by Natalie Mae
“You’re not powerless. You made your own magic, you survived three assassins in a tavern, and if you’d start treating people again like you used to treat Maia, you’ll find others who are willing to sacrifice for you, too. You just have to stop leading us into fates like soullessness and human sacrifice. Gods, here.” I snatch the tunic from him and wet a new side of it with the tonic. “You’re making it worse.”
The eyes that watch me are a stranger’s. They’re lighter and wondering, filled with questions instead of hate, with hope instead of anger. “You think I could be a good king.”
I work the dried blood off his skin, my fingers sure but careful, leaving the wound as an angry line. “Yes.”
It looks like it needs sewing, but I don’t have a needle or thread. A simple binding will have to do. I glance around the tent for anything clean I can use and spy a saddlebag just behind the prince. When I reach for it, he catches my hand. Gently, this time.
Leaving me balanced centimeters from his face, and practically in his lap.
“I need a cloth,” I say, with the lurching realization that I’m getting through to him a little too well.
Kasta slips his thumb over my palm. “I couldn’t understand why the gods would torment me with you when I’d already been through so much. But I was right the first time. You are the answer.”
I swallow. “Then you’ve changed your mind?”
He kisses me. An impossibly soft, warm thing that sends a shock wave through my body, stealing the feeling from my fingers, the thoughts from my mind. I jerk back, as stunned that I let him kiss me as I am at the hum resonating in my veins. It’s only shock, I tell myself, because I really was starting to believe he was too far gone. And now a sinking feeling pulls at my gut. Because whether I meant to or not, I’ve played right into Maia’s strategy.
A stone of the rune necklace dangles from the pouch, and I steel myself. This is so not something I ever wanted to do to anyone, but I can’t let another opportunity to escape pass.
I slip my arms around Kasta’s neck and press my mouth to his.
The first kiss is easy to ignore. I can pretend it’s nothing; a brush of my lips on someone else’s, cordial and light. The second one is harder. Kasta gets bolder, his hand sliding beneath my hair, pulling me closer. And still, every movement is careful and quiet, laced with that maddening uncertainty that’s so unlike him I almost wonder if this is some kind of strange dream.
Then his lips part mine, and I start to unravel.
Because he, of course, is not kissing me like it means nothing. He kisses me the way he looked at me as his First. Like I am everything, like I am more, and as the same heat flares in my core as it did at the palace, I start to panic that I’m not pretending anymore. His hands slide down my back; his thumbs into the grooves of my hips. Kasta, who has never once cared about my being a Whisperer. Who knows what it is to be judged on what he lacks. Who fears what the world will do to him because of it.
His arms flex, asking me closer.
I slip into his lap.
His touch is thunder and stone and wind. It sparks up my back as he presses me against him; as his mouth demands more from mine. Closer. More. I’m drowning in him again, at the mercy of his undertow, the desire in his kiss. I feel dizzy and drunk, the current pulling faster now, making my fingers clumsy as I try to find the necklace.
Kasta’s hands drop to my knees. I gasp as they slide beneath my tunic, and when his lips move to my neck, I abandon my mission and grab his wrists. This is no longer a game. There’s more here than I want to admit, and I don’t know what it is yet. Maybe it’s an entirely new level of exhaustion. Maybe it’s the draw of how much he wants this. I don’t want to entertain the third option, but if he really does feel this way for me, maybe there’s still a way to end this where no one gets hurt.
“Kasta,” I breathe. His arms flex beneath my fingers, but he pulls back.
“Yes?”
I almost forget the question. His eyes are startling in the light, vibrant silver in the center, river blue on the edges. Nothing like the cold, hard gaze I’m used to. This is who he is when he feels safe. When he lets go of his anger and fear, and lets himself free.
I swallow. “Are you still planning to kill me?”
His expression doesn’t change. The only hint I have that he heard me are the shadows, slinking like oil back into his gaze.
“Say no,” I say, my fingers trembling as I pull them from his wrists. He can’t possibly say yes. After everything I’ve done, after he trusted me with his secret, after this—
“You know what I’ve been through to get here,” he says.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I can’t do this without you.”
Revulsion builds in my chest, horrible and thick. I want to hit him. I want to scream and ask how nothing I did could make a difference; that I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt the entire time, that I’ve tried to help him—
“The magic in the knife is my last chance,” he says, as if that’s a better answer. “It’s the only hope I have left.”
“You haven’t listened to anything I said!” I say. “Magic is still the only thing you want. And what, you thought I’d smile and let you stab me if we . . .” I pull at my hair. “What is wrong with you?”
“There might be a way to do it without you dying. There’s a Speaker at the next checkpoint who knows more. They have centuries of knowledge, they’re experts in the science of magic . . . maybe there’s a way.” He trails gentle fingers on my shoulder, coaxing me forward. “Give me some time. I don’t know what this is.”
“Gods, they’re called feelings,” I say. “Maia was right. There’s nothing I can do. You’ll never be anything but selfish and cruel and afraid—”
His gaze sharpens. “Maia?”
“I tried,” I say, my voice cracking as I lift the poison I’ve grabbed from his pouch. My fingers shake so badly I nearly drop it. “I never wanted to hurt you. Just remember that I tried.”
I stab an amber stinger into his back and squeeze the bulb. He has time to shove me away before the sleep poison works through his system, stealing the shock from his eyes, the disbelief from his hands, and he slumps back against the horse skin, as relaxed as if he’s dreaming.
The boy who fears he’ll never be enough. And in that, has done everything possible to ensure it’s so.
I scream into my knees, angry with myself for how close I let him; at what he could be if he would just let go. I gather the supplies I want in a rage, half the potions and two leaves of dried fish, and the pouch of poisons from his belt. I start removing the protective bracelet, for only one of its runes is burned and used, but taking it would certainly doom him, and I curse him and leave it. I can’t believe I was arrogant enough to think I could be different. That I could save him like in the stories, with faith and kindness.
That he could let go of his fear because of me.
And still, as I bite back my sobs, I stop to bandage his dratted wound and shove the bloody cloak under his head to raise it. I leave the light potion but take the horse skin and practically leap from the tent, where the cold air feels like breaking the surface of a well.
Maia raises her head, jackal grin wide.
I fling the rune necklace at her feet.
XXIV
WHEN we’re only a few kilometers away, and the glow of Kasta’s tent fades among the dunes, my stomach has had enough of too little food and exhaustion and stress, and I make Maia stop so I can be sick. My anger has faded with the distance, leaving me with a horrible kind of emptiness. I’d reached him. I’d broken through a barrier he’d never let anyone through, and part of me questions if I even heard him correctly when I asked if he’d spare me, because the answer he gave makes no sense. What more could I have said? What more could I have possibly done?
You think I could be a good king.
It wasn’t a question. He believed that I believed it, and even then . . .
It wasn’t enough. Just as nothing has ever been enough for the Mestrah.
I guess I know who Kasta learned it from.
Maia, at least, has forgiven me. Not that she said so, but I can tell by the way she thinks, how her thoughts are no longer cloudy and muddled but light and quick. The same with her steps and the alert set of her ears, every piece of her looking forward. She’s changed to the chestnut mare again—I told her she didn’t need to and we could walk together, but she wanted to put distance on Kasta—and when she’s not thinking about how far we should go before we rest, she’s wondering how I can feel even the smallest sadness. I saved her. I saved me. I tricked one of Orkena’s most merciless, untrusting powers into admitting his darkest secret and taking his own poison.
Those are good things, she says.
Because the deathly stingers in Kasta’s pouch made me anxious, I kept two of the sleeping poisons for emergencies and buried the rest in the sand far behind us. The rune necklace lies in broken pieces in the saddlebag. When we reach the next city, we’ll trade the individual stones for clothes and transportation. I’ll go home. Maia hasn’t said what she’ll do, but I imagine it has to do with starting over, with having a life she actually owns.
Zahru the Silk-Lipped, Maia thinks, as her latest attempt at coming up with a suitable title for my heroism.
I groan. “Please stop before I choke myself on sand.”
But you have to admit it’s clever. It works for both—
“I know what it works for.” I clench her mane without meaning to and make myself relax with a huff. “I’d be really happy if we never talked about it again.”
I’ve already decided that when it comes to telling people this part of my story, I’m skipping the details. The last thing I need is for Hen to resume Maia’s quest to find me the perfect hero name, or my neighbors thinking I’m some kind of lying succubus. I’ll say we put up the tent, I knocked Kasta out with a stake, and I took the necklace and ran.
And ran and ran and ran.
Zahru? Maia asks, stopping. She turns to look at me, my reflection sad and dark in her yellow, starlit eye. There’s nothing else you could have done.
My shoulders droop. “I shouldn’t have talked to him. I should have just waited for him to go to sleep and taken the collar.”
She watches me a moment, and I brace myself for the I told you so, but her gaze only softens. For what it’s worth, I was hopeful you could reach him, too. When he was with you, I thought . . . I started to recognize the friend I’d lost. I wanted you to be right about him. She turns her attention east. But it is done. Now we must move forward.
I sigh and clutch her mane as she moves into a jog, but I know what she says is true. There was no other way for that to end. My alternatives were not talking to him, in which I wouldn’t have known about the poisons and might have woken him trying to get Maia’s collar, or believing Kasta truly would ask the Speaker about me, in which he still used the word maybe when it came to sparing me. I shudder at the memory of his lips on my neck; at the traitorous recognition with which my heart greeted his.
You’re tensing, Maia thinks.
“Sorry,” I grumble.
Hmm. Maia slows and her ears swivel back and forward, listening. The clouds are moving.
I squint at the horizon, at the darkness stretching into the stars. “Isn’t that . . . normal?”
It would be. She swings her head, moonglow silvering her mane. If there was any wind.
A stone builds in my stomach as I realize it’s as still as a tomb. The dark clouds aren’t to our side anymore. They’re in front of us, to the east. Maia has been following the scent of the nearest river, so I know we couldn’t have gotten turned around.
“Alette,” I say.
The storm is turning us back to them.
“Are there any outposts nearby?”
Maia breathes in and sighs. She has to be close to exhaustion no matter how excited she is to be free, and I can’t ask her to outrun it, especially with my weight adding to her burden.
The pelts, she thinks. We can huddle beneath them. They’re stronger than fabric. They’ll protect us just as well.
“But that could ruin them.”
She turns her head to see me. Do you have a better idea?
I don’t. I slip from her back and remove the saddle as carefully as I can, turning away as she shifts from horse to human. We have no stakes to hold the pelts, so we wrap the horse skin around us both, the leopard pelt hooding her head and the jackal hooding mine. I watch her masked eyes as the wind picks up and realize that at some point, I started to trust her.
Strange, that I should free myself from a monster who looks like a boy and end up with a girl who looks like a monster.
What? she asks when she sees me staring.
“I don’t think you’re damned,” I say.
A laugh threads her thoughts. Tell the gods that when I die.
“But really. How could you be? You’re cursed because you were sparing your best friend from making a terrible mistake. That’s an amazing, admirable thing to do. What fault could the gods find in it? That’d be like saying you were too kind, too selfless. It’s not even possible.”
She watches me a moment longer, then shifts her gaze back to the desert. He told you what happened.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Why did you say you couldn’t remember?”
Mm. Her tattooed fingers tighten on the pelt. Old habit, I suppose. She closes her eyes. I couldn’t even tell the Mestrah, when the priests were warming the knife to cut out my tongue. He asked me, without Kasta there, why I’d done it. How Kasta had been involved. If I’d told the truth, he would have pardoned everything. He’d have set me free. She laughs, bitterly. But I said nothing. Ironic, isn’t it?
“Then you’re definitely fine. True monsters wouldn’t put someone else first.”
Unlike monsters who do nothing when that someone is nearly beheaded.
I shrug. “I just used Kasta’s poison against him and left him in the middle of the desert. If we’re going down, we’re going down together.”
She laughs, her eyes crinkling. Gods, I’ve missed this.
“This?”
She shrugs, and it’s a moment before she answers. Having a friend.
I smile in turn, snickering at the idea of us, the world’s deadliest creature and a girl who talks to cats. “We make a decent team.”
We do. Sakira doesn’t know what she’s in for.
Sakira. I sigh at the swirling sand and squint out at the dunes, but the storm has muddled everything outside a short distance. I reach into the saddlebag and pull free a strip of dried meat, offering half to Maia.
Thank you, she thinks. But I can’t eat that.
“Don’t tell me you’re a vegetarian.”
She shifts. Not exactly.
“But you can’t eat meat.”
I can. She hesitates. I just can’t eat animals.
“Wait, what?”
She presses a dirt-crusted palm over my mouth and turns away, listening. The storm is nearly on us. Sand hisses outside the skins, and the wind presses us forward in bursts. It feels like fingers searching in the dark.
“Did you just tell me you have to eat human flesh to survive?”
Apos, Maia thinks, which is not an answer. We have to move.
“Look, Maia, this is a very important question—”
I hear horses. She’s already pulling the horse skin toward her, drawing it over her face. They must not have been far behind us. I’ve been so focused on the storm—
“Wait!” I catch her arm, but her bones shift under my fingers and I let go with a shiver. “You have to be exhausted. I can’t ask you to do this.”
You’r
e right. I should do the leopard.
“That’s not—”
But I can’t stop her. She’s already switched skins, and pointed fangs jut from her mouth as she shrinks and thickens, her fur shining in the moon like loose gold.
“Please, gods, don’t eat them,” I say.
A snicker. I’m not going to eat them. I fed right before the race started. She shakes her shoulders and circles in front of me, tail twitching. Relax. It’ll be a few more days before I’m ravenous enough to eat whatever moves.
A female “Whoop!” sounds outside the blowing sand, and my heart twists as three horses charge into view, headed by Sakira’s dratted buckskin. A small dip in the dunes is all that remains between us.
I have a feeling Sakira isn’t going to be as careless with me as before. And if Maia stands in their way . . .
“You should go,” I shout over the growing wind. “They don’t care about you. They want me. If they hurt you—”
What are they going to do, kill me? Maia flashes a toothy grin. It’s cute that you think I need protecting. Stay back, Zahru the Silk-Lipped.
The horses break the closest dune just as the wind surges, needling me with sand. It sprays before the buckskin like water before a boat, flying over the trio of horses as though hitting glass, obscuring our view so it seems the desert itself is folding in on us. Maia lets free a scream that’s met with terrified echoes of the horses’ own. The protection around them shatters. The buckskin rears and the gods release the wind; the sand drops just as Kita’s horse bucks and charges off into the night, and Alette struggles to hold her mount, who kicks and jerks, refusing to move closer.
Hyra! come their frantic thoughts. Run! Run!
“Kasta can’t be far,” Sakira says as the buckskin lurches beneath her. “Find him.”
“But, Sakira—”
“I’ll be fine.”
Alette turns her gelding south. Sakira draws her sword, a long, curved blade, and drops down from the mare. For as slender a silhouette she makes against the sky, she makes up for it with the shadow of muscle in her clenched arm, the sharp determination in her blue eyes.