eyes glittering, “and I offer you the weapon you need to win. And I also offer a little advice, your majesty.” Snapping back her skirt, Bryn withdraws a small dagger from her boot. She presses it to her wrist and smiles that cold, cruel smile. “Never tell your enemy what your weaknesses are.”

  North’s voice is all warning. “Don’t.”

  I barely flinch, too numb to feel pain. Someone holds me steady, Captain Chadwick, I think. “She’s bleeding,” he calls as Bryn completes the line down my arm, from my elbow to my wrist.

  Settling back in her saddle, Bryn shares a sly, pleased look with her father. “So,” she says, tapping the bloody dagger against her darkly painted lips. “Let the negotiations begin.”

  Twenty-Five

  ON NORTH’S ORDERS, I RIDE to New Prevast with Captain Chadwick, who clears his throat every few minutes and apologizes every time the horse jolts my body into his.

  It’s a long ride.

  North keeps ahead of us, Darjin curled behind him in the saddle, in line with Bryn and her father. They don’t speak to him or to each other. Whatever truce they might have called has not forgiven their perceived sins.

  “Usually his majesty only brings home jars of rocks,” Captain Chadwick jokes at one point.

  I humor him and force a smile. He clears his throat and doesn’t speak again.

  New Prevast is a city cradled by the sea, built from the same granite that forms the Kettich Mountains at its back. Most of the city is arranged around a half-moon harbor, but the palace sits apart, on a spit of land that curves out to sea before angling back at the mouth of the bay. The spit is mostly flat green moss and black sand, but a wave of earth rises along its northeastern side in a natural wall, protecting the palace from the harsh winds and wild waters of the open sea beyond. In contrast, the harbor waters are calm, more placid, filled with a meager handful of fishing boats lashed to a quay and the columns of a covered bridge that connects the palace grounds to the city itself. Everything sparkles in the rising dawn, and I catch North watching my reaction. He quickly looks away when my eyes meet his.

  While there are more people here than in Revnik, the city still feels empty, almost haunted, as we ride to Saint Ergoet’s, into a courtyard tiled in checkered white and gray stone and surrounded by a two-storied, columned promenade. A bell tower rises at one corner, and vines drip from the moss-covered roof, heavy with blossoms that fill the air with a softly spiced smell. Men in dark robes pause to kiss their fingertips and hold their palms toward North as a younger boy in lighter gray hurries to take his horse.

  Dismounting, North faces the rest of us. “You’ll forgive the humble accommodations,” he says, eyes on Perrote. “We rarely entertain foreign dignitaries.”

  “Why don’t you live in the palace?” asks Bryn with a look of dismay at the unadorned courtyard.

  “The palace is meant for the King of Avinea,” North says, patting his horse’s flank before allowing the stable boy to lead her away. “As yet, I’m merely the regent.”

  She snorts, derisive, exchanging dark looks with her father. “The sainted North,” she says. “We’ll make a sinner of you yet.”

  “The palace costs money to keep,” North says flatly. “It is not all virtue, Miss Dossel.”

  Captain Chadwick helps me down, gentle but steady. Despite his age—only a few years older than North—he commands quiet authority, directing half his men to their barracks and the other half to posts throughout the monastery. Then, with his hand on his sword, he rocks his weight back on his heels to await North’s order.

  North looks toward me and through me. At some unspoken gesture, Chadwick clears his throat and offers me his arm. “If you please, Miss Locke,” he says. “A warm bath and a hot meal are waiting for you upstairs.”

  I hesitate; no one else is being dismissed.

  But North doesn’t contradict the offer, and wounded, I accept Chadwick’s arm.

  He guides me through an arched, open hallway leading to a dining room on one side, a sunken kitchen on the other, before taking a flight of rickety stairs leading to the open promenade on the second floor, past doors marked with slotted windows and numbers hanging on the wall. One of the doors is propped open, a single cot inside, a bloodied face framed against a graying pillow.

  Tobek.

  His face is swollen with bruises, his throat paler than the sheets pulled to his chest. He sleeps under the watch of two guards—one of North’s and one of Perrote’s. A girl holds Tobek’s hand as she perches on the edge of a hard-backed chair by the bed. Long gold hair falls down her back in softly brushed waves. Iron chains are locked around her feet.

  My heart stops. “Cadence?”

  She looks up at my voice, but Chadwick ushers me past, toward another set of stairs, before I can see her face.

  “Wait,” I say, panicked.

  “I have orders,” he says, holding me back.

  Blood beats in my ears, rising to a scream. No. After all that I’ve done, all I will still do, they cannot keep my sister from me, not when she’s right there.

  Chadwick hangs back to allow me to go first up another narrow flight of stairs. I feint a step forward before darting around him, bolting back for the door.

  “Cadence!” I crash into the door frame and for one breathless moment, my sister’s eyes lock on me, bright blue and free of any magic spells, before a man tackles me to the ground, dragging me outside. A second man darts forward and closes the door, standing in the threshold with his hand on the knob, his other hand hovering over the hilt of his undrawn sword. He eyes me in silent assessment before his gaze flickers higher, to the roofline.

  Guards. I didn’t even see them before. Over a dozen hidden in the shadows, their loaded crossbows aimed for me. A perceived threat.

  Fear brines my tongue and I don’t resist when the first guard pulls me to my feet. Chadwick gestures to the others and they lower their weapons, but I watch them warily, chilled by how quickly they fade back out of view.

  “Why can’t I see her?” I ask.

  Chadwick takes my arm, more firmly than before. “She is a prisoner,” he says. “I have no power to intercede.”

  “What was her crime?” I twist in his grip, watching the two guards at the door, desperate for another glimpse of Cadence.

  Chadwick looks at me, pity splashed across his kind face. “She’s your sister,” he says simply.

  The third floor is shorter than the one below, with only two doors. Jostling a key from his pocket, Chadwick swings open the first and I stumble inside, blood humming, barely noticing the bed or the window or the fireplace. The wooden floors creak as I cross to the window, my shaking reflection thrown across the city. Chadwick watches silently behind me, his hands folded in front of him.

  “The water is warm,” he says, and I vaguely notice a bathtub in front of the fire. “We’ve sent for a girl to attend you; I’ll send her up as soon as she arrives.”

  I stare at my reflection, hugging the chill from my bones as I replay that stolen glimpse of Cadence again and again. How did Perrote even know about her?

  Alistair.

  I’ll kill him, I think, and my savageness surprises me even as I welcome its heat through my veins. But my hate is chased with self-reproach: It’s my fault for trusting my sister to a boy bred to show no mercy.

  Chadwick reaches for the door but hesitates. “Will you be all right, Miss Locke?”

  I close my eyes, leaning my forehead to the glass. Despite myself, hot tears roll down my cheeks. “Yes,” I say, and it’s a beautiful lie—the first of many I’ll have to tell if I’m going to survive any future involving Bryn and her father.

  Chadwick taps an uneven rhythm against the doorknob.
“I’m sorry,” he says at length.

  I open my eyes and turn toward his words, but the door shuts behind him with a soft but solid click. A moment later, a key turns and footsteps recede.

  Locked in, alone.

  Only North fills every corner of the room, from the jars of rocks to the spine-cracked books, to the indelible smell of chimney smoke that clings to the walls. Tidy stacks of old lessons fill a desk; more rocks line the windowsill. Reaching into my pocket, I find the rock he gave me earlier, the one that would earn me Chadwick’s trust. Rough in places, worn smooth in others, the hole through the center is big enough for my little finger to slide through.

  With a growl, I hurl the rock across the room where it clatters beneath the bathtub. I don’t want a rock; I want a spell above my heart to protect it from feeling like this, like it’s held together by weak stitches and hanging threads.

  An instant later, I’m on my hands and knees, retrieving the rock. I do have a spell above my heart, and while North removed the iron from beneath my skin, the memory of it remains.

  I have to be stronger than this.

  The sun is falling by the time a girl knocks and announces herself as Gretik, a dress carried over one arm to replace the filthy one I’d shrugged off before my bath. She’s all patience as I fumble through the uneasy act of being dressed by someone else. After bandaging the worst of my wounds, she clicks her tongue against her teeth and smiles like nothing’s wrong. “I’ll bring you your dinner,” she says, and bows her way out the door.

  She locks it behind her.

  I force myself to eat the heavy stew she returns with, but it sits like lead in my stomach. As she clears away the tray, I finally ask, “Where’s North?”

  “Prince Corbin retired an hour ago,” she says, and I don’t miss the light tone she uses to correct my address. “Did you need anything else?”

  I shake my head and ignore the ache in my chest, reminding me that this was the choice I made. Even so, I didn’t realize how much I craved an acknowledgment from him until I didn’t get one.

  Gretik returns in the morning, after the bell tower calls the monks to prayer. She escorts me downstairs and I follow like a leashed dog, uncomfortable with so much ceremony. She curtsies and nods me into the dining hall where a single meal has been laid out in a room full of heavy tables and polished bench seats that smell like wax.

  I wait for her to disappear down the hall before I enter the room. A figure glances up immediately and I flush, mumbling apologies as I turn to go.

  “Faris,” a voice says, full of relief.

  My heart stops as Alistair Pembrough crushes a cigarette out on the floor. He exhales a cloud of smoke and moves toward me.

  The shock of seeing him gives way to rage. I meet him halfway, grabbing him by the front of his coat and slamming him back against a table. It screeches out of alignment beneath our weight. “You were supposed to be watching her! Protecting her!”

  “I said I would keep her safe and I did,” he says hotly, grabbing my wrists. “She’s alive and she’s here, and that’s what matters for now.”

  “But?” My voice wavers in challenge.

  “But you’re on dangerous ground,” he says. “Brindaigel is in a panic. Perrote opened a bridge across the gorge eight days ago and it’s remained there ever since. More than that, he and his men haven’t flown to the skies in search of the missing princess. They walked into Avinea. And when they return, not one of them will bear any sign of the infection they said could not be avoided. You made them human and you made them liars, and if you think Perrote will forgive you for that, you had better open your eyes and watch your back.”

  My gaze falls to his exposed scars. Control, I think, and release him, dragging my hands through my hair before they curl around my neck.

  Alistair sighs, rubbing his mouth with his hand before shrugging helplessly. “What was I supposed to do?” he asks. “Perrote sends his councilmen after you and one of them ends up dead. He sends his shadow crows and none of them return. You were a liability and he was getting desperate. Why else do you think he’s here?” He leans closer, lowering his voice to a pointed whisper. “Because if someone was going to uncover his secret, he was going to profit from it too. Cadence was his bartering chip.”

  All the anger and frustration of the last week burns through my veins, igniting the poison that begins to itch with hunger and a desire to hurt him. “You knew he wasn’t a king?”

  Alistair fumbles through his coat for his cigarette case. “I’ve known since the day my father branded me with a thief’s coat of arms, injected me with a loyalty spell binding me to a stolen crown, and told me about a promise he made years ago that the daughter of the woman he loved would make it to Avinea so his son could be free. So they both would be free.” He meets my eyes, expression searching, begging me to understand.

  Pay attention, Faris.

  Alistair didn’t choose me to carry this magic to New Prevast out of guilt like Bryn suggested, but because that was my mother’s plan all along. He had the stolen magic and I had the spell to find Merlock. Together, we could have destroyed Brindaigel. She didn’t die because she was sloppy and got caught. She died sacrificing herself to hide what she’d done so we could be free.

  I am my mother’s daughter, I realize with a chill. Even then, she must have known I had an insatiable heart that would always crave more. Only she expected Alistair would fill that hunger.

  My fingers dig into the back of my neck and I watch Alistair fumble through his case before sliding a cigarette between his lips. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?” I ask.

  He swipes the cigarette back out of his mouth. “Would you have believed me?”

  I stare at him, and Alistair looks away. “I needed an army to tear that castle down, Faris, and I needed to survive that battle. Bryn doesn’t want me but I knew she wouldn’t kill me when she came back. I’m too valuable as a pet. But if I told you he wasn’t a king and you came back with an army, alone . . .”

  I swore to kill him four months ago. Would I have spared his life if he became one of Perrote’s mindless warriors defending the castle? Or would I see it as justice overdue?

  We both know the answer to that.

  “So now she’s a queen,” I say instead. “I’m still a slave, my sister is a hostage, but at least you’ll be free.”

  “Faris—”

  “No! I am not your weapon anymore!” I turn away from him, rocking my head back to the wooden arches that frame the plastered ceiling. “Did you tell him about Cadence? Did you make a deal with him!?”

  “No.” Alistair hesitates. “Your father did. Perrote offered clemency to anyone with information about who could have kidnapped his daughter. Your father knew you were gone, he knew you were angry, and he knew—when he heard about the tunnels, Faris—he knew it was you. He thought he could save Cadence by turning you in.”

  My heart cracks. My poor father, too drunk—too sad—to know better than to trust Perrote to show mercy. “And?”

  Alistair slides his hands in his pockets and stares toward the bank of windows on the far wall. A lock of hair falls over his eye. “And I promise you he didn’t suffer,” he says, voice thick.

  “Oh, but I will,” I whisper.

  Folding an arm across my stomach, I sink onto the bench seat behind me. Alistair tentatively sits down beside me. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  I twist away from his sympathy. “Why are you here?”

  He tries to light his cigarette but the match dances out of reach and he has to chase it with his other hand. “I came for my bride,” he says with a snort of derision, finally succeeding. He tosses the match aside and takes a slow drag. “Who apparently came for a prince. Brindaigel wasn’t big enough for her anymore.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say flatly.

  “Me too.” He swallows hard. “Perrote has no reason to humor me and my experiments anymore. I’ll be sent back to Brindaigel, my betrothal dissolved, and r
esume my court-appointed duties.” The shaking returns, and he barks out a self-deprecatory laugh, rubbing his forehead with his thumb. “Gods Above, Faris, this is not how I expected it to happen.”

  “What was supposed to happen?”

  He glances over, expression troubled. “I don’t know,” he says.

  Another mystery gifted by my mother. She left us magic instead of directions, clues instead of answers. My only hope now is that her contact still lives in New Prevast and knows more than I do.

  Shaking my head, I rub at my forearm, digging at the buried itch I can’t reach. The poison in my blood hums against my skin, smoky blue and silver, darker than usual, fed by my anger.

  “So it’s true.” Alistair shifts, reaching for my arm. “You’re infected.”

  I pull away. “Don’t touch me.”

  Rolling his eyes, he rummages through his coat pocket and brandishes a chalk-colored rock, webbed with holes. He cradles it between his thumb and fingers. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Pumice,” I say. “Hardened lava.”

  “It’s a filter,” he says, rolling it into his palm. “The entire city’s water supply runs through these rocks before it reaches the cisterns. It’s cleaner than the water we drink in Brindaigel and we drink straight from the mountain itself.”

  “So?”

  “So ask me to stay,” he says. “Give me a reason to, Faris Locke, and maybe I can give you a reason to believe that this”—he touches my arm with the edge of the pumice—“isn’t a permanent parlor trick to show at parties.”

  Hope is cruel and yet, it rises anyway: Who better than Bryn’s mad scientist to perform a miracle? “Are you saying you can clean blood? You can remove the infection? Without a transfusion?”

  Alistair arches his eyebrows and reclines against the table with an arrogant smirk that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

  I stare at him. “Blood is not water.”

  “And magic is not science,” he says, “and yet a very handsome boy with no magical ability was able to put enough magic inside you to make a not very handsome prince take notice.”