People talk about their minds shutting down in the face of hopelessness, but mine opted to travel through different sceneries in the days following Daisy’s death. I couldn’t recall being moved from my cell to the securest dungeon the kingdom possessed, one closer to the palace and tied with the most restrictive wards.
I had no recollection of being led to the palace, where I presumed people stood and gawked and hurled insults as I passed. I don’t remember the chains encircling my wrists, though I remembered their weight. I paid no attention when Empress Alyx announced my imprisonment before her court; I only saw a vision of the Kion monarch, visibly aged from stress and worry, and I felt sorry for the inevitability of what was to come. I turned a deaf ear to Princess Inessa’s fumbled explanations to me: how her mother had no choice, how they would do their best to explore another truth for my sake, how this must be a misunderstanding. In stark contrast to her mother, I saw the princess becoming fiercer, ceaseless, and more beautiful in the coming months, and I was glad for Fox.
Fox. The barrier between our thoughts was back, and it may as well have been made from the strongest steel, for I could no longer feel his mind.
I couldn’t blame him.
Even Hestia and the other elders’ undisguised glee did nothing for me. Maybe they were right. Maybe I deserved this.
I was confined to a true cell this time, with cobwebs and rats and no asha-ka comforts. I gave up all introspection, content to count down the days until I was tried in court, until a verdict was passed and I was sentenced for my execution. There was nothing else to do but wait to die.
Not even Kalen could reach me. He visited every day, always under the watchful supervision of soldiers and brother Deathseekers. I would close my eyes and turn away, so he wouldn’t bear the shame of facing a murderess, a kinslayer.
“I still love you,” I heard him say once, and my instinct was to reject those words, to relegate them to some reality where I never had to hear him say them. He couldn’t. I had done far too much to justify understanding, much less forgiveness. I had lost his friendship once after meddling in his head. Surely murder was worse.
The words gave me more hope than I wanted to deserve. But I didn’t want him to love me, not like this. Not in a dank prison surrounded by strangers. It was better for Kalen to distance himself from me. I didn’t want him to take away my isolation. It was all I had left.
Others had tried. Likh pleaded and cried, asking for answers I couldn’t give. Zoya was belligerent and demanding, yelling through the bars at me for giving up so easily. Mykaela came by every day, to talk to me in soothing tones like I had stolen another asha’s hua and only needed to apologize to make things right. Althy said nothing when she visited but forced fresh clothing on me and better food than the standard fare provided by the prison wardens. Of all who came to visit, she understood best.
Even Rahim took part, staring at me with his puppy-dog eyes. “Whatever else you might say, little uchenik, I refuse to think you are what you claim.”
It was hard to agree when Fox believed otherwise. While I paid little attention to anything during those terrible days, I couldn’t shut out Fox’s voice. Fox, telling the association how he had witnessed me murder my own sister. Fox, telling Mykaela and Mistress Parmina of my frequent blackouts and visions. Fox, telling Empress Alyx of my black heartsglass that I had kept hidden for three months.
It was ironic that the brother I had raised from the dead was providing the evidence necessary for my forthcoming execution, knowing it would kill him as well.
Would Inessa protest? Perhaps as a concession I would live, stripped of all companionship and warded for the rest of my life. I had killed Daisy. I deserved everything they did to me. I only hoped they decided Fox did not deserve it too.
Daisy.
Once, as a little girl, I was a target of the older boys and girls who ridiculed my preference for books over outside play. Their antics culminated in a book being snatched from my hands and stomped into the dirt.
I had barely started to cry when Daisy dashed into view, knocking out one boy with a punch to the face before the rest were even aware of her presence. She snatched up a fallen branch and swung at the rest, keeping them at a distance. “You want to hurt my sister?” She had snarled, “You get to go through me first.”
She fended them off long enough for Fox to come running, my brother making short work of the rest. For the next two days, I followed Daisy around like a young duckling trotting after its mother, until she grew irritated and demanded I go away as payment.
I soon lost myself in memories of her. I couldn’t retrieve and store memories in vials the way Khalad could, but had I access to that magic, I could’ve bottled them myself, so vividly I remembered her now that she was gone:
The confident way Daisy had with boys, breaking their hearts when she deemed them unworthy of her affection, and how right her assessments often were.
Her often-successful attempts to play matchmaker for other boys and girls in the village, sometimes more in love with the idea of love than being in love herself.
Her fantastically bad cooking, which did not dim her enthusiasm for it. She had no real aims in life, she used to joke, beyond finding a good man who would tolerate her meals.
The way she curled up with me and my books at bedtime after Fox left for war, asking questions about them, which I’d been so proud to know the answers to.
I wanted to collect every memory I had of Daisy, bundle it in a spell so I could keep her the same way I did Fox. But the elders wouldn’t let me. I was no longer trusted. Not that Daisy wanted to be forever tethered to her killer anyway.
The days blurred with me so caught up in the past that I soon lost track of the present.
Khalad was the last to visit. He sat next to my cell, saying nothing for the longest time. I concentrated on a crack on the wall above his head and thought about the time Daisy had danced at Kingscross’s Heartsrune ceremony. It was the last I’d attended before Fox died and I raised him from the dead. I remembered my jealousy, watching her twirl in the prettiest red dress, knowing I could never be as graceful.
“I want to see your heartsglass,” Khalad said.
I made no response.
I heard him leave and engage in discussion with one of the guards. Warily, they allowed him entry to my cell. He crouched beside me and took my heart in his hands. I stared ahead as if he weren’t there.
“I’ve known about the black in your heartsglass since Prince Kance exiled you from Odalia.”
I started.
“I said nothing because you were in no danger. Very few Dark asha exhibit black heartsglass, even in darkrot. It’s more often associated with the Faceless, a status symbol among themselves. Master tried to explain the misconception, but old suspicions die hard, even among asha. Black heartsglass don’t indicate insanity, he said. But it could signify a greater capacity for the Dark than most, which in turn makes it susceptible to darkrot. That’s all.”
“Then why am I going crazy?” I whispered, hoarse from my silence.
“I don’t know, but you’re not going crazy because of this.” He quieted, speaking beyond the guards’ hearing. “I suspect someone could be poisoning you.”
“What?”
He tapped my heartsglass. “There are fluctuations here that are unusual and have nothing to do with color. I’ve seen it before in people dosed over long periods of time. When I requested permission to examine you, only Kalen knew the real reason why.”
“I don’t understand.”
Khalad was angry. He’d been angry since entering my cell, but it hadn’t registered until the snarl tucked into his mouth. “Because whoever has been poisoning you must be a member of our party, Tea—either in the Valerian, or, more broadly, in the Willows. No one else could have gotten close without arousing suspicion.”
My head spun. “But…that’s impossible.”
“Like I said, we have to make sure. Kalen’s right. He’s always believed you, Tea. It’s killing him that you won’t talk to him.”
“I…I killed Daisy, Khalad.”
“You know compulsion more than anyone else here, Tea. Three months ago, we had no idea Blight runes even existed. What else will we discover in another three? Magic isn’t the only way to poison someone.”
Food and drink perhaps, the same way blighted victims were targeted. But Mykaela herself had delved me and found nothing wrong. “Is someone coming after me?”
“I can believe in one coincidence, maybe two. But a blight attack in Istera, then two more after we returned, all to shine suspicion on you, is stretching credulity a little too far. Don’t give up on yourself.”
“Has Fox?” I couldn’t help but ask.
Khalad looked down, and that was answer enough. Strangely, I felt neither anger, nor sorrow. Khalad sounded logical, but I didn’t believe him. I believed Fox. We were the only witnesses, and poor Daisy could no longer defend herself.
The Heartforger’s words lay heavy on my mind long after he’d left. Part of me didn’t want to care, but a greater part of me was unsettled. I didn’t want to wish; I didn’t want to hope. I was content to eke out the rest of my short days in prison, awaiting the blessed relief of the hangman’s noose or the executioner’s ax. There would be no surprises lurking there. No more daeva, no more politicking—just a short drop into forever and then peace.
I deserved it. I had killed Daisy.
Hadn’t I?
I could almost hate Khalad for giving me a reason to fight my sentence, no matter how small my chances were. As a Dark novice, I was indifferent to punishment, jaded in the knowledge that I would be forgiven. It was the price I exacted—my services in exchange for my freedom and their dislike.
And Fox. That hurt me most of all, losing his trust. If he swore I’d killed Daisy, then I was guilty, no matter what Khalad said. My hand delivered the killing blow, and no holy waters could ever wash them clean.
• • •
I had a visitor later that night.
I woke with my mind primed to fight. Someone was in the dungeon with me. I had no light to go by, and there were no other prisoners in the jail. The small barred window above my prison cell was of little help, and what little moonlight filtered through gave me shadows and shapes, but no particulars of contour or color.
“Hello?” I called out into the darkness, surprised at how weak I sounded in the echoes. “Is anyone there?”
The only response was rustling. A vague shape emerged from the shadows down the dark hallway. It jerked and unfolded itself into an upright position.
“Hello?”
It moved closer. I caught sight of Levi’s familiar face in profile and relaxed. He was doubled over, clearly still in pain from his injuries. “Levi, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be resting—”
The Deathseeker’s mouth twisted. With sick, mounting dread, I stared as his face literally ripped apart, a black and scaled flailing mass emerging underneath. The strange movements that I thought were from sickness were actually slithering motions, because Levi’s feet were gone. In their place were the thick, mottled curves of two snake tails as he edged toward me.
I rose to my feet, screaming for someone, anyone, to come. It was almost at my cell now, hands lengthening like tentacles to glide in between the bars, reaching for the edges of my dress. I sidestepped its questing, jelly-like extremities—once, twice, thrice—but knew I could not fend off an attack as more of it slipped between the steel bars.
The flash of a sword swung in the darkness and cleaved an armlike feeler off its blob of a shoulder. The creature that had once been Levi yelped and withdrew. Kalen lopped off another. “Levi,” he groaned, already grieving.
The monster showed no recognition. Fangs protruded from the now-reptilian mouth, blue vomit dribbling down its craw. The head lunged forward, an implausible cobra striking from within a collection of limbs.
Kalen’s aim was true. The sword cut cleanly through the beast’s neck, sending small jets of blood into the air. The headless creature fell but continued to thrash on the floor. A glint of silver caught my eye. There was the spark of a heartsglass embedded in the deceased Deathseeker’s stomach. Kalen spotted it at my cry and swung his sword again, digging the stone out of the creature’s abdomen. The monster groaned and finally laid still.
“Kalen,” I sobbed. “How—how—”
A rune flickered to life before me, the only real light in the cell as Kalen forced through the lock that barred me from leaving. “We have to get you out of here.”
“What?”
“Empress Alyx wants to speed up your trial, but Mykaela scried on the elders. They intend to drag you out tomorrow and have you executed without the queen’s knowledge.”
“Did they… Levi—?”
“I don’t know. If they’re responsible for this too, I…” His voice broke. “Now’s not the time.”
Without waiting for a reply, he lifted me up and swung me on his shoulder. I made no protest, still in a daze. I remembered the last time I fled in this manner, under threat of death. It was in Odalia. I was imprisoned by Kalen’s own father, the Duke of Holsrath, and made to flee with the others like thieves with consciences, desperate to return to Kion and ensure both Princess Inessa’s and Prince Kance’s safety. It felt like I was in a series of cyclic chapters that only foretold the same endings, no matter what forks in the road I faced.
The guards who were watching over my prison were dead, no doubt at the Levi creature’s hand. I recalled their bodies as Kalen ran down the corridor and out of the palace. Likh and Khalad stood by the entrance, horses saddled and ready. Mykaela and Inessa were there too, as was Fox. My heart twisted.
“Likh and Khalad will come with us.” Kalen settled me atop Chief. “The others must stay behind.”
“Where are we going?” I choked out through my emotion.
“The city-states of Yadosha,” Mykaela said. “Seek out First Minister Stefan. He will give you sanctuary in my name. Now, hurry. You must leave before any outcry. Shadi and Althy are running interference to hide your escape from the others for as long as possible.”
“They took Levi, Mykkie,” Kalen said hoarsely. “They blighted him. He slaughtered the guards.”
Mykaela closed her eyes. “The poor man. The gods rest his soul. He’s our problem now. Yours is to take Tea safely to Yadosha.”
Inessa stepped forward, reaching up to hug me tight. “I bring nothing of importance to this conversation,” she said softly, “beyond shielding Mykaela from suspicion. But I wish you all the best, and I hope we can bring you back here, absolved of all guilt.” She turned to my brother. “Fox?”
My brother said nothing, his head lowered. I reached out to him. The Veiling still stood between us, but I could sense faint stirrings of emotions—betrayal, anguish, mourning. Anger. So much anger. I trembled. He was not yet ready to forgive me. “It’s all right, Inessa.”
Kalen settled himself behind me; Likh and Khalad mounted their own horses.
I love you, I said softly. Something shifted on Fox’s end, but he made no reply. I let Kalen wrap his cloak around me, hiding my face from view, and watched as he took the reins. Soon, all three horses were racing down the road at breakneck speed.
“We might need assistance with the guards,” Khalad told me. “Are you up for it?”
I nodded and focused. I reached out with Scrying, letting it drift toward the city gates. I found a soldier’s mind. Ignore us, I ordered, weaving Compulsion into the mix, and felt it settle. I spread out farther afield, calming the thoughts of every soldier I could find. Without anyone chasing us or sounding the alarm, it was easier to escape this time.
Open the gates, I told the last guard, and the heavy doors creaked before us. I held my breath, expecting someone to let out a warning, for the army to mobilize and surround us, for all this to be a trap, but all I could see as we headed out of the city were the gate tower fires and blinking lights of wayward lampposts as we left home for the last time.