He nodded. “Good luck,” he said to Nismae.
“Don’t be stupid out there,” she said. They embraced, fiercely, with the tightness of two people who know they are unlikely to see each other ever again.
Then we turned and fled.
I looked back only once, just in time to see the intricate silver wreath of the Zumordan crown placed on Ina’s head. As we passed beneath the arches leading out of the coliseum, the flags around the edges of the building changed from red to white in a burst of magic.
In my Sight, something cracked. Or perhaps it was the sound of the Grand Temple breaking under the pressure of the magic rushing toward it. The ground trembled as the Great Temple began to slide off the side of the mountain. Chunks of rock and shards of stained glass tumbled down, sending up clouds of dust.
The king hadn’t lied about one thing—the gods were leaving Zumorda with him. They wouldn’t tolerate a ruler who had a manifest outside their gifts, who didn’t need them in order to be strong. Magic sank slowly into the ground in my Sight. Though the collapse of the kingdom had barely begun, I could already feel how it wanted to take me with it. It was like sinking into deep and paralyzing mud. None of the demigods would last long under Ina’s rule. Not with the bond between the monarch and the gods severed.
“We have to go. Now. My Sight is already fading, and I don’t know how long we have. Can you spread word on the wind to all your siblings? Tell them to gather everyone like us. Tell them to flee,” I said. We had to get to Havemont, where my power would still be reliable, for there to be any hope of changing the past. I needed time to sit, to think, to figure out how to unravel the series of disasters since Ina and I had left Amalska.
Hal nodded. He whispered to the wind, to the ears of all who were listening. He whispered of the change about to come, of how magic would leave the land under Ina’s rule now that the bond between the gods and the crown was broken. I hoped they could feel it already, the way power was draining out of us, crackling out across the landscape like untethered threads whipping and sparking in the wind.
I hoped they had the sense to go and the speed to outrun the death that awaited them if they didn’t.
CHAPTER 39
WE MET ZALLIE AND THE CHILDREN AT THE Switchback Inn and headed north for Havemont that same day. There was no time to waste. Hal’s Farhearing and my Sight had already faded to almost nothing before we even reached the outskirts of Corovja. I had my satchel and my herbs, but without my gifts I felt much less sure of my ability to protect our group. Hal’s worries were just as clearly written on his face, and almost everything startled him because he was so unused to being without his Farhearing. We had to get to Havemont, where the gods would still be in power—somewhere our gifts would work, the children would be safe, and I could rewrite the past.
As for the Fatestone, I kept it on a strip of leather tied around my neck, tucked under my clothing where no one would see it.
We were hardly the only travelers on the road. Many mortals chose to flee Zumorda, hoping they could escape before losing their manifests. Others chose to stay in spite of the risks. Word of the ancient blood rite Ina had used to take her manifest had spread, and some had successfully rebonded with their animal forms by using it.
Storms ravaged the kingdom as we traveled to Havemont, slowing the brutal pace we tried to keep in our haste to escape. Rivers eroded their banks and swept away homes. Farmers lost their final harvests of autumn. Trees seemed to be curling in on themselves, warping in strange ways that shouldn’t have been possible. In the few times I got a glimpse of the Sight, it was easy to see why. Magic was funneling away, just as the gods had threatened.
Five days after leaving Corovja, we crossed the Havemont border in the back of a farmer’s wagon with Iman and Nera both crying. Zallie and I tried to rock and soothe them, but the journey had been hard on us all. I had done my fair share of crying too—over the loss of my kingdom, the devastation I hadn’t been able to prevent, and the fears I had about what was yet to come.
The change on the opposite side of the Zir Canyon bridge was instant. Suddenly the grass was greener, the skies brighter, everything more peaceful. My Sight came back so quickly it was almost hard to use due to its strength.
The border town of Fairlough appeared before us in the afternoon as crickets began to hum in the grass. A stone keep sat high above the settlement. Farmland led right up to the heart of the town, but the main street was still sizable enough to boast a series of shops and a large inn. The buildings were far more permanent and well kept than some of the rickety markets I’d seen in smaller villages during my travels with Hal. Something about the town felt off to me, and then I realized it was the people. The Havemontians worshipped the same gods we did, but unlike Zumordans, they did not take manifests. The people appeared strangely empty in my Sight compared with those who carried a second soul inside their bodies.
In a way, the difference was comforting. The gods still watched over Havemont, which meant we would retain our powers, and because the mortals had no manifests, we could blend in as long as we kept our magic secret.
Before our first afternoon in town was spent, Hal earned a basket of fresh fruit and vegetables from a farmer whose cart he helped load at the market square. Iman and Nera turned out to be the key to finding a place to stay. The innkeeper’s wife, the last of whose three sons had moved out not so long ago, was instantly smitten with the babies and offered us two rooms in exchange for light work. After all of us being crammed into one room in Corovja, the two plainly furnished rooms still seemed luxurious by comparison. I felt guilty that we might not be there very long, but I needed enough time to recover from the battle to properly rewrite the past—to map out the way things should have gone. If I succeeded, everything would be different anyway.
Even once all our arrangements were made, I found it hard to shake the feeling that I needed to keep moving. At this point, I was used to it, and every time I looked at Hal and felt a burst of affection for him, I remembered what he’d wished for us—that we could take to the road as a family of explorers, not refugees.
But someone would always be hunting me for the power that ran through my veins, and carrying the Fatestone made it doubly likely. I wasn’t fool enough to think that would stop just because Ina had finally gotten the crown she wanted. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be others, either. I kept my shadow cloak close, taking comfort in its warmth and ability to hide me from anyone who might be able to sense magic.
All I had ever wanted was happiness for those I loved and a place to live where I could be an herbalist and help people quietly as I had before. Yet my journey had changed me.
Lying in bed beside Hal a few nights later, I asked him the impossible question.
“What should I do?” I whispered into his shoulder. The difficult thing was that lying beside him with Zallie, Iman, and Nera in a room just on the other side of the door felt so right. I feared what might come chasing me, but if not for that, perhaps I could learn to be happy here with this patchwork family of mine.
“You’re going to change the past, right?” His voice was a little guarded, as it always was when we talked about the past or the future and the ways I could shape them.
“That’s why we did all this—that’s why we got the Fatestone,” I said.
“But?” he asked.
In another version of my past, I might have met Hal anyway. Perhaps Iman could still have his own mother and father if I hadn’t interfered with the fate of his parents. Ina could be a village elder instead of a bloodstained queen. I might have stayed on my mountain and grown old in the slow way that demigods normally do.
But I had to write for my kingdom, not for myself—for the land I had sworn to protect that was now falling apart. The land itself would give up on life, slowly becoming a desert instead of the verdant mountains, valleys, and plains that existed now. There would be nothing for people to eat, no resources from which they could build their homes or pay thei
r tithes to the crown. Without my intervention, people would struggle to survive in the barren landscape Zumorda would become.
I couldn’t let that happen.
“I need to save Zumorda and its people. That is the biggest thing. But I’m afraid if I rewrite the past to change their fate, I’ll make things worse in some unexpected way. And if I’m honest about what I want . . . it’s right here. With you.”
He turned toward me and kissed my collarbone, making warmth blossom in my stomach.
I ran my fingertips down his bare arm, then buried my face in his neck.
“Your nose is cold,” he murmured, a smile in his voice, and then he took my arm and wrapped it around his waist. I kissed his shoulder, and his hum of contentment sent desire racing through me.
“I love you, Asra,” he said.
Our mouths met, his arm wrapping around me to pull me closer. I loved him too. I loved that when he deepened a kiss, he did it like it was a question. When he held me, it was with the care he took with any precious thing, but never with any restriction that would bind me. I loved the way he talked to Iman, as though the baby could understand every story and song and joke he told him.
It would be so difficult to say good-bye to that.
“I love you, too,” I whispered.
“Surely there has to be a way to fix the past that might give us a similar future?” he said, hope and sadness warring in his voice.
“I don’t know. The past is so hard to change. The past we have is what led us here. One tiny change could send everything spiraling in any of a thousand different directions. Every moment is full of possibilities for a different future that would become our present,” I said. I wished I could show him what it looked like in my Sight, all the complicated nuances of time and fate.
“Is the future any easier to shape?” he asked. “At least there is more choice involved in that. The future is something more than fate. It’s filled with choices. It’s a collaboration with those you love. Or that’s what I hope our future would be, anyway.”
My obsession with changing the past had blinded me to the other option—changing the future. Guilt and grief still racked me every time I thought of Amalska and its people, but changing the past might not protect them. Even without my interference, Ina might still have resorted to the blood rite to take her manifest. Bandits might have still attacked. She still might have gone after the king. Could I truly write the past with enough clarity to prevent any of those things from coming to pass?
“What if I changed the future instead?” I asked Hal, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice.
“In what way?” He propped himself up on an elbow.
“Fix the kingdom from here forward. There are things that wouldn’t be made right—the destruction of Amalska, mostly. That loss and those memories will never stop hurting.”
“It could have happened anyway,” Hal said as he had a hundred times before.
“I know. And that’s what I’m worried about. What if I rewrite the past and it turns into a multi-village massacre? Or those bandits don’t die and instead loot their way across the entire kingdom? I can try to prevent those things from happening, but I can’t possibly think of every disaster scenario. I certainly didn’t realize Ina would take a dragon as her manifest when I first wrote that fate for her.”
“So what happens if you change the future?” he asked. “How can you possibly undo the destruction Ina’s reign has already caused?”
“What if I create a feedback loop to sustain the magic of the kingdom?” I asked.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Hal said.
“It would be similar to how Ina’s manifest works. She’s tied to the land. So the land would be tied to the people, and as the people die, their energy would go back to the land. It becomes self-sustaining. The Tamers would probably like it because it would make it difficult for Zumordans to do any damage to their land without suffering for it. Many more people would probably end up with affinities for certain types of magic like Ina has for fire, but as long as the affinities don’t get out of control . . .” I muttered a long list of probable outcomes.
“If this future means I can go to sleep now knowing you’ll still be next to me when I wake up in the morning, then it sounds good to me,” Hal said. “And if I could have the chance to reconcile more fully with my sister someday . . . I’d like that, too.”
“I think I can do this,” I said, springing out of bed with a fresh wave of energy.
“Don’t stay up too late,” he said, sleepy contentment in his voice.
I rolled out of bed and tucked in the blankets around him, envious of how quickly his breathing grew deep and even as he drifted off to sleep.
I sat down at the little desk in the corner of the room and put on my shadow cloak. It enveloped me like an embrace, and I thought of my mother and her own mantle of darkness, wishing that she and I could have had a different story, too. She should have trusted me to grow up close to death in all its incarnations. Perhaps if I had grown up knowing it, I would not have dealt so much of it by mistake.
From my belt pouch, I took out an eagle feather stolen from one of Nismae’s brethren and a sprig of midnight thistle I’d gathered along the side of the road on the way out of Corovja. I took the Fatestone from its place around my neck and slipped it over my finger.
I pinned the feather to the table with my wrist, then sharpened the feather with my silver knife until the quill was fine and true. My left hand bore too many scars to count, but this one would be the last. I pricked my finger with the silver knife and let my blood drip into a small bowl bearing the thistles, and then I stirred, remembering Ina.
What I knew now was that the love I had for Ina had not been love at all. I had been chasing her before we left Amalska, from the first day we met, from the time I noticed that the blue of her eyes matched all my favorite flowers on the mountain. In all that time running after her, I’d raced on the ground, but she’d had wings long before she took the dragon as her manifest.
I dipped my quill into the ink.
Magic had always held our kingdom together, and it still needed to do that. The people themselves could be the key. The magic could be tied to the people instead of the monarch and the gods—rather like what Nismae and Ina had hoped for the future. Perhaps given the right set of circumstances, Ina wouldn’t be a bad monarch. Her ambition might serve her well in the end.
I put my quill to the paper, carefully scribing the first words of a new story for Zumorda—not of the past, but the future. The magic poured out of me and into the words as I wove our kingdom back together. I dictated that the people, land, and power of Zumorda would be bound in a way that would sustain them all. The ability to wield magic would be given to the people with aptitudes and affinities for it, those who felt something extra when they built a fire, plucked a flower, or stood outside in the rain—those who loved the land and the kingdom.
Instead of manifests being tied to a god, they would be tied to the elements that often went with those gods—a simpler, more primitive magic. Each person with even the barest hint of ability would have an affinity connected to the god who had once blessed their manifest, like Ina’s for fire, Hal’s for wind, or mine for blood and shadows. The people would use their powers to defend their kingdom instead of relying on the divine.
Ina was the only person I wrote of by name—that she would strive to be a good ruler. That she would respect those she ruled. And one day, she would face one of Iman’s descendants, who would help her learn the true nature of love.
When I finished writing, it was strange to put down the quill and not feel pain. After I sanded the pages, it was time for the last thing I needed to do. I murmured an apology to Veric and then unraveled the magic of the Fatestone itself. The blood channel through it slowly stopped moving, then turned black.
Now it was nothing but an ordinary ring.
Perhaps my days would be lived here in Fairlough with Ha
l, Iman, Nera, and Zallie, or one day Hal and I would take to traveling again, this time without missions of blood and vengeance following us. Either way, I wanted to spend my life with the people who had finally given me a home and a community. No one needed to know of my gifts—I didn’t intend to use them again. I would only be known as the town herbalist, someone people could come to in need.
I crossed the room and slipped back into bed with Hal. Our future would be shaped as we willed it. Together.
Because love was a heart filled with kindness, eyes a deep brown that warmed me from the inside out, and a hand I could count on to hold through the next adventure. Love was the way he made me laugh when I least thought it possible, and the way our voices came together to sing a tavern song inappropriate for most company. Love was the way he kissed me until I knew without doubt that anywhere he was would be home. And love was the way Iman looked when he smiled, filling me with contentment that lasted long after I’d put him down to sleep.
Love was what would last through this winter—and many more to come.
When our story began, I thought I knew love.
In the end, I finally did.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have no idea how I survived writing my second book except that it had everything to do with the people supporting me.
Alexandra Machinist, thanks a billion for making such a wonderful match by selling my books to Balzer + Bray. You are a superstar and I’m glad to have you on my side. Thanks are also due to Hillary Jacobsen, who is now a fantastic agent in her own right. Not once during the creation of this book did I ever have to worry about things being handled on the back end thanks to the diligent work of Alexandra and her team at ICM. You all rock!
Kristin Rens, thank you for slogging through this book with me and for your patience when I was struggling most. You may claim working on this book wasn’t as painful for you as for me, but I know it wasn’t easy. Having an editor who works so hard and is thoughtful, responsive, and kind is a blessing beyond belief. Many thanks also go to Kelsey Murphy, who makes sure all sorts of things run smoothly and does an outstanding job stepping in when Kristin is out of the office. Michelle Taormina and Jacob Eisinger—how do you keep giving me such incredible covers? Thank you from the bottom of my heart. The whole team at Balzer + Bray is one I’m lucky to work with. I’m so grateful to Audrey Diestelkamp and Caroline Sun and their teams for their contributions and support as my manuscripts travel through the cube maze that is book publishing.
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