Chapter Fourteen

It’s not late, but Virian and Dayen snore away, exhausted. I puzzle over everything that’s happened and realize that my life story is full of holes. This I know: A year after I was born, my father died, and my mother fled Bato-Ko with us children. This I do not: Why she left Bato-Ko, what caused a rift with her mother, what her life was like before I was born, and why she was arrested.

Whatever she did must have been terrible. Enough to warrant a possible death sentence almost seventeen years later. Death is usually reserved for only the worst of criminals, but my mother is no thief, or we would never have lived with so little. Nor do I think my mother is a murderer, because she always punished Kuran for getting into fights. That only leaves treason. She hates the Baylan—yet again, I don’t know why. I wish I could just talk to her. The questions circle in my head like goldfish in a bowl.

I roll over in my bed. Everything in the room is clean, but I still imagine those bloody words on the floor. Go home, they taunt, as if there’s anywhere I can call home anymore.

I toss and turn on my new mattress, folding and unfolding the Archivist’s tracking spell. I think that the orange thread is a piece of my mother’s headwrap. From what I know of tracking spells, you need something that belongs to a person to find them. Alen found me using hair he yanked off my head, and he swallowed the evidence so that the Guardians would not find out.

This spell feels like a lucky gift that I so badly need, but I don’t know if I can risk the corridors of the fortress in the dark. Kalena warned against it, and something in my gut tells me there is truth to the danger.

A quiet knock on the doorframe sends my questions scattering. I stuff the paper under my mattress and draw back the curtain.

“Kuya Tan—”

A white-toothed smile slices the darkness like a knife. “Ahh, Kuran Jal. Come walk with me so we don’t wake the others.” Arisa’s dark brown eyes gleam eerily bright in the moonlight, and the smell of rotting peonies sloughs off her like rain. The Astar carries no lamp and wears a dress so dark that she’s nearly invisible. For once, she is without her Guardian, and that scares me. I don’t trust Teloh’s motives, but I know in my soul that he would not let anyone hurt me.

Run away, my ghosts rustle, and they cluster against my spine in a prickly ball, as though they want to be as far from her as possible.

“I should rest for tomorrow.” I keep my hands on the curtain. “It’s been an exhausting day, and we’re not allowed out of our rooms at night.”

“Oh, I insist. I promise this won’t take long. I have the final say on the Raja or Reyna, after all. You need not fear the dark when you’re with me.” She holds out a hand as if I am a friend, but I wrap my arms around myself.

Arisa leads me through unlit corridors and does not slow until we reach an alcove that houses a statue of Omu. The Diwata’s face glows with the light of wish candles in colorful glass cups. Her stern eyes stare down upon us in judgment, and they seem to shift in the candlelight. I look away.

“Kneel.” Arisa pushes my shoulders down, and my knees crack against the cold stone floor. She stands behind me like a hovering executioner. This close, I choke on the flower-and-rot scent of her power.

“You are one of the girls from the Toso party. I wondered why you looked so familiar when I marked your hand. Was the other girl your sister?”

Freezing Hells. I cough and sputter, but she doesn’t seem to care. “No, just a friend.”

She doesn’t seem to buy my lie. Instead, she bends low to examine my face. Her breath tickles my ears, and I flinch away. I pray that my blue scarf is wound tight.

“Mmm… Kormar has such a soft heart. She asked me to check on you because she was worried after your test. She also told me that the balete stopped when you answered the questions you were given. Tell me what happened in your own words.”

My ghosts scrape at the cage of my chest so violently that I wince. Careful, they warn.

“We were answering questions when the tree came alive. We nearly died.”

“So, you did nothing but answer questions?” The candlelight shifts. Her shadows stretch into a sharp fingered shape. I close my eyes.

“Nothing. A boy… A boy in a yellow tunic was hanging upside down after his first question, but Kormar told us not to worry. I don’t know what was supposed to happen.”

She paces behind me, and her slippered feet tap rhythmically against the stone floor. “And what was the final question?”

“It asked what I am most afraid of.”

She stops and kneels before me. If I didn’t know better, her expression might have seemed kind. “And what are you afraid of, Kuran Jal?”

“Myself.”

“How curious.” She looks me up and down, unimpressed. “Tell no one what happened during the test. We must not alarm the other candidates, but it sounds like this was all an unfortunate accident.”

The candles flicker, and Arisa swivels her gaze down the hallway. Her mask of smugness falters for an instant. “Hurry back to your room. Do not dally.”

When I turn around, she is gone, and I dare not linger. I leave behind the rotting stench of the Astar’s words and magic, but though I counted hallways and turns on the way to the alcove, they do not seem to line up the same way. Pools of moonlight break the contours of my path into jagged mosaics that shift and change. I scurry toward an oasis of candlelight and find immortal Madur’s eagle statue where I remember it. The protector of Tigang and patron of Guardians stands with his wings flared, and he grips the hilt of a curved sword with taloned fingers.

But a gust of wind snuffs out every candle in the hallway. In the sudden darkness, every terrifying story told around the cookfire comes back to mind: there are shadows with teeth; there is darkness that walks.

I blunder into another hallway as the wind picks up. It sends my skin prickling and pushes me onward. I turn around, but there are no open windows in sight. A sound like waves crashing against the shore echoes down the corridor and builds until it is as deafening as a rushing waterfall.

I go back the way I came and abandon decorum. I run. The shadows shift and tighten around me, strangling away the moonlight.

The red flag marking the candidates’ quarters flickers in weak lamplight ahead. I sprint toward it and back to my room. Jumping into my bed, I pull my blanket to my chin like a child caught in the grips of some waking nightmare. The red flap of our curtain flutters in and out of the doorway, as if the fortress is alive and breathing.

I wait for the shadows to turn into fangs and claws or for something to burst through the door. Instead, footsteps patter down the hallways. Someone human shouts words too distant for me to understand.

Suddenly, the air fills with so much moisture that breathing feels like swallowing honey. The walls drip with condensation that runs in thin rivulets. A mushroom sprouts in the crack where the doorframe meets the floor.

I’m suffocating.

“Go away!” I gasp. “Please.” My voice wheezes out in a whisper, but the shadows outside shift as though they are listening. The magic eases its grip, and I gulp fresh air before crumpling into my mattress. Nearby, Dayen turns over in his creaking bed and Virian simply snores.

One dream fades into another. This time, I am lost in a storm, and all around me the glass walls of Bato-Ko are cracking.