“How do you know what direction you’re going?”
“Look at the sun to orient yourself.” I find the sun in the sky and point to it. “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. People have used sundials for centuries. They work. Put a stake in the ground, and watch as the shadow falls in different spots as the sun moves through the sky. Actually, that’s your assignment for the afternoon. Make a sundial. See if you can tell me what time it is.”
There’s a round of moaning. One of them whines, “That sounds hard.”
I raise a brow. “Survival is hard, Acari.”
“I thought our assignment was to find our way across the island,” another says.
“That’s tonight.”
“How will we find our way without the sun?”
“Simple,” I tell them. “Find the North Star. It never moves.”
“Establish true north,” Annelise adds. She rolls her eyes, her way to say duh.
It was a meaningless aside, but for a moment, I’m gutted. True north. It’s what Annelise has become to me. I hadn’t known hope before I met her, not really. When I’m with her, I feel renewed. I have possibilities. I feel known.
“How do you find the North Star?” someone asks.
I can’t find my voice, but Ann answers for me, and it’s a mercy. “It’s at the very tip of the handle of the Little Dipper.” She’s dropped to her knees, already at work sketching out the face of her sundial. “It’s the bright one,” she adds dismissively, concentrating on drawing lines in the sand. “You can’t miss it.”
“Can’t you just find that, then?” another student asks.
My eyes keep returning to Annelise, mesmerized by her focused intent. She’s proud—she’ll want to be the first one to finish this assignment.
“Tracer Ronan?”
I shake the nonsense from my head. “You can’t always have your true north.” There’s a pathetic metaphor in there somewhere.
“Why not?”
I shrug, growing impatient, eyes once more landing on Annelise. She’s digging in the side of her boot to pull out a throwing star. She’ll use that instead of a stick to cast a shadow for her sundial. “Because something might get in the way,” I say distractedly. She’s so clever, working through the assignment—it’s like I can see the cogs spinning in her head. “Like a body of water, or…” I must focus on class but can’t look away. She’s planting the star in the sand. There’s a flash of blue-white glare as light catches the steel. “Or some other natural element, like a—” I spot a design etched along its face—the pattern of a bird’s wing. It’s the star Carden gave her. Jealousy stabs me.
“Like a…?” a female voice prompts.
Annelise tilts her face to me, giving me an inquisitive look.
“Or a”—I rack my brain, trying to remember what I was saying, remember how to breathe—“Like anything. You might walk into a crevasse. A lake. A monster. Enough talking,” I finish sharply. “Get to work.”
Carden’s gift to Annelise is a reminder: I have to stop gaping at her. There is only one thing I can afford to see, and that’s Dagursson, and the target I’ve put on his back.
CHAPTER FIVE
We tell students not to leave the path. To beware the dark. I break both rules as I stand here in the shadows of the Arts Pavilion, prowling among the bushes like a burglar. I peer through the window into Dagursson’s office, seeking ideas, additional weapons, and the excuse that’ll get me close enough to kill him.
I need to get in, do the deed, and get out.
I’d failed Charlotte, but I won’t fail Annelise. If killing the old Viking is the only way to keep her alive, then that’s what I’ll do. Even though it might very well mean my own death.
I hold my breath, watching as he rises and walks to his bookshelves. But instead of selecting a book, he reaches his index finger high. Presses something. A panel pops open.
A secret hiding spot.
What does he keep in there? Is that where he’s tucked away the information about my family? If I could actually track them down… The possibilities make me reel. I could take Annelise to them. We could flee; they’d give us shelter. We could make a fresh start.
Discovering how to open it is suddenly in the top five on my life’s priority list. I wrench my neck, squinting, but can’t detect any levers or buttons in this darkness and inch to the side for a better angle. A branch snaps underfoot. I hold my breath.
But the old vampire continues in his own world. He hasn’t heard me—he wouldn’t. The thick masonry of the Arts building is as soundproof as a fortress. It’ll conceal my approach. Because I act tonight. No matter what.
I’d have liked more time to plan, but this is my only window when I’m certain to be alone. I dropped my students at various points along the western coast of the island. Annelise will be busy trekking across the island. Between the rocky terrain and the bloodthirsty Draug roaming the countryside, even someone as talented as she is will be occupied trying to make her way back.
I push thoughts of her from my head. Focus. Only focus will get me out of here alive. Only my focus will save her.
Carefully, I check the urumi wrapped around my waist. It’s the rarest of concealed weapons—one part coiling sword, one part whip—that I wear like a belt, hidden until the last moment. It’s the most dangerous blade ever created, as likely to kill me as it is to behead any vampire.
And yet, in my pocket is something I’m banking Dagursson will find even more threatening: a simple plastic lighter. By the time he knows what’s happening, I’ll have my urumi wrapped around his throat and a flame threatening his scrolls. It’ll be enough, I hope, to make him tell me what he knows about my remaining family.
I take the handle of the urumi in my hand. It’s cold, and I grip harder, imagining my heart as cold as this steel. I flex my hand, pumping blood into my fingers.
I watch the vampire pull out a scroll. He shuts the panel again and walks slowly back to his desk. His feet find the way by rote, so completely immersed is he in his reading.
I will kill Dagursson. Preserve Annelise.
It’s all the courage I need. Slowly, I extract the coiled blade.
Guard Annelise. Behead Dagursson.
Forget subterfuge and strategy. I’ll storm in and surprise him, whipping my blade before he thinks to look up. Paper-thin steel will bite his flesh, bringing hundreds of years of walking this earth to a dead stop.
I stalk from the bushes. A shadow moves on the path. I freeze. I’d know the curve of those shoulders anywhere.
“Bloody hell.” I’ve only murmured under my breath, but I’m heard.
Annelise stops, turns, steps closer.
I tear into her the moment she’s within earshot and hiss into the darkness. “What are you doing here?”
Even in the shadows, I sense her recoil. “Hi to you, too, Ronan.”
I take my urumi into my left hand and grab her arm with my right, tugging her back onto the path. “How’d you get back so fast?” She shuffles close, her side bumping mine. I experience a stupid, pleased sensation and shove it away again. “You should be halfway across the island right about now.”
“Why, thank you, Ronan,” she says in a voice thick with sarcasm. “I think I did a great job, too. It’s all that stuff I learned about the Draug. They feed on fear, and seeing as I’m not scared of them anymore, they’re not hungry when I’m around.” She stops walking when I pause to wrap the urumi back around my waist. “I mean, except for that time I was covered in my own blood. Being covered in your own blood would make”—she stopped short, tuning into what I was doing—“what the hell is that?”
“It’s a weapon,” I say quietly.
“Thanks, Sherlock. I mean what kind?” She tentatively reaches out to touch the blade. Her fingers brush mine.
I clench my jaw. “Careful.”
“Does this…this”—she peers closer—“this most awesome object have anything to do with the fact that we’re whispering?
” At that, she tilts her head up and pins me with her eyes. She’s closer to me than I realized.
I step away, beginning a brisk walk down the path. “Why are you here?”
She falls into step with a sigh. “I was looking for you.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Why?” I know I’m being harsher than is necessary, but I’m in uncharted depths.
“I told you before,” she says, frowning. “I have to talk to you.” A hint of vulnerability edges her voice—a needful thing suggesting she requires me and only me.
Or maybe that’s just my wishful thinking.
Either way, I have to stop short. Look down. Focus on getting the cursed urumi back in place without severing a finger.
She pauses beside me. “But it seems you have something to tell me first.”
My head shoots up. “Tell you?” Have I betrayed my feelings so quickly?
“Yes, you have got to tell me the name of your weapon. Are you”—she leans closer—“are you wearing it like a belt?” She’s gleeful and adorable, and for an agonizing moment I contemplate a world in which she’d get to be gleeful about normal things like new shoes and good movies. It’s a world I can’t even imagine.
“It’s called an urumi,” I say tightly.
“An oo-whatie?”
“Urumi.”
She shudders elaborately, an endearing pout wrinkling her face.
I know I’m supposed to be stern, but I decide not to fight my smile for her. “What’s with the look?”
“Whips.” She nods to the urumi. “They make me think of Masha,” she says, referring to her longtime enemy, now dead. “Yeesh.”
“Technically it’s not a whip. Think of it like a curling sword.” I pull it back out, offering it to her. “Go ahead. You can hold it. Be careful, though. People have been known to slice their noses off while swinging it.”
“Nice,” she says, hefting the weapon in her hands. “Where on earth did it come from?”
“India.”
She gives me that look I know so well. “No, dummy, I mean where did you get it?”
I pause. I could lie, but what would be the point? Annelise and I are way past lying.
I lead her to a bend in the path obscured by hedges. When I face her again, only the faintest starlight remains, glimmering along her cheekbone, casting her mouth in half light, half shadow.
“It was my sister’s weapon,” I say quietly. All Acari are assigned a weapon, something in tune with who they are. Annelise has her throwing stars. Masha had a whip. Charlotte got an urumi—though I never understood why. My wee sister with something so lethal never clicked for me.
Annelise gives my comment the weighty pause it deserves. Finally, she asks, “And you know how to use it?”
“Who do you think trained Masha?”
“Ronan. Well now.” The look she gives me is a considering once-over, an assessment, like a girl seeing a guy in a new light. “I had no idea.”
I stand taller. Because I’m a piteous idiot. “There’s much you don’t know.”
Like how I might be going off to my death in order to protect her.
I gird myself to meet her eyes again. She’s watching me pensively. She’s so much smaller than me, but she’s so close. It’d be so easy to lean down. To angle just so.
“I have a secret to tell you,” she says quietly.
Her words stab me. Sharp emotion hews me like a chisel through ice. Does she have the same thoughts I do? Thoughts of how all I want to is for us to touch. Not with my powers—just a normal touch, taking her hands in mine. How easy it would be to lean over, to close the gap between us. To bring my mouth to hers.
“A secret?” My voice is a harsh rasp. Might she be having thoughts like mine right now?
“Emma’s alive,” she says. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
CHAPTER SIX
“What?” I turn and walk to a crook in the path where I stand and stare into the trees, hiding my face from her. I need a moment to make sense of her words. Her secret isn’t that she loves me. Of course it isn’t. I’m a fool.
She follows, and so I busy myself with the urumi, taking it from her. I nick my palm getting it back around my waist. “This better not be any more of that nonsense about you breaking into the castle,” I say finally. “The vampires—”
“No, Ronan. Listen. I did it. I snuck inside the keep.”
My insides seize the moment the words come out of her mouth. Slowly, I meet her gaze. “What did you say?”
My expression must be dangerous because she recoils slightly. “It’s okay,” she says quickly. “I’m fine. It’s just…I did it. I snuck inside the keep.”
“How?” How could she have done such a thing and survived? Many girls went into that castle—and until now, none have come back out.
“I broke in.” She waves it away, her expression urgent, desperate with some other news. “That’s not the point. The point is, I think Emma is alive.”
I grow still, uncertain I’ve heard correctly. Emma was her best friend, and Annelise still blames herself for her death. “Did you see her?”
She shakes her head. “No, but—”
I interrupt at once. Hope is a dangerous thing on this island, cutting more deeply than any esoteric sword. I should know. “Emma is dead, Annelise.”
“No,” she says firmly, “just listen. That’s what I needed to tell you. I think she might be alive. There were other Acari there. They were drugged—at least, I think they were. They were shuffling around, all dead eyed, like Stepford girls or something. And Frost—oh God—my roommate Frost was there, too. On a table, Ronan. Laid out on a table. It was so creepy. She looked willing, as though it was some great honor. And then a woman came in—a woman, Ronan—a vampire woman. She took out this knife, and she… The boys they…” Her face cracks then, her knees beginning to fold beneath her.
I reach out and wrap one arm around her, then the other. Before I know it, I’ve tucked her close. She nestles perfectly into place. I shush her, murmuring, “It’s okay. I can imagine what they did. You don’t have to tell me.”
She pushes away. “No, Ronan. You can’t imagine. It’s horrific. There’s this ritual…where they…they…”
She’s shivering now, and I rub my hands along her arms. “Breathe, Ann. Remember our tactical breathing,” I coax, knowing the comment might interrupt her spiral. Tactical breathing: inhaling, holding, exhaling on a four count. She’d given me such grief about the absurd term, but it didn’t matter—tactical breathing was made for situations like this.
But apparently whatever the vampires did to Frost was too gruesome to recount, because once she gathers herself, she takes a different tack. “They have all the dead Acari’s weapons hanging on the walls,” she begins evenly. “But Frost was still alive, at least she was at first, and her weapon, that ridiculous ax, was lying on a table. And they had Emma’s Buck knife on the table, too. As though she was next or something. As though she’s still alive.”
She gives me a pleading look. I know that look. Every alarm in my head shrills to life.
“I have to save her,” she says. “Don’t you see? Emma is alive. She has to be.”
“Promise you won’t do anything without me.” What if I die trying to assassinate Dagursson, and she goes back into that keep alone to save her friend? My hands tighten around her arms. “Promise you won’t go it alone.”
“Who would help me? Who could I even trust? I mean, yeah, there’s you, and Carden—”
“Don’t tell him what you just told me,” I snap. Carden claims he loves her—and God help me, I believe him—but I also believe he loves his crusade at least as much. I fear the day will come when he places his own objectives before anything—or anyone—else. “Don’t confide in Carden. Not yet.”
“He’s not one of them,” she says instantly. “I know that.”
“But he’s a vampire. And that I know.”
Her face hardens as she processes something. “Well, then, h
ow about the female vampire thing. Did you know that, too? You didn’t exactly flinch when I said it.”
That’s my Ann. Always knowing, always guessing. That’s how I know she’ll survive after I’m gone.
I’ve taken too long to answer her, and my silence betrays me.
“No way,” she practically shouts, then catches herself, continuing in an angry whisper. “You have got to be kidding me. Women can be vampires, and you knew, and you didn’t tell me?”
“The Vampire Directorate likes to keep it a secret,” I say.
“Secrets, secrets, so many secrets.”
I know there’s something I should say here, something she needs to hear, but I’m too blinded by my own questions. “Was it Sonja?”
“Wait, you even know her name?” She deflates at that. “Yes, the vampire’s name was Sonja. And doesn’t it just suck for me that the person I trust most didn’t even tell me something so ginormous?”
I’m the one she trusts the most? “I didn’t know she was on the island,” I manage, fighting the urge to pull her close.
She’s scowling hard now, and I can see it’s to quell some intense emotion. “So that leaves…let’s see…nobody. There’s nobody else I can trust. I’m alone. Everyone I trusted is dead.” A light enters her eye, and she meets my gaze in earnest. “Do you think I could trust Alcántara? He was in the keep, but it was weird, he—”
“Kenzie,” I blurt, grasping onto anything to interrupt that train of thought. “There’s always Kenzie,” I repeat, recalling her dorm Proctor. “On this island, having friends is dangerous. But allies, they’re a good thing. She could be your ally.”
She scowls. “Spare me the lecture.”
“Just listen.” I can’t have her thinking about Alcántara. “Kenzie is different from the others,” I insist. “I know. I was the one who brought her in.”
She jerks from me. “Why are you always going on about Kenzie?”
My hands are left cold and empty. I clench them into fists. “What?”
“What what? I mean, what is the big deal with Kenzie?”
I struggle to parse this sudden hostility. “It’s just a sense I get.”
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