WHEN WIL CLOSED HER EYES again, she didn’t sleep for a long time. Though her body lay between foreign satins, her mind braved the night-dark waters back to Northern Arrod.
She saw a memory of Gerdie, nine years old, his face serious as he knelt over her. She lay in the grass, gasping. Tears blurred her vision and pain muddled her head.
“Look at me,” he ordered her.
Behind him was the stone wall, slick with a recent rain, and the smear her jeweled shoe had made in a patch of moss as she fell from several feet up. Those stupid, glittering shoes her mother insisted she wear instead of her brother’s boots.
Gerdie ran his fingertips along her shoulder, and her body quaked from the pain of it. Her brother bit his lip, as though her pain had shot up his arm and stabbed at him too.
He stood, and for a panicked moment she thought he was going to leave her to go look for help, but he only broke a branch off a tree and knelt beside her again. “Bite down on this,” he said. “We’ll go on three.”
He only counted to one. With a hard push, he forced her shoulder back into its socket.
The branch did nothing to muffle her scream. She kicked and writhed.
“Shh, shh,” he said in a rush, and pressed his palm to her forehead. Only then did she realize that he was shaking too. “It’s all over now. It’s all right.”
It was the first time he would repair her. It wouldn’t be the last. There were plenty of breaks and bruises and bleeding gashes awaiting her in the years to come. So many that they no longer frightened her. In addition to his alchemy, he would go on to develop a prowess for medicine, his sister another complex thing for him to solve.
He stayed beside her for more than an hour, long after the ringing in her ears had faded, and the sweat dried from her brow, and the violent pain became a dull throb.
“I’ve been reading about alchemized glass,” he told her. “There’s this kind called phoenix glass. You could shatter it to dust, but with a little water and heat, it’ll come back together again, stronger than it was before.”
She rolled her head to the side and looked at him. His eyes were bright, wise beyond what the rest of his child face could convey.
“We’re just royal spares, Wil. We won’t inherit the kingdom or serve on Papa’s guard. It’s like we’re made of leftover pieces.” He bent his knee, and the braces on his leg creaked loudly, as they always did when the weather was damp. “I’m all copper and hinges, and you’re that indestructible glass. When we fall apart we know how to put ourselves back together. No one else will do it.”
As the sun rose, a servant entered Wil’s temporary quarters and laid an outfit for her on the divan beside the changing screen. Wil pretended to be asleep. When the door groaned shut, she opened her eyes.
The day’s first light stretched across the marble floor, and Wil gave up on the idea of getting any more sleep. She drew a bath, and as she sank into the tepid water, she worked to remain composed.
No one knew her identity, she told herself. She had wanted to be a spy all her life, and now here was her chance. She had the elusive Southern princess at arm’s length.
Most importantly, the king and the princess would be receiving word from the North following this attack. Some sort of demand, or threat. Something that would indicate just what was happening in the castle.
She needed to know that her brother was safe. If he was in danger, then Pahn would wait. Loom would wait. She would find a way home, though it would break her mother’s heart, though her father would kill her for it. She would find him and get him somewhere safe, where his mind and his skills couldn’t be tortured out of him for the king’s gain.
After the water had gone cold, she tied her damp hair into a figure eight and dressed in the linens laid out for her. It was surprisingly light for such a long gown, off white, sleeveless, and entirely unassuming.
It would be easy to flee in this, Wil thought. No one would suspect that she’d come out of the palace. She could blend right in with the crowd and disappear.
She forced herself to put on her gloves, despite the stifling heat. The silk and steel were malleable, but they didn’t allow for much air.
After she’d gotten dressed, she moved to the balcony, hoping the fresh air might rejuvenate her and give her strength for whatever awaited. But if the night had been humid, the morning was worse.
She worried about Zay. Wherever she was, she surely didn’t have the luxury of a balcony. Was she locked in a sweltering basement? Hanging upside down in a wardrobe? She needed to get to her before something awful happened—if nothing had already.
As though someone were reading her thoughts, one of the heavy doors was pushed open.
There stood Espel in a ray of light, eyes blazing. Her long hair was drawn over one shoulder, tied tightly with a length of satin that blossomed out into the shape of a lily. She wore purple satin trousers and a tunic, and across her chest and around her waist were her vials and blades, poisons shimmering in rich hues.
Masalee was a step behind her, her eyes focused ahead, her hand on her hilt.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” Espel said to Wil. “You have to be up with the sun if you want to see my father. He’s quite busy.” She nodded to the orange goggles fixed atop Wil’s head. “You should remove those. They clash.”
Wil hesitated. They were the only piece of Owen she had left. But offending the princess would ruin her chances of learning anything about Northern Arrod’s attack. Mournfully, she removed them from her crown, setting aside the dead for the sake of the living.
“They’ll be perfectly safe, I assure you,” Espel said. “The servants know better than to disturb anything when they turn down the beds. Come, my father will be waiting.”
It seemed as though they walked for hours, and when Espel pulled back a heavy door at the end of a dark corridor, she expected a throne room like her father’s in her own castle. Instead she got sunlight, hitting the white sand and temporarily blinding her. They stepped outside and onto a beach along the ocean’s edge.
A small crowd was gathered, all of them dressed uniformly in blue and white or red and gold linen—servants and guards.
At the water’s edge stood a man with skin darkened and weathered by sun. And at his side stood a taller and leaner man, a sword at his hip and light-brown eyes. Wil stifled a gasp. He was Zay’s father; he had to be—she looked just like him. And that meant the man he was guarding so closely was King Zinil.
He did not seem so frightening, she thought, as she imagined the guard’s sword slicing through his chest.
“I haven’t told him about you yet.” Espel’s whisper pulled Wil from her thoughts. “I wanted him to see for himself, after the morning trials.”
Morning trials? Wil didn’t dare to ask. But she didn’t have to. The doors were pushed open again, and one of the servants raised a large brass funnel and blew into it, creating a fearsome sound that surely carried throughout the entire kingdom.
“Bring out the offender!” The king’s voice was deep and frightening. Wil was studying his face, trying to find any resemblance to Loom. But there was nothing. He was hardly a man at all. He was more of a statue, with soulless eyes and a beard that clung to the square angles of his jaw. Tattoos wove down his arms and around his throat in patterns similar to those of each of his children. Loom hid his tattoos when he was in public, because King Zinil had turned them into a mark of exile. He would immediately be identified, maybe even killed as a traitor. But Wil had noticed that Loom wore those tattoos proudly when they were alone. She supposed they still meant something to him.
From down the hallway, there was the creaking of wheels.
Servants were dragging out a guillotine; they struggled to carry it across the sand once they’d left the marble floor of the palace.
Wil’s palms were sweating in her gloves. She was about to witness an execution. She was not unaware that these took place, but when her own father conducted them, it was privately and without fanfare. He took no pleasure in it. She and her brothers had never seen one up close, all except for Owen, who had the burden of learning everything a king had to know.
“Let go of me! I can walk without being dragged.”
Wil nearly toppled back against Masalee’s menacing form. She knew that voice. Zay.
No.
Their eyes met, and for an instant Zay stopped struggling against the two guards who had her arms and were holding her an inch above the ground. Her face was stoic and unafraid. There was no pleading glance and certainly no tears. There was nothing but a girl who knew she was about to die.
“Zaylin Lassiv,” the king pressed in his commanding voice. “You were offered salvation when your husband was banished, but you chose to remain married to a traitor, thereby becoming a traitor yourself.” Some of the servants averted their eyes. Wil could see which ones knew her, cared for her. “The terms of your banishment state that due to your association with a traitor, you are to be executed should you ever return to this palace.”
“I didn’t return to your palace,” Zay fired off. “I returned to a bleeding river three miles away. I was dragged here drugged and unconscious by your heir.”
“Don’t make it worse, you stupid girl,” one of the servants standing beside Wil whispered. She sounded like she was holding back tears.
Espel cocked an eyebrow and watched her father the way children in the market would watch a marionette show.
“My daughter was guarding her kingdom,” the king said, unfazed by Zay’s insubordination. “She perceived a threat and determined a course of action.”
“What threat?” Zay snarled. “I was unarmed! I couldn’t have been a threat even if I’d wanted to.”
“My daughter informed me that you did in fact have a most unconventional weapon.”
The king had no interest in further arguing with a dead girl. He looked to his guard, the man with the light-brown eyes. Like Masalee, he also wore a silver robe. Wil supposed this was an honor reserved for high guards. “Set her down and carry through when I give the command,” the king said.
The king’s guard stepped forward. He held Zay’s wrists for a second. Only a second, and then he pulled her forward. She stumbled, and she didn’t fight as he led her to the guillotine.
When they stopped walking, she stood in his shadow and looked at him. Her lip trembled, and the fire left her eyes. “Father.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her onto the plank.
She was shaking, or maybe it was just the wind fluttering her clothes as he laid her on her stomach and fitted her neck into the divot.
Frantically, Wil looked through the crowd for something she could do. Turning the king to stone wasn’t an option. Masalee or Espel would hurl a dagger at her before she’d made it to him, and even if she did manage to take him out, there were dozens of guards who still had her surrounded. It would be her neck under the blade next.
She turned to Espel, who was toying with the collar of her tunic, her eyes wild with intrigue. At last Wil saw what Loom had described.
I have met monsters.
“We’ll put her head in a box and send it to the Traitor,” Espel said, coming to the idea the way a poet comes to a verse. She was staring at the blade as it caught the glare from the rising sun. “A shame to let all that lovely hair of hers go to waste. Masalee, talk to a servant about fashioning it into a wig.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
There was the sound of metal slicing through the air, and Wil felt the breath leave her body. The king hadn’t given the order, but Zay’s father was so eager to be done with it that he had dropped the blade already.
Wil looked to the guillotine, though she knew the horror waiting there was something she could never take back.
But the blade was still suspended high in the air and Zay still had her head to show for it. Even she seemed surprised by this, and she raised her head just as the sound of metal ripped over her a second time.
The king’s guard stumbled back. Blood dripped from daggers lodged in either of his arms. The crowd gasped and shrieked and scattered.
The next blade hit the king in the left shoulder. His guard was immobilized and there was no one else willing to give their life to shield him.
Espel growled and ran into the clearing. “Show yourself, you coward! You traitor!”
Masalee hovered around her like a shark circling prey, her eyes darting in all directions as she tried to anticipate the next attack.
Zay saw her opening and jumped to her feet. Wil ran to her.
Another dagger ripped through the air, and Wil’s stomach lurched as she heard it land in flesh. “Who’s doing this?”
“Who do you think?” Zay said. Her grip was like iron on Wil’s wrist.
Wil raised her eyes to the stone overhang, two stories up. There was Loom, his skin gleaming bright, his stance broad, unbreakable, beautiful in its defiance. He raised his arm, and another blade shot from his hand like a shard of sunlight.
Something pulled at Zay and she let out a cry as she was ripped away from Wil’s side. Her father pinned her to the sand, his knee on her stomach, one of the fallen daggers brandished in his fist. “I won’t betray my king for you, girl,” he said through gritted teeth.
Zay tried to kick at him, but her eyes were pleading. “Father,” she said. Her voice took on a gentler, plaintive tone. “Father.”
He silenced her with a slash to her cheek. A red gash appeared, clean and straight, and then began to bleed.
Wil knocked him away with a clean kick to his temple. He fell away, mystified with pain, and covered his ears to stop the ringing.
Zay only stared at him, astonished.
Wil grabbed her with a gloved hand and tore her to her feet. “We have to run. Now. Come on.”
Nodding, Zay stumbled after her. She wiped at her face, smearing blood across her cheek.
Someone grabbed Wil’s wrist, and instinctively she twisted free.
“Don’t let them escape,” Espel was shouting to the kingsmen. “If you hurt her, I’ll have your heads! I’ll have your families’ heads!”
Wil dodged another arm that tried to snare her, and with her gloved hands she shoved Zay forward. Zay stumbled, dazed, and Wil wondered if the blade that cut her had been poisoned. But no, that wasn’t illness or fatigue in her eyes. It was astonishment. Shame. Hurt.
Espel came running for them, Masalee at her heels, a rush of fury.
Another blade shot across the divide and sliced the back of Espel’s ankle. Wil heard the tendon tear, and the princess was down in a pile of bloody sand, gritting her teeth, screaming. Masalee knelt beside her. “Your Highness!”
“Get them.” Espel’s voice was strained. But Masalee, stubbornly loyal, wouldn’t leave her side. She was tearing the fabric of her sleeve to make a bandage even as Espel hit and shoved her.
Wil and Zay raced across the sand that reduced their speed by half and made it into the city square. There should have been a wall of guards to stop them, but King Zinil’s ego had dictated that they be present for Zay’s execution. He wanted them to witness what happened to his perceived traitors. He wanted them to see that he would have a father kill his own child.
They raced past vendors and down an alleyway, stopping at last to catch their breath.
Zay doubled forward and dry heaved.
Wil rubbed circles on her back with her gloved hand, and for once Zay didn’t spurn her closeness. She spat and shuddered and let out something like a sob.
“Zay . . .” Wil began and then trailed off. What could she possibly say to comfort her? That she understood? That she feared her own father would have done the same if she ever returned home? That she still, knowing that, loved him so much that she wished she could cut his memory out of her heart and bleed him away?
Zay stood and brushed Wil away from her. “Loom will catch up to us at Rala’s house. I’m sure that’s where he left Ada. There’s no one else he trusts. Must have figured out we were captured when we didn’t come back. And we’ve witnessed enough morning executions for him to know what was going to go down.” She shook her head.
Nothing more was spoken after that. Zay trudged onward with her head high, but her gaze was on something that only she could see. Some memory of a time when the arms that had shoved her onto the guillotine had held her.
When they left the alleyway, they blended easily into the crowd. No one had the luxury of knowing what went on in the palace. They didn’t know that Zay had nearly lost her head, or that Wil was set to become the princess’s new plaything.
“Rala?” Zay stepped inside the house, and Wil lingered in the doorway. This place still smelled of Gray Fever and the death it brought.
“Ada?” Zay called, and the boy stirred on a blanket on the floor where he’d been dozing. “Ada!” She swept him into her arms and clung to him like the world itself might come to take him away. He giggled and buried his hands under her hair.
Wil backed away from the door and out into the sunlight, away from the quiet and the sick.
A hand brushed her bare forearm and she jumped.
“Miss me?” Loom’s voice was cocky as ever, but when Wil turned to face him, her eyes grew wide with alarm.
He hadn’t bothered to conceal his tattoos, he must have been in such a rush, and a sweaty sheen coated his face, which had turned a purpled shade of pale. His eyes were sunken, the bones in his cheeks pronounced, his lips quivering and bleeding. His skin looked as though it could slide from his bones.
“Don’t stare at me that way. I can’t look as bad as all that,” he said.
He fell forward, and Wil wrapped an arm around his back, shifting his weight against her shoulder. “I’ve got you,” she said.
She touched his forehead and then his cheeks. Dangerously hot. “We have to go,” she called to Zay. “Now.”
“Hells,” Zay muttered at the sight of him. But her false anger didn’t mask her fear. She put an arm around his waist and together she and Wil hauled him toward the outskirts. His head swayed and dipped and darted back up as he tried to remain conscious.
“You know better than to get that close to the palace,” Zay said. “Are you listening to me? Wake up!”
He drew a sharp breath and rolled his hazy eyes in her direction. “But if I’d let them take your head, my dear wife, how would you be able to yell at me?”
“Idiot.” She kissed his cheek. “That’s what you are.”
His knees buckled.
“What is this?” Wil demanded, hoisting him back up. “What’s happening to him?”
“Curse,” Loom muttered. His lids were heavy.
“What curse?” Wil asked.
“I told you, no good can come from meeting Pahn.”
“Hells,” Zay swore. Blood stained the back of her hand, her cheek, her collar. “We don’t have time for this. We need to get you home so I can figure out how to undo this.”
“Can’t go back there.” Loom’s breaths were becoming more labored with each step. “That’s the first place the king will look for us. They’ll kill us now, you know that—kill us and take Wil.” He looked at Wil, desperation lighting his tired features. “If you’re brought back to that palace, you’ll never escape again. For as long as Espel has her way she’ll—she’ll—”
“Shh,” Wil said. “That won’t happen. Just save your strength.”
It was with great difficulty that they managed to drag Loom over the rock embankment.
A few yards from the water, with his modest ship in sight, he collapsed into an unconscious heap of fevered skin and dead limbs.
Zay swore and knelt beside him. Ada mimicked the gesture and dropped down next to her. Her cheek hovered over Loom’s parted lips. “Still breathing, but he won’t be for long if he stays here. Help me lift him onto the ship.” She hoisted him by the shoulders and Wil grabbed his feet.
Loom let out a feeble groan as they laid him on the deck of the ship. Zay doubled forward to rest her forehead against his. His hair was gathered in her fist. “I’ll fix this,” she whispered. “Hang on, ansoh.” My husband.
Zay ran for the stairs, dragging Ada by the hand. “Take care of him while I steer us out of here.” She looked over her shoulder at Wil, and her eyes were misty and red. “You keep him alive.”
She was gone, and seconds later the boat was moving.
“Loom?” Wil undid the buttons of his sweaty tunic, hoping the cool sea air might bring some relief. His arms fell heavy against the deck as they came from their sleeves. Lifeless. “Open your eyes,” she demanded. “If you think I’m going to let you die now after everything you’ve gotten us into, you truly don’t know the first thing about me.”
His lashes twitched, and she saw his eyes again, glassy but comprehending. “Good.” Her shoulders dropped. “That’s good. I’m going to go belowdecks and find some lyster to cool your fever.”
“Sharp memory,” he rasped. His eyes rolled back as they closed. “It’s in the kitchen. You have to get the leaves wet.”
She was gone and back in seconds, the potted lyster plant in one hand and a canteen in the other. She plucked a leaf in her gloved fingers, doused it, and pressed it against his forehead.
He looked at her, his chest heaving as he breathed. “How could you ever believe you were a monster?” he whispered.
She pressed another leaf to the side of his neck. “Is this helping at all?”
He nodded, then let out a strangled sound and gagged up a mouthful of frothy white vomit.
“Winds.” Her voice was frustrated. She had tended to enough sickness in her life to know that this was the work of something cruelly unnatural. Something that even her genius brother wouldn’t find in one of his books. She turned him onto his side as he coughed and shuddered. Don’t lose it, she was telling herself. You can’t lose it now.
“Loom, stay with me. Tell me what we’re dealing with. Tell me what to do.”
She put his head in her lap and applied more leaves to his fevered skin.
He squinted at her, blinded by the sunlight. “It’s a curse. There’s nothing to do.”
“Curse,” she echoed. “What curse? What are you saying?”
“After all I’ve demanded from you, you deserve to know.” He closed his eyes and then forced himself back awake. “It was a year ago that I tried to murder my father. After that, he ordered Pahn to curse me so that I could never inherit the throne under any circumstances. I enter the palace walls, I die. My heart will stop beating and there will be nothing—no doctor or herb or machine—that can revive me.”
“But—” Wil’s voice caught. “You didn’t even go inside the palace, and you’re away from it now. So you should be getting better, right?”
He laughed, a low, creaky sound and shuddered with pain. “I got too close. The damage is done.”
She laid another lyster leaf against the side of his neck, and one to his forehead. He sighed with relief at their coolness, but his skin was still sallow and hot. His eyes were all pupil.
“It’s meant to be a reminder,” he murmured. “A reminder that my home can never love me the way that I love it.”
“Why don’t you just let it go?” She was desperate to keep him conscious. “You don’t have to be king. The burden’s been lifted.”
“No,” he whispered. “Those hunks of land, those people who are sick and dying and afraid—they need me.”
“You won’t be able to rule any kingdoms if you’re dead.” She reached for another leaf, and he caught her hand, and pressed it hard against his heart. He wanted her to feel it beating under his skin, steady and stubborn as the rest of him. And she did.
“I’m not dead.” His voice was fading, even as he fought to look at her. “And that is my kingdom.”