by Bree Barton
She didn’t like Tuk or Lyman, not since overhearing them make jokes one day after a training session. “What did she expect?” Lyman had said. “The wife of an assassin will always have a target on her back. Should have thought of that before she married him!” Mia never forgave them for speaking so callously about her mother.
Now she clutched the tree limb, her skin tingling, peppered with a fine frost. Perhaps the boy from the village had sold them out. Or perhaps, said a dark little voice inside her, Tuk and Lyman had picked up her scent. Some Hunters claimed to be able to smell magic, to sniff out a Gwyrach in their midst. “The magical stench,” Lyman called it. “Not very becoming on a lady. But then, we aren’t dealing with ladies, are we?”
Tuk stooped beside the river and splashed water on his broad, russet-brown face. Then he sat and hefted his full weight against the trunk of an oak tree. Tuk pulled a flask of demon’s dwayle from his rucksack and quaffed a long swig, smacking his lips in pleasure. Lyman paced nervously up and down the riverbank, his pinkish cheeks alive with movement, fingertips dancing on his palms.
“Be that as it may,” Tuk was saying, “it doesn’t mean she deserves to die.” He swilled a mouthful of dwayle and belched, as if to prove his point.
“We don’t decide who lives or dies.”
“She saved the prince’s life.”
“And she’ll kill him soon enough. You know as well as I do: that’s what they do.”
The air locked in Mia’s throat. She felt a subtle change in Quin’s breathing, too: a quick inhalation, followed by a tightening of his chest. Would he scream out? If he believed what Lyman was saying . . . if he thought she would try to kill him . . .
But he was silent. He let out his breath, the air fogging her fingers, hot and humid. She loosened her grip.
“She can’t have gone far,” Lyman said. “The girl is book smart, but she won’t last a single night in the woods. She’ll get scared. Come crawling back to Papa.”
Mia knew the woods like the back of her hand—at least she would, once they reached Ilwysion. She was strong there. Competent. Lyman could choke on a plum pit.
“Have a swig and calm down, would you?” Tuk wagged the flask. “You’re making me tense.”
Lyman stopped moving. “Someone’s here.”
“You mean the king’s herd of fools stampeding through the forest?”
Then Tuk went still, too.
Mia’s stomach was a slab of ice sweating through her belly. The Hunters had sensed her. They knew.
Lyman lifted his head, his eyes grating over her like steel wool.
“There you are,” he said, and then said nothing more, as a silver blade caught him in the throat.
Chapter 16
A Raven on the River
MIA COULD PINPOINT THE exact moment Lyman died. She felt it in her own body, the agony whipping through her chest like a scourge: the fractured trachea, silencing his screams; the severed carotid artery, starving his brain of oxygen; the gasps and gurgles from his broken throat. He was drowning in his own blood. His heart writhed as red liquid spurted from his neck, drizzling the sliced knot of flesh and staining his tunic dark.
She didn’t understand how she felt these things, but there was no doubt the collapse in Lyman’s body resonated in her own flesh, her own bones, her own blood. Was this part of having magic, too? Feeling the sensations of a body that was not your own? She’d never read about it in any of her books. But it was very real, and very terrible. Hot bile seethed in her belly; she struggled to keep it down.
Tuk was already reaching for his sword. For such a large man, he was surprisingly light on his feet. With his free hand, he pulled a bone talisman from his pocket, kissed it, and tucked it under his belt.
“Show yourself!” he barked, but no assailant emerged from the forest.
Air burbled in Mia’s throat. This time it was Quin who clapped a hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t cry out. His fingers were glacial.
Who had thrown the dagger? Her mind was swimming in blood, but the blade looked familiar. That pale-green stone.
“Only a coward kills in darkness,” Tuk growled. “Show yourself.”
Domeniq du Zol stepped out of the trees.
Tuk’s eyes widened, though not as wide as Mia’s. Dom was the assassin? None of this made sense.
Tuk gave voice to the word bubbling up inside her: “Traitor.”
Domeniq rubbed the back of his head, his coarse black hair cropped close. It was a tic she knew well: whenever he was uncomfortable, he rubbed his head and flashed that crooked smile. But he wasn’t smiling now.
Dom bent and drew the serrated silver dagger from Lyman’s throat, the sound of bisected bone and cartilage slurping off the metal. He stepped forward. The stone at his neck burned a deep midnight blue.
“I’m sorry, Tuk,” he said.
Tuk brought his broadsword down hard, his aim straight and true. But Dom was quicker. He parried the blow, catching the side of the blade in one of the twisted ripples of his dagger, twisting his wrist and knocking the sword off course. Mia had never seen Dom move like this. She knew he was a gifted swordsman, but he’d been holding back in their training sessions: now he was all flash and lightning, powerful and stunningly precise.
One step and a feint was all it took: Dom fit his blade cleanly into the space between his opponent’s ribs, impaling the heart in its bony cage.
Tuk sputtered, skewered like a pig on a spit. The cliff of his body crumbled and fell, his giant mound of a chest heaving with effort, his large brown eyes blinking back tears. His face twisted in shock. He had been betrayed.
Dom stooped beside the large man and put a steady hand on his shoulder. It was hard to see from her hiding spot, but Mia was almost certain his smooth brown face was creased with grief. He bowed his head.
“I’m sorry, brother. You didn’t deserve this.”
The moment Tuk’s heart stopped, a shivering emptiness swept through Mia, like a gust of cold down a dark corridor.
She was tired. So tired. Fatigue bled from her pores. Should she try to heal them? All the animosity she’d felt toward Tuk and Lyman had evaporated the moment they fell. They didn’t deserve to die. Not at the hand of their friend and brother in the Hunt.
But somehow she knew they were beyond saving. Their hearts were silent. The men were gone.
The horror of what she’d witnessed shuddered through her, turning her limbs to jelly. She was losing her grip on the tree.
She felt Quin’s hands firm around her waist. He held her to the bough, encircling her torso with his arms, holding her steady. His face was crushed into the back of her head, his nose buried in her hair, and she could feel his breath all the way down to her follicles. His slender hip bones pressed into her back, piercing the thin smocks that lay ruffled between them.
Wulf and Beo plowed into the clearing in a cacophony of yips and howls. Domeniq snapped his fingers and whistled. She felt Quin’s body stiffen. If Dom hurt those dogs . . .
But he didn’t hurt them. He placed a hand on each of their golden heads, scratching them behind the ears. They wagged their tails.
“Wulf! Beo!”
A magnificent white mare galloped into the glade, with Princess Karri astride.
“The dogs had the scent,” she shouted.
Dom stood. “They must have lost it, Your Grace.”
Karri looked fierce in the moonlight. Her short white hair stuck out in a dozen directions, and the gown she’d grudgingly worn for the wedding was filthy and torn. At her hip, instead of a bouquet of posies, she now wore a longsword. Mia thought it suited her much better than the posies.
Karri nodded toward the two dead men. “What’s this?”
“My brothers in the Hunt.” Dom nodded at the dagger protruding from Tuk’s mountain of a chest. “Wound’s still fresh. Their attackers can’t have gone far.”
Mia was reeling. Dom had just killed them in cold blood, and now he was framing someone else?
Karri dismounted her horse and crouched to inspect the dagger.
“Gwyrach?”
Dom shook his head. “Magicians have no need for blades.”
“They do if they’re attacking from a distance.” She pressed a boot into Tuk’s shoulder and tugged the blade out of the wet wound. “It’s not Glasddiran.” She tested the weight, tossing the knife from one hand to another, catching it neatly by the green hilt. “Steel is light. Winged on the tip.”
“Pembuka,” Dom said. “Look at the stone in the grip, Your Grace. It’s aventurine. Nothing from around here. My money’s on the glass tribes in the far west—they like their weapons with a thin blade. There must have been at least three men, maybe more, to take down two Hunters.”
He stretched his arms overhead, showcasing the ropy sinews of his back. Dom had rippling muscles and a physique straight out of the novels Angelyne loved. Mia felt a pang. Angie.
“We find who killed these two,” Dom said, “and we find your brother.”
“And Mia, too?”
Mia was surprised, and more than a little pleased, that Karri cared about her safety. Dom cocked his head.
“Her too. Whoever killed these Hunters took both the prince and his winsome bride.”
His winsome bride. If she ever got out of this alive, she made a mental note to slug Dom in his nether regions. Unless he killed her first.
Princess Karri furrowed her brow, weighing her options.
“Were there any Pembuka guests at the wedding?”
“There aren’t many Pembuka left in Glas Ddir, Your Grace.”
“Perhaps not. But there are some.” She shook her head. “Yet another reason my father’s bigotry will be the death of him. He thinks he has stemmed the flow of foreigners, but they are still here, and they hate us now more than ever.”
She looked evenly at Dom. “If I were to rule this kingdom, all would be welcome. I would fling open every gate and crumble every wall.”
Her words sent a thrill through Mia, reminding her why Princess Karri had all the makings of a great queen. Reopening the borders would unlock a world Mia had never known. A conversation with her mother came flooding back, one she had lost in the aftermath of her death. Wynna rarely spoke of her past, but there was one night, toward the end, when her cheeks had grown rosy from blackthorn wine, and Mia was able to nudge her into loose-lipped nostalgia.
“The world of the river kingdom is all you’ve ever known, Mia—a world of terror and restraint. The fire kingdom was different. I went to Fojo Karação to study medicine, but I learned so much more. Imagine a place where Pembuka, Luumi, Fojuen, and Glasddiran all live peacefully side by side. Imagine languages and cultures and histories blending together—not without tension, but with a spirit of curiosity and exchange. And magic. In Fojo, magic was not so different from love.”
Mia arched a skeptical eyebrow.
“I know you don’t believe me,” her mother said, her words softened by the wine. “But magic was a way of bringing pleasure to the people you touched. You could love anyone you wanted, no judgment, no fear. Men could love men.” A smile danced on her lips. “Women could love women.”
Her laugh was a nip of spirits, the kind that burned the throat. “It might have been that way here, if Bronwynis were still alive.”
“If Fojo was so perfect,” Mia asked, “then why did you leave?”
Sadness flickered in her mother’s eyes. “Mark my words, my raven girl: love can be a beautiful thing. But the people you love are the ones who hurt you most.”
Now Mia saw the conversation in a different light. Perhaps her mother had loved a woman—a Gwyrach—who had once used magic to bring pleasure instead of pain.
If her mother had loved a Gwyrach in the fire kingdom . . . a former lover who bore a decades-long grudge . . . had this same Gwyrach slunk into the river kingdom three years ago, fueled by bloodlust and revenge?
The blade of an epiphany twisted in Mia’s gut.
The people you love are the ones who hurt you most.
In the clearing, Princess Karri hoisted herself back onto her horse.
“Take these men back to the Circle and bury your dead,” she said to Domeniq. “I’ll tell the guards we’re looking for a pack of Pembuka raiders—at least one archer and two men skilled with a blade. We’ll follow the Natha west toward the glass kingdom.”
Dom straightened. “Let the Hunters search the river. The glass tribes don’t know the Natha like we do—we’ll catch up to them within a day. And, Your Grace.” He grinned. “You must admit your royal river craft is no match for ours.”
“True, true. Our boats announce themselves like a pack of lumbering elephants. You Hunters do have a gift for stealth. Very well. You take the river. The guards and I will cut them off by land.” She whistled at the dogs. “Beo! Wulf!”
“Your Grace.” Dom rested one hand on the mare’s flank. “We’ll find your brother. If he were dead, we would have found him already. He has more value to them alive.”
“My brother will one day be king.” Mia couldn’t read the emotion that swept over Karri’s features. Was it pride? Envy? “Do not forget that, while he may have value alive, he also has great value dead.”
She galloped out of the glade, the dogs trotting dutifully along behind.
Quin’s shoulders sagged, his body heavy against Mia’s. Could she blame him? What his sister said was true: as heir to the throne, someone would always want him dead. He was drooping, both their grips faltering on the tree. They were too weary. She didn’t know how much longer they could hold on before they revealed themselves.
Dom was very still. He gazed across the river at nothing, deep in thought.
She wondered if he was thinking of his father. Just days before Mia’s mother died, Dom had found his father’s body on the banks of the Natha, long black braids steeped in mud and dark umber skin sapped of its color. There was no blood, no obvious wound. Dom didn’t like to talk about it, but Mia had heard the Hunters discussing the details: when Dom had touched his father’s face, he found his tongue frozen to his teeth, his mouth coated with frost despite the warmth clinging to the air. The Gwyrach had turned the breath in his body to ice.
Domeniq was left with his father’s cerulean stone around his neck and fury in his heart. Judging by the two corpses bleeding out on the riverbank, more fury than Mia had known.
But why would he kill his own brothers in the Hunt? The men who were trying to hunt the Gwyrach who had murdered his father? She didn’t know the answer. She hated not knowing.
Dom bent forward, picked up a smooth pebble, and skipped it across the black water of the Natha. The stone skimmed the river like a raven, elegant and light, landing with a soft crack against something wooden.
On the far shore, Mia saw a scoop of pale yellow, camouflaged so well behind a copse of white-bark birch trees she never would have seen it.
The Sunbeam.
Dom craned his neck, that lovely crooked smile lighting up his face. In the moonlight his teeth shone bright white against his warm ochre skin.
Was he staring up at her? His face twitched, and Mia’s pulse slammed through her body as he turned on his heel and strode out of the clearing.
She could have sworn he winked.
Chapter 17
Merely Girls
THEY WAITED FOR WHAT seemed like hours to drop down from their hiding spot, though it was probably only minutes. Stealthily they swam out to the boat, the cool river lapping at their flesh, and heaved themselves aboard.
Mia was grateful for the silence. Her thoughts, normally etched down one smooth line of logic, forked into channels and streams, eddies of unanswerable questions that only led back into themselves.
Dom had killed Tuk and Lyman but saved her. He had lied to Karri, thrown the guards off their trail, and fabricated a narrative to send the search party in the wrong direction. Not only that: he had led Mia directly to his father’s boat.
But why?
If it wa
s Domeniq who’d put an arrow in Quin’s back in the Chapel, he could have easily finished the job in the forest with a mere flick of his wrist. No, Dom wasn’t the assassin. But why had he helped them escape? There was something more at play. Something Mia wasn’t seeing.
The Natha sluiced over the bow of the Sunbeam, slicking off the moss and dust that had accumulated after who knew how long. The coracle, shaped like half a walnut shell, was spliced together with split and interwoven wood—willow for the laths, hazel for the weave—then waterproofed with bullock hide and a thin layer of yellow tar. Coracles were perfect for rivers: their flat, keel-less bottom hardly disturbed the water, and one person could easily maneuver the craft.
Mia sat tall in the Sunbeam’s stern with an old, splintered oar, one insistent sliver digging into her palm. Despite her exhaustion, she felt invigorated by her new theory. If her mother’s cryptic message was true—All you seek will be revealed—and what she sought most was Wynna’s murderer, then she was finally on the right path.
“I’m tired.” Quin was slumped against the Sunbeam’s starboard side. “Aren’t you tired?”
“Extremely.”
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?”
“I know we’re going east.”
“The depth of your knowledge astounds me.”
“Perhaps it’s time you get some sleep.”
Their exhaustion had made them ornery. Mia wasn’t sure what had drained her more, healing the prince or watching Tuk and Lyman die, but she knew her body had never felt so ravaged. A bone-deep ache swelled up inside her, expanding in her ribs, hips, and shoulders. She’d felt like this once before: when she was blossoming into a woman. As if her skeleton were no longer large enough to contain her.
She had an unsettling thought: Was this what it felt like to “blossom” into a Gwyrach? She shut her eyes to quell another queasy wave. Her father had told her you were either born a Gwyrach or you weren’t—there was no middle ground—but that sometimes the dark magic could lie dormant for many years, stewing and simmering until triggered under just the right conditions. He said this magic was most often coaxed out during fits of extreme passion: rage, terror, love. Mia wondered which one had caused her magic to reveal itself. Perhaps all three: rage at her father, terror of her impending marriage, and love for Angelyne.
