My memories of my mother were an empty room and a door with nothing behind it. No voice. No face. No tender hands. I had given it all up to save her and then to save the dying folks of Felhollow. I had given up everything for Will. This was my repayment?
“I’ve sacrificed worse things than you can imagine,” I hissed.
Creek’s blood had been so warm on my hands, and even now I could feel the heat of it burning in me. A lit coal that I could never put out.
He scoffed. “Like what? Your desire?”
I flinched. The words burned worse than any wound. “Even now, when I ask what the worst thing you think has happened to me is, you make it about you.”
“Lore—”
“Cynlira may deserve better than Alistair Wyrslaine,” I said, “but it deserves better than this. Will, you’ve got barely any time left before your trial. Is this really what you want to do with it?”
“I’ll see Lorena out,” Will said and stood. He took my arm before I could protest and herded me to the door. “I have no qualms with how I have spent my remaining days, and I am willing to die to ensure this plan goes through.”
I ripped myself away from him. “Felhollow know about this? Old Ivy? Kara? They all right with killing everyone in Cynlira? They know that those bandits who killed Rylan weren’t even bandits?”
Will’s hand tightened around my arm. “Felhollow will understand once the time comes.”
“Felhollow will be horrified,” I said, “and even Julian will see you as a monster once he isn’t in grief’s grip.”
“Julian’s a smart lad. He knows what needs to be done, and he’ll do it.” Will clucked his tongue and shook his head. “You can protest it all you want, but the Chase family built that town. You were only visiting.”
I jerked, and he slapped his other hand over my mouth.
“Killing Alistair Wyrslaine might be illegal, but it’s not wrong,” he hissed. The meat of Will’s palm, salted with sweat, covered my mouth. Creek’s hollow blue eyes stared over his shoulder. “I’m willing to bear those deaths to make Cynlira great again. Sacrifices must be made. What are you willing to sacrifice?”
I’d sacrificed my body and mind for Felhollow, each memory of my mother yanked out of me like a tooth. Even now, I could feel the holes left by my noblewright. I’d killed Delmond Creek. I’d killed Hyacinth Wyrslaine.
“There is always someone with dirtier, meaner hands,” whispered Creek’s ghost. “Who do you want opening the Door?”
The knife hadn’t always been in my hand, but it had always been my knife.
I stopped struggling.
“I would’ve run if Julian wouldn’t have killed me for getting you killed by that damned contract.” Will removed his hand. “I know this is a lot, Lorena, but you are like family. We would like your help. It will be easier for the council to take control of the wrought and schedule the date of the Door opening with Alistair Wyrslaine gone.”
The words I meant to say stuck to my tongue. I couldn’t let Alistair die. I couldn’t let Will open the Door. But drawing attention to Will—even going through with the trial—might reveal his plot, and when he was found guilty, the Crown would possess his property. The peers would use it and leave the people to fend for themselves, just like Will. There had to be a way to remove the council and court before it all came to a head.
“I need time,” I said finally, each word clawing through my throat as if the magic knew I wasn’t lying outright but wasn’t being honest. “Alistair said he wouldn’t pardon you.” He had once, but my breath caught anyway. “I need a few days to digest this. Your trial’s coming up. Give me until then. Trust me. Please.”
“Of course.” His eyes crinkled. “I have to, don’t I?”
“Oh.” I smiled, the expression tight and false. The taste of his hand still burned in my mouth. “Of course you do.”
Thirty-One
Will’s threat hurt, but Julian’s misunderstanding hurt worse. It was deliberate. It had to be.
Julian had been with me in Felhollow every step of the way. He knew how often I healed people, and he saw how pained it left me. Every cut, every missing memory—he had been there for them. Life and death weren’t an equivalent exchange. I couldn’t sacrifice a finger to create a finger. Wrights, noble or vile, didn’t work like that.
To alter the course of a life, the sacrifice had to cost more than the life taken or saved, or the wrought died.
I had told Julian that often enough during one dark day when I couldn’t save someone and was drowning in grief. He had hushed me and sung, rocking me like a child. He had comforted me.
But had he even been listening or just going through the motions?
The weight of his arm was still around my shoulders, sweat sticking my shirt to me. He certainly wasn’t listening to me now.
I couldn’t let Will’s plan come to fruition. The councilors had to be stopped, but I needed their supplies. Their havens could save hundreds more.
I needed to get the havens into my hands.
“Without lying,” I said to the empty hallway outside my room. “Three days before I talk to Will again. That’s plenty of time.”
Creek’s ghost laughed and echoed. “Easier to open the Door.”
“Shut up. Is everyone I’ve wronged going to haunt me?”
“Oh no,” he said and picked his teeth with his nails. “I’m singular. A crown among crowns.”
“A vile one maybe.” I winced at his too-loud laughter and shoved open my door.
Alistair slouched at my desk, long legs thrown over the corner of it, and read a book balanced atop his knees. He didn’t react to Creek at all.
“Lorena,” said Alistair, glancing at me over his shoulder. “You’re angry.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not angry at you.”
He lifted his legs from my desk and asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” I sat on my bed. “I definitely do not.”
If he knew, he’d kill them all or something equally unnecessary. Creek’s laughter vanished into Carlow’s room, and I peeked at Alistair’s work. He only had eyes for the Door; it made moving around him easy.
“Good,” he said. “If it’s about Willoughby Chase, I suppose I could pardon him.”
Will wouldn’t even be sacrificed until right before the Door opened, and even then, if they were smart, they’d have someone open it early. It would be easier to prepare for the end of the world if they knew exactly when it was.
“I don’t want to talk about him.” I grabbed his journal and quill.
“Wait!” He reached for my wrist and hesitated. “Not that quill. Not that ink.”
It was the water-thinned blue ink that he had used for our contract.
“Why?” I asked and handed it back to him. “What’s different about this ink?”
“Everything,” said Alistair, tapping the leftover ink back into the pot. He’d forgone gloves tonight, and his hands were mottled, bruise-like, with different inks. “My sister made this for me.”
“I’m sorry.” I rested my fingers against his shoulder.
He leaned into my hand, humming as I carded my fingers through his hair. “I use it for important things—contracts, court signings, and the like.”
“That’s nice,” I said. I tugged at the knot of hair. “Did you sign the new law on regulations and fines yet?”
He hummed noncommittally and scratched his binding.
I ran my fingers through his hair again, catching the knot more sharply.
“The fines will make them take notice,” he said, “but what does it matter if we can’t shut the Door?”
Everyone was going to die. When didn’t matter. As long as I could make their time before death better, I owed it to them to try.
“It’ll matter a lot to anyone waiting on their employ
er to pay for their healing or funeral plot.” I picked apart the tangle in his hair and set the smooth strands aside. “Northcott paid the Crown fifty tiens for breaking the laws when his munitions factory caught fire, and a month later, it caught fire again. It took days for my mother to die. He paid me four halfans.”
“That’s not enough for a healer,” he murmured.
“Or a funeral plot,” I said. “Cheaper, though, than keeping the factory within regulation.”
“Come with me and speak on it for the next meeting.” He tilted his head back to stare at me. “If your mother hadn’t died, perhaps I would have met you sooner. Imagine what we could have done with that time.”
Terrible things, probably.
“But you’ll push it through?” I asked. “Make it law?”
“Does it concern wrought?” asked Alistair.
Workers and wrought: we were all the same, and we had to recognize it. Wrought were forced, bound by blood and ink, to use our wrights only for the “good of Cynlira,” but what we really did rarely benefited everyone. Only the peers and wealthy reaped the rewards our wrights sowed.
“I personally find it very concerning.” I settled my hands on his shoulders. “Please, Alistair?”
“Fine,” he said with a bark of laughter. “We could bind them to agree with your wrights, you know? My mother always wanted to do it, but since the councilors and courtiers controlled her wrights, she couldn’t. She only tried once, and she nearly bled out. You, though, are unfettered.”
I sat back on my bed. “Are you disappointed that I don’t do things like that? Use my wrights to do everything?”
He sat next to me, right thigh to my left, and shook his head. “You do what you think is right. You know who you are, and you know what you want. My father—” He hesitated and took the glasses from his eyes. “My father had many rules, especially for my mother and me. We had to follow them, and then one day, my mother didn’t. She broke the rules and took his crown. I still follow some of them. I’m not as strong as you. I am sand beneath waves, but you are a cliff edge—eternal and unyielding. You will be here long after the rest of us are gone, and you won’t be drowning in regrets.”
I was haunted by regrets, but I was used to them too. Creek was an old friend now.
“This monster in my veins,” he said, “has given me regrets enough for a dozen lives. I fail constantly. It is unbearable.”
“Sometimes failure is the only option.” I reached up and brushed his hair behind his ears, tracing the little indents from his glasses. “Sometimes we fail even when we do everything right. Sometimes there are no answers.”
He shook his head. “No, the world has rules. The Noble knew them and the Vile broke them. If we can figure out those rules, we can do anything.”
“Alistair.” I sighed. “What if, like Creek, nothing we do is ever enough? It’s one of the Vile. It doesn’t have to obey the rules.”
“I refuse to accept failure so easily,” he said. “This monster in me will be good for something.”
“Maybe it’s only good at bad things because monster is all you’ve ever called it.”
My vilewright trilled, its agreement shivering through my veins.
Gray eyes full moons against the dark shadows around his eyes, Alistair stared at me and laughed. The sound died out quickly. “It’s not of this world. It’s a force of nature.”
“It is of this world though,” I said. “It’s like the Door—here but not completely. It affects us unseen.”
The Door’s hands had been harder to see than Will’s but no less real.
“It can affect us even when we’re not within its boundaries.” I touched my lips and tasted its red, red dirt. “It showed Safia a door she had never seen.”
“But it can’t affect us,” said Alistair, holding up his fingers and casting the shadow of a dog on the wall. “Outside its boundary, it can only lure us. Whatever world it occupies, it can only truly get through to us in that cavern.”
I brought my hand up to my shoulder. The holes in my coat from the Door were oddly spaced and burned around the edges, the threads eaten away by whatever its body was made of. It had touched me, and I hadn’t been able to touch it. At least not until it had shoved its fingers inside me. I poked a finger though a hole, nail digging into my skin. My other fingers pressed painlessly against my coat.
“We are always with you,” I said. “We are always watching you.”
Alistair touched my hand. “Lorena?”
“It’s not a Door. It’s a hole or patch or hem, but it’s not a Door. It’s where their world is connected to ours.”
“Lorena,” he said, “you’re not making sense.”
“Here.” I brought his hand to my shoulder and aligned his fingers with the holes. “Imagine the surviving Vile weren’t banished anywhere, and instead the world was wrapped in cloth. Our world was separated from theirs.” I stuck my hand beneath a lower, whole section of coat, wiggling my fingers, and his mouth opened. “The Door is a weakening patch connecting our side of the cloth to theirs.”
Alistair pushed his fingers through the holes and gripped my shoulder. A small noise escaped his throat.
“The Vile didn’t go anywhere,” I said. “The Door isn’t a door. That’s just how we perceive it, or the only way our mortal minds can perceive it. How it wants us to perceive it? It’s a threadbare part of the cloth threatening to unravel completely.”
I pushed my fingers against my coat, and he laid his free hand across the fabric. Even through the cloth, I could feel him tremble.
“Our vilewrights are bound to us, like buttons, so they can interact with us without being seen.”
Alistair nodded. “The Vile, not attached, cannot. Of course, this was always their world before it was ours. The banishment of the Noble and Vile just kept them from interfering with us.”
I grabbed his hand, drew a circle on his palm, and said, “The world.”
I drew another circle around it, and he inhaled.
“The fabric,” he said.
“And the Door.” I drew a single line through the top of both circles, pinning the outer one to the inner like one would a brooch to a coat. “With the Vile outside it.”
Nowhere in Cynlira would be safe when the Door opened. The Vile wouldn’t spill out of Mori; they would simply appear. Everywhere. All at once.
If Will went through with his plans, they would fail. There would be no time to flee to the havens once word got out the Door was open.
If I was right.
“We need to verify this,” I said. “Let’s start testing now.”
Alistair took my face in both his hands and laid his forehead against mine. His lips skimmed my nose. “I knew we would do great things.”
Thirty-Two
We could only do so much in the face of such intangible, untestable knowledge. The Door was a Vile, we had already known that, but to consider that the Vile were with us at all times and only separated by a thin membrane unknown to this world was something else entirely. Alistair was infatuated with the idea, but I could not think of any way to test it. The fact that it ruined part of Will’s plan, though, was enough. I had to find a way to use it.
Basil, Carlow, and I had left Alistair in the cavern muttering over a contract. I blinked into the midmorning sun, unable to believe we had spent all day and night down there, and Basil groaned. Carlow paced the garden path.
“It’s a negative,” Carlow said. She spun around, her goggles smacking against her chest. The glass caught the light. “We can’t prove a negative.”
In the reflection of her goggles stood three figures.
I spun. There was no one behind Basil and me.
“What’s wrong?” Basil asked, elbowing my side.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Carlow, your goggles magic at all? Can I see them?”
I held them up to the light. In my own reflection, the black of my eye, reached a finger, and I knew it was the Door’s. I tossed Carlow’s goggles back to her.
“The Door makes us all see things,” she said. “I see Creek constantly.”
I nodded. “I think it’s angry at me.”
“Odd,” said Carlow. “Creek’s never angry with me these days. It’s how I know it’s not him.”
The chime of a great bell racked the garden. Basil grabbed my hand, their fingers lacing through mine. Carlow looked toward the city.
“Fire,” she said. “That’s the bell for a fire in the city.”
I froze. I’d heard it in the days before my mother died. I’d heard it, still echoing, as she lay burned and barely breathing in her bed. I’d dreamed of it every day I couldn’t heal her enough.
“We have to help,” I said and choked. “We have to.”
I ran, Basil at my heels. We tasted it first, acrid smoke too dispersed to see but too bitter to ignore. It boiled and thickened over the city, a gray-black fog sticking to everything, and the stench of burning flesh and gunpowder, urine and sulfur, spilled through the streets. I led Basil through the familiar listing lanes, and folks ran every which way, crying for water and healers. The buildings were too close. Even ones blocks from the fire smoked with drifting cinders. The smoke was thick as water by the time we made it to the Wallows.
The fire was in the first building of a munitions factory. The only exit was overrun. A noblewrought kid far too young for the job they’d been given was trying to keep the front doorway from collapsing.
Basil dove into the crowd and yanked the noblewrought aside before they could finish their contract. They shoved the kid to me. Basil’s lips moved, and they brought their shaking hands together. Stones rose from the ground at their feet and bolstered the doorway. The dirt beneath them sunk.
“They tell you anything?” I asked the kid, dragging them away.
“To use stone. There’s plenty in the ground, but I don’t know how to do that.” The noblewrought kid coughed, and the sigil to Life on their chest spurted blood. “None of my contracts can fix this. I don’t know how to use stone.”
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