“A healer and a fighter,” she muses, appraising Weslyn with open interest. “Why do you speak of Eradain?”
Weslyn appears slightly relieved to be back on topic. A point on which we can agree. “He’s given Telyan the same deadline to adopt his legislation. He also requested we join his campaign to take the Western Vale.”
The article we read didn’t mention the campaign, and Weslyn pauses to gauge Mereth’s reaction. Though I’ve already heard this news, the reminder still unsettles me.
Her silence is telling, and Weslyn picks up on it immediately. “You received the same request.”
She nods, setting her spoon down. “He’ll be disappointed with my lack of enthusiasm, I imagine. That land has remained untouched for centuries, and for good reason. I have told his messengers as much.”
“Then you plan to say no?”
“I haven’t decided yet on my response, and if I had, I would not share it here. But I have no wish to expand Glenweil’s borders, nor to risk my people’s lives in such a foolish and needless endeavor.”
“Nor the lives of those living in the Vale?” Weslyn adds. In my peripheries, Helos straightens in surprise.
Minister Mereth holds Weslyn’s gaze long enough to be disconcerting. Whether she’s impressed or offended, it’s difficult to say. At last, her lips curve in a slight smile. “Why are you here, Prince Weslyn?”
He sips from his own wineglass. “We’d like to cross the river.”
Minister Mereth coughs a little on her soup. “Is that so?” This time, when he doesn’t bend beneath her gaze, her expression clouds over. “You have no business crossing the river, any more than Jol does.”
“No law prohibits us from crossing, so long as we do so in peace and with no intention to settle. So that’s not for you to decide. My actions are guided by my father, and my own conscience.”
A server enters the room with a pitcher but hastily retreats when he sees his minister’s face.
“Is that a threat?” she asks, in a voice carved from ice.
“On the contrary,” Weslyn replies, “it’s an invitation. In exchange for passage on one of your boats, we will happily share our findings with you.”
“And what exactly is it you hope to find?”
“With any luck, nothing.” Weslyn drains the last of his wine. “Our intention is to see whether Jol has begun his campaign before the deadline is up. To judge the state of the Vale, and whether it yet bears the mark of Eradain, with or without our help.”
No mention of the stardust, then, or the other riddle we’re aiming to solve: why magic is reviving in pieces east of the river. Nor do either of them acknowledge the Fallow Throes in their midst. The leaflet Helos picked up didn’t mention it, and Minister Mereth isn’t raising the topic any more than Weslyn has.
It’s all a show of strength between them.
“You wish to spy.” Mereth’s eyebrows shoot up, and she sits back again.
Weslyn nods, gesturing to Helos and me. “You understand our need for stealth.”
She grants him nothing, though her eyes blaze with curiosity. “And your companions are what, your bodyguards?”
He smiles without humor. “Of a sort.”
Minister Mereth’s gaze whisks over Helos and me once more before returning to Weslyn. “If you do find his people there, what then?”
“We’ll report our findings and call a summit. If he’s begun, we must intervene now before open war becomes unavoidable.”
“And you really think Jol would violate a centuries-old neutrality agreement on his own?”
Weslyn stares at her. “Do you not?”
Minister Mereth is silent for a time, so long that the servers come to clear away our bowls and replace them with another steaming plate of food. Weslyn, too, remains still, staring down the ruler by his side.
At last, she looks around the table, first at me, then Helos, then Weslyn. “You must return here first to share what you find. If you wish to use my crossing, those are my terms.”
Weslyn nods. “Agreed.”
Minister Mereth smiles then, a small, victorious smile that reminds us the people of Glenweil elected her for a reason. “The boat will sail at dawn.”
NINE
The walk to the water is quiet, save for the hissing of the wind and the distant rush of rapids. Dirt muffles our footsteps as we cling to hooded cloaks and wind our way through a city shrouded in predawn shadows. Helos, Weslyn, and I have moved in silence this morning, and none of us seems keen to break it.
We bade farewell to Ansley, Naethan, Carolette, and Dom at the base of the palace hill; Weslyn asked them to remain in Niav for three days, to gather intel on the city they could take back to King Gerar. It was a relief for me to leave them behind, but I noticed the tightness in Weslyn’s frame, despite the confidence in his parting words. Naethan had embraced him, once again ignoring Dom’s insistence on formality, while Carolette shot me a glance that promised death should anything happen to him. Ansley had murmured “good luck” and actually squeezed my shoulder before doing the same to Weslyn.
Now my stomach sits in knots, my joints feel cramped and achy, and I know it’s the strain of maintaining the shift as much as anxious tension. Resuming my natural form while I slept negated some of the hours I spent holding the borrowed one all of yesterday, but I didn’t sleep enough to cancel it out, and today, adopting Evaline’s form requires more of an effort.
I suppose we’ll be across the river shortly enough. With every miserable step, my apprehension deepens.
I tell myself the fear is irrational. That the land on the opposite shore is just that: land. But I can’t stop the adrenaline coursing through my limbs, the tingling spine and tightening chest, the way my skin quivers as if overrun with insects. My heartbeat is thrumming in my ears, so loudly I’m sure somebody else must hear it, and by the time the city ends and the river comes into full view, my heart’s roar nearly rivals that of the churning water.
If we succeed in fetching the stardust, we could awaken the land east of the river once more. These could be our last steps on nonmagical ground.
Helos is a few paces ahead of me, and suddenly I’m filled with a desperate need to close the distance between us. Clutching my cloak, I scramble forward until I’m walking so close I actually knock him sideways a couple of steps.
“Okay?” he asks in a low voice. His posture radiates calmness, but there’s a stiffness to his gait, and his eyes are wary. Haunted. I can tell his façade is an effort.
I don’t answer.
Without speaking, he slips an arm around my shoulders. Together, we follow Weslyn to the port.
It’s a small thing, little more than a sturdy-looking dock. A single-tiered boat, much longer than it is wide, tugs at its tether at the end, looking pitifully fragile against the powerful current despite the several pairs of rowers on deck. As we approach, the sight dredges up unwelcome images, along with those ever-present whispers of not enough, not enough. I try to drown them out with thoughts of Finley instead. Of golden hair and crystal eyes.
“Turn your face to the left. No, not that far—there. Hold it.” Finley adjusted his grip on the parchment pad and studied my face with renewed intensity. It was a warm, clear spring day, a couple of years back, when Finley’s body had not yet started attacking itself.
“You’re not looking at me,” he chided with a trace of laughter.
He was right. I was looking at the trees.
“Perhaps I’ll just have to draw Helos instead.”
I reined in my thoughts enough to feign offense, but it was an empty threat. He had drawn Helos only once and had made no move to do it again.
My brother grinned lazily, stretched out on his back with an arm strewn across his eyes. “Rora’s the better subject,” he objected. I scoffed at the notion of being better in any sense.
Finley smiled, open and honest, and it won me over. I held his gaze and allowed him to sketch my eyes.
“There,” he sai
d after a time, handing me the pad with charcoal-smudged fingers. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
It was, but I flashed him a small smile. The drawing was good, a little too good. When I handed it back, he tore it from the pad and offered it to me. “Your payment for sitting.”
“Miss?”
I turn my attention to the captain before me, a short, androgynous person with warm beige skin and close-cropped ebony hair. They gesture for me to step onto the boat Weslyn is already boarding, and I place one foot onto the wooden slat connecting the ferry to the dock.
Then stop.
The seconds pass. The captain makes a few reassurances about the current and the size of the crew, but half the sounds are lost to wind and water. The current is indeed slower this close to the shore, gentle even. But I don’t want to cross. The land on the other side almost cost Helos and me our lives. It left us scarred and hungry and so deeply, frightfully alone. And I do not want to go. I can’t go.
I take a step back.
“Please.”
I wrest my gaze from the distant shore to find Weslyn watching me carefully, one foot on the boat, the other still on the board.
“Please do this. For Finley.” Strangely, the request doesn’t sound like an order. It sounds more like the river close to shore. He looks at the wood, then back at me. And then, very slowly, he offers a hand.
The gesture awakens a flicker of shame. I should be able to do this myself. I shake my head and board the boat, wringing my hands before me.
When I next look behind, Helos is halfway down the slat. His body is rigid, no longer an illusion of calmness. I try to catch his eye, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at nothing.
At last, he’s across, and together we follow the captain down the center. The boat is larger than I thought but still creaks disconcertingly underfoot. Weslyn chooses a seat at the front, but Helos and I plant ourselves on a bench firmly in the middle, as far from the edges as possible.
The man to my left has the same muscular build as the captain on the dock. When I sit, he points south to a spot on the western bank, farther down the river. It’s close to the place where Helos and I first crossed. We’ll be following the current for a short distance rather than rowing directly across, he explains. I nod and straighten my spine, pretending not to hear the curiosity in his voice.
Indeed, all the rowers look curious, but they keep their mouths shut. I suspect they’ve been ordered to do so.
As soon as we’re settled, they release the boat. The captain barks a command, and we push off from the dock.
Fortune save us.
The rowers do their work in silence, with far greater efficiency than I anticipated; we’re into the center of the river in no time at all. In an attempt to distract myself from our destination and the way the boat rocks back and forth, I focus on my breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Why is Weslyn staring?
I force a challenge into my gaze, and he flicks his attention to Helos before turning forward once more. I’m the picture of stillness, but next to me, my brother can’t stop fidgeting. He bounces a leg, he twists his hands, he brushes the hair off his forehead. Giving himself away with each movement, and the experience is strange to me. He’s always had this restless energy when he gets nervous, but this—I haven’t seen Helos so on edge in a long time.
I can’t help but wonder if he’s remembering the rapids closing over his head. The heaviness of the river as it fought to drag him under. I wonder if he’s remembering the way I didn’t save him.
Or perhaps the sight of the opposite shore—inescapable now—has suddenly made this whole journey far too real. Forced him to confront the trauma of his past in a way he’s managed to avoid for years.
Tiny points of pressure prick my skin from beneath. Alarmed, I refocus on my breathing, determined to steady my racing heart.
The pricks are feathers, threatening to break through to the surface.
Not this time, I think resolutely. I won’t fly. I will not flee.
Hold it, said Finley.
“Easy, crew,” the captain calls as we make our way past the halfway point. The woods are growing steadily larger. I press my shoulder to Helos’s, attempting to offer some reassurance. His leg stops twitching, but his hands are still clasped in a death grip; upon closer inspection, I notice a tightly folded piece of paper clutched firmly between them. He’s running his fingertips over the creases.
A letter, perhaps? Or a map? The only bits I can see are blank. I resist the urge to reach for it, fixating instead on the long line of trees coming closer.
Weslyn hasn’t looked back in a while.
By the time the rowers guide the boat into the shallows, resolve strengthens me. I know what I have to do. I have to be strong for my friend. I have to be strong for my brother. And this time, I will not fail.
The pinpricks disappear.
Three people leap into the water and grab the front of the boat. Three more take it from behind, and slowly, they push and pull it onto the pebbly bank.
Weslyn is the first to exit the boat. The captain promises to set a daily lookout at Niav’s port, so we can catch our ride back by flagging them with smoke signals. Weslyn nods his thanks before stepping down onto the rocks, hands fisting the straps of his pack. Keeping my eyes trained on the tree line, I shuffle forward until I’m right at the edge. The captain offers me a hand, but I shake my head. I have no need of it.
For Finley, I think resolutely. And I step onto the shore.
TEN
Every step is an effort.
The sky has settled into a dull gray color, which I suppose matches the mood. It was difficult to stand and watch our only means of escaping this shore surge into the river and away to the opposite bank. We exchanged glances after that, Helos and I having released our borrowed forms to great relief—and to no comment from Weslyn—but no one was quite willing to splinter the silence, or take the lead. So the three of us just walk side by side up the rocky shore, boots grating against the tricolored stones, toward a mass of scaly juniper shrubs tangled along the forest’s edge. Helos halts us right at the tree line.
“Now that we’re out of the open,” he says, in a constrained sort of voice, “we need to establish our plan.”
Weslyn gazes farther down the river. “The giants live near the southwestern tip, don’t they? So we track south.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” I say, pausing my examination of my brother. Weslyn’s forehead creases. “We don’t want to walk the shore; it’s too exposed, and we’ll have to move farther inland anyway to reach the giants.”
“Too exposed—to what?”
He doesn’t sound as nervous as he should, and I can’t tell if he’s acting, arrogant, or vastly unintuitive.
“Marrow sheep,” I reply, sheathing my own apprehension in annoyance. “They come down from the mountain ledges hunting bones to grind between their teeth and strengthen their rutting horns. Widow bats that spin toxic webs of saliva. Changeling wolves whose fur camouflages to match their surroundings. Caegar wildcats that hypnotize you with their eyes, paralyzing your legs and lulling you into a false sense of security before killing you. Not to mention timber bears, even more dangerous than grizzlies, which are so strong, they can fell trees with the slightest push.”
“You make it sound as if this whole place is a death trap.”
“It’s not a death trap,” I retort. “It’s just the wilderness. The terrain here is unplotted. The trees are centuries old; the woods won’t be as easy to navigate as the Old Forest. There are boulders that could twist loose and pits of dirt hiding two-headed snakes and biting insects. Water sources don’t just appear when you need them. And all while we’re making our way across the Vale, we’re invading other creatures’ territories, and we’re walking a land where magic is steeped into the plants and the animals and the earth itself. That means unpredictability. A landmark could be there one day and gone the next. Leaves might produce a mist that puts us to sleep for a h
undred days. And if we get hurt, there is no one to call for help. No one. We are alone.”
I’ve moved slowly forward throughout this speech, to the point where I’m now somewhat close to Weslyn. I resist the urge to step back. He needs to understand.
For a while, he doesn’t reply. Just studies me as if working out a puzzle.
“And this is where you grew up,” is all he says.
I’m not sure I can bear the pity tingeing his voice, so I shake my head and gesture dismissively. “This isn’t about our past,” I tell him, not sure how true that is. “This is about saving Finley, and every other afflicted person before they end up underground. Not to mention finding the source of this resurging magic. And to do that, we have to stay alive. That means staying alert, traveling as stealthily as possible, and listening to my brother and me. Got it?”
I half expect Weslyn to respond in anger, but he only holds my gaze a few moments more, then nods.
“Got it,” he echoes, rather quietly.
Just as quickly as it flared, my impatience ebbs away. “All right then,” I say, satisfied and strangely flustered. “Helos?”
My brother flinches a little as our gazes connect, as if jolted from a bleak trail of thought, then quirks his head toward the trees. “I say we head west through the forest. We can make camp at the central lake, then track south to the giants from there.”
The base of my throat tightens. It’s been four years since we’ve been here, and already our familiarity with the landscape is returning to us.
As if we could ever be free of it.
I nod my assent, and he moves to take the lead. But I quickly stride past him; he’s been eyeing the woods apprehensively, and this, at least, is something I can do for him.
The forest is alive with the sounds of bugs, breeze, and the occasional yelping cry of a golden eagle. Given the summer season, the trees are in full bloom, ponderosa pines and silverleaf oaks whose canopy crowds thick above us. Needles shiver on their perches, the branches swaying and creaking intermittently. We climb steadily through a maze of roots, twigs, stones, and dirt, gaining enough elevation to accrue minor headaches, our sides nudged by mountain sagebrush and white-flowered stalks of bear grass. Every once in a while, I catch glimpses of a squirrel or a similar creature reveling in the disarray.
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