I FORCED MYSELF to follow Nedra into the quarantine hospital. My body was reacting as if I were expecting a fight—muscles clenched, fists tight, jaw hard. I made myself breathe, swallow. There would be no fight.
Not one I could win, anyway.
The revenants that had been scattered over the steps were disappearing deeper in the quarantine hospital. All except for Nedra’s twin, Ernesta. She stood beside the iron spiral staircase leading to the clock tower. She watched me.
I was never really comfortable with the way Nedra’s dead twin sister stared at me. The problem was that Ernesta looked so very much like my Ned. Same nose, same lips. Same olive skin, smooth over high cheekbones.
The only difference was in her eyes. Nedra’s burned with intention.
Ernesta’s were hollow, empty caves.
I turned to Ned. She was so different now—one arm amputated, her hair paper white, her cheeks sunken, her eyes fierce. No—that wasn’t different. Her eyes were always sharp, like the edge of a blade. I just wasn’t used to that razor gaze being directed at me.
“Um,” I said.
“Eloquent as always, Grey,” Nedra said, but she smiled, and the tight coil inside me finally released. She might have an army of the undead, but she was still Nedra. She still called me by the name she had given me.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d ever come here again,” she said in almost a whisper.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to.” I took a step closer. I couldn’t read her expression. “I meant what I said before.”
Nedra frowned.
“When I said I loved you,” I told her. “I meant that. Truly.”
Nedra stiffened. “I seem to recall you had a ‘but’ with that. You loved me, but . . .”
“I can still love you, even if I don’t agree with everything you do.”
Nedra’s eyes drifted to the floor, her head shaking almost imperceptibly. “That may be so, but can you still care about me if you don’t agree with what I am?”
I crossed the distance between us, putting my hands on her cheeks and turning her face toward mine. “I love you,” I said, hoping she could see the truth I could never deny. And I want to save you, I didn’t dare add.
A flicker of a smile crossed over her lips. “I’d like to believe that,” she said sorrowfully. She took a step away from me, then jerked her head to the spiral staircase leading to the clock tower. I followed her up. She moved with ease, while I struggled to catch my breath as we reached the top.
Nedra had turned the clock tower room into her private domain. With ticking gears on one side, connected by pistons to the milky glass of the clockface, the area had a steady heartbeat that Nedra seemed to find comforting. One corner was littered with blankets and cushions piled atop a mattress; the other had a worktable half-drowned with wax from melted candles.
“When I saw the ship,” Nedra said, “I wondered if the Emperor had decided to arrest me.”
I rolled my shoulders, trying to ease the tension in my body. “He will,” I said. “I don’t know when. I don’t think he wants to, but the people may force his hand. Necromancy—you knew it was illegal.”
“Laws don’t change whether something is right or wrong,” Nedra insisted.
“But that won’t matter,” I shot back. “You’ll be arrested and tried for the highest crime in the Empire.” And we both knew she was guilty.
Nedra’s chin tilted up. “He could try.”
I had to make her see reason. “Nedra, anyone who was even loosely tied to the rebellion—whether they were on Governor Adelaide’s side or not—has run. The dungeons will be full of traitors. The Emperor can’t just ignore your crimes, even if you used them to save him. The people want answers.” But more than that, they wanted someone to pay for the plague, and they didn’t care who.
“Arrests have happened already?” Nedra asked. She eyed me. “Your father?”
“He managed to escape.” I was careful to keep all emotion from my voice.
“But . . .”
“He and Mother likely went to Doisha. We have an estate there as well. And the Empire doesn’t reach quite that far.”
She noticed my use of “likely,” the uncertainty that I tried to hide. My parents had left me behind. But she only said, “I can’t imagine you in Doisha.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I wasn’t invited.”
She spared me any further comment. Her eyes grew distant, and her hand reached unconsciously for the iron bead she wore around her neck. How cruel it was that her parents, who loved and were loved, were gone, while mine were alive and happy, probably on the beaches of sunny Doisha, drinking wine and laughing about their escape.
“So you’re alone at your house?” Nedra asked, changing the topic for me.
“The Emperor gave me rooms at the palace.”
Her eyes dropped. I wondered if she was going to invite me to stay here instead. I wondered what I would say if she did. When she didn’t speak, though, I said, “I’m actually leaving for a trip now.”
Her gaze shot to me, and I felt a pang in my heart.
“I’m heading to Hart first,” I said. “And then the mainland. The Emperor gave me a special task, to find ways to help revitalize the economy of the north. I’m going to try, Nedra. I could make a real difference. I—” I paused, trying to think of the right words. “I want to help. I want to do some good.” For them, because I failed you, I thought.
What I most wanted was to convince Nedra to come with me—just her, and not her revenants. If I could do that, perhaps I could get her to Doisha, like my parents, or somewhere else that the Empire couldn’t reach.
I opened my mouth to speak, my eyes falling on the little workstation Nedra had set up for herself, littered with books, candles, paper, and quills. And—
I cursed, loudly. “What is that?”
Nedra stood and strolled over to me. “An awlspring,” she said, looking down at the mangled body, covered in black slime, pinned to her wooden desk with a dagger. “Or, it used to be.”
My eyes drank in every detail, even though I wanted to look away. Perhaps the form was originally that of an awlspring, but it no longer resembled the delicate raptor. Its claws were twisted and black, its beak mangled and no longer even, as if someone had taken the top and the bottom and yanked them in different directions. The eyes were lined in red, and even though the creature was dead, it seemed to stare at me with anger and malicious hate.
Nedra grasped the hilt of the knife and jerked it from the table. Black oozed off the blade, and she wiped it carelessly against a dirty rag on the desk before using the cloth to wipe the table’s surface and wrap the body up, letting it drop unceremoniously into a metal waste bin. The body thudded and splattered in the container.