City of Spells

by Alexandra Christo

  She had been so confused, all this time. She had been so lost, all this time.

  But, finally, there was light ahead. A hope for a future that meant she could stop being so scared. That meant she could finally rest.

  “How’s Tavia?” Zekia asked him. “And my sister and my father and Amja?”

  They’re all fine, he said. They’re worried about you.

  “Did Amja make you that bone broth yet?” Zekia asked. “Isn’t it so bad?”

  Wesley stayed quiet for a moment. We need to talk about the forest, kid.

  Zekia stepped away from the mirror completely.

  She didn’t want Wesley to see the look on her face now.

  “I didn’t tell him,” she said. “I swear that I didn’t. He made me promise that when the time was right that I would, but the time never felt right. And he said that he wouldn’t go looking for them and that he’d give everyone the chance to join us by themselves. He promised.”

  I know, Wesley said.

  Zekia’s heart jumped.

  “You believe me?”

  I believe you. I’m willing to bet it was all down to that bastard Nolan.

  “I had a vision,” Zekia said.

  She had to tell Wesley the truth. He’d know what to do. They could think of a new plan together, or find a way to tell Dante Ashwood that his world wasn’t worth fighting for. If they chose peace instead, if Ashwood stopped fighting, then everything would be okay.

  “I saw you kill him,” Zekia said. “And the world went bright again.”

  Ashwood? Wesley asked. Kid, I appreciate the faith, but there are a thousand futures out there and you can’t tell which ones are solid. Trust me, I know better than anyone that we shouldn’t be putting stock in visions.

  Zekia kept her eyes focused on her hands and tried not to fidget too much.

  Wesley didn’t understand. He hadn’t seen it.

  “This one was different,” she said. “The shadows went away and the magic was everywhere and it was so pretty. Everyone felt so happy.”

  Zekia swiped the tears from her eyes.

  “I don’t know who to trust,” she said. “And I can’t trust myself, because before I saw a future where Ashwood was leader and things were good. And now I see the opposite and I don’t know what to do. You know what to do, though, don’t you? You always know.”

  The only thing I know is that people deserve a choice, Wesley said. We can’t decide their futures for them, based on a vision or anything else. You have to know that, kid. You have to understand that.

  Only, she didn’t understand.

  Zekia was supposed to be a Liege and Lieges had to make the hard choices and lead people. They had to decide what was best, even if nobody could see the wisdom of it. All Zekia wanted was for magic to be safe and not to destroy her brother’s legacy by letting the Crafters down.

  But she’d done all of that anyway.

  I can only protect you if you let me, Wesley said. But I can’t save you from yourself.

  It wasn’t herself that she needed saving from, though. It was everyone else.

  It was the visions that snuck into Zekia’s mind like a thief and stole everything that made sense and replaced it with fear and death.

  She had been asleep ever since and she didn’t know how to wake up again.

  She didn’t know if she even deserved to.

  25

  KARAM

  The forest was decimated.

  The tree house that Saxony had kissed Karam good night in had fallen from its stoop and the tree that housed it—best at ferrying messages from one side of the camp to another—was burned to cinders.

  There was barely anything left of the place Saxony and the Rishiyat Kin once called home. The Uncharted Forest was gutted and all that was left in its ashes were bodies. It looked like the Shores of the Dead that Karam and Arjun had left behind, desperate to find hope back in these woods.

  “It’s all gone,” Arjun said. “The weapons and the magic. Do you think it was a raid? It must have been Ashwood and that bastard busker Nolan. They split us up so they could attack us when were most vulnerable. Everyone is gone and we’re all that’s—”

  “Check the bodies,” Karam said. “Check who they are.”

  Check if they are anybody we care for, she thought.

  She wouldn’t consider the worst until she’d seen it for herself.

  So they thumbed through the dead and with each body Karam turned over, or those whose faces were bloody enough that she had to go by their clothing to see whether they were busker or Crafter, she prayed that she wouldn’t see anybody she loved.

  There were some Rishiyat Crafters and a few of the buskers Karam recognized from their camp, but she couldn’t find Saxony, or Tavia, or anyone in Saxony’s family. She couldn’t see her friends and when Karam sat on a charred log that looked like it had been part of a building once, she let out a long exhale.

  They were alive, somewhere out there.

  She shouldn’t have wanted to smile, surrounded by so many bodies—so many of someone else’s loved ones who didn’t make it—but Karam had already lost so much that she thought she was owed this small spark of hope.

  “What do we do now?” Arjun asked. “We came all this way and they’re gone.”

  “Saxony wouldn’t have fled this place without me,” Karam said, certain. “She would have left a sign somewhere to hint at where they were going.”

  “Signs can be read by anyone,” Arjun argued, unconvinced. “They wouldn’t have risked that.”

  “Then it would have to be something only I know,” Karam said. “A thing only I would be able to follow.”

  “Karam—”

  “Stop it,” she said. “We’re not losing anyone else.”

  Arjun pressed his lips together and nodded.

  Asees was gone and six of Arjun’s friends had died with her. Karam and Arjun had been too late to save them, but they weren’t too late to save the others. Whatever had happened here, their army had survived, and that meant there was a chance of redemption for Karam.

  She could still live up to the legacy of the Rekhi d’Rihsni her family had formed to save magic.

  She could still help them win this war.

  She could still save Tavia from that awful future she had seen.

  Nobody else Karam loved was going to die.

  “Think,” Karam said to Arjun. “What would only we see? What here would mean something to only us?”

  Arjun picked up a piece of ashen wood. “Maybe they wanted to leave something and didn’t have the chance,” he said. “If they had to run from this attack, then they couldn’t have stayed around to leave signs and clues. There wasn’t time.”

  “Saxony would have found a way,” Karam said.

  If there was one thing in this world she still had faith in, then it was Saxony; it was the woman she loved and her inability to give up on somebody she cared about. Saxony wouldn’t have abandoned Karam, any more than Karam would have fled this forest without her, or a way for them to find each other again.

  Love didn’t bow to time and neither did Saxony.

  “You’re glowing,” Arjun said.

  Karam wrinkled her nose. “What did you just say to me?”

  “You’re glowing,” he said again.

  Her nose stayed wrinkled. “I told you to think, not to be weird.”

  “No,” Arjun said, sighing. “I mean you’re really glowing.”

  He stretched out his arm and took Karam’s hand in his, holding it up to her face for her to see. The ring that Saxony had given her was alight. The green eyes of the serpent whose body coiled around her fingers and all the way up to her pulse were indeed glowing, just like Arjun had said.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  Karam didn’t know what it was, but she felt a comfort when she looked into its eyes. It made her feel inexplicably warm, as though there was a voice somewhere inside of it, familiar but not enough so that she could put her finger
on it, telling Karam it would all be okay.

  “Saxony gave it to me before we left,” she said.

  “It’s a strange present,” Arjun said, examining the snake. “Whatever happened to flowers?”

  Karam didn’t reply; she just kept staring at the serpent, wondering what it was trying to tell her with those fire eyes. She didn’t have to wonder for long, because once Karam had blocked out Arjun and kept her focus on the creature curled around her finger, the snake began to whisper to her.

  This way, it said. Out of the forest and into the ivy.

  “Do you hear that?” Karam asked.

  Arjun frowned. “What am I supposed to hear?”

  This way, the snake said again. She is waiting.

  Karam turned around, just in case the voice was coming from somewhere else, but the moment she did, the snake’s eyes fell dark.

  “It stopped glowing,” Arjun said.

  She looked back at him. The eyes of the creature lit up again.

  Arjun stepped back. “What is it?” he asked. “It’s looking straight at me.”

  “No,” Karam said. “Not at you.”

  She stretched out her arm and walked forward, past Arjun and farther into the clearing. All the while, the snake’s eyes grew brighter.

  “I think it’s a compass of sorts,” Karam said. “It’s going to lead us out of the forest.”

  “To where?” Arjun asked, following behind her.

  Karam didn’t know where to, but she knew who to. Saxony could have given her a weapon of some sort, a protection charm to keep with her or something to curse any enemies Karam came across. But she hadn’t done any of that. Instead, Saxony had given her this ring, and it had to be for a reason.

  It’ll help you find your way home, Saxony had said. Back to me.

  Karam’s smile grew.

  The ring wasn’t just a compass; it was a map, it was a beacon, it was a way for them to finally find what they were looking for.

  “Where is it going to take us?” Arjun asked.

  “To Saxony,” she said.

  And that was all she needed to know.

  26

  SAXONY

  The ivy towns were beautiful and sweeping, with vines dripping from the walls among the fresh lavender buds and dahlia spheres that inked the rooftops like a second shield. The ground was as green as any of the trees in the forest, and though there was something so wild and untethered about this part of the city—where the rich and the righteous resided—it was also refined in its curved architecture and broad streets.

  Saxony felt somewhat out of place, hidden among the swells of the city as a soldier readying for war. She longed for the scent of the forest and the echo of its trees, but they couldn’t go back there. Not now that it had been compromised.

  “This place is so different from the forest,” Amja said, like she had read Saxony’s mind. “I miss the whispers of the trees already.”

  “It doesn’t matter what any of us miss,” Saxony said. “The forest is gone.”

  She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but Saxony couldn’t seem to keep the edge out of her voice when she spoke to her amja.

  “It’s my fault,” Tavia said. “If I hadn’t let Nolan escape, none of this would have happened.”

  “I thought you were supposed to apologize when you did kill someone, not when you didn’t,” Wesley said.

  “Funny,” Tavia said, but she was looking at Saxony.

  Her eyes were almost pleading with Saxony’s for forgiveness, as if there was anything to forgive. Tavia wasn’t to blame for the Uncharted Forest. It wasn’t her job to take responsibility for everything that went wrong in the world.

  “It might not have been him,” Saxony said.

  She didn’t want to think it, but how could she not? Dante Ashwood knew about the Uncharted Forest and with Zekia by his side, she’d be a fool not to consider that her sister might have told him. Though Tavia seemed sure it was Nolan, Saxony couldn’t quell the doubts in her mind. Her Kin had been hiding there for decades without suspicion and yet their attackers knew the weakest parts of their defenses.

  Zekia had betrayed her so many times now. Saxony couldn’t trust that she hadn’t done it again.

  It made her wonder whether her sister was truly lost.

  “It wasn’t Zekia,” Wesley said.

  “How could you possibly know that?” Saxony asked.

  “Because she told me.”

  “She told you,” Saxony repeated.

  Wesley looked reluctant to say more, as if admitting any kind of connection between him and Zekia would be acknowledging the connection that he and Saxony now shared.

  “Think of it as using her own tricks against her,” he said. “Mind magic is a two-way street and once a lock’s been broken, it’s not hard to walk through the door.”

  If Wesley was suggesting what Saxony thought he was, then that seemed dangerous. He’d only known about his powers for a few weeks, whereas Zekia had been learning to craft since she was a child. If Wesley wanted to try and invade her mind from here, it would take work, and Saxony worried about just how much.

  She looked at him, into those black eyes that still unsettled her. It happened sometimes with magic poisoning, or when Intuitcrafters spent too long inside a person’s mind, which was a roundabout way of saying that Zekia had drained all of the color from Wesley’s eyes when she tortured him.

  Saxony felt too much shame to know what to say.

  She should have done more to stop Zekia from taking him. She should have tried harder to save him and worked with Tavia to bring him home.

  But she hadn’t. She’d left her brother to rot.

  Saxony already owed Wesley her life and now she had yet another debt to him that she couldn’t repay. Another mistake she couldn’t take back.

  “Mind magic is tricky,” Saxony said. “You could hurt yourself.”

  Wesley looked insulted at the thought of himself not being invincible. “It’s not tricky with her,” he said. “I don’t even need to try much when it comes to Zekia.”

  “Yes,” Amja said. “Your connection is strong, both in your minds and in your blood.”

  Wesley shifted a little, probably because of the unblinking way Amja stared at him.

  He adjusted his lapels.

  “Point being, I can make her see sense. We just need to hold out.”

  And by hold out, he meant hide out in this safe house with a weakened army and little hope for more recruits. They had lost dozens in the fight, and now that the other underbosses had been killed, there would be no reinforcements from their buskers.

  The Kingpin had seen to that. He’d slaughtered their soldiers before they’d even had time to recruit them.

  “What we need now are ideas on how to deal with Ashwood,” Wesley said. “Fenna Schulze has agreed to discuss an alliance. Now that Ashwood’s forces are closing in on the government city, she welcomed my bat.”

  “So we need to have a plan to present to her,” Tavia said.

  Wesley nodded. “Any ideas on a way we could halt the spread of the Loj?”

  “You should speak to my amja about that.” Saxony folded her arms across her chest. “She’s the one with all the plans.”

  Like the plans to have Saxony kill her own brother.

  “And you’re the one who enjoys doing whatever you like with no regard for my wisdom,” Amja said.

  “At least I’m not a liar.”

  “Well, not right now.” Tavia leaned back against the wall with her eyebrows raised. “But your track record is a little shady.”

  Saxony turned to glare at her. “Says the girl who runs off to rob buskers by herself without consulting anyone and nearly gets herself killed.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re the one who—”

  “Enough!”

  Wesley slammed his hands down on the table.

  “We need to present a plan to the Doyen, and right now the only thing I have to show her is a bunch of people feeling sorry
for themselves.”

  He rubbed his temples like they were giving him a headache.

  Saxony had rarely felt so chastened, even by her amja, who made a sport out of guilting her.

  “I just meant that my amja is the Liege,” she said. “So you should speak to her.”

  “I’m speaking to you.”

  “My amja is—”

  “Not you,” Wesley finished.

  He looked over to Saxony’s amja, who was watching the whole affair with still eyes and a look on her face that Saxony rarely saw: curiosity. Interest.

  As a child, Amja was the person who Saxony saw as most certain in her life, most unwavering and, if she was being honest, unwilling to compromise, but now her grandmother looked at Wesley like he might just stand a chance at being heard.

  “I’m not trying to offend you,” he said. “But Saxony has great power and she led the Crafters back when we first went against Ashwood. It’s because of her that the other Lieges from Kins across the realms have joined with us. She can unite people in a way that I don’t think you’re capable of.”

  “You think I’m not capable of leading my people?” Amja asked.

  “I think you’re too scarred by the past to see the future clearly,” Wesley said.

  Amja blinked and her eyebrows furrowed together ever so slightly, and for some reason that made a sudden panic shoot through Saxony.

  He’d offended her.

  “Wesley,” Saxony said.

  It was one thing for her to insult her amja, but another thing entirely to hear someone else do it.

  “You need to respect how things work,” Saxony said. “You’re way out of line.”

  “No.” Amja’s voice was soft as the breeze. “He isn’t. He has wisdom.”

  “Wisdom,” Saxony repeated.

  “I can see what he has seen in you,” Amja said. “I have seen your bravery and your determination, Saxony. And most of all, your ability to look past what others want and see what is needed for the realms.”

  “You just said you were angry that I went behind your back and summoned the other Lieges,” Saxony said.