9

You would think after the exhaustion that came with Scrying, I would have been deterred from using it. Fox thought I was insane. “You can’t expect this will get better,” he said as I pored through the pages of the book.

“It barely fazes Aenah. I can train till I get to that point too.” If the Faceless thought I could become a powerful spellbinder, that was her one message I was willing to believe. “Here, listen to this.” I waved the book in my brother’s face. “It talks about a Veiling rune.”

“That makes as much sense to me as Drychtan.”

“If done right, it can stop anyone from accessing your thoughts and prevent them from using Compulsion on you.”

That got his attention. “What do you need for it?”

My fingers ran down the page, tracing the rune inscribed in dark red ink, trying to commit the complicated pattern to memory. “After the invocation, I am to formulate an image in my mind like a shield.”

“A shield?”

“Or a door, it says. Anything that best represents shutting yourself away from the rest of the world. I don’t know if it would affect any bonded familiars.”

“Can’t hurt to try. How long does this spell last?”

“For as long as you hold the shield in place. It requires some conscious effort at first, but the book says that with enough practice, you can learn to keep those defenses in place even when asleep.” I wove the rune in the air and found the image of a closed door worked better for me. I could sense Fox’s touch drifting over my mind, carefully testing for weaknesses. “I can’t sense anything from you,” he reported.

“Really?” I asked. In that moment, I lost my concentration, and his presence once more flowed easily into mine. “This is harder than it looks,” I complained.

“You think it’ll work on me?” Fox asked.

I obliged, weaving the rune around him this time. I probed cautiously into his head but encountered an unbreakable barrier separating our thoughts. I tried pushing forward to no avail.

“I guess it works with familiars too.” I felt the door he was holding in place shift but remain strong. “It would be a good way to keep you and your three-headed pet out of my head for a change.”

“Can you sense him?”

“Just around the edges. It gives me some mild discomfort, like shoes that are getting a little too tight.”

“How are you not distracted enough to let go of your wall?”

Fox grinned. “Might have something to do with being dead. You’re not too prone to stray thoughts, and it’s easier to concern yourself with the bigger picture. It’s always been easy for me to compartmentalize.”

“You would have made a fairly good Deathseeker, Fox.”

“Perish the thought. Let’s see how long I can hold this up. Any other rune we can take a stab at?”

We tried the Heartshare rune next, to little effect. “Only for spellbinders, I suppose,” Fox conceded. “Or for the living anyway. What’s next?”

I cleared my throat, trying not to act too excited. “Well, there was this one spell I’ve been meaning to talk to you about…”

He glared at me. “We agreed you wouldn’t snoop without me around.”

“I made no promises about reading them.” I placed the book on his lap. “See for yourself.”

“You know I don’t understand half the gobbledygook in this.”

“This one’s straightforward enough.”

I was impressed. His face turned pale as he read, but he never once let the shield in his head lapse. Finally, he looked up. “What does this mean, Tea?”

“Exactly what you think it means.” It was one of the most complicated runes I’d ever seen, a tangle of crisscrossed lines and convoluted angles that made it resemble a thornbush run amok or a spiderweb caught in an inkblot.

While other runes were spelled out in diminutive cursive, this was sprawled across the page in heavy block letters, as if the writer himself was aware of its importance.

Resurrecting Rune, it said. A rune capable of bringing familiars back from the dead in the truest way possible.

I didn’t care if the rune had twenty times the complexity of Yadoshan architecture, if I were worth my salt as a bone witch, I was going to learn that spell, whatever it took.

Fox shared neither my enthusiasm nor my excitement. He read the page again with furrowed eyebrows and a clenched jaw. “This is too dangerous, Tea.”

“The chance of it succeeding is worth the potential risk.”

“No, it isn’t!” He stabbed at the page with one finger. “Have you read what this requires?”

I knew. I had spent many hours that morning staring at the page, as if looking long enough could make the task easier on my conscience. Distill the juices of the First Harvest into a familiar’s heart to take back what death had decreed. Beware, for the First Harvest is poison and kills all it touches, asha and familiar, save for those who possess the black. Reap its fruit and suffer death.

“We can ask Khalad to help. It’s possible that—”

“It says it kills everyone who tries to take it, Tea! It’s implying that whoever uses it would require their own life as a sacrifice!”

“Well, we don’t know what a First Harvest is yet. I’ve been looking everywhere, but there’s been no mention of it in the books here. But like I said, I’m sure we can find a loophole—”

Fox slammed his hand on the table with enough force that the wood splintered. “Don’t play semantics with me, Tea! Willing or not, you’re asking someone to die, and I know exactly who you’re volunteering. You are under no circumstances allowed to risk your life for me, Tea. Do you understand?”

“I wasn’t…” That was a lie, and he knew it. But the Veiling barrier slipped, and I sensed a hodgepodge of his emotions: shock, worry, determination, anger—more anger than I had ever felt from him. And fear—crippling fear, which I had never felt from him so keenly.

Impulsively, I reached over and hugged his middle. “I won’t. I promise. It’s not like we’re pressed for time or that you’re in any danger. Hey, I’m protecting you too, right? I can’t do that if I’m dead.”

There was a pause. Fox’s fist unclenched slowly, and he sighed but returned my hug. “Remember that, brat. You know I’d be lost without you.”

• • •

I was a fast learner and soon committed most of the runes to memory. For six days, we practiced; when we weren’t testing the extent of the book’s magic, I was fast asleep. But the more I experimented, the less exhaustion I felt.

Eventually, we learned to prolong the effects of the Veiling rune, finding it easier to enforce the same shield in our minds instead of creating our own individual barriers. It became a game of sorts, figuring out how long we could maintain it and which of us could do so the longest. Sometimes, I felt the azi’s presence, though it showed only curiosity at our magic.

There was no way we could use the Puppet rune on actual corpses, so we made do with rat bones instead. I knotted the threads of magic together like the book instructed, commanded the rats to run from one corner of the room to the next, and let go. We watched as the skeletal rodents scuttled on their own without any further influence on my end.

The Illusion rune was more complicated. After I learned to bend the spell around an object instead of pouring magic into its essence, I was able to successfully hide it from view. I tried it on Fox.

“I don’t feel any different,” his disembodied voice reported. “Although it’s disconcerting to see that I have no reflection in the mirror.”

“Stop moving around or you’ll be invisible forever.” The spell was a little too good. It took me a dozen tries to draw it right, and I got it just as Fox was beginning to worry.

“The next time we practice this,” he growled as he finally came into view, “we’re going to use a blasted potted plant instead.”

We couldn’t practice the Dominion and Strangle runes given their implications, but I studied them regardless. I also found myself going back to the lightsglass and shadowglass spells, though I knew we couldn’t—shouldn’t—do anything with them. The same held true with the Resurrection rune. “We need to find another way, Tea,” Fox said curtly, and that was that.

Spell practice was a good means to keep me distracted from Prince Kance’s impending engagement. Fox never spoke of Inessa, but every now and then, I would catch a thought, a vision of him and the princess walking down Kion’s market district at night or sharing mint-seasoned doogh at a teashop. I also sensed he would much rather not talk and so kept my silence. Because of all the preparations leading up to the engagement party, Polaire and Althy were constantly busy, much to my relief. I wasn’t quite ready to talk to Polaire after our fight.

Fox had returned to the barracks after our last practice, still keeping a firm hold over the Veiling barrier I’d drawn. I went through Aenah’s book again, but every time I became too engrossed, I felt the barrier starting to slip from my grasp, much to my irritation. It’s odd how the spells that seemed easiest were always the ones that required the most discipline.

I switched to Scrying, determined to master that one. I was still leery of spying on anyone else in the palace, but I finally decided on a target that wouldn’t affect my conscience.

I was wondering when you’d try this on me, Aenah’s voice drawled in my head, speaking from her dungeon. For all her bravado, I could feel her discomfort. That gave me satisfaction.

Why tell me about this book? I asked her. There was nothing for you to gain.

She chuckled. I suppose it was my last card to play. Oddly enough, I like you. You’re clever and resourceful and not yet set in the ways of the asha, though several more years in Kion will surely erode your independence. There are many things asha cannot do that I can, and your problems will not be solved by the paltry runes your asha-ka teaches.

There is more to you sharing this than you taking a liking to me.

True, Aenah replied. I know now that I cannot win you over by guile—that mistake is the reason I am imprisoned here. So I turn to truth where deception has failed. I ask for nothing, Tea. Not for my release from this prison and not for you to join my cause. All I desire is to show you how the asha have deceived you. I have done many terrible things in my life, sweet child. But your asha have done worse, and it is time you look at them with new eyes. If you are willing to listen to me, then I will tell you more about the elder asha, their machinations, and the more powerful of the runes in my book.

What have the elder asha done that make your transgressions pale in comparison?

It was your asha elders who conspired to hide your sister’s heartsglass.

You lie!

And for what reason? The truth should be easy enough to ascertain. Ask them why they abandoned the search so easily. Ask them why the young King Vanor refuses to speak, even in death. Ask them why shadowglass interests them so. Ask how Blade that Soars and Dancing Wind’s story truly ends. What secrets can you find when you step into Mistress Hestia’s study?

I quickly broke off the link, more shaken than I want to admit. That wasn’t possible. She was lying. Why would the elders withhold Mykaela’s heartsglass?

A sudden barrage of emotions that were not my own flooded into my mind, at once unexpected and familiar. The Veiling dissipated; Fox had broken his barrier.

I scried again and reached out to him, prepared to tease him for the sudden lapse, but it was not the practice fields or straw dummies I saw when my vision refocused. It was the angry, teary-eyed face of Princess Inessa.

She was exceptionally lovely, beautiful from her delicately curved nose to her high cheekbones and smooth flawless skin. Her bright-blue eyes were perhaps her most arresting feature, a rarity for a Kion, proof of the royal house’s ancient ties to the old kingdom of Arhen-Kosho, and a devastating contrast to her chestnut-colored hair.

“I can do whatever I want, now can I?” I’d never heard the princess speak like this; her normally pleasant alto was loud and harsh. “You have no say over where I go and who I marry!”

“But it’s not your decision, is it?” Fox sounded different too. His voice was too even from holding back his anger with great effort. “Why can’t you be honest for once in your life?”

“You are the last person to talk to me about honesty!” She shot back. “We have nothing! We had nothing!”

I hunched over, the pain in my chest catching me by surprise. The jolt soon passed. Fox responded without any change in expression. “And that’s why you’ve been watching me at practice for the last three weeks.”

She reeled back this time, and I could see her heartsglass mist over into blue. She clutched at the collar of her dress. “I don’t… I haven’t—”

“And now you’re to wed the Odalian prince,” my brother continued ruthlessly, much to my dismay. “It’s nice to see you free to make your own choices.”

The princess lifted her chin. “It was never my decision. But I’m prepared to honor my promises, unlike other people who come to mind.”

“Honoring your promise to a stranger one moment, honoring it to a prince in the next. And in between, honoring it to every Ahmed, Farshid, and Hamid who so much as looks at—”

Her slap knocked me to the ground. I blinked up at the ceiling with my cheek burning, but Fox remained upright, watching the princess stomp away. Once she was gone he said, very quietly, “Tea?”

I’m sorry, I squeaked, scrambling to my feet. I wasn’t intending to pry. I felt you loosen the barrier, and I wanted to—

It’s fine. We can talk about it later.

A quiet Fox was the saddest thing I’d ever felt. Gently, I disengaged from his mind but not before his melancholy washed over me, aimless and drifting.

Deliberately, I reached out and sketched the Resurrecting rune. I cast no spell, summoned no magic.

The elders couldn’t have worked this sorcery. Polaire was right. They would never have compromised themselves this way. But if I acknowledged that Aenah could be telling the truth, let her tell me more…

I sat and watched the rune glittering before me, light as air yet like a millstone around my neck, before I raised my hand again and watched it disappear.