DARKLEAD.
So this was what her brother’s alchemized weapon could do.
Wil stood frozen on the shore, her face alight with the blaze of distant fire. She couldn’t feel her lungs, yet she heard each breath outside herself.
Gerdie. He was the only one who knew how to use his horrid invention.
But he wouldn’t have done this. Not of his own volition.
Superimposed over the faraway flames, she conjured images of her brother shackled in his basement, coerced by their father, possibly even tortured, and lost in his grief.
He was all alone. What was their father doing to him? It was her job to protect him, and she couldn’t. She was so far away, she may as well have been watching this unfold from the stars.
Somewhere in the castle, her father was flanked by counselors and plans, and he had ordered this. Even she hadn’t thought he would go this far so quickly. Had Owen tried to tell her?
“Wil!” Loom skidded to a stop at her side. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I am. I’m all the way over here. But the mainland—”
“We have to go to Cannolay,” Loom said. “We have to help.”
“You aren’t going anywhere near that place, you idiot,” Zay cried. “What use are you to anyone when you drop dead on its shores?”
“Now isn’t the time to—”
“You already pressed your luck today. You’re staying here. I’ll go.”
“I’ll go with you,” Wil said.
Zay was already running for the rowboat, but she stopped to look over her shoulder. “What’s it to you?”
Someone in that burning city would have to know what had happened. She hoped. Maybe the attack had come with word—news, a threat, something—from Northern Arrod.
“You dragged me out here because you wanted my help,” she said. “So do you want my help or don’t you?”
Zay’s eyes turned suspicious. She had always been wary of Wil, disdainful of anyone with Nearsh blood in general, but ever since the night Wil had returned Ada, all of this became tainted with curiosity. Zay didn’t know what to make of Wil any more than Wil knew what to make of her.
Wil ran to catch up to her, and Loom snared her elbow, spinning her to face him. Tiny burning cities in his eyes. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.
“I want to.”
He was searching her face, reading her in that way of his.
He was so close, and her blood rushed from her heart in rivers that all seemed to lead to him, pushing her closer, tempting her to touch him. She could smell the streets of Messalin in his hair, with its graves and gray flowers. She could taste his love for all of it on her tongue, like a kiss.
His full, parted lips were heavy with the weight of her name. He drew a breath to say it.
She broke free of his grasp before he could. Her heart beat with lethal force. “I have to go,” she said, turned, and ran up a sand dune to catch up to Zay.
Zay rowed furiously. Wil twisted her hair at the nape of her neck to get it out of her way. Her eyes never left the burning capital once.
They were halfway across the water when Wil said, “It’s not going to help, is it? All the diamonds and rubies in the world couldn’t fix this.”
Zay turned to look at the ashes billowing up into the night sky. “He would have been a good king,” she said. “I’m not just saying that because I would have been his queen. He loves this stupid kingdom more than anyone can.” She shook her head, pulling herself out of a trance. “It’s going to be bloody. I hope you’re not squeamish.”
From here, Wil could smell the smoke from Cannolay. The scorched skin. Burned hair. All of it wafting across the watery divide.
Owen had told her about an explosion he’d seen in a small country in the East. Nothing so big as this. It had all seemed so far away then. A dark paragraph in a fairy tale, as she lay in the cool grass and asked him to tell her something she didn’t know about the world. Owen had never been one to shield her from the truth, not even when she was small.
She gritted her teeth against a wave of pain at her core. It wasn’t really the inevitable carnage, or even the worry, and it certainly wasn’t the gentle rocking of the sea. Something was changing in her, pushing from the underside of her ribs, trying to splinter her bones to burst free. Something new that wasn’t there before.
It had all started when she met Loom, the only living thing in the world she knew to be immune to her touch.
Zay picked up on her uneasiness. “I’ve got smelling salts if you faint.” Her voice was only a little bit taunting.
“I’m fine.”
“I’ll destroy you, you know,” Zay said. “If you hurt him. So I hope you’re not planning something.”
This was meant to scare her, Wil supposed. But the sentiment made Zay seem less menacing. More sincere. Though Zay was married to Loom, and though that marriage was merely political, she loved him in a way that ran as deep as bone marrow. The way that Wil loved her brothers—the one living, and the one dead—enough to row into a city that was burning against the black sky.
“I understand,” she said.
“Yes. I somehow believe that you do.” Zay narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “You know, there’s something about you I never noticed before, but the shadows really catch it now.”
Wil looked at her. “What?”
“I saw the queen of Arrod once, when I was a little girl. She had a distinct chin and soft cheeks, a lot like yours. You look like her. Has anyone ever told you that?”
Wil would have given anything just then to see her mother’s face. She didn’t know that she ever would again.
“No,” she said, and it was the truth. She studied Zay for any sign that this was a trick, but the thought of the queen already seemed gone from Zay’s mind when she looked over her shoulder at the city burning in the distance.
The lights of Cannolay were that much closer now. They had to pass Messalin to reach the capital, and they stayed in the dark waters away from the lights’ reach. It would be so easy to disappear forever in the darkness here. Even the moon’s glow no longer touched them.
When they finally reached Cannolay, it was far from any buildings, but the smoke had thickened the air nonetheless.
The boat crashed into the rocks, and once they were on their feet, Zay dragged it ashore. “Try not to talk to anyone,” Zay said. “Last thing I need is someone overhearing your accent and gutting us up on a laundry line. Your kind isn’t exactly welcome here. Especially now.”
Silence would be more welcome than conversation, Wil thought, and followed Zay into the darkness.
It was a wonder that the Southern Isles were so well known for their medicinal plants. Wil had only been here a short while, but in that time she’d seen little more than dirt, sand, and rocks.
The rocks crested after what seemed to be an eternity of climbing, and all at once the city came into view.
Zay raised her head into a breeze that moved the wild hair from her cheeks. “See down there?” She nodded into the blackness. “It’s the Red River. They call it that because the minerals along the bottom look like rust. It’s a main water source. If there’s going to be another attack, it’ll likely hit there.”
Zay was just like Loom, Wil thought. She still cared for this city, even after it had cast her away. She was still eager to climb these rocks in the veil of moonlight and offer what small salvation she could give.
“Zay?” Wil stood beside her. “Something happened to Loom when we went to Messalin, didn’t it? Something about that place makes him ill.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t tell you. You make the secrets spill from his tongue the way that gems spill from your fingertips.”
“So I was right then. What is it about that place?”
Zay shook her head, began climbing down. “That’s something you’ll have to take up with him. I’m not in the business of divulging secrets.”
They moved in darkness down the embankment, and by the time they’d reached the bottom, Wil could hear the gentle rush of water.
“Watch where you step down here,” Zay said as they reached the ground. “There’s a lot of vegetation. Try not to crystallize anything. Most of these are medicinal and they’re of more use to people as they are.”
Wil couldn’t watch anything; it was so dark that she could scarcely make out Zay’s form in the moonlight.
“Stop.” A voice came booming across the darkness, and Zay went rigid.
“What?” Wil whispered. “Who is that?”
“The king’s finest.” She grabbed Wil’s gloved hand. “Come on.” She took off running for the embankment, Wil keeping even pace.
Wil’s heart was racing and she ambled in the blackness, trying not to touch Zay with her bare skin, which was a challenge until they reached the jagged rocks and Zay at last released her hand.
“Under the command of King Zinil of the Royal House of Raisius, you are ordered to stop!” The voice was accompanied by the clatter of swords.
“Don’t say a word,” Zay whispered fiercely. There was no panic in her voice, but somehow Wil knew that Zay was frightened. The way she also knew that they had been caught.
The commotion of swords and footfalls was as close as her next breath. Wil felt a strong hand grasp her arm and move to tear her away from the rocks.
She closed her eyes to the inevitable crackle of skin turning to stone.