Her hair was matted now with blood and dirt and sweat, but it fanned against the flannel pillowcase in a phantom attempt at elegance. In this room, she would always be a princess, and, for the first time, a stranger to him.
Masalee didn’t have to work as hard now to keep Wil alive; Wil was beginning to take control of that task for herself. If not for the sleep serum, she would be awake. Even now, she was fighting it. Her brow furrowed; her fingers curled and uncurled.
If they had been alone, he would have climbed beside her and laid his head on her chest. He was so tired and so defeated by his own relief. He wanted to sleep to the sound of her breathing and feel the breeze of it in his hair.
But they weren’t alone, and Loom suspected he wouldn’t be able to rest yet, or for a long time.
Wil’s brother stood in the doorway with his arms folded, watching them. He looked nothing at all like Wil; his eyes were a bright, persistent blue. His hair was as light as Wil’s was dark, and his tall, broad frame stood in contrast to Wil’s slight but muscular build.
But Loom saw the bond that existed between the siblings nonetheless. He saw the worry Gerdie tried to mask. Like his sister, Gerdie was ever on guard, anticipating a perpetual storm. The guns and knives sheathed along his hips and thighs all bore the same patterns as Wil’s.
This was Wil’s family. And this castle, unfitting as it might have seemed, was her home. Wil was not entirely lost in the world, as he had thought when he first met her. She belonged somewhere. There was someone to miss her when she was gone.
Loom stood away from the edge of the bed to face Wil’s brother. Espel stood at a distance; she had been studying the boy just as closely.
“Who did this to her?” Gerdie asked. There was nothing murderous in his tone, but his eerie calm spoke to a very patient sort of rage. And here is where he differed from Wil, who was impulsive when she wanted revenge.
Loom opened his mouth to speak. He was going to tell the truth, all of it, and face whatever consequences they brought.
But Espel was faster. “A marveler by the name of Pahn,” she said. Recognition flashed in Gerdie’s eyes. He knew that name, but he said nothing as Espel continued. “My father is King Zinil.” She took a confident step forward, making a show not of pride but of fearlessness. She knew that this boy would see her as an enemy, and she wanted to make clear that she was unafraid of him. “He couldn’t leave his kingdom, so he sent Pahn to attack your kingdom. He’s the most powerful marveler the world has to offer. Was,” she amended. “Before your king killed him.”
“Baren is my brother, not my king,” Gerdie amended, and then shook his head to dismiss whatever else he’d been prepared to say about it.
“We thought you were dead,” Loom ventured. “We thought—” His voice, like his thoughts, tapered off into silence. His mind was still fogged by the lingering aftermath of being under Pahn’s spell, and he hadn’t slept. So much had happened that it seemed he had been on this continent for a thousand years. Was it only two nights ago that he was on a ship headed to this kindgom, with its princess in his arms?
“How can I be certain you won’t kill me?” Gerdie asked. “Being that we’re enemies.”
“We aren’t your enemies,” Espel said, and Loom was grateful to have her on his side for this. Espel was clever and quick even when she was nursing her wounds and on her second day without sleep. “We came here with Wil, and we came here to help.”
It took Espel less than an hour to explain their banishment and Wil’s initial plan to dupe King Zinil with an alchemized corpse. The time was kept by the grandfather clock on Wil’s chamber wall. When it broke into a trill at the top of the hour, it startled Loom from a lull he didn’t realize he had fallen into.
Espel didn’t betray her own fatigue, but he knew that she felt it. She had to. Despite all evidence she meticulously presented to the contrary, she was human.
After answering all possible questions Gerdie could have had for them, she ended with a question of her own: “Is the rest of your family still alive? King Baren?”
Gerdie had remained stoic throughout everything, his eyes occasionally flitting to Wil, who was still lost in her serum-induced sleep as Masalee kept vigil.
Though this was the only question any of them had asked him, he didn’t answer it. “You must be tired,” he said. “Let me show you to a place where you can rest.”
Once again, Wil struggled her way to the surface of her nightmares and broke through them.
“Wil?” Gerdie’s voice was there to greet her when she awoke. Her eyes opened, and she saw him on a chair at her bedside, his face alight with relief.
“Hey,” she croaked.
“Hells.” He bowed his head. “You have to stop scaring me. It’s becoming a pattern.”
“I’ve been told I am very hard to kill,” she said drowsily. “It seems you are, too.” She tried to push herself upright, but a fresh stab of pain to her chest stopped her. She closed her eyes, not because of the pain, but because she wanted to hide from his answer to what she was about to ask him. “Gerdie, where is Mother?”
In a flash, she imagined her mother cold and dead, just like her brothers had been—at least, as they had appeared.
“Mother is safe.” He lowered his voice. “She’s in Southern Arrod with Addney.”
Wil blinked. “How did you convince her to flee?”
“We got word that a retaliatory attack would be hitting us. Turns out Baren actually had the foresight to employ proper spies. We all went into hiding. She went to protect the future heir just in case soldiers invaded the southern half of the kingdom. I stayed behind to make sure Baren didn’t let this place burn to the ground.”
“But it did burn,” Wil said. With the memory of the Port Capital, she felt overwhelmingly useless. This was her kingdom and she had set out to save it after robbing it of its heir, and she couldn’t even sit up in her bed. “Everything is ruined. Everyone is dead.”
“Most got out alive,” Gerdie said, though he seemed to know how empty those words were. Just as in Cannolay, one life claimed by war was one life too many.
“Where is everyone?” Wil asked. “I didn’t see any survivors. I didn’t even see any bodies.”
Gerdie hesitated, and she grabbed his hand in both of hers, clutching it until her knuckles turned white. “Where?” she demanded.
“Baren’s soldiers led them through the woods in the darkness. They didn’t even use lantern light. Baren—he did something to the trees. Cast an illusion so that it would hide the people passing through the forest. If they’re lucky, they’ve made it to Southern Arrod by now.”
“Luck” was not a word Gerdie had ever used, and it made Wil uneasy. He was not dealing out certainties, because he knew they would be lies.
“You were right,” he said. “Baren was dabbling in marvelry. More than dabbling. It turns out he has a real gift for it. I guess it’s in our family’s blood, though I’m not sure where. We sure as the hells don’t have any.”
“You’re rambling.” It was an accusation. Gerdie only rambled when he was either lost in the channels of his own thoughts, or he was stalling for time.
Gerdie drew a long, heavy breath. “The bodies were an illusion. Pure marvelry.”
“It was so real,” Wil said. “I touched you. I—”
“He’s stronger than I would have thought possible,” Gerdie said. “Then again, a year ago I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for you to turn an entire garden into diamonds.”
“Where is he?” she asked.
“He’s . . .” Again Gerdie hesitated. His shoulders rose and then sank in defeat. “He’s made some sort of a deal with that old woman in the train tunnel.”
Wil’s blood went cold. That old woman was dead. She saw their mother kill her. But maybe it hadn’t been her. Espel had stabbed Pahn and he’d disappeared into wisps. Could the old woman have cast a similar illusion?
“Is that where he is?” Wil felt the desperation all the w
ay to her bones. “That woman is dangerous, Gerdie.”
“Baren is more dangerous,” he countered. “He’s been practicing this ability for years, Wil. Right under our noses.”
“It wasn’t under our noses,” Wil said. “We all took care to avoid him.” She laughed ruefully. It made her chest hurt. “All these years, I thought I was the invisible spare.” She considered. She remembered Loom stabbing her, immersed as he was in Pahn’s spell. She remembered the blade feeling as though it were on fire when it tore through her. And then very little after that.
“Baren saved me,” she said. The words came out slowly, a puzzle she was trying to solve. “I remember Pahn kneeling beside me. I remember that my body had gone numb from the pain. I couldn’t move. He would have finished me off, but Baren . . .” She trailed off. She turned the memory over in her mind, but it never changed. “Baren killed him. To protect me.” She had been staring at her chandelier as she processed this, but now she looked to her brother. “Why would he do that?”
Gerdie’s face had gone ashen. He hadn’t known the details of her latest brush with death. He made a quick recovery and said, “I don’t know. I was surprised enough that he protected me when the attack began. I was certain he’d leave me to fend for myself, but he made sure we both got out before Pahn came for us.”
“Pahn came alone,” Wil said. “He was so certain he could kill you.”
“He did kill us.” Gerdie shrugged. “The illusion of us, at least.”
Wil felt sick. Her mind would never be free from that horrible image of Gerdie dead on the floor of his laboratory. He had been alone. That was the worst part. She hadn’t been there to protect him.
“I found your monocle,” she said. Her voice sounded weak. “In the snow.”
She reached under the blankets and dug into her pocket. The motion sent waves of pain to her chest.
Gerdie held the lens up for inspection. “You smudged the hells out of it.”
She laughed, and the laugh broke with a cough. “Sorry.”
“Baren was the one who said you’d be back. Something about your curse and all of us being meant to die. It’s hard to suss out what was madness and what was true.”
“He isn’t mad,” Wil said. “He never was.” Her eyelids felt heavy; she tried to stay conscious, but her body was through listening to her. “I need to tell you a story. Shake me if I fall asleep in the middle of it.”
She told him about Aleen. She told him that this curse was kept alive in her heart, but that it had spread out to all of them. First it took Owen, and then it took all of Arrod.
She was scarcely awake by the end of it. Frustrated, she fought against her own exhaustion.
Gerdie was frowning, but it wasn’t for Aleen. It was for her. “You were never a curse to me, Wil,” he said.
“Yes.” Her eyes closed, and she forced them open again. “I’m the reason all this has happened.”
“Our grandfather is the reason this happened,” Gerdie said, with the familiar practicality he employed when he was certain he was right. “You aren’t the cause.” He smiled, and the sight flooded her with so much relief and happiness; hours earlier, she had been certain she would never see him again, and here he was, alive; and faring better than she was. “You’re the reason I was able to forge so many weapons in my cauldron,” he continued, “and Owen was able to learn the Port Capital gossip. You’ve done more to help our kingdom than a dozen of Papa’s best soldiers.”
Wil didn’t believe those words, but for now she let them wash over her and she pretended that she did. She wouldn’t have been able to go on otherwise.
“Papa knew, all this time, and he never breathed a word,” Gerdie went on.
Wil closed her eyes, not from exhaustion, but to try and shut out the image of her father’s face. It didn’t work. She could see him so clearly just then, in more detail than any oil portrait or sepia photograph could render. She could see all the subtle ways she looked like him, hidden though those details were.
“I can’t pretend I ever understood Papa,” she said, her voice tight. She meant to say more, but tears threatened, and she knew that if she spoke another word, she wouldn’t have the strength to stop them. What she had meant to say was this: She hoped her father had loved her. She hoped he knew that she had loved him, in her own broken sort of way. He had not shown her much kindness, and though she competed with her brothers for his approval, she hadn’t been kind either. She had lied to and cheated him, and often thought the worst.
But she had loved him.
Gerdie dabbed at her sweaty brow with his sleeve. He seemed to know what she was thinking, and Wil was so grateful to him. Grateful that someone in this world had always understood her, even when she was a tangled mess beyond sorting.
“We have to find Baren,” she said, when she was able to speak. “If he’s with that woman, he’s in danger.”
Baren had tried to kill her more than once since learning of her curse. The recollection didn’t leave her feeling sentimental about having him back. But he had also saved her life when Pahn tried to end it once and for all, and she had to find out why. Maybe there was some good in him after all. Maybe he truly did care about the people of Northern Arrod when he arranged for them to flee the kingdom.
“Rest now,” Gerdie said.
She shook her head against the pillow. “There’s no time.”
“We won’t be able to leave until nightfall anyway,” Gerdie said. “It’ll be safer to move in darkness. We’ll be less vulnerable to an attack.”
Wil wanted to argue. Her kingdom was falling to pieces all around her and she should have been the one to save it, because this was all her fault. But Baren was the one laboring over it now. Baren was acting as king, and surely the world had gone mad.
“You nearly died.” A hint of pleading stole into Gerdie’s tone. Her stubbornness had often frustrated him, just as his did for her.
“Yesterday I thought you were dead,” she said. Her eyes closed, though. Exhaustion and pain were at odds, and she was tempted to sleep if only to dull the aching in her chest.
“Now that we’re even, let’s make a pact to live for another eighty years,” Gerdie said.
“A hundred,” she said.
“Deal.”
Thirty-Four
AS SHE SLEPT, WIL FELT the energy of marvelry coursing through her chest and she knew that Masalee was nearby. This time, she wasn’t trying to control Wil’s heart, but heal it.
From the depths of her sleep, Wil could hear Masalee’s voice, faint as the whispers of the Ancient Sea. The words were in a language she couldn’t understand. It might have been one of the Eastern tongues spoken in Masalee’s childhood.
Her voice was soft and cool and gentle.
Sometimes Wil felt water being spooned between her lips. She felt Loom nearby, watching her. Worrying.
And then, eventually, she felt Baren. This was the thing to startle her awake. She pushed herself upright, gasping. Pain twisted in her chest as though her heart were barbed with thorns.
Gerdie had been sitting at her desk poring over sheets of paper, but now he rushed to her. “Hey. What is it?” He was trying to ease her back against the pillows, but she fought him off.
“Something is coming for us,” she said.
“She’s been dreaming,” Masalee said. She was sitting at Wil’s bedside, where she had likely been for hours. Night was beginning to fall outside. The sky was heavy with the thick darkness of a Northern winter.
Wil shook her head. She ignored the spots of brightness in her vision. “No,” she said. “I heard voices.”
Masalee and Gerdie went still to listen, until the only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock, which had grown aggressively loud with each tick.
Wil slid out of bed. Her legs wobbled, but she didn’t fall as she made her way to her window. Frost glazed the twin panes of shuttered glass, freezing them together, and she had to hit the seam between the panes with the heel of her han
d to loose them enough to open.
Night had not finished falling yet, and there was enough light left for her to make out the outlines of figures moving toward the castle. Dozens of them. Gerdie and Masalee were on either side of her now, crowding the windowsill.
“We have to move,” Gerdie said. “We’re being invaded.”
“Wait.” Wil heard one of the men shouting orders. He spoke in Northern Arrod’s accent. “They aren’t enemy soldiers,” she said. “I don’t think King Zinil sent any of his men, did he? He only sent Pahn.”
“Are those our soldiers?” Gerdie asked, bewildered. And then he shouted down to them, “Who’s out there?”
Wordlessly, Masalee wrapped a blanket around Wil’s shoulders. Wil was grateful for this. She hadn’t noticed the bitter wind dusting snow into her chamber. She hadn’t noticed that her fingers were numb from the cold.
The figures had stopped charging forward. They stood assembled at the gate now. Only one of them moved forward, tilting his head to stare up at the window. “Your Highness,” he shouted. “We’ve returned to protect our royal family.”
“That’s one of Papa’s soldiers,” Wil whispered to her brother. They had been gone after Baren took over. Dead, she had assumed, or banished somehow.
“You’re certain?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “You don’t evade soldiers every day of your life without learning a few of their voices.”
“Stay where you are,” Gerdie shouted to the men.
He moved for the door and Wil followed after him. “Wait,” he said. He drew two of his daggers and one of his guns, fitting them into Wil’s empty sheaths and holster. “Really, Wil, is it too much to ask that you not lose the weapons I give you?”
“It’s been a long couple of days,” she said. Though she felt rested now, she was still filthy. She could smell the blood and the sweat souring her skin.
“Where are Loom and Espel?” she asked, as they moved down the hall. She tried to keep up with her brother’s pace, pretending every step wasn’t its own contained hell of agony.
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