by Sarah Ahiers
Perrin loomed over me. The look in her eyes was bright, wild. She’d won.
Lea dashed out of the storm.
Perrin had only enough time to jump back. Lea swung her sword in a fast arc, catching Perrin’s knife hand. The knife, and one of her fingers, spun off into the storm.
Perrin shouted in shock and pain.
A shadow exploded from the spinning sand. I had a quick glimpse of stripes, orange and black, with a white-tipped tail, and then the tiger leaped at Perrin. She screamed and the tiger crashed onto her, mouth around her throat.
She thrashed but the tiger dragged her away, disappearing into the swirling sand of the storm.
My breath exhaled in a cough, and Lea dropped to her knee before me.
“How bad?” she asked, and I realized she saw the blood coating my hands and arms and face and thought that was the danger, that I’d been wounded. But it wasn’t a wound that was killing me, but how I couldn’t catch my breath. How my heart pounded, how I was on fire, burning up.
Claudia Da Via dashed from the sand.
“Look out!” I managed to cough.
Lea spun, but not quick enough. Claudia blocked Lea’s sword and slammed a knife into her side.
Lea gasped and the sword tumbled from her grip.
Claudia danced away. She looked at me, expression hidden behind her bone mask, and then she was gone, disappearing once more.
Lea fell beside me, hand pressed to her side. But blood seeped through her fingers, dripping off her gloves onto the sand below her.
“Lea!” I shouted.
Metta and Isha and Nev were behind us and Metta crawled over to me now, hand on her stomach as she reached us, Isha lifting Nev’s face out of the sand that threatened to bury him.
And still the storm raged. The sand twisted, whirling faster and faster.
Lightning flashed again, and the shadows were still there, three on one side, a fourth across from them. Huge and stretching into the sky.
The sand spun, whipping away in a cyclone, a column of wind and dust.
And I knew it for what it was. This storm, this bol. The maelstrom from my dreams.
It towered over us, spinning faster and faster until it crashed down.
thirty-nine
THE STORM VANISHED.
But not my nightmare.
I opened my eyes in the sudden quiet. The wind had vanished. The sand. The dust. Everything, except for Lea beside me, who stirred in the silence.
Pale light flowed around us, watery and gray. I pulled the scarf from my face and the air felt stale and stagnant.
A gray fog rolled in and out of the empty space surrounding us.
Lea pushed her mask to the top of her head, her hand weak and feeble. I pressed my own hands against the wound in her side. It was fatal. This I knew. Claudia had meant it when she sank the knife into Lea’s side.
“This is a dead place,” Lea said. “But at least I’m clothed this time. I must not be actually dead yet.”
“Shhh,” I hushed her.
My dream. A dead place. Somehow I had brought us here.
The singura felt cold against my chest.
Lea snorted and then coughed, her lips staining with blood. “I’ve spent your whole life quieting you and now here, at the end of mine, you try to quiet me?” She chuckled. “It’s almost poetic.”
She shifted, trying to push herself up, but she paused and then groaned.
“Don’t move,” I said.
“Twice Claudia Da Via had a hand in my death,” Lea said. “I suppose that’s kind of poetic as well.”
Above us a boom sounded. I gasped.
The fog swirled and spun rapidly and to the left it suddenly parted, vanishing like a wisp of smoke blown away with a breath.
A forest of bones had been hidden by the fog. Bone trees stretched upward, swaying slightly, white and bleached.
Lea shifted again. “Allegra,” she said, but I kept my gaze on the bone forest. There was movement among the trees. I narrowed my eyes, peering into its depths.
“Do you see that?” I whispered. “Something moves . . .”
Lea grabbed my chin, her fingers slick with blood, and turned my face to hers.
“Do not look,” she said. “Do not stare upon Her face.”
“What?” I asked.
And then She was there, appearing from the folds of the bone forest, taller than the tallest tree, dark and empty and faceless but for the bone.
“Don’t look at her!” Lea yelled.
But how could I not look at Her? Not look at Her terribleness? Her beauty? Not hear Her breath, like the baying of a thousand hounds, not hear Her heart, like the crack of a tree in a storm.
She was everything and I—I was nothing. I was empty, hollow. I was—I was—
Lea yanked my face away.
I inhaled sharply, my mind clear again.
Another boom echoed around us and the fog across from Safraella swirled and vanished. But instead of a bone forest stood a desert, white sands stretching on endlessly.
“They come,” Lea said.
And They did. The Three. We sing a song about the Three, of Meska, Culda, and Boamos. Boamos gives us wealth and thievery, while Culda sings us safely home. And great Meska with her animals wraps us in our mother’s warmth. Gods of the travelers. I did not look upon them, but They cast shadows on the ground before us, as did Safraella.
“Leave.” A voice spoke, masculine, deep like the ocean, maybe, or the heart of a mountain. Boamos.
Safraella’s shadow shifted on the ground.
“I have come for what is mine.” Her voice was soft and quiet, like a final, whispered breath. The kiss of a corpse.
Safraella was a jealous god. This we knew. This we had learned from the Da Vias folly. She would not let me go. She would not let me be stolen by these other gods.
“It was her own will.” A third voice now, bright and sweet, like birdsong, or a hymn, hummed in the dark. “She wears the singura.”
“She is mine,” Safraella said.
“No.” Boamos.
“Then I will take her.”
There was a noise, a screech and crack, as if a tree shattered. Safraella had ripped one of the bone trees from the ground. It was long and straight and sharp.
She cast it at the Three.
From the shadows I saw the bone spear strike Boamos in the chest. He screamed, an unearthly sound, the sound of mountains tumbling into the sea, or boulders shattering into sand.
We screamed as well, pressing our hands to our ears, trying to drown out the sound, the unbearable wail.
The shadows launched themselves at one another.
The ground trembled. The air thundered. Ripping and tearing noises surrounded us as the gods battled.
Lea’s blood was warm and slick on my hands. The singura weighed heavily on my neck.
“Allegra,” Lea said, and I pulled my vision away from the shadows of battling gods. Her skin was pale. Her eyes glassy.
“You should have been mine.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
I pressed my forehead to hers. “I was always yours.”
And it was true. Maybe I was meant to be a Da Via. Or maybe I was meant to be a Saldana. It didn’t matter, in the end. Names were just names, and didn’t make us who we were.
Lea squeezed my arm, her grip light, weak. The gods stormed above us.
We were not meant to witness this. This battle. This war. This was not for our eyes. This was a dead place, Lea had said. And we would die here. It was a certainty I felt in my gut. In Their rage at one another, They would destroy that over which They fought.
Lea closed her eyes.
The spiritual sickness hadn’t left me. I was dying. Lea was dying. The singura swung from my neck before me. If I didn’t have the singura, none of this would have happened. If I didn’t have the singura, we wouldn’t be here, in this dead place, Lea dying.
I was still caged. Caged by the gods.
I grab
bed the singura with my fist, coating it in blood, and pulled it from my head.
“I don’t want it!” I shouted at the shadows fighting above us. “I give it away willingly to Metta!”
I hurled it away from me, into the fog of the dead place.
It was no longer my burden to bear. I belonged to me now, and no one else. And so I would die, but I would die free, with Lea at my side.
Silence fell over us, a blanket over our heads, or like sinking beneath the cool waters of the lake.
The shadows of the gods stilled, and though I couldn’t be sure, it seemed They looked down upon us, seeing us for the first time, perhaps.
Lea’s breath wheezed in and out of her.
And mine didn’t. I felt light and unburdened. Uncaged. Free.
The gods stirred, and their shadows separated, pulling apart from one another, returning to their sides.
“Come, daughter,” Safraella said. And though She could have been speaking to either of us, I knew She spoke to Lea.
“No,” I said. “No.”
“Everyone owes a death,” She said. “Oleander Saldana was granted a resurrection once. That is more than most.”
“You can save her again,” I said.
Lea’s eyes were closed. She struggled to breathe. I clutched her to me.
“Please,” I said. “I need her.”
I knew what it meant, to serve a dark god. To do Her dark work. To serve. But for an instant I wished for a god of something kinder, maybe, to answer my prayer.
“Death is the only kindness I offer,” Safraella spoke, as if she’d heard my thoughts. “I am not a god of mercy.”
The shadows shifted, then one stepped forward.
“I am.”
Meska, god of animals and motherhood, Her voice soft like the down feathers of a bird, warm like a mother’s love, like a child cradled in devoted arms.
Maybe sometimes love hurt us.
The fog and pale light floated away, washed aside in the gentle, warm breath of Meska as it enveloped us all.
But maybe sometimes it saved us, too.
forty
I SLIPPED OUT OF THE DARK ALCOVE, INTO THE DARKER room, and closed the curtain behind me. I slid my feet across the floor, then stepped up the stairs, one after another.
The morning sun burst over my head, warm and welcoming and bright.
I shifted the bag from one shoulder to the other and headed north to Bedna’s house, where I knew she was waiting for me.
People went about their business, and though many of them looked at me, none scowled or glared like they had in the past.
I reached Bedna’s home and pushed my way inside. She sat at the kitchen table and waved me to take a seat.
“How did you know it would work?” Bedna asked.
I sipped the oil she served me. It was light and fruity and her favorite, so she said.
She spoke of the singura of course, and passing it to Metta.
“I didn’t,” I said.
I’d woken in the dead plains, outside the border of Mornia. The morning sun streamed down on us, its warmth like Meska’s warmth, before She sent us away from that place where gods battled.
And we’d lived. Even Lea—though her leathers had been soaked in her own blood—got to her feet with the rest of us, her wound healed by Meska’s mercy. Lea wasn’t my mother, not truly, but maybe that small distinction didn’t really matter to a god of mothers. After all, She had brought Nula and Bema back to life, in the story Nev had told me, so what was a little mortal-wound healing to a god like that?
Bedna had found us, Metta, Isha, and Nev as well, too shocked or frightened to speak. But Metta wore the singura, the one that should have always been hers had Les not taken it as a child, a single memento of his mother.
By the grace of the gods no innocents had died. The travelers had fled from the ghosts, through the bol bearing down upon them, and all had managed to find shelter or outrun the ghosts until the rising sun had saved them. The only true death was Perrin, her body dragged some distance away by the tiger until he had abandoned her.
The tiger was nowhere to be found, and the people agreed that Perrin had angered Meska by her ill treatment of the tiger, and so She had taken her.
Later Nev and I would walk over to the pit. We found a mound of sand pressed against one of the walls, tall enough for the tiger to free himself.
The other two tigers had remained in the pit, too accustomed to their cage to want anything else.
I finished off the oil Bedna had poured me. “Lea said it was a dead place,” I continued, “and Nev had told me the singura could only be passed on in death. And, anyway, I had nothing to lose.”
“You had your life to lose.”
I shrugged. “Yes. But it’s just a life in the end. What is it worth if you’re not willing to give it up to save the people you love?”
Bedna made a small noise and passed me a bottle of oil, which I added to my bag. “You were fortunate.”
I did my best to imitate one of their traveler shrugs. Her lips quirked. “I am alive,” I said. “And free. That was the most I could hope for.”
Outside, the morning was bright and the sky was blue. The bol that had arrived with Lea had vanished in an instant, suddenly dying with our return. Whether it had been a natural storm or not, I didn’t suppose anyone would ever be able to say.
Metta had lost their tiger, and their status had taken a hit. But she had gained a singura, and in the next few days she would have a child and would become a mother.
“It is enough to work with.” She grinned, grasping the singura around her neck.
The travelers were still wary around me, but now it was less because I had stolen something from them, from their gods, and more because I had returned it, and lived. And seen the gods, of course. At the very least, it was no longer something only Lea and Les could claim.
Les.
“He’s fine,” Lea had told me. “Well, as fine as can be expected. It was close for some time, but he was awake when I left, mad as hells that he couldn’t come with me, driving everyone crazy. Marcello is loving every second, taking care of him. And the baby, Malia. He was never this helpful when you and Emile were children.”
Nev was waiting for me outside of Bedna’s. He took my hand, fingers wrapping around my bandages, and together we walked out of New Mornia to the western border where Lea waited, loading Kismet with supplies.
Her mask rested on top of her head and she smiled as we approached. She tightened her saddle bags and came around. Nev gave us space.
“You won’t come home with me?” she asked again as I passed her the final bag of supplies for her journey, even though she’d been asking me constantly.
“If I did,” I said, “nothing would change for us. We could try to do things differently, but it wouldn’t last. We would fall back into old patterns. This way, at least, I can come visit whenever I want.”
“And leave again,” she said, a touch of bitterness in her voice.
“Yes,” I said. “But you knew I would, one day.”
“My wild one,” Lea said. “Exploring the world.”
“We will travel north to Fazia first,” Nev said. “Then after that, Yvain. They will be happy to see the menagerie.”
“Good,” Lea said. “Because Les and Beatricia will hold me to it. Don’t leave me to their wrath.”
“I won’t,” I said. “You can tell them at the least I’ll need to collect my things.”
Lea smiled. Then it vanished and all at once she was hugging me and I was hugging her in return.
“Maybe it was a mistake taking you,” she whispered to me. “Maybe I was wrong. But I’m not sorry for it. I’ll never be sorry for it, no matter how many knives Claudia Da Via sinks into me. And I would do it again.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice or the tightness of my throat.
Sometimes, we did terrible things in the name of love. Sometimes, family and loved ones hurt us the most. But sometimes,
those we loved were the easiest to forgive.
Lea stepped away from me, holding me at arm’s length. “I’ll see you soon.”
I nodded. “Soon.”
Then she climbed onto Kismet’s back and made her way west, toward Yvain and home and family.
Nev stepped beside me, taking my hand again. “You have your freedom now,” he said. “Is it what you thought it would be?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “But then, I guess that’s the way of things, sometimes.” I faced him, and took in his new bruises from Perrin, the scratches and cuts from the storm. But there were no longer any bruises from me. And his smile was as wide and bright as the first time I met him. My heart thumped.
“And anyway,” I said, “I’m not exactly free. I’m still stuck with you.”
He laughed. “We have made a terrible mistake.”
“Awful,” I agreed.
“Yes.”
The menagerie would leave in a few days and we would travel with it. I would see the world with Nev, and then we would return to Mornia and Metta and Isha. Or go to Yvain and Lea and Les. And I would never escape from my family, the people who had caged me.
But maybe I didn’t need freedom in order to be free. Maybe I’d just needed to find the right cage. The one of my choosing.
My hand slipped into Nev’s.
It fit perfectly.
Acknowledgments
Authors always say the second book is really hard to write. But of course no one (me) really believes them. Because it’s not like this is actually the second book I’ve written, so how hard could it be, right?
But, alas, it turns out that I am not a special snowflake after all, and this book was just what authors who had come before me said it would be: really, really hard to write.
Good thing I had some great people helping me along the way.
For starters, my agent, Mollie Glick, and her team of awesome peeps, who are there at the drop of a hat if I need anything.
And my editor, Alex Cooper, who writes me really long edit letters but somehow makes them seem totally doable and not scary at all—even if she thinks it would be a good idea to cut entire characters and make the book one hundred pages shorter. She’s pretty much always right. And of course Alyssa Miele and the rest of the HarperTeen team who make things happen so seamlessly.