The stew tastes like ashes in my mouth, but I chew with dogged determination. It takes everything I have to force myself to swallow when I’d rather gag, but I do it.
Revenge takes energy.
Melkin doesn’t eat. Instead, he sits hunched forward like a giant praying mantis, digging the tip of his knife in the sand, while he watches the rest of us in brooding silence.
The package rests beside me on the ground, a lifeless reminder of everything I’ve lost. What could be worth such bloodshed? Such single-minded greed from both Rowansmark and the Commander?
Setting aside my stew bowl, I reach for it.
“Don’t open it.”
I meet Melkin’s dark stare in silence, my fingers still tugging at the bindings holding the thick paper in place.
“Don’t.”
I unknot the bindings and rip the paper off. Beneath the paper, a heavy black cloth is rolled up like a log. Laying it in my lap, I carefully unroll the cloth until I see what rests at its center.
A slim wand of smoke-gray metal with a hole at one end, like a flute but with only three raised finger pads along its length, gleams dully beneath the flickering light of the single torch that Melkin has allowed us.
“What is this?” I look up, first at Quinn, who shows no inclination to answer me, and then at Willow.
Her brown eyes are alive with excitement as she leans forward and says, “It’s tech from Rowansmark. See the three finger pads?”
I nod, and Melkin shifts closer to me, his eyes on the wand.
“There are symbols on each pad.”
I run my finger across the circles and discover a different raised design on each. “What do they mean?”
“Willow.” Quinn’s voice is gentle, but his sister darts a quick glance at Melkin and subsides.
I can’t read the subtext of their communication, and I don’t want to. I just want to understand what I’m holding so I can see the Commander’s endgame and thwart it.
I need Logan. He’d know how to figure this out. How to get the information from them and make a plan.
And I need Logan because he’d understand that something inside me is broken. Something I have no idea how to mend. He’d understand, and if he didn’t know how to fix it, he’d dedicate himself to learning how.
I need him, but he needs me more. He needs me calm. Focused. He needs me to get the information, make the plan, and rescue him. I’m not going to let him down.
Turning to Quinn, I speak in a voice as hard as the packed dirt beneath us. “I need to know what they mean. You told me men are looking for this. Clearly my father didn’t want them to have it, or he would’ve just returned it. The leader of my city is looking for it too.”
“Rachel, that’s enough.” Melkin’s voice is low and furious.
I ignore him.
“If you don’t tell me everything I need to know, people may die. I might die. And you said yourself, you didn’t want my father’s …” Death? Sacrifice? I can’t put his loss into words. There aren’t any terrible enough to convey how empty I am without him. My hand creeps up to clutch the leather pouch I wear around my neck, and Quinn’s eyes are sympathetic.
I hate him for it.
“You said Dad was a hero.” I throw the words at him. “You said he died saving you.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not asking you to die. I’m not asking you to risk anything but the truth. You can be a hero if you just tell me the truth.”
“Your father didn’t want you to use that.” He looks at the wand.
“You have no idea what my father wanted.”
He looks wounded, and the fury inside me lashes out. I grab the wand and wave it in his face. “What does this do? Tell me!”
“Stop!” Willow shoves herself between us. “Leave him alone.”
“Then you tell me.”
She darts a glance at her brother. “We’ve already done more than we feel comfortable doing, but we owed Jared.”
“And you aren’t done paying your debt.”
“Rachel!” Melkin’s voice is harsh, but I keep staring at Quinn and Willow.
“How am I supposed to keep this safe if I don’t understand it?”
Melkin makes a choked noise at the back of his throat, but I don’t break eye contact with Willow. She’s going to tell me. I can see it.
“Wrap it up and hide it,” she says.
“Not if I don’t know what it does.” I lean past her to look Quinn in the face. “If you don’t tell me, if I don’t understand, I could trust the wrong person. Are you really okay with that?”
“Are you really planning to simply keep it safe?” he asks. I look in his eyes and realize he knows. He knows I’m going to use it. Knows I’m capable of it.
My chin rises. “If by keeping it safe, you mean not letting it fall into the wrong hands, then yes. I am.”
“Jared didn’t want you to use it. He wanted it given to Logan McEntire to be destroyed.”
“Logan is in Baalboden’s dungeon. To get him out, I’m supposed to give this”—I gesture toward the wand—“to our leader.”
“You can’t!” Willow says, and reaches as if she’ll take the wand from me.
I hold the wand out of reach, and stare her down. “Then tell me what it does. I have nothing left to lose. Tell me what this does, or I’ll start pushing buttons and figure it out myself.”
She looks at Quinn.
“It’s her decision,” he says quietly. Something in the weight of his words makes me feel like he thinks the consequences will be more than I can bear.
He’s wrong.
Willow slowly lowers her hands. “Fine. The finger pads create individual sound waves on a frequency humans can’t hear.”
“What good is that?”
“Humans can’t hear it. But the Cursed One can.”
I immediately slide my fingers away from the circles.
“You mean this—”
“Is a device designed to call and control the Cursed One.”
A vicious sense of power blooms inside me. I cradle the device to my chest and feel unstoppable.