Splendor and Spark

by Mary Taranta

  But I resist, grounding myself with the knowledge that Cadence is watching me, battling her own need for revenge. Giving in like this will only kill me faster.

  “Enough.” Baedan’s expression is unreadable, eyes glittering in the light. “We are allies now, after all.”

  And she’ll need all her men if she expects to survive against an attack from Perrote’s army.

  Exhausted, I sag back, overcome with delayed pain. “Touch my sister and the deal is off.”

  “You seem to be outnumbered,” Baedan says.

  “We had an agreement,” Bryn cuts in, hands raised between us in an unexpected gesture of peace. “Nothing has changed.”

  “I think the price just went up, princess.”

  “That is not how it works,” Bryn says, frustrated. She pulls out the dagger and lets the blade flash in warning. “You need Faris—”

  “But not alive,” Baedan says. “All I need is the skin that spell is on.”

  Fear flutters low in my stomach. If she tries to remove the spell and sees it’s gone, she’ll kill all of us.

  “What do you want?”

  We all turn toward Cadence, her voice thin but her chin raised high. “Blood? Is that what you eat? Fine.” She thrusts a slender arm out, raking back her sleeve. “Take some of mine.”

  “Cadence, no—” I try to stand, only to stagger, dizzy: too much poison, not enough air. I collapse back onto my knees.

  “Finally,” Baedan says, as two of the hellborne grab Cadence, dragging her forward. “Someone who appreciates the value of compromise.”

  “Don’t touch her!” Tobek darts forward. “If you want blood, I have plenty.”

  Baedan’s expression sharpens. “Now that is a tempting offer. North nearly died to save you once, and it would give me great pleasure to undo all that hard work.”

  Tobek blanches. “Just let her go.”

  “Done.” Baedan nods and the hellborne release Cadence. Bryn opens her arms. but Cadence runs to Tobek instead. He looks terrified for a moment, before he relaxes, returning her hug. One of the hellborne wrenches them apart and pulls him away; another fits him with a rope around his neck.

  “Do something,” Cadence demands of Bryn.

  “What do you want me to do?” Bryn asks flatly.

  Across the fire, Baedan sinks the needle in Tobek’s neck and withdraws a syringe of dark blood. She takes the first shot, closing her eyes with an expression of ecstasy.

  Cadence looks to me next, and I could kill someone. She finally wants my help, and I’m powerless to oblige.

  Tears well up in her eyes as the hellborne fill the syringe a second and third time, passing it among themselves like a bottle of barleywine. Their eyes roll back and their jaws go slack as Tobek’s clean blood cuts through the mud in their veins, giving the infection something new to burn through—briefly reigniting the giddy and addictive euphoria of magic.

  They could very well be contaminating him with their own blood each time the needle is plunged back into his skin. He was infected once already; it won’t take much to make him fall again. But Tobek doesn’t resist. His eyes meet mine and he dips his head, a barely perceptible motion, toward the horses tethered nearby.

  He wants us to leave him and run while the hellborne are drugged and sluggish.

  My chest tightens at the prospect of leaving anyone behind, but this alliance will never last; we need to run, and this may be our only opportunity. But he’s coming with us.

  “Come on,” I urge, pulling Cadence away, back toward the colder shadows where Bryn paces, throwing glances toward her father’s camp.

  Cadence shakes me off and barrels toward Bryn. “This was your plan. This is your fault. If he’s hurt—”

  “I didn’t hear you volunteering to take his place,” Bryn says darkly. “Which is ironic, considering you blame Faris for not doing the same for you when you tried to flee Brindaigel.”

  Cadence flinches. I squeeze her shoulder—another conversation for another time. “We need to leave while they’re distracted,” I say, voice low. “We’ll take two horses and cut the others loose. You take Cadence; I’ll get Tobek.”

  Bryn stops pacing. “And then what? We outrun my father?”

  “Do you have a better idea?!”

  “Let them fight it out—”

  “North can’t fight Merlock, Baedan, and your father,” I say.

  “Corbin is collateral damage,” Bryn says, flicking her wrist dismissively. “You’re the only one who seems to actually need him.”

  Cadence looks from Bryn to me and back. “You want to let Prince Corbin die? Isn’t that why we came out here? To help him?”

  “Plans change and people die,” Bryn says. “Surely you know that by now.”

  Cadence recoils, wounded. The Burn has stripped Bryn of her usual bribes, and gone is the sisterly princess who had dresses and coffees and soft feather beds to buy Cadence’s attention. There is only Bryn now, laid bare. And she’s not nearly so beautiful as she once was.

  Blood ticks in my ears; my vision blurs at the edges, only Bryn in focus. “And you think Baedan will honor your agreement. Brindaigel for Avinea.”

  “Who knows,” she says sardonically. “Maybe Baedan will kill my father and vice versa and I’ll inherit them both. Either way, we stick to our plan. And watch that temper,” she adds, resuming her pacing. “You’ll be hellborne by morning if you keep raging at everyone.”

  Furious, I storm over and lean into her face. “We’re leaving,” I say, “and either you’re coming with us or you’re dying out here on your own. Your choice.”

  Her eyes flash with warning. “Don’t threaten me—”

  “You kill me, your amplification ability will kill you out here,” I remind her. “You can run to Daddy, but he won’t save you and neither will North. As much as it might pain you, princess, we need each other.” And then, because I cannot help myself, I add sarcastically, “I’m not the enemy tonight.”

  Bryn gives me a murderous look to have her own words thrown back in her face, but I refuse to give her an inch. She relents, rolling her eyes and sighing. “All right,” she says, pulling my dagger from the folds of her skirt. “I’ll get the horses; you get the apprentice.”

  Satisfied, I release her and turn, nearly colliding with Cadence behind me. She looks as though she wants to say something, and I smooth her hair back. “See, nobody gets left behind,” I say, forcing a smile. “And where did you learn to fight like that? You were amazing, Cadence Locke.” Digging into my pocket, I retrieve the pearly seashell I picked out for her. “Here. I found this on the beach outside the Burn and forgot to give it to you earlier.”

  She stares at it, soft pink against the dirt and ash smeared in her palm. Slowly her fingers close around the shell as she straightens, leveling her chin and meeting my eyes. “You were right,” she says. “Thaelan did come back for me. And I wanted him to. I wanted you to get lost, so that he and I could escape, and then maybe he would finally like me best. And when I saw you that day in the square, and you didn’t speak up for me, I—I thought you knew. And you hated me.”

  My heart cracks open. “Oh, Cade.”

  “You kept coming back to see me,” she continues, voice wavering. “You kept promising to save me, but then one day you didn’t come, and I thought—”

  I embrace her, as hard as I dare. “I was coming back. I will always come back for you.”

  Her chin digs into my shoulder, thin arms circling my back. “I know that now,” she says at last. “I want to be brave like you, Faris, but I don’t know how. I tried to be like Bryn, but . . . I can’t do that either.”

  Bryn stops pacing, eyes meeting mine. She’s angry at the implication, of course, but more than that, she’s actually hurt. A flicker of resentment crosses her face as she turns her back on both of us.

  “You just need to be Cadence, the way you are,” I say. “Perrote made Alistair kill Thaelan because Perrote is a coward, and people like us, people like Thae
lan, scare him because we aren’t afraid to fight. And that’s what we have to do now, all right?” I kiss her forehead. “We fight.”

  Cadence nods, and I kiss the top of her head again, embracing her as hard as I can. “I love you,” I murmur. “And I promise your heart will not turn to stone. That’s only for trolls in the Wintirlands.”

  A weak smile at last. I’ll take it.

  Standing, I reassess the hellborne. Tobek sits, slumped by the fire, balled fists pressed into his thighs. Baedan and the others appear drowsy, intoxicated; it’s been too long since they had clean blood, and they seem to have overdone it.

  Good.

  I cut toward Tobek just as the first shot is fired in the distance, followed by a volley of others. Perrote. His campfire was a decoy, not a truce.

  Baedan rouses herself from her stupor, but is slow to retaliate with haphazard magic. It brightens the sky, dimming the stars as I yell at Bryn to get the horses, shoving Cadence after her. In the lull between rounds of fire, I hear the Burn awaken to our noise and the hellborne’s spells with a whisper of ash and shadow. This much magic will cause another avalanche.

  The hellborne understand the inherent dangers of the Burn and crowd closer to the fire, making easy targets for Perrote’s men as they approach. Baedan stands her ground, seeming to awaken again as she casts webbed spells that scorch through armor and skin. She doesn’t notice the three of us slipping through the dark to where the hellborne horses are all tethered and saddled several yards away. They grunt, anxious.

  “Straight west,” I order, swinging Cadence onto a horse as Bryn saws through its rope. “Across the fields. If he’s not there, continue west to the abbey in Kerch. Keep the mountains on your left and don’t wander.”

  “Faris!” Cadence reaches for me.

  “I’ll be right behind you!” I turn back for the camp, cutting off any potential protest. I trust Bryn not to linger.

  Tobek still cowers in the ash, tied to a stake in the ground. He flinches when I grab his shoulder in greeting, but soon realizes what I’m doing and tries to help me loosen the rope around his neck. We don’t have time to fight with knots, however, and I give up, kicking the stake out of the ground instead. He follows me, sluggish but still moving. I realize—too late—that Bryn has my dagger and I have no way to cut the rest of the horses loose.

  I turn to Tobek in question, but he’s woozy, disoriented from a loss of blood and the reintroduction of poison. I frisk his pockets, ignoring his indignant protests, and find a small hunting knife. The earth rumbles with familiar warning; dunes of ash begin collapsing around us, kicking up a cloud of debris that cloaks the sky. I work faster, teeth bared against the scorching pain in my bleeding palm. Just as the rope begins to fray, Baedan materializes in front of us.

  “No,” she growls as she grabs the horse’s lead, winding it around her wrist. The horse bucks, fighting for its freedom, but she’s stronger. With her free hand she yanks at the rope around Tobek’s neck, tightening it until his face drains of all color. “Where are they going?” she demands.

  The first wave of ash collides with the camp. The fire flickers, struggling to stay burning, and the darkness creeps close, inhaling with anticipation. But the dunes around us are not nearly as tall as those we encountered more than a week ago; even now, the worst seems to have settled.

  “Let him go, and I’ll tell you,” I say. Wind batters at us, throwing ash into our eyes and hair into our faces.

  “Doesn’t work like that anymore,” Baedan says. She flattens her palm to Tobek’s forehead, and poison begins to bleed out of her hand into his skin.

  “Stop it!” I clutch the knife in both hands to counterbalance the movement of the earth. My swollen fingers ache with the pressure. Ash begins to sluice around us.

  Tobek’s eyes roll back; his mouth sags open in a silent scream. The veins across his face flood with poison, but the rope around his neck is acting as a dam, keeping it from spreading lower, toward his heart.

  The pistol I took from the guard. Dropping the knife, I pull it from my pocket and aim it steady in my hands. I’m shaking, but my finger folds across the trigger, a gesture committed to my memory from the last—and only—time I shot a gun.

  But the shot that tears through Baedan’s heart is not mine. She flies back into the ash from the brunt of it. Dead. All her magic was useless against gunpowder and bullets. Apparently a carved-out heart is not the only cure for a hellborne soul.

  Tobek is safe, but Perrote’s odds of lasting in the Burn just increased exponentially.

  Tobek falls to his knees, scrambling to loosen the rope around his neck, gasping for breath. I lower the pistol to help him, but figures emerge from the cloud of ash, drawing my attention. Dirty, blank faces watch us over the barrels of their muskets, features illuminated by small lanterns hanging from each of their saddles, the flames protected by thick plates of glass. More than a dozen men remain, and two more behind. Perrote and Rialdo. Of course they would have survived. Monsters thrive out here in the Burn.

  Hiding the pistol in my coat, I raise my hands in surrender. Ash stings my face as it whips past in a frenzied rush, but even with watery eyes I meet Perrote’s stare with a defiant glare.

  “Shoot her and then skin her,” he says.

  “The spell is gone,” I say. “It has been for days. But,” I rush to add, as his soldiers take aim and cock their hammers with a dozen muted clicks, “I know where Merlock is. Bryn is on her way there now.”

  This, at least, earns a reaction, as he realizes that his daughter is not hiding behind me. Rialdo and Perrote exchange dark glances, and I half-smile, shoving back my coat sleeve to display the binding spell. “Bryn can still inherit,” I say, “but if you kill me, she’ll start soaking in the poison I’ve been carrying for her. With her amplification ability, she’ll be dead before you find her. And without her blood, you have no chance to take Merlock’s magic yourself.”

  Perrote’s smile is thin, forced. “And so you want to negotiate.”

  “I don’t have much time left,” I say. I nod to my hand; even in their dim lamplight, the skin is visibly discolored. “I’ll take you to Merlock, on one condition.”

  Rialdo snorts, derisive, but Perrote regards me seriously. “Name it.”

  My eyes travel down the line of soldiers, and I startle when I see Alistair at the end. Blank, expressionless, armed with a musket but dressed in his waistcoat and cravat beneath the baggy soldier’s coat they gave him to wear. An executioner again.

  “You kill me yourself,” I say, eyes dragging back to Perrote. “I want my blood on your hands, your majesty.”

  Their horses become unsettled in the deepening ash. Despite the protection spells Perrote’s provost must have cast over them, they won’t last forever out here. Nothing will.

  Perrote wets his lips and considers the request, as if looking for a catch, and then laughs. “As you wish.”

  “Swear it to me. With all these men as witnesses.”

  The smile disappears. His men are slaves, but there is a handful of Chadwick’s soldiers with no loyalty spells, Elin among them, no doubt swayed by Rialdo’s powers of persuasion and the tempting future of an Avinea flooded with magic defenses. These soldiers saw Merlock’s betrayal destroy everything, which means Perrote won’t be able to risk breaking his word to a worthless servant.

  “On my word as king,” Perrote says.

  “I want your word as a man,” I say. “Crowns change hands so easily here in Avinea.”

  His eyes flash, but he says, “On my word, Miss Locke.”

  “Then we have a deal.”

  An arched eyebrow, the return of his smirk. “Like mother, like daughter.”

  Not that long ago the words would have felt like an insult. Now they feel like a benediction. My mother sacrificed herself to save the ones she loved, and I will do the same. A few days is all North and Bryn and Cadence will need. A few days I can give.

  Feeling guilty, I glance to Tobek and try not t
o think of how I’ve sacrificed him, too. The look he gives me is proof enough that our truce has ended.

  “Merlock is headed northeast,” I say, ignoring the way my heart cracks, the way it already mourns those left behind, to whom I never said good-bye. “He’s going back to Prevast.”

  Perrote and Rialdo exchange looks.

  “She’s lying.” Tobek glares at me, finally loosening the rope around his neck and hurling it aside. Weeks of quietly blaming me for everything that has happened surface now, with so much poison in his blood overshadowing all logic. “She’s going to drag you across the Burn until all your magic spells dissolve, your horses die, and you’re all full of poison.”

  I turn on him, livid, but he scowls at me, massaging his throat. Poison glows through him. “I’d rather die with North than with you,” he says. “And if North has already won? Then bringing them saves North from having to hunt them down.”

  “And if he hasn’t won yet?”

  Ignoring me, he says, “We head west, and that’s as much as I’ll tell you right now.”

  “Bring them,” Perrote barks, and two of Chadwick’s former soldiers dismount and march forward. One, a younger, newer recruit, avoids my eyes as he clamps irons onto my wrists, but the other one meets my accusing gaze without flinching.

  “Chadwick died trying to save this kingdom from men like him,” I say, chin tipping toward Perrote.

  The soldier doesn’t even blink. “Then I can see why he’s dead,” he says.

  Before I can spit a profane-laden reply at him, Tobek and I are roughly hauled onto two horses, and Perrote gives the order.

  We ride, kicking up clouds of ash and displacing hungry shadows in our wake.

  Twenty-Seven

  THE FIELDS OF ARAK ARE an untouched memorial to the war fought more than twenty years ago. Bones shine in the midmorning light; armor glitters. Skeletal remains clutch corroded pole arms, pitted swords, and the tattered scraps of both Merlock’s and Corthen’s banners of war. Corthen’s are red, like Brindaigel’s. The same herald, too: two crows clutching a single eye.