“Sometimes,” he said.
“Then sometimes, perhaps, you understand that everything we do is in service to his memory. To preserve the precious gifts he gave us in death. Divine blood runs in our veins. That is not a responsibility to be taken lightly.”
Councilor Adara looked as if she truly believed every word she was saying. Evander wanted to point out that since diviners, sentients, rooks, and seers weren’t allowed to sit on the council, none of the councilors actually had any divine blood in their veins. As he looked across their self-satisfied faces, he understood for a brief moment the loathing that Cassa wore like a second skin. The council was meant to carry the burdens of the city, to protect and to serve. Instead, they sat here beneath a mosaic of a distant past, shielded by tradition, and fighting only to preserve their own significance in a world that had long ago left Eldra to decay. The responsibility that had driven him here wasn’t to a dead god but to the city full of people who had been left behind.
But it hadn’t been enough, and he was so tired. Maybe the councilors had preserved their power for so long merely by outlasting everyone else. There wasn’t anything he could say that would make a difference here, so he said nothing and let the guards lead him away.
Once in the corridor, he heard the familiar cadence of Cassa’s voice as she came around the corner, cuffed and flanked by a pair of guards. Whatever mocking comment she was making died on her lips when she met his gaze. Her hair had fallen across one eye, and for a split second she was that younger, softer version of herself—that person she might have been in a different life. Some forgotten part of himself ached. He knew he ought to say something, but no words came, and his escorts propelled him in the opposite direction. The council really wasn’t wasting any time with this second sentencing. Alys would be mollified by the efficiency at least.
He thought the guards would take him back to the dungeons to await his execution, but they were headed through unfamiliar corridors. When they reached a barred wooden door, Evander’s heart skipped a beat. Fear burned through his veins, and for a moment his exhaustion was forgotten, drowned in the certainty of what awaited beyond that door.
The night air was damp with a recent rain, and he splashed through a few puddles pooled in the cobblestones before one of the guards jerked him to a stop. The clouds had cleared enough that moonlight shone through. Once his eyes adjusted, Evander could see that they were in the middle of a small, empty courtyard. The walls were high, but a cool wind dipped in, pricking his exposed skin. The night was the same as it had been a few hours ago. This was the same wind that had whipped through the valley as he and Newt crossed to the wood. This was the same moon that had glinted off the roof of the Blacksmith’s cottage. Not so long ago, he’d kissed Newt in the shadow of that cottage, swept by the wind and surrounded by silver.
That was what he tried to think about now. That, and none of the rest. Not the executioner beneath the citadel or the council in their Judgment Hall. Not his parents, somewhere alone in captivity because he hadn’t been able to save them. Not the weight of the iron around his wrists or the bite of stone as the guards pushed him to his knees. Not the click of the pistol’s hammer behind his head. Not the painful breath he drew in that would be his last.
FORTY-TWO
ALYS
Alys had lost track of time, but she knew that Evander and Cassa should have been back by now. Even taking into account their penchant for back talk, how long could it possibly take for the council to pronounce a sentence they’d already decided on? She tried not to let her mind run through the possibilities, but it ran anyway, circling around and around them until she was dizzy and exhausted. Her chest started to constrict, and she could feel the panic creeping from her brain into her body. Not again, not again, not again.
She’d been on the verge of losing control after the guard came for Evander, and then when a different guard showed up shortly thereafter to take Cassa, the maelstrom spun wild. She didn’t want the council to decide her death or her parents’ deaths. She didn’t want to die. But more than anything, she didn’t want to watch her brother and her friends die first. They were in this together, they had always been in this together, they couldn’t leave her alone, they couldn’t—
Dimly, she had recognized that Cassa was kneeling in front of her, despite the guard hovering impatiently at the threshold. It was Cassa’s fault they were down here in the first place. If only she’d told them the truth. If only she hadn’t left them behind.
Cassa took both Alys’s hands in hers. Alys hadn’t realized she was driving her fingernails into her palms, but they burned as Cassa’s fingertips slid across them.
“Let’s go,” the guard said. His voice felt so far away. Her vision was growing hazy and bright at the edges as her thoughts roiled and raged.
“Hold on,” Cassa told him. She tilted her head to look Alys in the eye. “Alys.”
If only she’d told them the truth. If only she hadn’t left them behind. Alys ignored her. It wasn’t difficult, with the world falling away piece by piece. Soon it wouldn’t exist at all. Soon she would be alone.
“Alys,” Cassa repeated, giving her hands a squeeze. “Remember that time you fished me out of an underground lake just before a creature with probably very sharp teeth dragged me down to my death?”
“I said, let’s go.” The guard rapped his pistol against the door.
“And I said hold on,” Cassa shot back, her eyes never leaving Alys’s.
Alys managed a short breath. Then another. Though he hadn’t made a sound, she knew that Newt was staring at them both with marked concern. Cassa was going to get herself shot right here in their prison cell. So typical.
“What about it?” Alys asked, surprised at how steady the sound of her own voice was despite everything.
Cassa’s lips twitched into a smile.
“Nothing,” she said with a shrug. “It’s just a great story. The bards are going to love it.”
Then she stood up and turned toward the guard. Alys watched her, realizing belatedly that the maelstrom had slowed, her vision was clearing, and Cassa had just given her something small and simple but so important.
“Doesn’t matter how many times I save your life,” Alys called after her. “You’re still not immortal.”
Cassa threw her and Newt a backward glance. Silhouetted by the lantern light, chin high, heedless of the gun at her chest, she really did look like someone the bards would sing about in the centuries to come.
“I dare anyone to prove it,” Cassa said with a grin. Then the guard slammed the door shut.
That had been a long time ago. Too long. Alys had kept the panic at bay for a while, but it was circling back, ever closer, ever hungrier. She raised her eyes to meet Newt’s, thinking that if he wasn’t worried, she could let herself breathe. But if he was trying to put on a brave face for her, he didn’t do a very good job. Even in the shadows she could see the apprehension in every line of his features. She felt sick.
The voice of the guard on duty yanked her out of the downward spiral. His words were indistinct, but not so much that she couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“What are you doing down here?” he asked.
Alys climbed to her feet and pressed her ear against the metal grating. The reply was softer, lost in the corridor of stone. The guard coughed uncomfortably.
“I don’t think that—”
Quiet. A faint, muffled thump. More quiet. And then:
“Cassa? Alys?”
Behind her, Alys could hear the rattle of iron as Newt jumped to his feet as well. That meant she wasn’t imagining it. It really was Vesper.
“Here,” she called out and banged the iron of her cuff on the grating.
A few moments later, Vesper’s face appeared. Her face glistened with sweat, and she was panting like she was either exhausted or in pain. She turned the key in the lock and yanked the door open. Alys had the urge to hug her but stopped short at how strangely fragile she look
ed. She wavered slightly on her feet. Her hair was falling from its pins in frizzy tendrils, and she was ghostly pale.
“Are you hurt?” Alys asked as Vesper inserted a smaller key into her cuffs.
“No. Just not feeling quite myself at the moment.” She flashed a mirthless smile and ducked her head over Newt’s cuffs. “Where’re Evander and Cassa?”
“The guards took Evander maybe half an hour ago,” Newt said. “And Cassa pretty soon after.”
Vesper’s lips flattened into a grim line, but she didn’t say anything.
“We have to find them,” Alys said.
“We’ve got to find a way to get through the citadel undetected first,” said Newt.
Vesper led the way toward the alcove. She was shaking her head.
“There was an . . . incident in the interrogation room. A guard is dead. One of the council’s sentients and the chancellor have gone missing. The alarm will be raised any minute now. Soon every corridor will be crawling with guards.”
“What happened?” Newt asked.
“I think the less you know the better,” Vesper said. “But the rook is getting stronger. And bolder.”
“No, I mean here.” Newt nudged the unconscious guard with his foot. “Did you hit him with something?”
“Something like that,” Vesper muttered, tugging nervously on her sleeve.
“We can’t leave here without Evander,” Alys said. “Cassa too. I don’t care how many guards are up there.”
“I might have an idea,” Newt said, scooping something up from the table.
“What?” Alys asked.
Newt turned and extended his hand, palm up. He uncurled his fingers to reveal the rook’s bone runes.
“You could guide us to them,” he said.
Alys’s heart stuttered, and she pushed Newt’s hand away.
“I can’t read those,” she said.
“I thought diviners could read anything,” Vesper said.
“Maybe some diviners, but I can barely read coins.” She shot a glare at Newt. “You know that.”
He didn’t say anything, just watched her in that composed, careful way of his. She couldn’t believe he was putting her in this position. Putting the weight of Evander and Cassa’s lives on her shoulders, knowing that Alys always cracked under pressure. It was true that she’d read the coins in the crypts when they’d had no other choice. That she’d rowed alone across that silent lake to save Cassa. That a long time ago, she had followed the daughter of the city’s most notorious rebels toward a new, fiery purpose, changing her life irrevocably in the process.
Why did every challenge have to feel like the first she’d ever faced, when Cassa and Evander and Newt always grew sharper, stronger, braver? Why, then, was it never any easier?
Her lungs were aching, and the edge of her vision was bright and blurry. Her head whirled in the maelstrom, uncontrollable, unstoppable, incurable. Sharper, stronger, braver. She could never be any of those things. She could never be. She could never. She could.
Alys took the runes from Newt and spilled them onto the tabletop. He and Vesper stepped back to give her space, and she leaned closer to the runes. At first, she saw nothing. Just a handful of old bones and forgotten symbols of a bygone era. Nothing here could help them. The corners of her vision were still painfully bright, and the panic still lurched in her chest, but she wouldn’t let it control her. Nothing. There was nothing.
Then she saw too much. A spasm of futures. Too many to differentiate. Some of them blindingly tragic and others comfortingly sweet.
She blinked, reminding herself what her mother had taught her. How the variations of the future were like hundreds of pieces of paper, held up to the light. Sometimes the images overlapped, sometimes they didn’t. Alys just had to find the boldest images, the ones that repeated the most.
Two guards in front of a moonlit chapel. Meaningless. And not what she was looking for.
A cold hand wrapped around a colder vial. Still not what she needed.
Evander. She seized on the image, letting everything else fall away. From there it was easier to work backward, expanding her focus until she could see a whole picture, until she could see what they had to do and what would happen if they didn’t. Bile rose in her throat at the last image, and for a moment she was more terrified than she’d ever been in her life.
It didn’t have to happen that way though. There was time to stop it.
“We have to hurry,” she said, sweeping the runes into her hand and shoving them into her pocket. “They’re going to execute him.”
She led the way up the stairs. She hadn’t seen Cassa, but if she was in trouble too, she was going to have to hold her own for a while. Evander’s future was too precarious, too immediate for Alys to possibly ignore. Cassa would understand.
Their path was laid out in her mind’s eye like a map. She didn’t know the layout of the citadel, but she knew the way to Evander. Every turn, every detour, every corner to pause at while waiting for guards to pass, every doorway to hurry through while avoiding watchful eyes.
When they reached the wooden door, it was unbarred, and Alys knew they still had a chance. She didn’t warn the others what to expect. She didn’t even slow down. She yanked open the door and threw her shoulder into the back of the man she knew would be standing there. A shot rang out, echoing across stone, but it went wide.
The man spun around, and Alys stared down the black barrel of his gun for a heartbeat. Then Evander found his feet and tackled the guard to the ground with much more success than she’d had. A second guard emerged from the shadows, pointing his pistol but unable to fire while Evander and his partner were locked together in struggle. Alys opened her mouth to shout a warning—for whom, she didn’t know—but in the next instant Newt was at the man’s back, one arm tight against his throat. The man flailed, firing wildly. Alys could have sworn she felt the heat of the bullet on her arm.
Vesper stepped out of the doorway and placed her hand on the man’s cheek. He tried to jerk away from her, but Newt held him in place. A few seconds later the man slumped to the ground, unconscious or dead—Alys didn’t know. Vesper swayed on her feet, gripping her head, and Newt caught her by the elbow. At Alys’s feet, Evander had managed to knock the gun from the guard’s hand. Alys kicked it away, and it skittered across the cobblestones into shadow. She was trying to decide if she should try kicking the guard too, but Evander got a hold of the back of his head and slammed his forehead into the ground. The man fell limp.
For a few seconds, the courtyard was deathly still. Then Alys’s mind caught up with what had just happened, with what had almost just happened, and she choked back a sob.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, trying to help Evander disentangle himself from the unconscious man.
Newt was there too, and together they got Evander onto his feet. He was gasping for breath and looking between the two of them like he was looking at ghosts, like he didn’t believe they could possibly be standing there.
“I’ve been worse,” he managed.
Newt still had a hold on Evander’s arm. From the look on his face, he was either about to laugh or cry or pass out. Maybe all three. The unmistakable heat between them, which had been simmering for a couple of months now, wasn’t something that Alys had ever experienced, but that didn’t mean she was oblivious to it. She decided now was a good time to check on Vesper, who was leaning against the wall of the citadel.
“I’m fine,” Vesper said, before she could ask anything. She didn’t meet Alys’s eyes.
Alys looked down at the guard. She could see now that his chest was moving with slow breaths.
“I didn’t take anything from him,” Vesper said quietly. “Memories are delicate. If you twist them around enough, the mind shuts down to protect them. It’s not permanent.”
“Thank you,” Alys said. “We’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”
Vesper looked up at her, her eyebrows raised. If she’d been expecting some sort of f
ear or rebuke, Alys wasn’t going to be the one to give it to her. It was true that the council and Solan had made a habit of taking advantage of people with the gifts at their disposal, but Vesper wasn’t like them.
“You’re welcome,” Vesper said, still hesitant.
“I don’t just mean for tonight,” Alys said. “Telling your uncle about Cassa’s plan was the best decision. I think Cassa must see that too, even if she’ll never admit it.”
The corners of Vesper’s lips curled up in a small, sad smile. The boys came over before she could reply.
“Can I get a little help here?” Evander extended his manacled wrists.
Vesper dug the key out of her pocket and freed him.
“Where do we go next?” Newt glanced at Alys.
“I guess we should find Cassa,” Alys said. A tiny part of her wanted to just let Cassa lie in the bed she’d made—isn’t that what Cassa herself would tell them to do? But just like the first time they’d escaped the dungeons, leaving Cassa behind was never an option. Not really.
“She must still be in the Judgment Hall,” Evander said. “I saw her before—”
He cut himself off at the sound of the bell ringing the quarter hour. For a few seconds, no one said anything. They were all thinking the same thing. With every passing minute, Solan was closer to being free.
“There’s still time to stop Solan,” Vesper said. “His next dose of mirasma is at the first morning bell, and I know where they deliver the elixir.”
“We have to help Cassa,” Alys said. “And we have to find our parents too.”
“Your parents are safe,” Vesper said. “They’re in a house in the upper echelon. No one can hurt them there.”
“Except your uncle.” Evander’s eyes flashed darkly.
Vesper shook her head.
“I tried to convince him not to take them, but he was afraid you wouldn’t agree to help otherwise. He never would have hurt them though. I swear, they’re safe.”
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