WHEN WE REACH THE HALLWAY TO OUR quarters, five wraiths swarm us with their sunken-in, death-masked faces spouting hisses and glaring at us with their chilling yellow gazes. Their bony hands reach for our arms. “Ussss. Ussss,” it almost sounds like they’re saying amid the bustling Bron boots and shouted questions as to how we got out and where we’ve been.
I recoil from the wraiths and lurch for the Bron soldiers. “I need to speak with Rasha,” I tell the largest guard, the one who tried to take my knives after the banquet two nights ago.
“You’re in no position to ask anything.” He grabs my shoulder and hustles me through the wraiths and toward my room, but as we’re passing Rasha’s, I reach a foot out and kick her door.
There’s an immediate click and the giant guard stalls—perhaps to see if she’ll allow me entrance or simply because I go limp in his arms and he doesn’t feel like dragging me. Either way, the door creaks open and through the partial space I see Rasha slumped on the bed, her brown face pale. She frowns.
“My apologies,” the Bron guard says, and drags me toward my room. I could count to five before she calls after us to let me enter.
“But only Nym.” She peers coolly past me to Myles, who’s being jostled by his own angry set of guards. Behind us, the Dark Army soldiers hiss louder, a low, nerve-clenching sound.
The Bron guard shoves me in and the Cashlin men slam the door behind me, then proceed to make a quick weapons search of me, confiscating my knives before situating themselves, two near the windows and three by the door.
“Well?”
I take a deep breath. “I need your help.”
Rasha lifts a brow.
“To speak with Sir Gowon. As much as I hate to admit it, I believe he can help us. And Eogan,” I add softly.
She nods as if she already knew this.
I move closer to her bed. “Look, I’m sorry I was a bolcrane and I’m sorry about what I said earlier.” I look over at her guards. “For insulting your people regarding the war.”
“Me too.”
I wait. Because I’m hoping that’s not all she has to say.
She sighs. “However . . .” She takes a deep breath. “There may be some accuracy to it.” Her intense gaze eases, almost to the point it glimmers with a fleck of shame. “It’s true we didn’t help your Elemental people,” she whispers. “We did more than you know, but not enough. I’ll not make excuses because we have our reasons for staying uninvolved, but still, some of the decisions our matriarchs have made have not always been right. Nor favored by everyone.”
I nod.
She flutters her hand as if it’s no big deal and her voice takes on its airy tone. “Apologies exchanged and accepted then. However, that doesn’t let you off from explaining to me what in hulls you were thinking in taking on . . . whatever it is you took on.”
I peer at her guards again who are watching us in silence. Then turn and stride to the open window overlooking the airship pad. “How much can you see?”
“Enough to know that you went with Myles and took on an ability that’s not your own.” The bed creaks beneath her weight. “I can’t see it clearly, but it looks dark. Oh Nym, what were you thinking? Why didn’t you come to me first? I warned you and everything!”
I flip around. “And what would you have told me? That it wasn’t a good idea? I knew that but I had to do something. And so far it’s been fine.” I curl my nearly perfect hands to show her. “Better than fine actually.” I look up with a grin. “I almost freed him tonight. Another day and I should be—”
“I would’ve told you it was more dangerous than you imagine.” Her face has grown serious. She slips her feet onto the floor and stands to stare at me with both hands on her hips.
Did she not hear me? I almost freed him. “You think I didn’t weigh the cost? My Elemental power was dangerous too—the most dangerous Eogan once said—and I learned to control it. I can do so with this one too.”
“A nice sentiment, but—”
I start toward her. “But what? You would’ve wanted me to give up? How could I? And now—now it’s almost worked, Rasha. We’re going to do this!”
She pauses and, after a moment, nods in resignation. “Perhaps you would’ve chosen differently if I’d trusted you with more information on the airship.” She reseats herself on the bed. “And I understand why you made your decision, Nym. I just don’t know that in this case the end result will justify the means of getting there.”
“Then we should’ve just killed him when we both had the chance.” I look away, at the door. At the ceiling. At anything but her concerned frown as a stab of discomfort pricks my spine. Why do she and Eogan not see what this can do?
A moment longer and I sigh. “Eogan agrees with you if that makes you feel better.”
“Agrees how?”
“That this power I’ve taken is dangerous. He says it’s what created Draewulf.” I dig my foot into the carpet and swallow hard to shore up my suddenly quaking throat.
She gives a single, sad dip of her head. Another half-minute and she lifts her gaze to one of her Cashlin guards. “Ask them to tell Sir Gowon that the Elemental and I demand to speak with him. If he refuses, tell him I’m aware of a defining choice he made eighteen years ago.” She hesitates. “And if the Bron guard outside refuses, tell him I’m aware of what he did last evening.”
The guard clicks his heels and unlocks the door to speak with the Bron soldiers out in the hall.
I furrow my brow.
She looks at me and bites her lip. And admits with a subdued smirk, “I have no idea what he did last night, but it’s worth a shot.”
I grin. “And Sir Gowon?”
Sadness flashes through her expression and into her tone. “You are aware of Bron’s rite of passage for their boy soldiers?”
When she doesn’t continue, I nod. Mainly because I suddenly don’t trust my voice. All I can picture is Kel.
“When Gowon’s own son was ready to take it, Eogan’s father used it as a test of loyalty, giving Gowon a choice—have the boy prove his and his father’s fealty to the crown or be demoted. When it came time . . . The young man the boy was made to kill in combat was his best friend. A child barely a year younger than himself.”
My chest hardens. “You read that?”
She nods. “Although it’s now in the far past, I’m certain it’s still an area of shame for him.”
An area of shame yet he inflicts punishment on those who would disobey? Or perhaps that’s why he allowed Kel to live the other night.
She clears her throat and drops her gaze to my wrist. “So who gave it to you?”
I glance down as she fluffs a pillow and leans back.
“The ability.”
Oh. “Myles took me to a woman.”
“How did she do it?”
“Through a drink.”
“Can you go back and get rid of it?”
I don’t answer that. I won’t answer. I merely walk over until I’m facing her spot on the bed again. “Like I said, it’s been fine. I don’t need you to worry about it. I think we should be concentrating instead on what we’re going to ask Sir Gowon and how to stop the Dark Army.”
She eyes me. “In that case, that’s all I’m going to say on the subject aside from warning you that the moment you get scary with this ability, I will not hesitate to do everything I can to take you out myself. And the next time I see Myles, I will most likely rip his head from his neck.”
I nod. Fair enough.
“Now about Sir Gowon and the wraiths . . .” She casts her gaze over the bloodstain on the carpet, and for a second I’m certain her eyes go misty. As does her voice. An odd ripple of guilt goes through me—not for her grief over her loss, but that it didn’t occur to me to even wonder how it would affect her. More than that, that I never even wondered about those killed. What were their names? Did they have kids? The thought digs into me that normally I’d be moved by something like that.
Instead? I feel nothing.
“I’ll get you some water.” I grab a cup from the morning’s food tray to take to the water closet. I rinse it before filling it with water from their pipes in case someone poisoned the pitcher on the table. Not likely with her men standing there, but still . . .
Her faint smile quivers along with her chin when I return. She sniffs. “She was my maid for the past six years.”
I put my hand over hers and squeeze.
“Our kingdom is full of life but our palace . . . can be a bit lonely.” She clasps back. “With the Luminescents living in it, there’s not much need for conversation. Everyone can read everyone else.” She twists her mouth wryly and glances back over to the bloodstained carpet. “But Fara wasn’t one. She couldn’t read my intentions. She was my friend.”
“Oh, Rasha.” I sit on the bed beside her.
She scoots over and closes her eyes as if in a daze. “At first I thought maybe the murders were to get at you but . . . I’m beginning to think they’re targeting everyone.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know—either a Bron Assembly member or the wraiths. But those monsters are too hard for me to read.” She shudders. “It’s like they don’t have souls to decide things on their own. And the way those murders were done . . .”
I nod. “Do you think . . .?” But I stall at the grief plaguing her face. Unable to bring myself to ask if perhaps the wraiths were in need of more body parts . . . “What about Draewulf or Isobel?” I say instead.
“Possibly. Although I didn’t see it in Isobel, nor do I see how it would suit their needs.”
“Except that we don’t actually know what their needs are. On the roof with Myles, Draewulf, Isobel, and a commanding wraith said they were waiting for Draewulf’s vessel to be prepared. And Eogan kept saying that he and Sir Gowon were wrong—that Draewulf is taking the blood of kings in order. That he needed Eogan’s blood and block to protect Draewulf. He keeps talking about Elegy 96. Do you know of it?”
No answer.
When I look down, she’s curled up, eyes shut, as if attempting to block out all thought.
I slide up to sit beside her and tug the blanket higher on her shoulder. Patting her arm, I listen to her breathing slow.
After our silence has melted in with the room’s atmosphere, her gentle snoring picks up, and her bodyguards quietly begin discussing the murders. I listen in for a bit but they’re no further in understanding them than Rasha is.
Soon the men switch to discussing the larger predicament we’re all in. Their accented words all seem to boil down to the same question:
Will we make it out of here alive?
Slowly, eventually, Rasha’s snoring settles into a deep rhythm, like the patter of rain lessening into a steady, comforting drip.
I pull my arm from around her shoulder and rest my head against the wall.
And eventually doze off too.