The wind is soft against my cheeks, cold but gentle. As I tend to Irenya’s wounds in the narrow basket of the balloon, night drifting over us, the world seems still.
Quiet.
The only sounds are the voices of Nox and Micah as they debate what to do when we land. They pause every now and again so that Micah can throw up.
“For the love of souls,” Nox says, wincing as his friend retches over the side. “I hope that doesn’t land on anyone.”
Micah groans and presses a hand to his stomach. “I think I’m going to pass out.”
“You’re so delicate,” Nox says. “How would you have made it through initiations without me?”
“I always have a better chance of surviving when I’m not with you,” Micah shoots back.
Nox’s cheeks line with laughter.
It’s strange seeing him with a friend and looking so relaxed. It’s different from the uppity soldier at the Festival, pandering to the king and holding on to his sword like it’s some kind of trophy.
It’s also different from the boy who barged into my room in the dead of night and demanded a vision to save his life.
Nox adapts and changes himself to whoever he needs to be in the moment. I can relate to that. I’ve spent a lifetime making myself small so others can feel big. I’ve molded myself into what they want me to be so well that I’m not sure who I am outside the walls of my tower.
“Ouch!”
Under my touch, Irenya sucks in a sharp breath, and I tear my eyes from Nox to look down at her ankle.
“Oh,” I say, cringing. “Sorry. I’ve never healed anyone else before.”
“I can see why,” Irenya teases. “You’re not very good at it.”
I poke out my tongue and I would jab her in the ribs if I didn’t know they were broken.
Every part of her looks broken and I’ve spent the last hour trying to put back together the pieces that I can. I feel weak and my eyes threaten to flutter closed, but I can’t stop. Not with Irenya still in pain and not when I know it’s all my fault.
I press my hand softly back to her ankle, then move the other to the tender skin over her ribs and close my eyes, so as not to be distracted again.
I feel the magic of my ancestors sweeping through me, trying to find the wounds that need healing. I gather that power up and let it seep out of my fingers and into Irenya.
Hoping, praying to Asclepina, that it obeys.
Our goddess was said to use her magic to heal villages, but I’ve only ever used it for myself. My mother and the king never considered training me on how to help others.
Why would they?
The sooner someone dies, the sooner we get their soul.
“Rest,” I tell Irenya, once I feel my magic recoil.
Depleted almost entirely.
Her skin is no longer bruised purple and she doesn’t flinch as much when she moves, so it must mean I’ve done something right. Put the bones back together.
I wipe the blood away from my nose, before it drips down onto the blanket that I’ve pulled across her.
“It’ll be better tomorrow,” I promise, smoothing my friend’s hair across the pillow with a gloved hand. “Just rest.”
Irenya nods, and when she closes her eyes, her breath shakes with the weight of her tiredness.
I stand and step to the edge of the basket that keeps us floating across the sky.
“How is she?” Nox asks.
He’s at my side, gesturing to where Irenya lies on the wicker floor.
“She’ll be fine,” I tell him. “How’s he?”
I look to the other side of the balloon, where Micah is still retching.
“Dramatic,” Nox says.
He watches me press my hand to my nose again. The blood is heavier than ever before, soaking through my gloves.
Healing Irenya has drained me in a way that healing myself never has. It’s as though I’ve siphoned all the energy from inside myself and poured it into her.
“You’re hurt,” Nox says.
“I’m fine,” I lie. The tiredness seeps even into my voice and I know he can hear it.
“You were bleeding back in Vasiliádes too,” Nox says. “After we jumped off the mountain.”
There’s a note of concern in his voice that throws me off guard, even though I know that it’s only because he needs me to keep him alive until he finds his precious make-believe sword.
“One nosebleed doesn’t compare to what’s ahead,” I say.
Or to the injuries I used to get during training with Asden.
Just thinking his name makes my heart ache.
I look over to Nox, their faces such a perfect echo of each other.
“The king will be coming for us,” I say, lowering my voice to a whisper so we don’t wake Irenya with all this talking.
Nox leans against the basket, looking out at the tiny world below with a sigh. All we can see for miles is ocean and darkness.
If not for the balloon’s navigational system directing us to Armonía, telling us which way to steer the small wheel so the propeller can fight against the winds, we’d be lost to the night.
“He knows I want the sword,” Nox says. “Do you think he’ll use your mother’s visions to follow us to Armonía?”
He throws a pouch into the balloon’s furnace. The flames turn blue and the balloon rises, picking up speed with the higher winds.
Irenya stirs but doesn’t wake.
“My mother can’t see our future if we’re not there to touch,” I say.
“What about the king’s future?”
I shake my head, gripping tighter on to the rough branches of the basket. “The king doesn’t have a future.”
Nox looks puzzled, which is to be expected. The king has spent lifetimes making sure the only thing people know about him is that he’s all-powerful.
“King Seryth eats souls, which means he’s full of other people’s destinies,” I explain. “Every soul he’s taken is muddled inside of him. He’s a patchwork person, with no future of his own.”
It’s a weakness and a strength.
The king can never know what’s in store for him, but nobody else can either. It means they can never use it against him to their advantage.
He’s a shadow in this world, ever present, and with my mother by his side there will never be enough light to cast him out.
“The king doesn’t just kill people,” Nox says, taking in my words. “He destroys them too. Takes everything they are and keeps it for himself.”
His voice is cold and distant, much like the wind, which fights against the roaring fire.
He’s thinking of someone, I can see it in his eyes.
Of Asden. The General. His father.
I swallow, the cold bite of the wind seeping down my throat. I wish I didn’t remember that day so clearly.
My whole life I’ve been raised to be the king’s witch, just like my mother and her mother before her. Isolda Somniatis made it our destiny to serve him. To keep him in power, whatever the cost.
Even if that cost was people like Asden Laederic, a man who taught me how to protect myself. Whose love for his son wasn’t weaved in a web of deceit and intricate betrayals. It was simple and true. The kind of thing I’ve always wished for: someone to care without motive and without agenda.
Asden loved Nox more than he loved himself. That was clear in his voice when he pleaded for his son to be kept safe.
Would knowing that bring Nox comfort or make his pain worse?
Would knowing that I also cared for his father make a difference?
“You’re bleeding too,” I say.
I gesture to Nox’s arm, where his wound has soaked through. The tear in his shirt gives me a glimpse at just how deep it truly is.
Nox grabs a washcloth from one of the bags of supplies.
“I cut myself when we jumped from the mountain,” he says, like he’s only just remembering.
“I can heal it if you want,” I offer. “It’ll scar otherwise.”
“No.” Nox presses the cloth to his arm. “Scars aren’t a bad thing. They show that you’ve lived, and who wants to die without living?”
“People who can’t afford to keep buying new shirts?”
Nox laughs and those lines press into his cheeks again. He puts a hand to his mouth to muffle it, careful not to wake Irenya. Then he clears his throat, as if to clear the laughter away, but I still see hints of it on his lips. Tugging his mouth to the side.
Nox looks young when he laughs, unburdened.
“How did you stop us from falling, earlier?” he asks, breaking the quiet between us. “Before you dropped me onto my own sword, that is.”
The question makes me nervous because I don’t have a real answer. There’s a lot about my magic and my family that I don’t know and I’ve never been allowed to explore.
You’ll find out soon enough what it means to be the witch, my mother always said. The king will make sure of that.
“I’ve only ever had visions or healed before now,” I tell Nox. “The true power of the Somniatis witch doesn’t come into force until…”
I trail off.
Until the previous witch dies.
Until my mother dies.
I think about her bleeding on the floor, reaching out a hand to me. For comfort? To kill me? I can’t be sure which.
“So this is all new to you?” Nox asks. “Floating in midair and whatever you did in the tavern?”
Souls, I wish he hadn’t brought that up.
I’ve got enough guilt on my shoulders to last a lifetime without remembering that.
“You mean when I saved your life?” I ask. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“I think we’re even now.”
“You’re keeping score?”
Nox raises an eyebrow. “You’re not?”
I press my lips together, because he’s right. I am. How many tallies will we have to put on the board in our bid to outmaneuver the king?
“This magic sword,” I say to Nox. “You can’t really be thinking of going after it, can you? Now we’ve left Vasiliádes, surely the most important thing is to focus on surviving until the Red Moon.”
“That sword is how I survive,” Nox says. “It’s how everyone does.”
“It’s a fool’s mission,” I argue. “Polemistés is too dangerous.”
I can feel the bite of the king’s serpent on my palm. If I have any chance of living through this, then I have to convince Nox to give up on this hunt.
“I don’t mind a bit of danger,” Nox says in a shrug. “So long as it gets me my revenge.”
“That’s not what’s important right now.”
“It’s the only thing that’s ever been important to me,” he corrects.
He finishes wiping the blood from his arm and tosses the rag into a nearby bucket. The light from the torches of the balloon flickers across his face like tiny bursts of lightning.
“The king needs to die, and my father thought the sword in Polemistés was the way to do it,” Nox says. His voice is sharp-edged, like the point of his blade. “I owe it to him to try.”
I would scoff and tell him to stop believing in fairy tales, if not for the mention of Asden. Nox may think he owes his father something, but in truth it’s me who is in his debt.
“You don’t need magic to kill the king,” I say instead. “He’s nothing without his witch.”
“You want me to kill your mother?” Nox asks, unconvinced.
I bite my lip.
I want him to kill the thing she’s become and save the person she was. Kill the monster and bring back my mother. Deep down there must be sparks of the person she used to be inside.
“You nearly killed her back at the castle,” I say.
“Nearly isn’t the same thing.” Nox’s sigh is loud enough to make the fire blink. “I know the stories about witches.”
“Stories?”
“A witch can only be killed by beheading, drowning, or fire.” He recites the lines as if it’s a play.
“That would kill anyone,” I say.
“But anyone else would also die from being stabbed, especially in the neck,” Nox says. “Not your mother. Not you.”
“You’re wrong.” The flames crackle behind me like a warning. “I’m not the witch yet.”
I’ve spent years being reminded of that.
Nox pauses then, studying me. His eyes narrow, just a little, as if he’s deciding something. Calculating.
“So you’d be easy to kill, then,” he says.
“Not as easy as you.”
Nox’s eyes relax, but I can still see the intention behind them. The plan formulating, for what he’ll do if I betray him.
Nox doesn’t trust me, and regardless of how much I cared for his father, I don’t trust him either.
I wish there was a way I could escape from this bargain.
I wish I knew more about our goddess and our powers, so I could use them to unbind our fates.
And most of all, I wish death hadn’t tied me to the most reckless soldier in all of the Six Isles.
I seem to be the only one out of the two of us concerned with not dying. Rather than focus on shutting ourselves away to survive this month, Nox wants to infiltrate an army of deadly warriors on an even deadlier island to try to kill an immortal king. It’s madness.
He’s not trying to escape death, he’s seeking it out.
And the moment he finds it, we’re both damned.