Enormous paisley designs stare back at me from the wallpaper. Black with thousands of tiny glittery eyes. Moist eyes. One shifts. Then another. I watch their legs pop up from the white wall, followed by their bodies, and they’re no longer decorative paisleys but spiders. Hundreds of them. Covering the room, watching, waiting.
For what?
I twitch my hand into a fist. Maybe I can create a wind tunnel to destroy them, to make them leave—but my body freezes in place. I glance down at my chest and at the vortex swirling there. It’s dark, powerful. It’s sealing me down, anchoring me into a whirling pool of grief and anger and hope.
The spiders’ sound picks up and blends into the hissing outside. Clack, clack, clack. They’re coming for me. Oozing down the walls like mugplant to land in blobs on the floor. They pop up again and scramble toward the bed, the blankets, clawing beneath them, crawling for my skin, and I can’t move, oh hulls I can’t move as their teeth find me.
They chew into my flesh and force the last of their venom into the very roots of my veins, until my blood is pooling around me in red circles, spreading to join that stain in the carpet as the hissing from the hall grows louder. The hissing that for whatever reason sounds eerily like words. “Come closer, closer, closerrr,” they’re whispering.
Closer to what? I look down at my body that is being eaten alive by spiders. Except it’s not me anymore. It’s Draewulf.
Morning sunbeams flutter against the wall, dousing the crisp black-and-white paper in yellow light, dissolving all dreams of spiders. I squint. I’m huddled, shivering at the foot of Rasha’s bed, and she’s sprawled out across the rest like a giant moth with silken-robed wings.
Jolting up, I flex my hands, my toes. And exhale relief to discover they are my own skin, pale and real. I am not a wraith. I am not Draewulf.
In fact, aside from the dull throb in my head and the chill clamped like an iron sheet to my bones, the rest of me feels normal.
I shudder. Please let everything be normal.
Sitting up, I scoot over and lean against the warm wall to absorb some of its heat into my bones. When that doesn’t work, I wrap my thick cloak around my shaky body and get up just as one of the guards nods to a pot of tea and a platter of food on the desk.
“It’s safe.”
I nod and walk over to pour the tea and poke at the tiny fruit and purple-fleshed meat. I sniff them. No subtle scent of almond or rind.
A quick bite tells me it tastes fine as well, and abruptly my stomach is reacting to the awareness that I’ve not eaten in far too long. I’m shoving food in my mouth when Rasha stirs and looks over at me. She raises a brow, only to utter a real, true, Rasha-style giggle.
I resist mentioning that she looks even more like a moth the way her hair is standing on end, and by the time she’s up and taming it, I’ve finished my food and am giving her an account of last night’s roof encounter.
A knock sounds on the door. One of Rasha’s guards unbolts it and a Bron soldier steps in.
“Sir Gowon has agreed to see Princess Rasha.” The man’s gaze falls on me. “And the Elemental.”
I watch Rasha from the corner of my eye as she and I and all five of her Cashlin guards follow the Bron soldier down a maze of hallways. Behind us trail wisps of muffled hissing from two of the Dark Army wraiths. I refuse to look back or acknowledge them, or the alarming sense that just like in my dream, I can almost decipher what they’re saying.
As if the words are trapped on the edge of my tongue, but for the life of me I can’t recall them.
It makes my skin itch. I glance up at the Bron soldiers leading us far from the Main Hall, then look around for any of the Faelen bodyguards. It’s a full moment before I realize they’re all still locked away with the delegates.
I look down at my hands. Did any of the murdered guards have families?
I don’t want to think about it.
The jittering cold now moves to my jaw, making my teeth chatter. I clench them and try to focus on the fact that Sir Gowon didn’t believe me about Eogan and the Elegy. Will he this time? And if not, how do we make him?
“Did Eogan give you any other clues on what the Elegy refers to?” Rasha says.
A flare of irritation surfaces. Is she jesting? Wasn’t she just listening to me recount in her room last night’s scene with Eogan? If he’d said more I would’ve told her. “Nothing else,” I say tightly, and keep my gaze on the hall in front of us until the guards stop at a door.
Three of Rasha’s men go in with the Bron soldiers to search the place, and suddenly the wraiths are hovering too close, suffocating the air with their sounds and scent of decay. I’m tempted to plug my nose and ears so maybe my veins will stop trying to echo them, but instead I force myself to turn around and study what I can see of them beneath their cloaks. To see what they really are and how they were brought into existence.
What I find is as sickening as what I saw the other night at the banquet. Physical conglomerations of humans and beasts somehow pieced together and brought alive. Human torsos and heads emaciated to skulls, blended with animal parts and bolcrane claws.
Did they bring the plague with them, or is the plague a form of magic that turns people into them? Either way, the monsters hissing in front of me with sunken-in faces are as bloodless and cold as Rasha’s maid lying somewhere in this Castle.
As soon as the guards are done, I stride past them into the room only to find we’ve arrived before Sir Gowon. The space is dim inside with hall lanterns illuminating it just enough to reveal it’s some sort of chapel. My gaze scans the simple floor rugs and a beautiful, intricate table facing what appears to be a landscape mural before I stop at the painting hanging over it. It’s an artist’s rendering of a man who looks very much like Eogan. Only older and more calloused.
His dead father, I assume.
I give a low scoff. Apparently arrogance runs in the family.
The Bron guards nearby say nothing, but their faces sour as I walk over to it. Even with that awful portrait, this room has more personality than anything else I’ve seen in this metal castle. It has a sense of history. I run my fingers across the intricate altar and imagine Eogan sneaking into here as a child.
On the wall beside it is a smaller portrait of a woman holding two identical children. The woman has a gentle face but the small boys aren’t smiling. The next moment I’m peeking back up to his father’s overbearing painting, then lift it to peer behind it to the landscape scene of a valley.
A Faelen valley.
Inhale. Exhale . . .
It’s a mural of the Valley of Origin Eogan and I visited.
The brushstrokes and coloring make it clear even to me that this painting is far older than anything else in the room. And not merely older—more delicate. There’s a distinct sense of reverence in the edges and lines that suggest this was more than a mural. It was regarded as a place of honor.
I frown. Is that how Eogan knew to go to the Valley when he was in Faelen? Did his ancient ancestors once worship the Creator there too?
I’m just reaching out to finger a dust-covered edge of it, when a Bron guard says, “Sir Gowon for you,” and the old man is standing outside the door, his bushy brows furrowed in suspicion.
“I trust this is important, Your Majesty, seeing as it’s a highly inconvenient time.”
Rasha smiles at him. “I assure you it’s of the utmost consequence.”
“In that case, I caution the both of you not to test my patience. You have ten minutes.”
He glances my direction before stepping into the room. Rasha nods to her guards who, albeit reluctantly, leave with the Bron men and close the door until there’s merely one sliver of light.
Sir Gowon walks over to twist a knob on a lantern set into the wall, and the room springs alive with golden beams. “Well?”
Rasha tips her head to me. The floor is mine.
My hands are beginning to shake harder. I wrap my fingers around the insides of my cloak and eye him. “I asked you the other night about Elegy 96. Now I’m asking again.”
“Is this what you summoned me for?” He snorts and waves a hand as if he doesn’t have time for this, then turns on his heel for the door.
“Eogan trusted me enough to have me ask you about it.”
“Which only begs the question, why didn’t he tell you himself?” he throws out. “And since he didn’t, I can only assume you tricked him for the Elegy name.”
“You consider his character so weak? Or perhaps you find me so dangerous a threat.”
He stops. Flips around. The muscles in his soft throat clench.
My smile goes cold. “Draewulf has taken over Eogan, whether you trust me or not, and Draewulf is about to destroy you all. The last moment of clarity I had with Eogan, he said to tell you to take a closer look at the Elegy because it’s begun. He said Draewulf took him first but is going in order of blood. Something to do with his block and the land.”
Surprise surfaces in his eyes.
It’s followed by fear.
Before I can press him though, his face hardens and that protective expression I saw the other night flares. “And yet, if your claim was true, he’d have just as easily appeared to solicit help from me himself rather than send a message through you.” He glances back and forth between Rasha and me. “And for one supposedly having intentions on him, you insult his honor most easily while he’s done nothing but protect you.”
I give a caustic chuckle. “Like he protected his generals? Or perhaps like Draewulf’s daughter, Lady Isobel. Did you know she’s decided she wants to turn your entire Bron army into wraiths? I’m curious, how do you think she’ll go about doing—?”
“I swear to you it’s his honor we’re trying to save,” Rasha interrupts. “As well as Bron’s. Because Draewulf did take your king. You saw him in the meeting yesterday. Is that the man you knew—willing to use Draewulf’s army? Even Odion wouldn’t have done so.”
He gives a humorless laugh. “I’ve advised Eogan’s father since shortly after his and Odion’s birth, and I’ve spent the past twenty-two years watching them grow to take his place. If you knew any of them the way I have, you’d realize how foolish a statement that is. You say Eogan would have me help you, but all you’ve done is corrupt Bron tradition here.” He’s almost spitting the words at me.
I clench my hands. The cold in my bones is igniting my veins, and with them my anger. I don’t have time for this. “Look, Eogan’s block is failing, and when it does he’ll be dead and Draewulf will have complete control. We need to know what that Elegy says. What exactly has begun?”
He doesn’t answer. Just firms his stance and crosses his arms.
I snap my chin toward the wall mural. “That’s the Valley of Origin, isn’t it?”
His eyes flinch. “How do you know that?”
He shifts to the side—out of the dim lantern light so it falls on me—and shuffles closer to scan my face. He’s searching my eyes.
Ten seconds.
Fifty seconds.
Enough. This is a waste. The ice in my veins is turning into fury, to need, to bitterness that will lash out and claim the information from him if he won’t offer it. I’m just reaching out to force the only hope of surviving we have from his throat, when—
“Perhaps don’t tell us about the Elegy then,” Rasha says in her high-pitched, hazy tone. “Tell us about Draewulf.” She strolls over and smiles. “Having lived so close all these years, you must know quite a bit about his origins. Humor us.”
It’s an elongated minute before the tension has eased enough so that Sir Gowon uncrosses his arms and graces Rasha with an expression of tolerance. “King Eogan killed him. What else do you want to know?”
“Was he always able to shape-shift?”
The sound of his sigh says he’s weighing how much to give us. After a moment, he nods. “I will tell you what most people in Bron could already tell you. I’m sure you’ve heard he was born from a Mortisfaire mother and wizard father. Since Mortisfaire powers can only exist in the female line, he naturally turned to wizarding and managed to do a lot of good until an unfortunate accident. His ability to shape-shift came as a consequence of his experiments at the age of nineteen.”
“Experiments?” Rasha’s eyes blossom red as she focuses thicker on him. Searching for his answer, and for Draewulf’s weakness if she’s smart.
“We are all aware there are darker things in this world, yes?” he asks. “Varying shades of good and evil? Sometimes people play with things that aren’t theirs to alter. In one of Draewulf’s experiments, he discovered a way to absorb things. Powers and spirits, life energy from others, for lack of a better explanation. The ability to do so granted him incredible abilities, but it also came with a price. His attempt to cheat that price has been to live shifted in wolf form. Sometimes the consequences of altering things are mild, but sometimes they’re disastrous.”
I swallow and shift uncomfortably at the sudden itching beneath my skin. It feels like the spider’s crawling through my veins. I am not Draewulf.
“Now if you both are quite done . . .”
Rasha gives me a side glance. “What was the price?”
Why is she looking at me? What I did was my only option and it’s going to bring us victory.
“Tell us and we’ll leave you be,” Rasha coaxes Sir Gowon.
He stares at her as if he’d desperately like to believe that. “My apologies, but we are done here. The guards will see you—”
I flick him my glare. “What does the Elegy say?” When he ignores me, I reach a hand for his waist-shirt and twist.
He grips a hand over mine. “You’ll kindly unhand me.”
I step closer. Squeeze harder. The hissing from outside the room grows louder in my head. “What does it say?” I demand. “What does Eogan think has begun?” Suddenly my arms are crawling and my veins, my chest . . .
“Nym, stop!” Rasha says.
“Read his intentions. What do you see?”
Her hand tugs at me. “You’re going to kill him!”
“He has the information we need.”
“We’ll find it another way. We’ll ask Isobel! You can’t do—”
Can’t I? I stare at her as the heat from my fury floods the ice in my blood. I am beyond finished with this man’s uncaring for the world going to the pit of hulls all around him while he stays in his comfortable fool ignorance. Then the dark from my chest is climbing up until I’m pressing against him, draining the words, the knowledge we need as the wraiths’ hissing in the hall becomes thunderous.
He whimpers.
I pull, yanking the energy from his chest bones. Like marrow I can taste.
Sir Gowon wheezes and stumbles forward. He opens his mouth and I sense it—the words on the tip of his confused, tormented mind.
“Nym!”
I barely feel Rasha’s hands because I swear I will make him speak or else—
“When shadows are sown to sinew and bone, and darkness rules the land,” he gasps.
“Let storms collide and Elisedd’s hope arise,
Before the beast forces fate’s hand.
Just as from one it came and to five was entrusted, to only one it can go, to rule or to seek justice.
If his demise is to be Elemental,
Interrupt the blood of kings in each land.”
I stare.
“Elegy 96 is a prophecy,” he slurs. “Handed down for generations of Bron kings. It’s a fortelling of what is to come.”
Twenty seconds go by as every vein in my body is curling up like roots around my chest. Interrupt the blood of kings.
He’s taking the blood in order. He needed Eogan first.
“Nym, let him go,” Rasha whispers next to my ear.
One heartpulse. I can feel his thudding beneath my hand.
Two heartpulses.
Three . . . I shake my head. “Not until he tells us more. What does it mean interrupt the blood of kings? What exactly will Eogan’s block protect him from? And who exactly is he taking in order?” Did the witch know of this? Is it supposed to be a caution? A teaching? I press against him harder, but his head wrenches backward at a bizarre angle.
My gaze darkens. I peer down at my hand, which was deformed but is now near straight and perfect, and for the first time notice how fascinating it is.
How powerful.
He’s choking on deep guttural breaths as his lungs shiver beneath my hand. His heartpulse flailing, flailing, flailing as his life seeps away, dissolving into thin black wisps that tickle my skin.
Rasha’s hands are around my waist and she’s yanking me back. Next thing I know the power is gone along with the connection.
And I’m shuddering so hard.
I look up at both of them. Her expression is horrified. His just looks odd. Gray. As if he’s dying. I blink and feel the cold and hunger fade.
Suddenly I’m seeing him standing there so feeble and weak and oh litches what have I done? I jerk back and stare in dread at them, at my fingers, my palms. He begins to slump forward and I go to steady him but he pushes me away.
“Guards!” he gasps. “Take them! Lock them in their rooms!” He peers at me. “Your power is like . . . like . . .” He shakes his head and stumbles again.
I hurt him.
I look at Rasha and everything in me turns ill. I glance back at him, but he’s already walking away while the guards grab my arms and shove us from the room and into the hall toward our quarters.