 |
 |
I woke to the sound of bells ringing. Ice crawled through my veins. “No,” I got out.
I turned to Lorian, who glanced at me. He was already jumping out of
bed and reaching for his leathers. “We need to go.”
The bells continued to ring, and someone slammed their fist on our door. I jumped. Lorian slowly turned his head in a way that spelled death for whoever was out there.
“Taking,” the voice announced. “Everyone to the square.”
My entire body seized. My lungs constricted. Black dots danced across my eyes.
“Prisca!”
Lorian was crouching in front of me, his hands wrapped around my upper arms as he shook me.
“King’s assessor,” I said through numb lips. “Here.”
“I know.” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “We can’t leave. If we do, the guards will follow us.”
The rules were the same everywhere. Everyone had to attend Gifting and Taking ceremonies with unless they had a written exception.
“I can’t go. The king’s guards are looking for me.”
Oh gods. This was it. They were going to drag me away from this place, throw me in the back of a barred carriage, and take me to the city to burn.
“Look at me.” He waited until I met his eyes once more. “They know there are two people in this room. The innkeeper recorded it. And thanks to your little game last night, the entire inn knows we have a woman traveling with us.”
He was right. This was my fault.
Lorian seemed to regret his words, because his hands tightened around my arms and his expression softened. “We’ll go to the Taking, and we’ll be ready to leave as soon as it’s done.”
“They’re going to notice me, Lorian. This is it.”
A stupid way to die. This felt like a waste. I hadn’t even gotten close to the city. Hadn’t had the chance to see my brother one last time.
“I won’t let them hurt you.” Lorian’s words seemed to be coming from somewhere far away. I could practically smell the smoke.
“Enough. You’re stronger than this. And you don’t have the luxury of falling apart. Do you understand me?”
I nodded.
“Good.” He let me go. “Now put on your cloak, and let’s all pretend to be pious.”
“I’ll use my magic on the innkeeper so we can sneak past him. He won’t know if we’ve left the room already. It can buy us some time.”
Lorian shook his head. “The innkeeper is a null.” “What’s a null?”
He was already dragging me toward the door. “Someone who repels magic. It’s unlikely your magic will work on him, and if it did, it would cost you so much power, you’d be useless for the rest of the day.”
Fear had gripped my throat and was squeezing. My only choice was to rely on Lorian and the others.
Lorian swung the door open. Galon was already waiting outside our room. “Marth has the horses ready,” he muttered. “They’re tied at the edge of the town, near the road to Lesdryn. As soon as the ceremony is over, we’ll leave.”
“What if the guards follow us?” I asked, my lips numb. Sometime over the past few days, my concerns had changed. I was no longer worried that Lorian would hand me over to the guards. No, I was more concerned that the mercenaries would die in an attempt to protect me.
“I asked the innkeeper, and they’ll be traveling south from here. As long as we don’t give them any reason to suspect you.”
I followed the men downstairs, noting the innkeeper crossing something off his list as we walked past. Lorian was right. He would have informed the guards if I’d stayed behind.
More guards lined the streets outside. My stomach twisted. I ruthlessly clamped down on the nausea and pulled up the hood of my cloak. Thankfully, it was cold enough that many of the townspeople had done the same. Lorian strode next to me, his huge body shielding me from the crowd. I could practically feel the warmth emanating from him. I could definitely sense the icy rage. Galon strode on my other side, shoulders back, expression unconcerned. His confidence helped with the worst of my terror, and I squared my shoulders.
Cavis and Rythos were waiting at the edge of the crowd, as far from the guards as they could get.
Rythos reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a squeeze. My stomach settled a little, and I squeezed back. Almost immediately, I was surrounded by hard male bodies. They formed a circle around me, and I knew for sure that if they had to, they’d slaughter anyone who took me. Not just because I was pretty sure at least Rythos and Cavis liked me, but because if I went down, they’d go down with me.
Not to mention, they were all territorial brutes who were currently eyeing the guards like they were imagining their heads on pikes. My own gaze slid to the king’s assessor and got stuck there.
King Sabium had several assessors he liked to use. I hadn’t seen this one before, but they were all the same with their black robes, silver brooches and beady-eyed stares. All of them seemed to enjoy finding the corrupt and ordering their deaths.
Hunching under my cloak, I had to fight the urge to battle my way through this crowd and sprint as far from the assessor as I could. Yet my legs had turned rubbery. Lorian seemed to sense it, wrapping his hand around my arm. I forced my gaze away and turned to Galon, who was glowering at the king’s assessor with a kind of malevolence I’d never seen
from him before. I elbowed him, and he scowled at me, dropping his gaze as the town’s priestess walked past.
She was younger than the priestess from our village. But her expression held the same peaceful piety I’d seen so many times before.
The wooden platform she climbed was similar to the one I’d stared at so many times in my town. Next to the platform, a man and woman both stood, their baby clutched in her mother’s arms. The woman was pale, but she strode up the stairs beneath the king’s guards’ watchful gaze.
“Such a sweet little girl,” a woman said to one of her friends, her voice carrying over the wall of muscle next to me.
A girl. The baby wouldn’t be named until after the Taking ceremony, as was tradition.
“Where’s Marth?” I whispered.
Rythos jerked his head toward the other side of the crowd. “We’ll meet him after.”
The priestess began to speak. I’d practically memorized the story of our history, but as always, I focused closely, hoping for some hint about why I still had my power.
“Centuries ago, our people went to war with the fae,” the priestess said. Several townspeople spat on the ground at the mention of the creatures who’d caused such heartache. The priestess allowed it, closing her eyes.
“Not content with their incredible power, indescribable wealth, and fertile lands, the fae decided they wanted more. They wanted humans,” she said in a hushed tone. My skin crawled at the thought of being stolen in the middle of the night.
“They wanted women to be their brides to make up for their low fertility. They wanted human servants to manage their households and work in their mines. They wanted more power. More wealth. More, more, more. Finally, the king’s great-great-grandfather, a strong, wise king called Regner said ‘enough.’ He was tired of his people being preyed upon. Tired of the fae taking whatever they wanted. And so, they went to war.”
Statues of Regner stood in most northern villages. I remembered climbing on top of one of them as a child. The king had been practically a myth while alive, and once dead, he’d become almost godlike himself.
The priestess ran her gaze over the crowd, clearly in her element.
“The fae may have been outnumbered by us, but they had the kind of power that could flood valleys. The kind of power that could burn entire
cities to the ground. Our people had fae iron. And they used it to fight back however they could.”
I’d spent many hours mumbling prayers during various ceremonies in my village, and many of those prayers had involved thanking the gods for risplite—the strange mineral they’d gifted us. When added to iron while it was in the furnace, it turned previously normal iron into a true weapon against the fae.
The priestess continued talking. “The slaughter continued for weeks. And then months. Our people—on the brink of being destroyed completely
—were losing hope. And so, King Regner went to the gods and begged them to intervene. If they helped us defeat the fae, we would give the gods back our power while it was young and potent. Because that power would grow as it aged, and the gods could sip on it, staying strong themselves in a time where few were worshipping as they should.”
Next to me, Rythos let out a soft snort. Lorian glanced at him, and Rythos’s expression turned blank.
“For the gods had been losing power themselves,” the priestess said. “As fewer people prayed to them. As fewer people sacrificed to the deities. The gods—on the verge of fading—agreed to the king’s deal. And so, the bargain was struck.
“Every year, we celebrate the first Taking—on a day known forever as Gods Day—to respect the sacrifice our people made that day. They were willing to give up their power, to lose their magic until they reached maturity at the age of twenty-five winters. They screamed as they gave the king everything they had. Some of them died. But it was enough. The gods accepted the sacrifice and helped King Regner drive the fae back behind their borders. And now, that sacrifice protects those borders from the monsters who would avenge their fallen friends and family members. Because the fae are much longer-lived than us mere mortals. And while this may be history to us, that time is a memory for most of the fae. And they will not forget.”
The priestess turned her smile onto the couple standing below her. “Come, and help your daughter sacrifice to keep all of us safe.”
The man followed his wife up the stairs, and the priestess held up her hands, the wide sleeves of her impeccable gray robes falling down her arms.
“Just as the gods gift, they also take.”
The town priestess waved her hand at one of her novices, and the priestess-in-training walked toward the platform, the basket of dark, empty blue stones in her hands. The blood rushed in my ears as I stared at the stones I’d imagined would be the answer to my problems.
The novice bowed her head, offering up the oceartus stones.
The priestess plucked one at random. She lifted her hand, held the stone high in the air, and began to chant. Slowly, she lowered the stone, until it was poised just above the baby’s head.
“Heed our sacrifice and see our piety. Have mercy on our weakest, bolster our strongest, and protect all who live here. For our power will always belong to the gods from whom it came.”
We all began to speak the words we’d memorized when we were children. “Faric, see our sacrifice. Tronin, see our sacrifice. Bretis, see our sacrifice,” I chanted along, hearing Galon’s and Lorian’s low rumbles next to me as they spoke the same words. Faric was the god of knowledge, Tronin, the god of strength, and Bretis, the god of protection.
If those gods had any mercy, this would finish soon, and we could flee.
The priestess spoke a few more sentences in the old language. A language never to be spoken by those who hadn’t taken the holy vows.
I tensed. I hated this part.
The baby began to scream. Her parents kept their expressions blank, but any who cared to look could see the pain in her mother’s eyes. Could see the way her father’s hands fisted as the priestess took his daughter’s magic, sucking it into the oceartus stone, which glowed so brightly, it hurt to look at it.
I shifted my attention to the guards. They were watching too, their gazes intent as they witnessed the Taking. Occasionally, parents would attempt to protect their babies. It wasn’t common, but it happened.
My heart began to thunder in my chest.
The Taking was over. The baby continued to scream as if she were being tortured, and her mother lifted her, pressing her to her chest.
The priestesses insisted that the Taking was painless. But no one who had ever seen a newborn lose their magic could ever believe that lie.
Everyone climbed off the platform. They would have a quiet service at their home and announce their baby’s name. My legs had gone weak again
—this time with relief. We’d survived this long. Now we just had to find our horses.
The crowd began to disperse. We slowly began to move toward the road leading out of the town. I wanted to shove my way through these people. To beg them to move. But that would only draw attention.
Lorian’s grip changed on my arm, and I looked up. Marth was standing in front of us, his face pale.
“We have a problem.”
He handed us a piece of parchment. Someone had drawn my likeness and described my features. It wasn’t exact, but it was close enough that I was sure to be questioned if we attempted to leave. Everything receded until all I could see was my own face. My lungs seized, and a line of cold sweat slid down my spine.
Beneath the picture were the names of the corrupt who had been taken to the city. This wasn’t uncommon. I’d seen this list before, hung in our village square.
My gaze got stuck on a name halfway down the list. “No. No, no, no.”
Asinia. My best friend Asinia.
Asinia had been in hiding too. And I’d never known. Just as she’d never known about my own magic. When the corrupt were found, all their friends and family members were assessed. Asinia likely wouldn’t have been caught if not for me. She wouldn’t be in some dank dungeon awaiting her death while I laughed and ate and learned how to fight.
“We need to go,” Marth murmured. I stared at the parchment.
I couldn’t cry. I was too numb. My whole body shook, my teeth chattering as I pictured Asinia alone on a stone floor, with nothing to eat, counting down the moments until she—
I leaned over and vomited. Lorian sighed, pulled my hair away from my face, and shifted us both a few foot-spans to the side.
Strangely, it was his nonchalance that blew the worst of the fog from my mind.
He handed me water, and I rinsed my mouth.
Then we were moving. Lorian tucked me beneath his shoulder, steering me toward the outskirts of the city. Dimly, I was aware of the mercenaries discussing our situation. Their voices sounded like they were standing at the other end of a tunnel.
“The innkeeper paid attention to her face. So did the barmaid. It’s possible they’ve already spoken to the guards.” Rythos reached out and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back.
“There’s only one road out of the city, unless we cut through the forest.
But that will seem suspicious,” Cavis said.
My heart was frozen. It was stuck to the walls of my chest, to my lungs, all of it just a big clump of ice.
There was no question I was still going to the city. But I wouldn’t be finding a ship.
I was never meant to live a full life. The gods had determined that when they’d rejected my power when I was just days old.
But if I could save Asinia’s life, it would all be worth it. And I would.
Somehow, I would. “Prisca.”
Someone was gently shaking me. I looked up into Lorian’s eyes. “What?”
“You can mourn later. For now, we need to get past the guards at the town gates.”
Mourn. Because if Asinia was in the king’s dungeon, she was as good as dead.
Fury burned in my belly. But I nodded, and a hint of what might’ve been relief flickered over Lorian’s face.
“Listen to me. You need to use your power. Remember what you learned,” he said, and the breath froze in my lungs.
I was the one who was supposed to save us?
He gave me a warning look as I shook my head. “I can’t.” I’d only ever managed to hold it for a few seconds of time. We would need much longer than that if we were all to get past the guards on the road out of this town.
Lorian’s eyes narrowed, and the warning turned to disgust. “Every time I think you’re about to stop being a scared little mouse and actually reveal the woman I believe you are, you prove me wrong. Well, sweetheart, we don’t have time for your insecurity and self-doubt.”
“I hate you.”
He just shook his head. “Either you freeze those guards long enough for us to get past them, or we all die here. Rythos goes first, and his death is the hardest. The king has been looking for him for some time.”
My face was numb, but I turned my head until I could see Rythos. His gaze was on the guards standing at the town gates. He watched them the way I might watch a poisonous snake slithering through the grass toward me.
I looked at the king’s guards, and all I could see were flames. All I could smell was the scent of burning hair. All I could see was my skin, slowly turning to ash.
“Prisca.”
I would have been better off dying in the river. It would have been an easier death.
Strong fingers dug into my arms, squeezing until I came back to myself. I stared at Lorian. His eyes blazed into mine, and a muscle jumped in his cheek.
Beneath the terror, my fury burned bright. So bright, I didn’t have to reach for my power. No, instead, the threads seemed to reach for me, my skin heating.
“There it is,” Lorian breathed. “Now, use it.”
The guards were standing at the gates, paying careful attention to each person who walked toward them. As we watched, one of the guards snagged a woman’s cloak, throwing the hood off her head. Her hair was a fiery red, and the guard nodded at her to continue walking.
“You need to freeze time before the guards see us,” Lorian said. “Or it will appear that we have disappeared in front of their eyes, and they will come after us with everything they have.”
It was difficult, freezing time for everyone except our group. Staring at the guard in the middle, I watched as he began to strut toward another woman who went still. Her shoulders hunched, and I could practically feel her terror from here.
I took a slow, deep breath. Then I reached for the tangled thread of time and pulled. It took every drop of my will. But time froze.
“Hold it,” Lorian instructed. “Don’t let go.”
It was already slipping. Immediately. Panic roared through me.
Something wet dripped from my nose. Blood.
“Hold it!” Lorian roared at me, dragging me toward the guards. My vision began to dim at the edges.
“Focus, Prisca,” he snarled. “Dig deep.”
I pushed everything I had into it, stretching time, molding it.
This was my only hope if I was going to save Asinia.
My head felt as if a giant had trapped it between his hands and was squeezing. I let out a whimper that would mortify me later.
Asinia.
“Don’t let go,” Lorian growled, hauling me into his arms and running for the horses.
My vision had gone dark.
I couldn’t fail. If I let go, we were all dead.
But it was so difficult. The thread was slipping like sand through my fingers, the seconds of time fighting to resume.
Lorian handed me to someone else briefly. Then I was lifted up, into his arms, and held tight to his chest once more.
“Almost there,” he ground out.
I could feel the horse galloping beneath me. Its movements shook me, distracting me further.
“Can’t. Hold. It.”
Speaking split my concentration, and I lost my grip on the thread. I caught it an instant later, but I was holding on to the very end.
“Let go,” Lorian said.
I slumped against him. My vision hadn’t returned. A dull panic spread through my chest, and I buried my hands in Lorian’s shirt, almost desperate for something to hold on to.
“Good girl,” Lorian purred in my ear.
“Can’t see,” I choked out, panic battling the exhaustion that had swept through my body.
I felt him take a deep breath. “Flameout. That shouldn’t be happening.
You have much more power than you’re using.”
It didn’t feel like I had more power available to me. But his unconcerned tone helped dull the edges of my terror. My hearing seemed to sharpen, and I focused on the sound of the horses, on the low murmurs of the other men, and the thumping of my own heart.
We rode in silence as my vision gradually returned. First, sunlight appeared around the edges, and then blurry shapes began to take form. I let out a shuddering breath.
“I’d thought it was fear that would help you unlock your power,” Lorian said eventually. I wished he wouldn’t murmur in my ear like that. It was far too intimate. Not to mention, my head was pounding.
“It wasn’t, though, was it?” he asked when I didn’t reply. “It was anger. The reason you were flaming out at the end was because you allowed the fear in.”
I considered that, but my brain was still foggy, my thoughts distant. When I’d let myself channel my fury, my power had been easy to grasp. But the longer I’d held time, the more my mind had focused on what would happen if I failed. If I lost hold of that thread and we were caught.
“You’re saying I should use my rage?”
Mama had always said I needed to control my anger. That focusing on the way the gods had messed with my life would only make that life harder. “I’m saying your emotions may help you find your power, but they won’t help you keep it. You need to dig deeper. Follow the thread into the center of that power and memorize it, until you can pull it free with just a
thought.”
I considered that as we rode for the rest of the day. The notion that I’d be able to reach for my power that easily was thrilling. The possibility burrowed into my mind and stayed there, as I imagined myself freezing time easily, without a thought.
The mercenaries had left the main road at the first opportunity, and we were once more traveling through the forest. Around me, a thousand shades of green and brown blurred together.
Despite the danger, a dull pride wormed its way through my chest. We’d escaped certain death in that town. I had done that. If I could do that, I could get us through the city gates. And from there, I could find a way to free Asinia.
Asinia.
When Papa died, I’d lain next to him for hours. When his body was taken away, I’d crawled into my bed and stayed there for days, unable to move. Asinia lay with me, her arms wrapped around me. She didn’t say a word, just let me know she was there. When I cried, it was in her arms. When my stomach growled, she made me eat.
The hole inside me—the one that had been created when I’d fled my village, when I’d left my family behind…
That hole had deepened with the realization that my mother was dead.
And now, knowing Asinia would die on Gods Day—all because of me… That hole turned into an abyss that could never be filled.
Gods Day happened on the full moon closest to the anniversary of the first Taking. If you were unlucky enough to be arrested just days after the prison was emptied, you’d have an entire year to rot in the king’s dungeon and picture yourself burning.
The next full moon was just days away. The full moon after that… I had a little over a month to come up with a way to free Asinia before she was burned.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Lorian rumbled behind me. He said it as if she were already dead, and I tensed.
“She’s going to be okay.”
He went silent, his disbelief evident.
That was fine. He didn’t know Asinia. And he also didn’t know me. I barely knew me. But I knew there was no way I was allowing Asinia to be burned alive. Even if it meant the gods punished us both when we died.
Finally, Lorian found a clearing that pleased him, and we stopped for the day. The mercenaries seemed to realize I needed to think, because they let me sit in silence.
I’d used my power today. For longer than I could’ve imagined. Lorian had said it was like a muscle that needed to be trained. In that case, I would train every day, as often as I could. Because with that power, I had a chance I could save Asinia’s life.
Eventually, I got up to wash. Marth and Lorian were sitting by the river. “Why didn’t we take the back gate?” Marth complained.
My gaze snapped to Lorian’s. I let him see just how badly I wanted to hurt him.
Marth seemed to realize he’d said something he shouldn’t have, because he winced, glancing away.
“You knew another way out of that village?” My voice was hoarse.
Lorian gave me an indolent shrug. “You weren’t progressing with your power. I hope you remember how it felt, because we’re going to practice all night until you can be trusted tomorrow.”
One moment, I was standing, staring at him, and the next, I was flying through the air.
He blinked, but my hands were already wrapped around his throat. I’d launched myself at him, and he just sighed, prying my fingers off him.
“Save it for your training with Galon,” he said disinterestedly.
I’d thought I hated the king’s assessors. I hadn’t known what hate was.
Rythos hauled me away. “There now. Probably better not to annoy Lorian when he’s in this mood.” He petted me on the shoulder, and I shrugged him off. Yet another thing these men had lied about. How often did they need to prove they couldn’t be trusted before I finally understood it?
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You knew too, didn’t you?” “I didn’t know all of his plan until I was caught up in it.”
I just watched him silently until he sighed. “He may have asked me to play up my fear for you.”
“You have magic,” I got out. “You could have befriended those guards, and they would have allowed us out of the town.”
For the first time, fury burned in Rythos’s eyes. “Once, I could have. Once, I could have charmed the entire town into doing my bidding. Now?” He let out a bitter laugh.
Lorian’s warning snarl cut through the air. I wasn’t surprised. He was determined to keep me as ignorant as possible.
“Keep your secrets.” I gave Lorian my best bored look. “Tomorrow, we’ll be done with each other.”
His eyes narrowed on my face. With a stiff nod, he turned and stalked away.
