DAYS PASSED IN A HAZY STRING AS THE NIGHTSWIFTS let me heal. They took me to bathe often, no doubt to reduce the chances of infection in my wound. Meager portions of food were delivered twice each day, accompanied by tea that was syrupy with peaceroot and a substance that dulled my pain and left me too exhausted to do anything but sleep. I tried to avoid the tea, but they offered me no other liquid. Those who delivered it were never familiar and always left through the window by manifest as birds. My pleas to see Hal and questions about what they were doing with my blood were met with silence. Eventually I gave up speaking.
Wind eddied in the tower room, leaving me always cold. During my wakeful moments alone, which were few, my head pounded from the peaceroot and anxiety prevailed. I feared Nismae would come back for more blood, or worse, with a way to make me write the future for her. I searched every crevice of the room one-handed for some sign of the door through which we had come in. No evidence of it existed. The room was completely empty except for the chamber pot in the corner. They’d taken my satchel and cloak, leaving me with nothing but the clothes I’d come in wearing—and Veric’s letter, still tucked between my bodice and skin.
My arm slowly healed but brought no function back to my hand. I mourned its loss, and in my coherent moments raged that if I’d been free, I might have been able to do something about it. There were stronger poultices for the wounds. Fire-flower tinctures that would have better dulled the pain.
The few times I was awake at sundown, I sang vespers to try and calm myself. If Hal was anywhere nearby, he had to hear them. At first I thought the songs might lead him to my prison, but it was a foolish hope.
Sometimes I dreamed of him. In those dreams he had golden wings, and we flew away from the tower, from everyone, all the way to the end of the earth. There I no longer had to worry about Atheon, the Fatestone, royal vendettas, or stolen blood. At the end of the world we lay on a bed of stardust in the empty black of the sky. He surrounded me with the light and magic of those golden wings and held me close, telling me this had all been a mistake, a bad dream, and he would never leave me again.
I woke up hating him for the lies my own mind told me, and angry with myself for longing for a fantasy that could never come true. The more time passed, the more furious I became. Why hadn’t he tried to listen from afar to discern Nismae’s latest plans instead of walking me right into the arms of the enemy? Perhaps he’d known all along what she was going to do or how quickly she’d turn on me if she saw a way to use me. I tried to fight the way the anger twisted my insides, begging me to turn into something as dark and vengeful as everyone who had hurt or abandoned me.
Some days the anger lost. Some days it won.
One morning in the pale light of dawn, I stood in the archway with my toes hanging over the edge. The scent of green and growing things came in on the breeze, and I knew spring had come without me. Below, the brume lay soft and white as a blanket. It almost looked as though it wouldn’t hurt to fall. I spent several long minutes there, weighing whether it would be better to let Nismae take more of my blood, or to jump. I didn’t want to die, but the thought of her using me as a weapon was worse. All life is precious, Miriel used to say. In the end, I went back to my pallet, turning to face the wall. My abilities were the only hope to change the mistake that had begun this story—the fall of Amalska. If I died, all hope of that would be lost.
When Nismae finally came, it was only to check on my wound and to declare me healed enough for her to take more blood. When she examined me, I struck at her with my other hand, succeeding only in leaving a long scratch down the soft flesh on the underside of her arm.
“I see what Hal appreciates in you,” she said.
Anger flared in my breast.
“You’re making a mistake,” I told her.
“No, I’m getting what I want and what this kingdom needs. You’ll be free to go as soon as my goal is achieved. Hal doesn’t seem to think you’ll be inclined to stay nearby.”
So Hal was on her side, was he? Why had I ever trusted him? Nismae stood up, indicating for the man accompanying her to bind my hands and feet so that I wouldn’t be able to attack when they returned for my blood.
No apology came for what she was doing to me.
With my meal the next morning, I received water instead of the drugged tea. With no use of my hands, I was forced to lap it from the cup like an animal. Over the course of the day my headache receded and my magic began to come back to me again, but so high in the tower and surrounded by stone, I couldn’t reach anything other than my own power. I only once made the mistake of trying to pull apart the enchantment concealing the door, but something made the threads of magic too slippery to hang on to. I tried everything I could think of until I had thoroughly exhausted myself—everything but pulling the life force out of the people who came to deliver my second meal. Even now, I couldn’t sink that low.
Poe was the one who came to take the second batch of blood. She took it more gently than last time, using a thin slit on my already wounded wrist, carefully delivered where it wouldn’t do any damage. Still, I trembled in the hands of the two warriors who held me—but this time it was with fury, not pain. How could these three look me in the eyes after I’d spent nearly a week before being imprisoned learning their names, hearing their stories, sharing with them pieces of my past? How could their loyalty to Nismae be stronger than empathy for someone who had never done them any harm?
By the time Poe moved to the fourth vial, my head had begun to swim. “Why are you taking so much?” I slurred.
“Nismae’s orders,” Poe said, her voice shaky.
“What is she doing with it?” I asked.
Poe shrugged, unable to meet my eyes. “Giving gifts to Invasya,” she murmured.
By the time I woke up, I was alone and unbound again, and then the next morning I was served another batch of tea thick with tranquilizers. I drank it, grateful for the oblivion. I didn’t want to remember Ina. I didn’t want to think about where I was or what would come next.
Nismae looked happier the next time she visited me several days later. “We’re so close,” she told me. “You’re going to be the reason for change in this kingdom.”
Resentment burned in my breast as I stared at her, wishing I could tear her apart the way I had Leozoar. But her iron cuffs blocked my ability to steal her life force, and so instead she left me with a cup of water and a stronger urge than ever to walk out the open window.
Later that night, someone whispered my name in my ear.
It sounded like Hal. Another dream. Another betrayal. Another lost hope.
“Go away,” I mumbled to the dream phantom.
“Wake up, Asra!” Hal said more insistently.
“Leave me alone!” I struck out with my good arm, and my fist connected with solid flesh.
“Gods!” Scuffling followed, along with several more curses.
I cracked an eye open. Hal stood silhouetted against the moonlight streaming in through the window. Even after all these hours, days, weeks, I still recognized the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his jawline, the way he moved.
“I suppose I deserved that, but you could at least warn a person,” he said.
“Why are you here?” I asked. I wasn’t in the mood to be teased. The rescue I had dreamed of was too good to be true.
“To get you out. I’m so sorry, Asra. I didn’t know where she had put you. I could Hear you, but I couldn’t find you. There’s some kind of enchantment on this room.”
I wanted so badly to believe him.
“How did you find me?”
“I eavesdropped on Poe, since I knew she’d be helping Nis,” he admitted. “I never would have found you otherwise.”
I sat up on my pallet, my injured arm burning and prickling in the way that had become familiar as it healed. I didn’t trust him. He was part of the reason I was here.
“You let her do this to me,” I accused him. “You led me straight to her, knowing she might be dangerous. I thought we were friends.” I never would have let anyone hurt him.
“We are friends,” he said. “But Ina could have killed me. Would have if Nis hadn’t stopped her. I saw it in her eyes. What use would I have been to you then?”
I didn’t want to believe that it was true, but I had seen it, too.
I hated her.
I touched my bandaged wrist where Ina’s courting bracelet had once lain. For the first time, I wondered if things would truly be better or different if I rewrote the past. Had Ina ever loved me? I thought she had, but the moment everything had fallen apart, she left. The moment I had confessed to her, she admitted to betrayal. The only person who kept coming back for me was Hal . . . and I didn’t know if I could trust him either.
“I’m sorry for hitting you. I didn’t think you were real,” I said.
“It’s all right. Like I said, I deserved it. How is your arm?” The sadness in his question was as palpable as the lumpy mat I sat on.
“My hand doesn’t work the same way anymore,” I said. “They’ve kept the bandages clean and changed, no doubt because they don’t want to risk me getting a case of blood poisoning. Might inhibit them from draining me again.”
“Yes, they’re planning to do it again tomorrow.” His voice took on new urgency. “That’s why I need to get you out tonight. There’s more—but I’d rather talk about it somewhere else.” For once he didn’t sound like he was joking.
I stood up and brushed the straw and dust from my rumpled clothes. He didn’t have golden wings like in my dreams, but any place was better than here.
“Lead the way,” I said.
He walked over to the window and beckoned me to the edge. We faced each other, feet no more than a hand’s width from the edge. “Do you trust me?” he asked.
I shrugged. I didn’t, but it wasn’t as if I had any choice. I could always take off on my own after I regained some strength and got far enough away from Nismae to disappear. I didn’t have to trust him to do that.
“I need you to for just a few minutes, because we’re going to fly,” he said. “My life will be in your hands as much as yours will be in mine.”
“All right,” I said. Nervousness fluttered in my stomach.
“Put this on,” he said, grabbing something off the floor that looked like a cross between a vest and a harness. He helped me secure the buckles in the back, then unhooked a bundle of lines from somewhere outside the window and clipped half of them to me and the rest to himself.
“Stand behind me as close to the edge as you can get. Once we get moving, keep your legs straight out behind you and follow the motion of my body if you can. If you can’t, just try to stay steady and straight.” He waved his hand and called a gust of wind. A winged contraption in the shape of a wide inverted triangle dropped from the tower wall to hover before the window. It was made of pale blue fabric stretched taut over a frame made of some material I didn’t recognize. A straight bar hung from the middle of it.
“What is that thing?” I asked. I had never seen or heard of anything like it.
“Meet the Moth, one of the few things I helped Nismae craft,” he said. “She’s made of fabric and dragon bones, and she’s our way out of here.”
“How did you get it from her?” I asked.
“She sent me out on a mission with it tonight. I came here instead. They won’t look for it—or me—until morning,” Hal said. “Are you ready?”
I nodded, not sure how to respond to the knowledge that he’d betrayed her for me. I didn’t imagine Nismae reacted well to incomplete missions, much less her own brother turning on her.
Hal pulled me closer, the scent of him so clean and pure I felt as transported as I’d been in my dreams. In spite of my new uncertainties about him, the familiarity of his closeness brought such solace that I struggled not to cling to him, to bury my face in his back, to hold on and never let go.
“On the count of three, we jump,” he said.
“All right.” I held on to him one-handed, hoping it would be enough. I no longer had the ability to grip anything with the other, and likely never would again.
He stretched out both arms in front of him and counted to three. His muscles coiled before he sprang, and I moved intuitively with him so that we took the leap in perfect tandem. He caught the bar of the Moth, and it glided away from the tower.
For one perfect moment I felt nothing except the wind in my face and a heart-pounding surge of energy as we swooped through the sky. Was this how Ina felt when she flew? The cool night air whipped loose strands of my hair and slipped into the gaps in my clothing, but I barely noticed, too caught up in watching Hal manipulate the wind in my Sight. It was a little like dye being gently stirred into water, the way he pulled the thermals toward us to give us altitude. We glided left and then banked right as he shifted his weight, floating over the city in a serpentine pattern that allowed us to lift through the turns. After a few weeks of near blindness thanks to the peaceroot, having my Sight back made me feel alive again.
When we lost enough altitude to almost sink into the fog over the city, Hal called a more powerful gust to lift us closer to the dome of stars overhead. I never wanted to stop flying. No one could reach me here, and even without the bed of stardust, I felt as safe as I ever could have wished in my dreams.
Like all good things, it came to an end too soon, when the opposite side of the canyon came into view.
“We’re going to hit the ground hard,” Hal shouted. “Try to run with the momentum if you can.”
We barely cleared the far side of the canyon before our feet hit the ground. We ran, stumbling over the rocks and grass, coming to a crashing halt when the Moth slammed into the ground in front of us and pitched us both into the dirt. I barely muffled a cry as I caught some of my weight on my wounded arm.
Hal unhooked me from the Moth and helped me slip out of the harness. I lay on my back for a moment, trying to ignore the buzzing of damaged nerves in my injured arm. My heart still raced from the flight, and a swell of fierce gratitude made my breath catch. Never in my life had I been so thankful to feel earth and grass underneath me. I was free. Thank the Six, I was free.
Hal bundled up both our harnesses, tying them securely to the Moth’s navigation bar, then teased the contraption back into the air with conjured gusts of wind, sending it out across the canyon and over the fog to the south.
I sat up. “Why did you do that? Couldn’t we have flown farther?”
“The Moth is too difficult to travel with—my magic can only carry us so far, and if I were to exhaust myself in the air and lose consciousness . . . well.” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. “It will be more useful as a decoy to keep Nismae off our trail. She’ll notice me missing, and she has spies everywhere in this city. There isn’t anywhere safe to hide in Orzai. Might not be out here either,” he said grimly.
I sighed, brushing the fingers of my uninjured hand gently through the leaves of a dandelion. My satchel was gone, probably forever. Nismae had all my notes, precious years of Miriel’s work and mine, details about how to enchant my blood. I had no doubt she’d succeed in doing great things, or that she’d come after us as soon as she noticed our absence. Hope seemed very small and far away, but at least outside the confines of the tower, it existed.
“I need to sit down for a minute,” Hal said as soon as the Moth was out of sight.
“Help yourself,” I said, still sitting on the ground.
He collapsed beside me. “I know you’re probably angry with me, but you need to know what’s going on. Nismae read that journal of yours and figured out how to enchant your blood to give Ina some of your powers. The shielding. The magic draining. She saw you do both those things when trying to defend yourself from her, so it wasn’t hard for her to replicate. Now that she has another batch, she might be able to do more.”
My stomach clenched. Everywhere I turned and everywhere I went, my blood led only to further doom and destruction.
“I should have unhooked myself from the Moth somewhere over the city,” I said.
“Don’t say that,” Hal said firmly.
“You don’t get to tell me what to say,” I replied.
“No, I don’t. But maybe there is a safer way to use your true power. I can take care of you if it comes down to having a headache, like I get with mine—”
“No.” I interrupted him. Power always had a cost. I knew what the price of my gift was. It wasn’t so much aging or pain that frightened me, but the unexpected collateral damage that always seemed to result. A flood that killed thousands. A village destroyed by bandits just so one girl could find her manifest. What would happen next?
“There’s one other thing. Nismae plans to try to use the other demigods to help her. She wanted to start with me. She asked if she could have some of my blood, too, to see if there is a way to bestow my powers on a mortal.” He looked out over the horizon. “I said no.”
I studied his features in the moonlight—the gentle curve of his nose, the shadows beneath his cheekbones, the bold and curling eyelashes that gave his face a constant air of innocence. I couldn’t tell what he might be feeling. My heart tugged me in directions at odds with my mind. It would be so easy to scoot closer to him, to rest my head on his shoulder, to lull myself into believing he’d be there when I needed him. He’d rescued me, hadn’t he? But how could his loyalties lie with anyone other than his sister? How could he have led me to her in the first place? I didn’t know what to believe.
“Is that why you betrayed Nismae to rescue me tonight? Because she wanted to use you?” I asked.
“No. It was that thing I Heard at the top of the cliff in the Tamers’ forest.” He shuddered.
“His name was Leozoar,” I said. As terrible as the old man had been, I understood him. He deserved to have his name remembered by someone.
“He didn’t speak to me like my siblings might have, though I suppose he once was one. More like he was muttering to himself, lost in his own mind. It was mostly nonsense, but there was so much suffering and agony in the words. If Nismae finds a way to pull the magic out of us and use it, or if we let our abilities be used by others for evil, who’s to say we won’t end up just like that—some twisted thing, barely more than a wraith?” Fear shone in his eyes.
“So it’s selfishness, then? Self-preservation?” It was too much to hope that he’d come for me because he cared, but still, I did. I longed to mean something to him. I wanted to matter to someone—something I was less and less sure I ever had.
“No. Not just that. I don’t think what she and Ina are planning is right. I don’t believe in hurting innocent people like you, even if they think it’s for the greater good.” He spoke softly.
I swallowed hard against a surge of guilt. I wasn’t as innocent as he thought.
“Do you think killing the boar king is for the greater good?” I asked.
“No. But coming for you was.” He looked at me, finally, sadness in his eyes.
It took everything I had not to embrace him, to thank him for caring enough to come for me. But if there was one thing I knew, it was that I couldn’t trust anyone but myself ever again. And with only myself to rely on, there was only one thing left I could do, now that I was free.
“I have to go to Corovja,” I said. “I have to go to the Grand Temple and try to talk to the shadow god myself.”
“That’s daft,” Hal said. “You can’t. Nobody can enter the Grand Temple without permission from the king, even demigods. And even if you could get in, how could you get the gods to speak to you?”
“I have to at least try,” I said. “I’ll tell the clerics I just want to enter the temple to see if my parent will answer me. Besides, if I go to Corovja, I can warn the king so he can stop Ina and Nismae. He’s the only magic user with enough power to do it. Maybe if I get on his good side, he’d speak to the shadow god on my behalf—if I can’t gain entry myself.”
In spite of my resolutions, guilt still ate at me. In stopping Ina and Nismae, the king would no doubt kill them both—two people who had more history with me and Hal than anyone. We both stared vacantly at the fog swirling in the valley below, the silence strangely comfortable between us. Everything had a sense of finality, until Hal spoke.
“Can I come with you?” he asked.
I looked at him, startled.
“I thought you said you never wanted to go back to Corovja.” I’d half expected him to try and talk me out of what I was about to do, but not to ask to go with me.
“If the clerics won’t let you into the Grand Temple, how are you going to get to the king?” he asked, his voice flat.
“I thought anyone could petition the crown for an audience,” I said. Honestly, I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to. If I could get the Fatestone right away, I wouldn’t need to speak to him at all. He’d never know his story had been written over.
“They can . . . but it takes time. Some people wait moons to be granted one.” He sighed and looked down. “But I could get you in much faster.”
“How?”
“The royal alchemist. He owes Nismae a favor that I might be able to collect on.” The expression on his face told me that it might be best not to inquire how that had come about. I’d never thought about the people Hal had known and left behind in Corovja—about the whole life he’d lived before we met. The thought of him being forced to beg and steal to survive there made my heart ache. I just hoped the friends he’d made along the way weren’t dangerous ones, the royal alchemist included.
“But Ina isn’t your problem, and Nismae is your sister. Are you sure you want to help me?” It had to be impossible for him to take sides in this and feel good about it. Still, I wanted to take what he’d offered me. I could go to the Grand Temple and the king on my own, but it would be better with Hal by my side.
He took my uninjured hand and squeezed it just once. “Ina is clearly dangerous. And well . . . Nismae taught me that we protect people we care about. So I’m not going to let her hurt you.”
This time I couldn’t talk myself out of the feelings of warmth that pooled inside me.
“You’re sometimes awfully moral for a thief,” I said, and returned the squeeze. He grinned at my jab, then stood up and helped me to my feet.
I scanned the sky until I found the constellation of the huntress, following her lines to the tip of her arrow, bright in the northernmost part of the sky.
After a long pause, I said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
I thought about all the things I was grateful to him for—helping me out of Nismae’s grasp, trying to protect me, and most of all, not standing in my way when I needed to stand up for myself. He hadn’t been perfect, but he had always done his best, and done it honestly. I could forgive him for standing down when Nismae had attacked me. What other choice had he had? Forgiveness was the only thing that would keep me from leaning into the darkness and letting it become part of me. I didn’t want to be like Ina, consumed by grief expressed as rage. I didn’t even want her in my life anymore, not the way she was now. I wanted to continue to be a healer, not a fighter.
“For doing the right thing,” I finally said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner. She’ll come after us, you know.” His voice was gentle, but sure.
“I know.” If Nismae and Ina considered my blood part of what they needed for overthrowing the king, they would not stop hunting me until they got it.
Perhaps the shadow god truly was the only one who could help me now. I shook off a shiver and started walking toward the huntress’s star.