Chapter Twenty-Nine

Dayen, Tanu, and I alternate a watch over Virian a few hours at a time. One thing becomes clear: Dayen is coming with me, and there’s no way I can stop him. I doubt that my mother will be as willing.

I am so tired after my second shift that I fall asleep sitting on my bed and only jolt awake when a gag slips into my mouth. A rice sack goes over my head before I can see who is responsible. I kick out and strike a leg out of pure instinct, but multiple hands grab hold of my arms, and no matter how hard I struggle, I can’t break free. My heart pounds with terror as they drag me away. This is the end at last is all that goes through my mind, over and over again.

I recognize Nen’s voice in the mob, but there are others with him. Their slippers echo against the marble, and the air goes chilly as we descend deeper into the fortress than I have ever gone.

When the sack is torn off, a cavernous room comes into focus. My hands remain tied behind my back, and two boys whose names I don’t know keep a tight grip on my shoulders. The domed roof drips water where a leak has sprung, and wooden scaffolding that looks a century old, circles the room where halfhearted attempts at fixing the cracks in the stone were abandoned. Flickering torchlights spit and hiss against its sharp edges. There is wrongness that lingers in this room that sets my teeth on edge and makes my blood boil.

A dark pit is carved into the center of the room. Waves crash against stone an unknowable distance below, and I taste brine on my tongue. The pit is so deep that light does not touch the bottom, and when I look upon it, the place where the monster touched me flares with heat. This is the Demon’s cage. I twist to get free, but I cannot tell them with the gag in my mouth. My vision begins to double. This is not the time, I beg the ghosts of my past lives as I fall to my knees, but another vision wrenches me from the present.

Palm fronds sway overhead as the wind whips at the trees and the surf. Shadows converge into a form that looks like a toddler’s drawing: an approximation of a human with many heads. Chaos turns to look at me, and shadows split into a smile. The surf crashes, and the wind howls, but I remain untouched, as though I stand in the eye of a storm.

The Demon’s voice is like falling water, everywhere and nowhere, not a sound from a mouth attached to a mortal body. “You and I are the same,” it whispers as softly as a kiss.

The vision releases me, and I collapse into the present. Why this vision? Why now? I bite down on my gag and scream in frustration. My useless ghosts do not respond.

An eyebrowless Nen stands at the forefront of a ring of candidates that forms a circle around me. And I thought he would be grateful I took his punishment? It’s my mother’s trial all over again, only I am the one they plan to condemn. I stifle an inappropriate laugh. I have worried over this fate every day of my life before the Sundo. It seems laughable that my end at the hands of ignorant fools has finally found me here.

I break one boy’s nose and struggle to get free of the circle, but there are too many of them. They bind my wrists to the scaffolding against the wall, and my taped fingers scream in protest.

“Kuran Jal, the ruler of Tigang must be the best of us.” Nen sneers. “And we have decided that you are not fit.”

Who is we? I narrow my eyes. Not many can hold my gaze, but then I see Dayen. He struggles to break free of two candidates at the rear of the crowd. His mouth is gagged like mine.

Someone removes the cloth stuffed in my mouth so that I can answer to their charges.

“And what reasons have you?” I spit.

“Seran,” Nen hisses, and a boy steps forward. Seran has a long face and spiking hair. Blood still drips from his broken nose. “I saw her sneak off with Arisa the other night, and she’s friendly with her Guardian. She’s spying on us in return for the Astar’s favors. You all saw how Nen was singled out for punishment.”

“That’s absurd,” I reply, but Nen lifts his chin and raises a gold earring between his fingers. It’s the same earring that I plucked from Ingo’s unconscious body after the Makers test. I thought I’d lost it. My stomach drops.

“Dayen found this in your room. What did you do to Ingo?” Nen asks.

How could I even begin to explain it? I also made a promise to Arisa, backed by a threat. I cannot speak about that night without condemning us all. I look over at the boy who betrayed me, and the shame in his expression is a slap to the face. My eyes blur with hot tears, not from shame but anger. I am so close; I will not let these children ruin things now.

“Look at her neck!” someone screams. “Look what she was hiding!”

They swarm forward in a blur of faces and curses.

“The truth will put you in danger. Please, believe me!” I shout, but my voice is lost in the commotion, and I have no idea if anyone hears me.

The wooden scaffolding sways behind me, and I scrape my bindings against it. The whole structure groans, and I grit my teeth as pain blooms.

“Who are you to condemn me? Have you not seen the Astar’s marks? Who do you think truly controls Tigang? I can tell you it is not some puppet ruler chosen in some arcane competition. Arisa will be here long after our next ruler is gone, and the next after her!” I scream, but no one is listening. Nen draws a wicked-looking knife. I pull so hard at my bindings that the rotted wood cracks and I break free.

Dayen elbows the boy to his left and ducks under the arm of the other. He rushes to the front of the crowd, toward me, still gagged.

I hop up the scaffolding to get away. A piece of wood snaps under my left foot, and I clutch the scaffolding with white knuckles. The wood shatters against the hard stone below. I reach for another bit of scaffolding as Nen climbs up behind me.

Dayen reaches for Nen to stop him, but he is too tall and too heavy. When he tests his foot against the scaffolds, the entire structure trembles.

But I don’t need saving. Nen is so close. I lean down and kick at the scaffolding in his hands. His grip loosens and a cascade of wood pulls away from its moorings so we are dangling partway over the pit. He clings to the wood, and his face drains of blood as he scrambles for a better hold.

I could let him fall. I’ve known so many Nens, and I have never done anything but cower. I’ve never done anything but take their hate or run from it. And it’s all Astar’s fault that I’ve been called a monster my whole life when I could have been…

Arisa.

My jaw trembles. I watch him flail for a moment longer before I shout for Dayen.

I extend my right hand to Nen. “Take my hand or fall and die.”

He wavers, and I know the terrible choice he weighs: to live cursed or to die. I let him choose and relish the fact he does not know there is no teeth to my curse. He reaches for my hand, and I swing him onto the ledge of the pit with Dayen’s help.

No one knows what to say. A space clears around me, and I storm away, leaving Nen sprawled on the stone of the floor. I don’t look back. I want to be away from this cursed fortress before I am lost forever.

I touch the familiar marks upon my neck. I was so close to letting Nen die. I wanted to watch him fall. I wanted to watch that smug expression shatter. Worst of all, I don’t think I would have regretted it.

I huddle my arms around my trembling body. Maybe I deserve to be reviled.

A sweet mung bean pastry in a bakery box stamped with a shop name waits on my bed when I return to my room. A note on the plate reads: Eat with care. Ask the kitchens for more. I nibble at it, too tired to care if it’s poisoned, and find a message on a roll of rice paper tucked inside.

Baylan and council divided. Arisa cleaning house. You are not who you say you are. Who are you really, Jal girl? - O

Maybe someone I don’t want to be.