I slip across the floor, my boots gliding over the blood.
My stomach rolls.
I steady my footing and swallow down the bile, shoving a few of the men aside as I try to pull Nox out.
I’m not strong enough.
Burdened by Nox’s weight, it only takes one of the men to swing his arm back before I’m thrown to the floor. They laugh and a horrible fury burns inside me.
The lanterns on the tavern walls are a dark amber, and when I look at them, the flames dance.
I can feel my magic, begging me to do something. To not be powerless.
From the floor, Nox glances up at me.
Though his face is bloody, I’m sure he can see the fire breaking into my eyes.
Someone kicks him again and Nox’s head falls back.
My breath stops.
It’s like watching Asden be killed before me all over again. But this time I can do something to stop it. I’m not a child, hiding behind my mother.
I tear a glove from my hand and set my sights on the man who started all this. The one who accused Nox of cheating and grabbed my arm.
I cannot fight this many people at once, even with Asden’s training, but if I can scare this man with a vision of his future, maybe he’ll stop his attack.
Without considering the pain that hit me the last time, I reach up and clasp my bare hand around his arm.
Skin on skin.
Flesh against flesh.
The man goes rigid, but the vision doesn’t come.
I focus, letting my fear and anger grow, thinking maybe that’s the key. I let it all seep out of me.
I picture the king’s black eyes and the sound of my room locking every night, sealing me in. Of my mother’s smile disappearing and being replaced by something cold and distant.
The sound of her lullabies disappearing to silence.
The man convulses.
Then I feel strange threads, grasping and tugging inside me.
Inside the man.
It’s invigorating.
“What are you doing?” someone yells. “Stop her!”
Nobody does.
They don’t dare touch me, too afraid as the man shakes beneath my grasp.
I can feel his energy funneling into me. His life. I drink it in like I’m dying of thirst. I can see the torchlight of the tavern becoming stronger, bolder, around me. Their flames growing and growing with my strength.
“Selestra.” Nox’s voice sounds far away and throaty. “You’ll kill him.”
Kill him.
The words knock into me and the room hurtles back into focus at startling speed.
I don’t want to kill anyone.
I focus on my hand, still gripping the dying man.
I don’t know how I’m doing it, but I’m sucking the life from him. Just like my mother siphons souls from the dead and feeds them to the king. Just like my great-great-grandmother siphoned the life and magic from all the old witch families.
I rip my hand away, terrified, and the man collapses to the floor, pale as the night stars.
The room sharpens.
What’s left of the crowd screams.
There’s horror on their faces as they see me. No serpent eyes, but my mask has slipped and so has my cloak, revealing the green of my hair.
“Witch!” someone calls out.
“She’ll kill us all!” another cries.
I swallow.
No. No. No.
If they know who I am, that means the king will know I’ve been here. I can practically hear the sound of more padlocks being fixed to my tower.
New bars on my windows.
He’ll make sure I never see the light of day again.
The crowd backs away as I rise to my feet, dizzy.
The dozen people who remain in the tavern watch me carefully, unsure of what I’ll do next.
The room spins, the energy I’ve siphoned from the man catching in my throat. I feel drunk with it. I feel like I might be sick.
“If any of you speak of this night, then my mother and I will punish you,” I threaten, trying to hide my own desperation. “I’m the heir to the Somniatis magic and you’ll suffer at the hands of my family’s power.”
My voice is bolder than I feel and I hope they won’t see through it and spot how terrified I am. I have to convince them to stay silent, for all our sakes.
The king and Theola will kill every person in this room for even looking at me wrong.
“Run!” I say to the crowd. “Run home and never speak of this again.”
To my surprise, they do.
People rush like a stampede of animals, fleeing from the big bad witch, knocking lanterns from the walls as they shove each other in a desperate bid to escape first.
A small group lifts the man I drained from the floor and I’m relieved to see his breath—shallow, but still there—as they drag him to the door.
One of the lanterns smashes against the floor and catches the edge of a fallen curtain. Flame pools quickly across it, like the rivers on the Floating Mountain, burning through the fabric.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to settle myself, but the room is still wobbling inside my mind and the sound of the flames is deafening.
I reach up a hand to wipe the blood from my nose, but nothing comes.
Using large amounts of my power has always come at a cost. A nosebleed here, a splintering headache there when I heal the injuries from sparring with Irenya. Not this time.
Instead of feeling drained, I feel energized, like I might faint with the power of that man’s energy swirling inside me.
Is this how the king feels whenever he feeds on a soul?
Is this how he always feels, made immortal, invincible, by the power my family gives him?
I swallow.
Whatever this feeling is, I hate it.
Across the room, the tavern burns.
The room has emptied of everyone but Nox, and now the fire that minutes ago was licking up the curtains seems to shoot like stars across the walls and over the floors.
It moves so quickly.
The smoke thickens and my skin grows hot.
This is my vision.
Quickly, I bend down to Nox, who’s lying on the blood-soaked floor. I’m not sure when he lost consciousness.
With my gloved hand, I touch his cheek, coaxing him awake.
“We have to get out of here,” I say.
He stirs, but when his eyes don’t open, I shake him at the shoulders.
“Wake up!” I yell more urgently.
Nox grunts and sucks in a hard breath. “Are you trying to kill me or save me?” he asks hoarsely.
“I’m not sure yet.”
I pull Nox to his feet, slinging his arm over my shoulder.
His face is red with blood, and by the way he moves, I know some of his ribs are cracked.
We turn toward the exit, but the room is filled with smoke and all I can see is fire.
Across the walls.
Over the door.
“I don’t suppose you foresaw a way out?” Nox asks. He coughs and waves his arm to clear away the smoke.
I study the room, but I don’t know any other way out. The windows have smashed open, but the fire around them is crackling fiercely, leaving no way to get past.
Then I remember.
My vision.
The image that carved itself into my mind with enough force to make sure I never forgot.
A handle in the floor, surrounded by broken glass.
A trapdoor.
I turn. I did foresee a way out.
“This way.”
I stagger over a small ribbon of fire and drag Nox behind the bar. On the floor, among a litter of bottles, is the door.
I crouch down.
“How did you know about this?” Nox yells over the roar of the flames.
He kneels beside me, wincing as the pain of his injuries takes hold.
“I can predict the future,” I say. “Remember?”
Above us, the ceiling quakes, spitting dust.
I know it’s going to fall at any moment.
“We have to hurry.”
I twist the handle and flip open the small hatch to reveal a narrow tunnel.
“Any idea where this leads?” Nox asks.
“Away from here,” I say, and jump down.
Nox follows quickly, landing with a thump beside me.
I reach up and pull the hatch closed behind us, hoping it’ll keep the fire at bay.
My eyes squint to adjust to the darkness.
The tunnel is only just tall enough for us to crawl farther in. A single light hangs from the ceiling of the door, casting a glow down the tunnel and illuminating the dirt of the walls.
“Go,” I urge, pushing Nox forward.
With a sharp breath, every movement looking painful, Nox crawls ahead.
Everything is mud-slicked, weeds clinging to the walls and ceiling. As we move forward, dirt falls onto my shoulders.
Nox holds up a hand crusted with mud.
“This seems unsanitary. When was the last time they cleaned their escape hatch, do you think?”
“Would you just hurry up?” I press.
“Not enjoying your view?” Nox says dryly.
I roll my eyes.
I wish I hadn’t let him go in front.
“Just move.”
The tunnel is filling quickly with smoke, burning my throat dry, and coughing only makes it worse. My chest aches, like the smoke is inside me and trying to push its way out through my skin.
My eyes sting with it.
“I see a light!” Nox announces.
He crawls quicker.
Moonlight seeps through the cracks of the opening, boarded hastily over with wooden slats.
Nox slams his elbow against them, hard enough for me to flinch.
It sounds like it hurts, but he must be used to pain or it doesn’t compare to the injuries he already has, because Nox doesn’t stop. He hits the wood, over and over until his elbow pushes through and he can rip the rest away.
We crawl from the hole.
The dry summer grass crunches beneath my palms. I heave in a gasp of the fresh night air and pull myself to my feet.
My hands are blackened with mud and soot, and I cough out breath after breath, pushing the smoke from my lungs.
Nox clambers to his feet beside me. He stumbles a bit, but manages not to topple over. I feel like collapsing too, back onto the grass, where I can sleep for days.
The initial high from absorbing the energy of that man is gone and there’s a weight on my chest as my magic whimpers over how much of it I’ve used.
Whatever I did, it doesn’t feel right.
About half a mile from where we stand the crumbled remnants of the After Dusk Inn are engulfed in flames. I watch as it burns to nothing.
“Looks like I’m going to have to find a new place to play cards,” Nox says. “At least I got my Chrim though.”
He reaches up his sleeve and tosses two crown cards onto the grass.
“You really did cheat?” I ask, aghast.
Nox raises a mocking brow. “I didn’t realize you had such a strict moral code, princess. Besides, I needed the Chrim.”
“A few pieces of gold was worth risking your life for?”
“Spoken like someone who’s never had to worry about not having it.”
I roll my eyes and walk toward the nearest alley. Nox knows nothing of my life. He may think it’s all diamonds and ballgowns, but at least he can go wherever he wants and do whatever he wants.
I may have Chrim, but he has freedom.
I walk faster. I need to get back to the castle and clean myself up before anyone notices I’m gone.
“I thought you said I was going to die tomorrow,” Nox says. He limps after me, struggling to keep pace. “Bad time to get your dates wrong, don’t you think?”
Tell me about it.
I nearly got myself killed with my own carelessness.
I wouldn’t have ventured out into the lower towns or a tavern, of all places, if I’d known. What use am I as a witch when I can’t even predict my own death right?
“I made a mistake,” I tell him.
“And then you saved me,” Nox says. His eyebrows pinch in confusion. “Which one was the mistake?”
I shake my head.
Truthfully, I’m not sure.
Saving him meant saving my own life, but it also means I’ve betrayed the king. If he were ever to find that out …
I bite my lip and keep walking.
Nox clutches at his ribs, trying to keep step with me as I speed up.
“You could have let those people in the tavern beat me to death,” he says. “But you came back.”
He looks at me curiously, like I’m a puzzle in place of a person.
“Why did you come back?”
“I don’t know,” I say, at the same time as the voice in my head whispers, Because it was the right thing to do.
Because you damned me too, the day you sought that prediction.
And because maybe I don’t want to be exactly like my mother.
“I won’t do it again,” I say.
Nox pushes the hair from his face. It’s wet with blood and ash. “But we make such a good team.”
I stare in disbelief.
We nearly died, and if the king finds out that we were together tonight—if anyone who escaped ignores my threats and spills that secret—we’ll both be punished.
The king will think I’m conspiring against him to deny him a soul and he won’t suffer an insolent heir. He can’t afford to let anyone live who isn’t loyal only to him.
Even witches.
Especially witches.
“Next time, you’re on your own,” I say to Nox.
We both are.
And with that, I walk away from him and head back toward the castle.