Secret in the Stone

by Kamilla Benko

  “Hi Sophie …” Sena trailed off, and Claire knew she must not have known what to say to the girl whom she’d set up to be the thief of the Unicorn Harp.

  “Say, ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Nett instructed in a stage whisper.

  Sena’s yellow gaze dropped to the ground, and she mumbled, “Sorry.”

  Sophie stood a moment, and Claire wondered if this was going to be one of those times Sophie would refuse an apology and hold a grudge.

  “I think,” Sophie said, her eyes sweeping the dank cell, “that you’ve had a fair enough punishment. But I have something else to say.”

  Sena cringed. “What?”

  “Thank you,” Sophie said. “From what Claire’s told me, without you, she probably would have ended up as wraith bait.”

  “Maybe not wraith bait,” Sena said, nodding seriously, “but definitely Forger rust.”

  “All right, all right,” Claire interrupted, ready for this conversation to be over. “We need to get you out of here.”

  “Yes,” Nett agreed. “The Grand Council might come down at any moment.”

  “You’re wrong,” a voice called out from down the passageway. Claire froze as she saw the flicking orange of a torch make its way toward them. “We’re already here.”

  The torch lifted closer to the bearer’s face to reveal the thin features of Mira Fray.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Sophie launched herself in front of Claire. “You can’t have her!” she shouted. “Claire’s death isn’t the key to anyone’s victory!”

  “No,” Fray sighed as she came to a stop in front of them. “She most certainly is not.” The Spinner wore a navy gown, trimmed with hundreds of swinging blue tassels. But the threads didn’t swing with her motion. Some swung forward while others swung back or to the side, as if each thread had a mind of its own. And maybe they did.

  “But,” Claire said, taking a step back, “why do you want me, then?”

  “We don’t,” Fray said, a shake of her head sending her many long, white braids dancing. “You’re much more useful to us alive.”

  “But we heard you say it!” Sophie exclaimed. “We heard you telling Jasper that her death would be the key to your victory.” But even as the words left Sophie’s mouth, Claire realized that wasn’t quite right. What Fray had said was that the girl’s death would be key. They’d never heard a name.

  Claire felt a push as Sophie nudged her away from the bars.

  “Stay away from Claire,” Sophie said shakily. “She’s no use to anyone. She’s not even a real princess—she’s just a sister!”

  Mira’s eyebrows shot up. “Somehow, I don’t believe that. And neither do you, I think. But no, Claire’s death is not key, either. Though if you keep squawking, it will come much sooner than you think.”

  “But then—” Sophie pressed, but Nett let out a yelp.

  “NO,” Nett cried, flinging his arms wide as if he could stop one of Arden’s most famous and powerful Spinners from marching on. “YOU LEAVE SENA ALONE!”

  This time, Fray didn’t say anything.

  A creeping horror began to twine through Claire, and slowly—so slowly!—she pieced together Nett’s shout … and Fray’s silence. The girl whose death was key to victory was not Claire, the supposed Gemmer princess of Arden. Nor was it Sophie, who was also Prince Martin’s descendant.

  It was Sena.

  But …

  “Why?” Claire’s voice rang out as she tried to scan for an escape. If she could keep Fray distracted, maybe Nett or Sophie could think of a plan. “Why do you want Sena to die? What did she do wrong?”

  “Besides steal the Unicorn Harp?” Fray shrugged. “Nothing, really. Nothing worse than Grandmaster Iris of Greenwood’s lie about possessing said object. Nothing worse than anything my Royalists have done to collect unicorn artifacts. But all this was done for the greater good of Arden, as will be Sena’s death.”

  “You’re not going to hurt her,” Nett said, stretching to his full height, which was only a little bit taller than Claire. “I won’t let you!”

  “Ah,” Fray said softly, taking Nett in, who looked as puffed up as a hedgehog. “You’re Francis’s grandson, aren’t you? Yes, he wasn’t too happy about this plan, but he’s not in a position to help her.”

  “Please,” Sena said, and Claire whipped around to see the Forger girl standing with both hands wrapped around her bars. “If I have to die—can’t you at least tell me why?”

  Picking up her gown, Fray stepped over to come nearer to Sena. “Because of your parents, my dear.”

  “It’s not Sena’s fault her parents fell in love!” Nett yelled. “Why do you keep punishing her?”

  “I’m not punishing her,” Fray said, never taking her eyes from Sena’s. “I’m using her as a lure.”

  “Lure for what?” Claire asked, sneaking a glance at Sophie. But she didn’t have her thinking face on. Instead, she looked sick.

  Fray sighed. “I expected more cunning from a Gemmer princess of Arden. I just said, for her parents.”

  “My parents are dead,” Sena spat. “Or as good as. Papa was executed years ago and Mama is held somewhere in the labyrinth of the old capital—according to my sources.”

  “Your sources are wrong,” Fray said. “I am the greatest historian of our time. Nothing occurs in Arden without me knowing. That includes a faked execution. That includes a rescue to save a wife. That includes rumors of a pair of alchemists in hiding as they experiment with a great and dangerous magic. One that could tear at the very seams of our world as we know it.”

  Sena looked as though she’d been hit with a hammer. She visibly swayed on her feet. “Papa—he’s alive? And with Mama?”

  “For now,” Fray acknowledged. “But they won’t be for long.”

  The Steeles—they were alive! And that strange phrase again … the seams of the world. Where had she heard it before? With sudden understanding, Claire remembered. Cotton. Cotton had said the strongest alchemists—the very ones who had taught everyone how to wake the chimera—went missing when their experiment had gone wrong at the seams of the world. Sena’s parents had been to Woven Root!

  “You’ve set a trap!” Sophie’s eyes flashed. “You’re using Sena as bait so then—what? Wait, I know.”

  Sophie’s expression was terrible to behold. “You’ll make the execution public and coax them out to rescue their daughter. And when they do, you’ll parent-nap them. And you’ll find a way to use this to drive the guilds even further apart, just like how you started the rumor that the Forgers destroyed Queen Rock and Unicorn Rock. So that finally when you’re ready to take over, there will be no one to stand against you.”

  “That is a very good guess, yes.” Fray nodded approvingly. “I always thought you were clever, even if you were obsessed with unicorns.”

  Claire’s stomach lurched. Sophie knew Fray before Claire had ever laid eyes on her. Her sister had spent much of her first days in Arden talking with the famed historian, seeking out the legends of unicorns.

  “So you’ll kill me just so you can have power!” Sena yelled through the bars, looking more mad than scared. “You’re despicable!”

  Shaking her head, Fray peered into the cell. “I’ll have power, yes, I’ll admit to it. But I’m not doing it for myself. I’m doing it for Arden. I’m making the path clear for Queen Estelle’s return, because only she can bring magic back to its full strength. Only she can rid the land of wraiths. And she needs your parents.”

  She smiled sadly, and snapped her fingers. Two men melted from the shadows, and though they did not wear the Royalist blue cloaks, Claire recognized them from that horrible night on the Sorrowful Plains.

  “And if that means one little girl must be killed,” Fray said, tone as slippery as oil, and words as vile as lake slime, “then so be it.”

  The drip, drip, drip of the dank cell was as loud as a drum in the dark belly of the Drowning Fortress.

  Claire hunched miserably in a corner, t
rying to avoid Sena’s boots as the Forger girl paced up and down the cell, her red braid whipping behind her with each quick turn. Sena always had a spark of a temper, but with the turn of events, Claire wasn’t sure when it would burst into a full-fledged forest fire. It was better to just stay out of her way.

  Besides, Claire was still wrestling with the idea that the conversation she and Sophie overheard at Stonehaven was never about her, but Sena.

  Shifting uncomfortably, Claire tried to think of an escape plan, but it was hard to concentrate on anything but Fray’s echoing words—so horrible that they seemed to have their own kind of glue.

  “Hey,” she said gently, trying to make her voice soothing like Mom’s when they were feverish. Her hand went to her ribboned bun, where she’d returned the nubby pencil from her Lock-it Pocket once Fray had inspected her. “Maybe I can draw us out of here again.”

  Sophie’s lips twisted. “You could barely do it last time. And that was just a doorknob to a door that already existed.”

  Again, her voice was flat, like a picture without highlights or shadows. If only Sophie were a drawing, Claire would know how to fix it. But sisters were more complicated than sketches.

  There just had to be a way out of here, a way to save themselves and go back to their search for the unicorn.

  Wait a minute … the unicorn!

  “Sophie,” Claire said, dragging herself to her knees. “The flute!”

  “What about it?”

  “Get it out!”

  The silver strand of unicorn mane she’d found outside the chimeras’ stable streaked through her memory, bright and guiding like a flare. It was still wrapped safely around her pencil. “Maybe it’ll work this time. Maybe, like the princess in the story, we needed to be in, what’s the word? Mortal Danger for it to work. The unicorn will appear and its magic can destroy the locks—they can open anything, you know—and we can ride away on it and—”

  “Claire—”

  But Claire ignored her sister, her mind galloping ahead, just barely keeping up with the words that were spilling out of her. “I don’t think we’ve been tracking the unicorn at all—I think he has been following us! He wants to save us, I just know it, and—”

  “THERE IS NO UNICORN!”

  Claire flinched as Sophie’s shout filled the cell. Sena and Nett had gone silent, backed away to the far side of the cell, as if to give Claire space to hear the words right.

  Sophie surged to her feet, still shouting, “THERE NEVER HAS BEEN.”

  “What are you saying ?” Claire demanded, anger rising. “I released the unicorn from Unicorn Rock! It saved you!”

  Sophie shook her head. “If that unicorn is somehow still alive, it is probably unfathomably far away by now, if a hunter hasn’t caught up to it. He’s never followed us.”

  “But,” Claire protested, “we’ve found the unicorn mane everywhere—”

  She stopped as Sophie made a sound. Claire guessed it was a laugh, but it was about as similar to laughter as a grimace was to a grin.

  “What you found—that wasn’t unicorn mane,” Sophie said.

  “Of course it was,” Claire said, her own voice tight. “You said it was. In the moonlight, it was all shiny and silvery like—” She stopped. She had been about to say like spider’s silk. But that wasn’t entirely right. It had been silvery, yes, but more like silk thread.

  Like the silver embroidery thread used to decorate lavender dresses one might wear to her sister’s Grand Test.

  The same thread that would catch on the underbrush as the sister ran away from deadly enemies. The same thread that had unraveled from her sister’s dress.

  An eerie calm spread through Claire, a numbness that froze her anger, damming it in place. Her ears popped, and her mouth went dry.

  “You lied to me,” Claire whispered.

  “You didn’t want to stay! You wanted to go home!” Sophie yelled. “You said that. It was the only way to keep you in Arden—”

  The dam broke.

  “SO YOU TRICKED ME?” Claire’s fury flowed fast and fluid.

  “You don’t understand,” Sophie protested. “I told you. I needed magic—”

  “YOU NEEDED?!” Claire shouted. “WHAT ABOUT WHAT I NEED?”

  Sophie was never the easiest to get along with. She always got to choose the movie for family nights. She always picked the color scheme for their annual family picture. She always decided their Experiences.

  But this … this lie. This was beyond anything Sophie had ever done before. To pretend they were on the trail of a unicorn when they were not? To lie repeatedly to her own sister?

  The fact of it hit Claire hard. She couldn’t believe it.

  And yet …

  And yet the most terrible thing of all was that she could.

  It might have been the worst lie Sophie had ever told her, but it was not the first.

  Claire squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t bear even to look at Sophie.

  Sophie had lied to Claire to make Claire stay with her, but before Arden, Sophie had pushed her away. She had chosen to hang out with her older friends rather than stay home with Claire. Sophie was always leaving her behind … except when she needed something from her.

  A raw cry tumbled from Claire, as her thoughts hit and bruised, her anger pummeling her insides.

  “You didn’t even give me a chance! You just assume because I’m your little sister—because I’m not actually the Gemmer princess—that I’m not brave enough to help!”

  “Claire—”

  “No,” Claire said, standing up on shaky legs. “You don’t get to say anything, not now.” Tears, hot and salty, landed on her tongue. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying.

  “You say you wanted to help Arden, but all we’ve done is cause more problems. Anvil and Aquila will probably never move again. The queen is back. And the last unicorn is probably already gone for good. You just keep wanting to go on adventure after adventure without thinking about how your actions affect others! You don’t care about me at all. I—I hate you.”

  The silence, punctuated only by the dripping ceiling, gaped wide as a crocodile’s jaws between them. It felt as though it would devour them both whole.

  Nett and Sena were standing there watching the whole thing in shock. Claire didn’t look up at them but could feel their stares, the questions they weren’t asking.

  And then, a sound escaped Sophie’s corner of the cell. A sniffle.

  Suddenly, Claire realized her sister was crying. She was so surprised by it that for a minute she sat there, unsure what to do, her anger transforming instantaneously, as if by magic, into something else. Into curiosity. And worry.

  “Sophie?” Forgetting to feel sorry for herself, Claire shuffled over to her sister. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the cell, but Claire thought her sister’s skin looked waxy, and there were tight lines in her face that hadn’t been there before.

  “Hey,” Claire said softly. “Are you okay?”

  Sophie only moaned in response.

  “Nett?” Claire cried, voice wobbly. “Can you come over here?” Something in her voice must have told Nett this was an emergency. A second later, he was there, crouching next to Sophie. He placed the back of his hand against Sophie’s forehead, and she let out a low moan.

  “She has a fever,” Nett said. “She’s burning up.”

  “But she’s shivering!”

  “My head …,” Sophie mumbled. “It hurts.”

  “Lay her down,” Nett instructed. “Sena, is there any way you can make a fire?”

  Biting her lip, Sena nodded. A few minutes later, using the heat from a buckle on Claire’s boot and strips of cloth from their tunics, Sena had managed to kindle a small blaze.

  As the flame’s warmth flickered out, Claire brushed her sister’s hair off her sweaty forehead. How had this happened? She thought of the night before, when they’d flown through the clouds. They’d been cool and wet, and the wind had rushed by them,
shooting goose bumps up their arms.

  A hint of a bad memory crept into the back of her mind—fluorescent lights, beeping monitors, hushed voices, nurses’ shoes squeaking quietly along linoleum hospital floors. But Claire pushed that memory away. This was different. Sophie had gotten a chill, was all. Probably from all that flying.

  Sophie wasn’t sick-sick, not anymore. The unicorn from the rock had cured her.

  Hadn’t it?

  Slowly, though, Sophie’s shivers grew less violent, and the rise and fall of her chest grew steady.

  “Claire?” Sophie’s voice was but a thread of itself, thin and on the edge of breaking. “There’s something else I’ve been keeping from you.”

  Claire’s body went numb.

  “Before we left,” Sophie said. “Do you remember how I was late to the Grand Test?”

  Claire nodded. “You were mad at me,” she whispered.

  Sophie shook her head, and her fingers brushed the spot above her collarbone, where Claire knew there was a pink scar shaped like a single star.

  “It was because Terra pulled me aside. She wanted to see my scar. I think she wanted proof of your story. And then she told me that she thought—that maybe—the unicorn hadn’t cured me. That he had only stopped me from dying of the arrow wound … and not anything else.”

  Anything else. The rare illness that even the doctors at home did not understand.

  “She said,” Sophie continued, “that unicorn magic is extremely powerful, but it works in mysterious ways. Their magic can sometimes save lives, she said, but more often than not it changes lives. I didn’t know what she meant, but now … I thought I was fine. And if I’m not—” Her words cut off, as abrupt as a cliff. And Claire was tumbling over it.

  Sophie wasn’t healed. She was still sick.

  “You didn’t tell me …,” Claire said, too stunned to think.

  “I tried to,” Sophie said. She took a deep shuddery breath. “I wanted to. I just wanted to protect you from feeling sad. I thought maybe if we stayed in Arden a little longer, I’d discover my magic, and it would, I don’t know, save me. But if the unicorn couldn’t … there’s no magic that can.”