THEY MOVED THROUGH NARROW PASSAGES carved from stone. Servants’ channels, Wil guessed. There were a few in her own castle, and she and Gerdie had used them in their games.
The opal chamber was rightly named. The marble floors shimmered and gleamed, a different color each way the light touched them. The far wall was raw mountainside, carved into an elaborate headboard much like the stained glass scenes at the broken castle—animals in the foliage carrying mangled prey in their jaws, amid carved blossoms and vines.
Wil could feel the hatred emanating from the princess’s guard like a summer fog. In the bright light of the opal chamber, Masalee’s elegant face was filled with disdain. She offered no explanation, giving Wil only a bitter laugh when she took in the state of her damp clothes and limp hair.
Wil had never felt so scrutinized in her life.
When Masalee left, Wil deflated with a sigh.
Loom would soon notice that she and Zay weren’t coming back, if he hadn’t already. He wouldn’t be able to come after her, not with the bounty on his head. Zay was no good in her state. Wil would have to find a way to get both of them out of here.
Though she was desperate to get to Pahn, she couldn’t resist the rare opportunity to see the famed mountain palace, of uncovering its secrets. Maybe she could learn something that would help her family, would end this war.
In the stillness of this large and empty room, the enormity of the night’s events finally reached her. She could see the guard she had killed as clearly as if he were still before her. All ruby, even his hair, even his forearms. This was a first. Usually her victim would die before they had completely crystallized.
But this time, the ruby had spread fast. By the time he was dead, there had not been an inch of skin left to the guard.
She was getting stronger. Her body thrummed with the electric energy of it, even now. When she caught her reflection in the dressing mirror, her skin seemed brighter, her eyes a deeper brown.
It was an especially hot night, and the air was heavy.
Through a pair of glass double doors there was a stone balcony just wide enough for her to step out on and gaze at the city.
It was all cloaked in blackness, including most of the palace itself. Wil strained her eyes and tried to see across the water to the distant island with its broken castle. Loom was there, worrying. She knew it. Just as she felt his presence, she also felt his absence. Felt every wave of water that rolled between them. Felt the anxious air leaving his lungs and filling the soundless night.
She felt the distance just as fiercely as she’d felt his thumb grazing her lip.
There was a sound within her temporary quarters, and she spun on her heel just in time to see the one of the heavy carved doors opening.
Espel stood, backlit by the sconces in the hall. Her small frame did nothing to fill the gaping doorway, but something about her was arresting even so. She wore a white linen gown that ruffled and rolled around her feet like the sea bursting over rocks.
When she met Wil’s eyes, her stoic expression turned to a sweet smile. “It’s a great view, usually. The flecks in the stone catch the sunlight and it’s like the air is on fire all day.”
Espel advanced until she was beside Wil on the balcony, a hairsbreadth from touching Wil’s arm.
“I suppose the Traitor has told you I eat live baby goats for breakfast, or that I bathe in the blood of my enemies,” Espel said, stretching her arms out over the ledge. “We’ve never gotten on well. I’m sure you know what a trial brothers can be. Always so desperate to be the Important One.” She sighed and turned onto her back, hanging upside down over the railing to look at the stars splayed above them.
Espel’s demeanor turned serious. “What do you make of your king’s handiwork?”
“I don’t have a king anymore.” The words were easy for Wil to say because they were the truth.
“Perhaps not,” Espel said. “But what you do have is an extraordinary power.” She stood upright. “I’d like to know more about it. Come and take a walk with me.” The breezy invitation was not a question.
Wil kept even pace with Espel, and the moment they stepped into the hallway, Masalee emerged from the shadows between the sconces. “Your Highness.”
“Oh,” Espel said, as though inspecting something she’d stepped in. “Bring us some tea. We’ll be in the Star Garden.”
Wil saw the muscles go rigid under Masalee’s robe. “I can summon a servant, Your Highness.”
“If I had wanted a servant, I’d have told a servant to do it,” Espel went on, and began walking again. Masalee kept pace behind her.
“The entire palace overlooks the Ancient Sea,” Espel said. “You can hear the tides from every room. Do you know how it earned its name?”
“For the soldiers who died in battle,” Wil said.
Espel noticed the change in her. “What do you think about that?”
“What I think is that the sea makes us delirious,” Wil said. “We look to it to find the things we’ve lost.”
Espel tilted her head, but said nothing. Wil supposed the origin of names was important to a girl who had been named for something so deadly. Did the name define her, or merely suit the fire with which she was born?
They moved down a labyrinthine set of hallways where flimsy candles danced halfway up to menacing ceilings. The faint etchings in the mountain walls told stories of love and violence and corpses, of fiery ships succumbing to watery graves.
“I suspect your mind is as powerful as your hands,” Espel said at last. “It would be a shame for a girl with your ability to have a dull brain. So many girls allow themselves to be bleeding idiots because that’s what’s expected of them. Dress like a girl. Walk like one. Eat like one. Desire the things a girl should desire, and nothing more—but how can that be called desire, if it’s dictated?”
Wil was frightened by how much she agreed. She had not expected to have so much in common with a princess who boasted of killing her mother.
They reached a pair of massive doors made of pale wood. Its carvings were of plants that resembled the tattoos snaking up Espel’s wrist as she reached for the handle. In the flickering firelight, the fanged creature appeared to be biting into her wrist. The lines were slender and gleamed with bits of silver.
The door opened with a frightful groan, and the warm night air rolled into the palace.
Wil marveled at what she saw.
There was a garden that sat atop a mountain plane, overlooking the city and sea. There appeared to be nothing separating the garden’s edge from the sky, but Wil could make out a silver gleam in the air, just faintly. She had never seen an electrical dome up close before, but she had read that they were invisible and only air could pass through them. They repelled weapons and generated backup energy from the sun so that cutting their electricity wouldn’t disable them.
Espel led them out onto a pathway of raw mountain stone. “Stay put,” she ordered Masalee.
The starlight was a bright beacon out here. The world was still and calm.
Chemical smoke still lingered on the air, a bitter reminder that peace was an illusion. Still, the flowers were unaware of any bloodshed. The blossoms were varying shades of silver and white, like the stars themselves.
Espel spun on her heel and faced Wil, stopping her short. “So then. Tell me about your power.”
“It began earlier this year,” Wil said, the truth spilling from her like blood from a wound. “It happens when there’s adrenaline, but not when I’m calm.”
“Are you calm now?” Espel said.
“No.” Despite her outward composure, Wil could feel her heart beating staccato in her chest.
“What can you transform?”
“Anything living.”
Wil waited for Espel to demand another display of her powers. But after staring ponderingly at the blossoms around them, Espel said, “How long were you in the company of the Traitor?”
Wil hesitated.
“No harm is going to come to him at my hand, believe me,” Espel said, reading her expression easily. “He wouldn’t be stupid enough to come back here, and I have no interest in chasing him through the slums besides.”
“It’s been weeks now,” Wil said. “We met at a camp.”
“And he brought you to the South with a plan of some sort,” Espel said, falling gracefully onto an iron bench. She crossed one leg atop the other and canted her head just slightly in invitation. Wil sat beside her.
Espel wasn’t afraid to get close. There were mere inches separating her from certain death against Wil’s skin. The princess glanced to her guard, who was rigid in the doorway, a hand at the hilt of her sword.
The sword wouldn’t do anything, Wil thought. The crystal would overtake the princess’s body in the time it would take her guard to cross the space between them. Though Wil would still be left an easy target.
The princess didn’t ask very many questions about Wil’s past. She didn’t care about her brothers or her upbringing, or even her Northern Arrod accent. She was interested only in Wil’s power—when it started and how it worked. Everything.
When Espel was content with her answers, she turned her head and stared out at her kingdom that was devastated but unbroken by the zealous king’s attack. “You should sleep,” she told Wil. “Tomorrow you’ll meet the king.”
Tomorrow, she thought, she would find out what had happened to her family and discover some way out of the palace. She would find Zay, and they would return to the broken castle that lay hidden across the sea, where even the starlight couldn’t find it.
The palace itself smelled faintly of incense and mists. But the night breeze through the open window carried the charred, chemical smell of the darklead.