“Yes,” said Vesper.
“I’m not stupid,” Cassa said. “I know we aren’t going to bring down the council tomorrow. I know I’ll never be able to accomplish half of what my parents did. But I have to keep fighting. That’s all I have left.”
“That’s not true,” Vesper said.
Cassa didn’t reply. She just stared across the river and the valley, into the inscrutable night, until finally they had to return to the city.
FORTY-SEVEN
CASSA
Cassa ran all the way to the crypts, stopping to walk only when the stitch in her side made it impossible to breathe. She’d given up trying to be stealthy. The first guard who’d caught sight of her had collapsed immediately to the ground. It seemed Solan was as determined as she was that she would make it to his lair. She had no idea what he wanted with her, but she knew she’d do anything to bring her friends back. Despite all the uncertainty, that alone was enough to keep her moving forward.
With the new familiarity Vesper had given her, the journey to the lake went quickly, though passing by those endless rows of tombs still cast a shiver down her spine. She’d taken a ghost globe from the citadel, but the shadows felt more grasping, more enveloping, now that she was alone. Her heart pounded mercilessly the whole way across the lake, giving her a pulsing headache to rival the pain in her shoulders and back. The chamber of seer statues was as dark as they’d left it, and once she’d crossed the raised path, Cassa forced herself to stop.
Even though her chest clenched at the very thought, she walked to the feet of the statue where Mira’s body was splayed on the ground. In the blue light, she was impossibly pale. She didn’t look like herself anymore. With shaking hands, Cassa set down the globe. Gently, painstakingly, she positioned Mira on her back, her arms crossed. There was no color in her cheeks, and her skin was cool as Cassa pushed the hair away from her face. She deserved a little dignity, and that was all Cassa could give her. She combed her mind uselessly for the words to the death rites, but it was far too late for that anyway. Maybe Mira didn’t even believe in the Slain God. Maybe she had gone somewhere kinder than oblivion.
Achingly, Cassa climbed to her feet and retrieved the ghost globe. Solan was so close, she imagined she could feel his malignant power, leeching at her resolve. She didn’t let herself think as her footsteps led her into the warmly lit chamber. Vesper might always be three steps ahead, but Cassa had run out of moves a long time ago. Solan probably knew that. It’s probably why he had chosen her for whatever final task or torment he had in mind. The others had their wits and charm and speed and bravery to fall back on. But without her friends at her back, Cassa had nothing.
Solan was seated in his usual armchair. He was healthier than she’d seen him last, though his features still shifted unsettlingly. Did that mean the bloodbond hadn’t taken effect yet? Not that it mattered. He had the elixir to get him through the final hours. She could see the clear corked bottle on the table near his elbow. The blue-green liquid, shimmering with a silver sheen, was strangely mesmerizing. That one dose of mirasma was the last thing between Solan and centuries’ worth of vengeance.
“Hello, Cassandra,” he said, elegant as ever. He gestured toward the sofa. “Thank you for joining me.”
“It wasn’t exactly an invitation.” She didn’t sit, didn’t move any closer to him. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want.” He cast a glance toward the elixir. There was an undercurrent of impatience in his tone. “I want what I’ve always wanted. What you’ve always wanted. To see the council and the chancellor fall.”
“So what’s stopping you?”
He cocked his head slightly, considering her. Even now, was he reading her memories? Turning over every mistake, every doubt and fear and pang of regret?
“What stopped you,” he asked, “when you had the chance?”
She shrugged with forced nonchalance.
“I don’t like prophecies telling me what to do.”
He just stared at her, unmoving. His visage was fluctuating so tumultuously now that it made her dizzy to look at him. Only his eyes were still bright and constant, piercing her with a frustration that was almost visceral. Something occurred to her.
“Shouldn’t you have taken your medicine by now?” she asked, looking pointedly at the mirasma. “It must be getting hard to hold yourself together without it.”
Even as she spoke, she observed the truth of her words, the hard set of his jaw, the sweat gleaming on his brow, the shudders that ran through him periodically. That frustration in his eyes was sharpening into something fiercer. Deadlier.
“I will,” he said. There was something dark and slithering in his tone that felt faintly familiar to Cassa, like a nightmare she’d forgotten. “But only once I’m sure.”
Sure of what? Between his divination and his sentience, he had to know that they had failed to poison the elixir. He had to know that freedom was finally in his reach.
Or did he?
Cassa smiled, and there was venom in it.
“Must be hard to read the future without your runes.” She clasped her hands behind her back and began to meander casually around the room, pretending to admire the decor. “I would have thought a diviner as skilled as you could read the tea leaves or even a handful of pebbles, but maybe you’re having trouble staying focused.”
She paused to look at him. He was barely containing his anger now. Her smile broadened.
“And I suppose stealing all those memories must really take its toll—even on someone as powerful as you. Maybe your sentience isn’t as accurate as you’d like?” She stopped to face him directly, daring him to contradict her, to read something in her features.
His lip curled in disdain, and he said nothing.
“Down here, so far from the rest of us, I suppose it would be impossible to know anything for certain. Like why I let the chancellor live. Or whether your bloodbond is going to work. Or whether we managed to poison your last elixir.”
The silence between them was thick and tangible, shot through with his rising fury. She couldn’t blame him. How awful it must be to go from borderline omniscience to miserable uncertainty, right at the crux of all his plans. Solan remained still, though his emotions emanated so visibly that Cassa had an idea of what being a sentient was like.
“You don’t know anything, you worthless girl,” he spit out. His whole body was as taut as a bowstring.
“Maybe a nap would help,” Cassa suggested.
He snapped and lunged to his feet. Cassa stumbled back at his approach. She could feel his claws digging into her mind, ripping at her, and she struggled to stay conscious, stay standing. Then, just as suddenly as he’d attacked, he staggered back into his chair. The claws retracted. Her memories were still whole, still hers.
He glared at her through his feeble trembling. She wondered what would happen if he went much longer without the elixir. Would he be just as weak when he lost control of his senses, or would his powers surge once his mind flew apart? Solan himself had said that if he lost control, he didn’t know how much damage he might do. Considering that his power could reach the entire citadel, she was willing to bet a lot. Solan wasn’t an ailing man in need of medicine. He was a dense, burning star, waiting to explode.
“You’re going to help me,” he said.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
He laughed. A low, creeping sound.
“I don’t need to read your thoughts to know that’s not true. Of course you’re afraid of me. I’m the one holding your friends’ lives in my hands.” He tapped his right temple. “Or should I say, my mind.”
Cassa’s hands tightened into fists. No matter how weak he was, no matter what information she managed to glean, she’d never be a threat to him. He held all the cards, just as he always had.
“If I tell you what you want to know, will you return their memories?” She hated the raw vulnerability in her voice.
“I don’t harbor any ill will toward you or
your friends,” he said. “I quite admire you, in fact. You’re the only ones in a city of thousands who kept fighting the council, even after the last rebel was dead.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed him, but did she have a choice? Did it even matter in the end? Once he’d destroyed the council, would there be any limit to his malice? The councilors weren’t the only ones complicit in his imprisonment. There were many more in the citadel who were culpable. She knew from experience that when it came to revenge, there was always one more person to blame.
“Do you swear?” Her breath hitched. If she told him the truth, he would drink the elixir, and it would be over. There would be no going back.
In reply, he closed his eyes. For a long while, he sat unmoving, a furrow in his brow.
“It’s done,” he said at last. “Giving back memories is much easier than taking them.”
He could be lying. Probably was. But she didn’t have a choice. She was three steps behind, struggling to keep up.
“We didn’t get the chance.” She almost pulled out the vial to prove it to him, but something stopped her. An inkling of an idea. “I was about to go into the chapel when you sent your little invitation.”
Solan studied her. Maybe he was trying to read her past. That was fine. He would only see the truth.
“I’m afraid I can’t trust you, Cassandra,” he said, a little sadly. “And I have to know for sure.”
Panic charged up her spine. Would he hurt her friends again?
“Why would I lie?” she demanded. “I have everything to lose.”
“You’ve already proved yourself to be . . . unpredictable.” He gestured toward the sofa. “Please sit down.”
There was no ignoring the order in his tone. This time, she obeyed. Gently, Solan picked up the bottle of elixir and offered it to her.
“Just a sip,” he said. “It will be quite harmless to you, assuming you’re telling the truth.”
That easy. She knew it wasn’t poisoned. One sip, and she could leave this place. He would wreak his revenge, but maybe there would be another way to stop him later.
Or maybe there was one more possibility.
She took the bottle from him with her right hand. The poison was in her left pocket. If she was careful, and if he was distracted, she could ease out the vial. She wasn’t as quick with her fingers as Evander, but she might be able to pull it off. Just one sip. Then all she had to do was pour in the poison and hand it back. So simple.
She popped off the cork, and the iridescent liquid sizzled softly, like it was reacting to the air.
“It doesn’t taste as good as it looks, unfortunately,” said Solan. He spoke casually, but she could see the eagerness in his eyes. He was ready to down the mirasma the second she took a drink. His entire body must have been craving it by now, straining at the seams.
She took a whiff, and though she’d been prepared for the acrid scent, she faked a racking cough into her right arm. With her left, without looking down, she slipped the poison free, wrapping the cold vial in her colder hand. Just one sip, then she could figure out what to do next.
“Surely there’s still a small part of you that wants them dead,” Solan said coaxingly, misconstruing her hesitation. “The council took so much from you. They’ll probably never understand how much.”
He was right, of course. She might as well have died that day, when the news about her parents came. She’d lost the most important part of herself. It had burned with her parents on an anonymous pyre. And from the ashes sparked something both debilitating and empowering. She’d lost her parents, but she gained her purpose.
She opened her hand and glanced down at the vial, just for a second. The rest of the world tilted away. Again she felt that strange sensation, as if her mind was reaching back for a memory that had never existed. Her heart thudded so loudly that surely Solan could hear it. It couldn’t have all been for nothing. All those years, all that pain, all that rage. It had to mean something. With Evander and Alys and Newt and even Vesper, she had defied the citadel itself. And now, in the darkness beneath it, she understood what she was meant to do. She hadn’t been able to pull the trigger, but Solan wouldn’t hesitate to wipe out the council and Chancellor Dane. Before he could do that, she had a choice to make—except it wasn’t really a choice at all, was it?
They would never forgive her.
She left the vial where it was and took a drink before she could change her mind. The metallic, bitter taste assaulted her senses, and she handed the bottle to Solan. Her hand was trembling so hard, she almost dropped it. Solan drank the elixir down in four gulps and sank back in his chair.
Too late to go back now.
“You made the right decision, Cassandra,” he said, wiping his mouth. “I promise I will finish what you started.”
Cassa said nothing. Solan sprang to his feet, energized by the mirasma. He paced around the room as if he could no longer harness his excitement.
“Now I can leave this filthy dungeon behind, and the council will pay. The council and everyone else who let me rot down here while they used my prophecies to fill their coffers.”
Cassa watched him as he moved, practically giddy with his victory.
“Cassa,” she said suddenly.
He paused and looked at her.
“What?”
“My name is Cassa,” she said. “You always call me Cassandra, but that’s not my name.”
He raised an eyebrow, and she could see him struggling to tamp down his elation and plans of glorious revenge to figure out why something as insignificant as a nickname could matter to her right now.
“Cassandra is the name your parents gave you, is it not?”
“My parents called me Cassa.” It was entirely unimportant, and yet somehow, in this moment, it was the most important thing in the world.
He frowned at her in confusion. He started to say something else but winced and clutched his chest. He grabbed at the table and then his chair, managing to sit down before his legs gave out. He was gasping.
Cassa’s own chest had constricted so much that she thought it would crush her lungs. She sucked in a few short breaths, each one hurting more than the last. Solan clawed at his sleeve until he’d exposed his forearm. His eyes widened at what he saw there. Cassa raised her own arms, palms up, to examine them in the light. Her veins were turning black. Black as ink. Black as night. Black as poison.
“Look at that,” she managed to cough. “I guess neither of us is immortal after all.”
WHAT CASSA FORGOT
“I came ahead to give you this,” Vesper said. “We’re running out of time, and I already know you’re going to insist on taking it yourself.”
Cassa nodded and shoved it into her pocket. The least she could do. Her fingers were shaking, but she told herself it was the chilly air.
“Where are Alys and Newt?”
“They’re coming. Newt is hurt, but not bad. Alys is helping him.”
Cassa nodded and peered around the corner. The street in front of the chapel was still empty.
“I have to go,” she said. “Evander is distracting the guard who was on watch. He’ll probably come back here once he’s lost him.”
“Wait.” Vesper put a hand on her shoulder. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
Cassa raised an eyebrow and glanced back at her.
“Are you accusing me of running in with no idea what I’m doing?”
Vesper just stared meaningfully. Cassa let out a short laugh.
“The locked room in the tunnel, the night we escaped,” she said. “That’s where they lower the mirasma to Solan, isn’t it?”
“Impressive memory.”
“Not all of us can be rooks.”
“Be careful, Cassa.”
Cassa darted into the street and ran for the front doors of the chapel. Some caution might have been prudent, but she knew they were running out of time. If the guard managed to lower the elixir before she’d poisoned it, then all was
lost. She paused at the entrance of the chapel long enough to pluck a stone from the garden plot. There wasn’t time for hesitation. She had to move quickly or she’d miss her chance.
She slipped into the chapel and strode up the main aisle. Everything inside was clean and new, at least relative to everything else in the citadel. The council had had to rebuild it quickly after the fire, lest word spread too far about how easily the rebels had infiltrated the wall. Behind the altar, an oak door stood open. The colorful tapestry that had been hiding it was tucked behind the door. If it was open, then the guard was still inside. No hesitation.
She ran for the altar, barely slowing down as she flung the stone into the nearest window. It shattered with satisfying volume. She ducked behind the door, and not a moment too soon. The guard ran out, his hand on his holster, searching for the source of the sound. She slipped into the tunnel as soon as he’d cleared the steps and ran to the left. Warm light spilled toward her. She ducked through the low doorway, taking stock of the room. It was tiny and bare, with a circular stack of bricks in the center that looked like a chimney—or a well. There were ropes dangling from a crossbeam overhead, looped around a wheel attached to a wooden crank. On the bricks perched a wooden tray, its four corners attached to the ropes. The swirl of the mirasma was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She’d made it in time.
Beside the tray was an open flask, and she grinned as she wrenched the vial of poison out of her pocket. The guard’s private vice had bought them just enough time. She emptied the poison into the elixir. For a moment the liquid clouded blackish, and her heart stuttered, but then it cleared to its mesmeric blue-green shine. She shoved the vial back into her pocket, corked it, and sprinted the way she’d come. Instead of exiting into the apse, she passed the doorway and stopped short in the shadows beyond, halfway down the opposite tunnel with the exit that had been bricked up years ago. She pressed herself against the wall, just in case, and watched as the guard entered the tunnel, scratching the back of his head. He walked back toward the room, his silhouette stark against the golden light.
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