He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)
He Who Breaks the Earth: Chapter 22

Lia held herself absolutely straight in the saddle as Vivi picked through the trees toward the Montanne estate. He stopped to snuffle at the ground, pieces of earth falling in at the edge of where his cloven hooves had dug in.

A blue flare means the plan is off, she told herself, staring at the night sky. A blue flare. Light it, Altahn. Send it up.

The sky stayed black.

Anwei’s plan—the one she hadn’t said out loud until Knox was safely asleep below—stuck like needles down Lia’s spine, every step jarring them deeper. We need a diversion. What do the Warlord and Tual both want?

Lia. They wanted Lia.

And just as Noa had found herself running toward her father’s boat, Lia was riding through the trees toward Tual’s lake alone, aura blazing, practically shouting for the Warlord to get her veil ready. “You tell them we’re coming,” Anwei had said as the healer bent over a bush with leaves that spiked out menacingly with large bursts of pink flowers sheltered inside. “I’ll find Mateo and your sister while they’re staring at you. You tell them I’m a Basist, a murderer, a shapeshifter, even, and that I’m coming for the sword. When Altahn sets off the salpowder explosion, you lead the charge into the cliffs to fight the attack. In the confusion, you can follow my aura to the tunnel we opened, and I’ll close it once you’re through.” She sniffed again, nodding slowly as she extracted a pair of tweezers and a small, empty oilcloth packet from her bag.

“What about Tual?” Lia asked, stepping up closer only to shy away when Anwei shooed her back from the plant’s spiky leaves. “The shapeshifter who wants to slit my throat? You know, so his son can eat my soul?” When Anwei didn’t look up from the plant, Lia couldn’t help the tinge of rancor sharpening her voice. “What in Calsta’s name are you doing?”

“Something that has recently become extremely important.” Anwei’s brow furrowed as she leaned toward the little cluster of flowers sheltering under the leaves. “It’s in the hibintia family—perfect for bonding humor markers to a tincture. Relatively common plants, though this particular variety is quite poisonous.”

Lia fought to keep her hands from shaking. “Your plan is for me to walk directly into the trap Tual set and just hope he’s not in the mood to spring it? And you are harvesting herbs?”

“Of course not.” Anwei leaned forward, tweezers peeling back one of the bright pink petals to reveal a crawling mass of black. “I’m harvesting the ants. They digest the plant structure, and the process nullifies the poison. Ants give me the properties of a hibintia plant without this one’s unfortunate bite—”

“Anwei.” Lia did her best to school her voice into something that didn’t sound murderous. “I can’t do this. I’ll end up dead, and so will Aria.”

The healer’s tweezers darted into the cluster of ants, pinching one free. Lia’s stomach lurched at the sight, frustration like oil boiling in all of her limbs, demanding she move. Anwei didn’t seem to notice, depositing the unfortunate insect into the oilcloth, then going back to the bloom for more. Is that how she sees the rest of us? Like curious little creatures that might fit well into one of her tinctures? But Lia banished the thought immediately. Anwei had been right about everything so far, and she’d done it gently, even waiting for Knox to bore Willow into putting him to sleep before beginning the heist.

“If Tual was ready to reveal he’s a soul-sucking shapeshifter to the Warlord herself, don’t you think he would have done it already?” Anwei picked another ant off the flower. “I’ll get there long before you do—we’ll call everything off if there’s even a chance that things will go wrong. We can warn you away with one of Altahn’s flares before you get close to the island.” She’d buttoned the little pouch and started back toward the boat, leaving Lia behind in the darkness.

Too much faith. That was what Anwei had. Too much faith in her own observations, as if she were incapable of getting anything wrong. Too much faith in herself that everyone would follow, clustered like those little ants, ready to be sacrificed for whatever remedy Anwei had decided was worth their lives.

But Aria was there, inside the lake house.

No matter how many times Lia thought through the plan, it felt like panic. Like Ewan Hardcastle’s teeth against her lip, like her cold seclusion room, like no one in the world cared who she was or what she wanted, not even the goddess who was supposed to love her.

But Calsta was with her now. Lia clung to the feel of gold glowing from her humors. The goddess did care. The goddess wanted her to succeed.

The goddess just… didn’t want to give her any extra power to do it, keeping back the third oath that would give her enough strength to match the Warlord.

Do you trust me? Anwei had said.

Knox did. Altahn did. Noa did. And Lia had no choice but to do the same, the thought of Aria’s little face like an arrow pointing her on. Calsta did, or she never would have brought Knox to Anwei.

The problem was, Lia wasn’t sure Anwei understood what she was asking. Walking into an arena with Tual and the soul-stealing sword he’d taken from Patenga on one side and the Warlord with her soul-stealing interpretation of Devotion on the other was worse than Lia finding herself trapped in an arena facing down an angry auroshe.

Do you trust me, Lia? Calsta’s voice seemed to echo from the sky. Whatever Anwei’s faults, the goddess knew exactly what she was asking. This was acting. This was moving. Fighting. Doing.

Wasn’t that what Lia had wanted all along? The sword Gilesh had let her borrow to replace the one she’d lost in the bay felt heavy against her spine.

Vivi snorted, twisting to look off into the trees. He shook his head and continued on at Lia’s kick, but not before she’d seen the hulking beast silhouetted against the moon on the rocks above them. Ahead of them, just beneath the shadow, an extremely large cat lay half-eaten on the ground.

Rosie. Why was she here? She hadn’t followed Lia to town, she’d stayed here by the lake, as if Mateo was what she truly wanted. But if that were the case, then why hadn’t she swum to the island? Lia’s stomach twinged with pity at the thought of the injured auroshe out here alone, trying so hard to find the ones who had bonded with her, then carelessly forgotten her.

Perhaps Aria wasn’t the only one who could use saving from the Montanne family.

When the lake finally came into sight, Lia forced herself to keep riding toward the shore, then across the spindly bridge that led to the island, her eyes fixed on the house silhouetted against the cliffs. No one stopped them, a white aura appearing in Lia’s sight at the far edge of the bridge, but when she got to the island’s shore, the guard only gave her a polite bow, gesturing for her to ride on.

Vivi gave the guard an interested sniff, but Lia kicked him on before he could try to nip her. A tower hulked just past the bridge, slumbering auras bright on the first and second floors. The third floor was empty, and Lia couldn’t see the fourth or fifth because her aurasight couldn’t reach. She rode past, Vivi trotting through the courtyard beyond it with his head down and his hackles up, bristling with every step. Into a garden, the house like a specter on the far side of the island, candles glowing like feral eyes in the windows. The waterfall spewing over the cliffs glowed a ghostly orange in Jaxom’s light. There was no sign of Aria.

Lia forced her fingers clenching the reins to relax. Anwei was coming. This is going to be fine.

She thought it hard, like a prayer. The healer had promised.

And Lia believed her.

Fine fortress this is. And what a fine distraction I am. Will I have to ring the bell before anyone notices me? Lia stopped the moment her aurasight touched gold and dismounted. The Warlord was on the top floor of the house, her aura parched as if something had taken a sip from her golden light. There was one other Devoted aura present, and it was moving with purpose toward Lia from around the side of the house. Standing straight, Lia set her chin high, unease a knife in her stomach. Tual’s aura slumbered calmly at the back of the house, but Mateo was nowhere to be seen.

The Devoted rounded the hedges and started toward Lia, a sedate smile on her face and a sword at her back, taking in the sight of Lia unveiled calmly as if Lia had written ahead to announce her arrival.

“Lia Seystone.” She barely glanced at Vivi when he snapped at her. “I’m Cath. I don’t believe we had the pleasure of meeting back in the seclusions.”

Lia dipped her head in acknowledgment, heart hammering. “I’m looking for Tual Montanne. And the Warlord. And my sister. Not in that order.”

“Your sister?” Cath’s eyes trailed down from Lia’s uncovered head, past the boiled-leather cuirass she’d haggled for outside of Chaol at a great loss to Altahn since she didn’t know how to haggle properly. “You’re not here to see Mateo, then?”

“Why would I be here to see Mateo?” Lia pulled on the mantle her oath scars were supposed to give, her tone sharp. “I came to warn the Warlord and the Montannes that there’s an attack planned against the island this evening.”

“An… attack.” Cath’s eyes narrowed. “How is your aura intact? You ran away in Chaol.”

Lia licked her lips. “I serve the goddess, as you do. Leaving Chaol was the only way to warn…” She cleared her throat. “I came to prove… m-my… l-loyalty.” The words stuttered out as the Warlord’s aura twisted itself free from the snarl of candlelight coming from the top floor. She was far away then close with moments, appearing in the doorway like a spider at the center of this web. “We… are all… we’re all in very great danger.”

Lia’s hands clenched at her sides. This was what she’d come to do.

Face her.

Lie to her.

Distract her.

But now she couldn’t breathe, panicked gasps bubbling up like they had the first day Lia had climbed into Anwei’s garden. Flashes of memory burst through her in quick succession: her mother waving as Lia had ridden away behind a Rooster, pretending to smile when Lia could see the tears plain in her eyes. Flash. Her scalp burning as the first oath was branded into her, marking her as a goddess’s property. Flash. A veil dripping down over her head. Flash. Ewan riding behind her as they approached Chaol, the Warlord’s words ringing in her ears as his terrible thoughts about her ran like oil into her vision, impossible to scrub away. It’s your choice, of course, who your bond will be with. But Ewan is one of our best Devoted. We need more gods-touched as strong as him. As strong as you both.

The buzz of Calsta’s energy shot through Lia like lightning. Years of loneliness, of sadness, of feeling as if she were no more than a sword, a veil, a thing to be moved where the goddess chose—it hadn’t been Calsta doing it.

It had been the Warlord.

And now the Warlord was coming for her.

Vivi’s reins tight in her grip, Lia turned to meet her, mind gobbling up every new aura in range as she came closer to the house. No Aria.

When the Warlord stepped into the courtyard, she held out her arms as if she meant to gather Lia to her like a lost child. “Lia, my dear girl. You’ve come back to me.”

Lia looked the Warlord straight in the eye as she hadn’t been able to do for the last two years with a veil between her and the world. She stepped back a pace, putting Vivi between her and Cath, ready to draw her sword at any moment. “A Basist is coming tonight. She’s after Tual Montanne’s sword.”

“Interesting. That’s exactly what Mateo said. You know Mateo, of course?” The Warlord waited expectantly. “What did he do to you, child?”

What did Mateo do to me? Lia’s breath caught in her chest, rage like a wave inside her threatening to drown her. Mateo did nothing but try to help me! She wanted to yell. It was you who locked me in a room with Ewan. It was you who took me from my parents. It was you who switched out my dolls for a sword, then took my sword when it became a comfort and gave me a veil. Mateo was on my side even when he didn’t want to be. She gritted her teeth, forcing her hands to stay at her sides. Vivi gave an eager screech. He could smell the blood in her thoughts and wanted to spill it out where everyone could appreciate it.

But Lia knew she had to keep herself together long enough for Anwei to get in. Keep the Warlord’s attention long enough for the healer to locate Aria and Mateo. Long enough that Altahn could set off his explosions to cover their escape.

So she drew her sword. “They’re coming. I don’t know how Mateo knew, but I can’t let them hurt you.”

“You know I can see your energy flaring as you use it,” the Warlord’s low, husky voice drawled out from the house’s fancy portico. She stepped into the moonlight, looking much smaller than the woman Lia remembered from the seclusions. “What exactly did Mateo bring you here for, Lia Seystone?”

Gritting her teeth, Lia stepped out in front of Vivi, the weight of her sword too comfortable in her hand. “I am not here on anyone’s behalf but my own.”

The Warlord squinted down the length of the weapon, unconcerned. “Interesting words for a Devoted.”

Mateo grimaced at his cards, glancing over them at Aria. She was twelve. Twelve. How in Calsta’s name was she beating him at scales? “Whoever decided these suits must have been color-blind, because the complementary color to green is—”

“I noticed you rearranging your cards when you drew spears.” Despite her pallor, Aria still managed to make her boredom sound like a weapon. She yawned, covering her mouth with her cards, and she seemed to blur at the edges, something still and dark at her center. Mateo blinked, wondering if the extra energy Willow had taken was making him forget how tired his body was. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, willing his sight to go clear. “You have a queen and at least three stones. Complaining about the card colors isn’t going to change the fact that I am going to destroy you.”

“I thought you were sick. Why aren’t you sick in a way that helps me?” Mateo tried to think of a swear word Aria wouldn’t know so he could use it, which would do a better job distracting her than—

Lia’s golden sparks flared in Mateo’s stretched-out aurasight. He jumped up from his chair to look out the window, his cards fluttering to the floor in a forgotten pile. Lia’s here. Lia is here on the island. The words choked inside him, Willow swelling up inside him to look too. You didn’t know. How come you didn’t know?

“You can’t pretend to have an episode to get out of your bad hand, Mateo,” Aria chided. “You’re not that poor of a loser, are you?”

“Oh, I’m the worst kind of loser,” he breathed, trying to imagine a world where Lia’s aura below didn’t come straight to him, sword ready to stab before he got to explain.

It won’t matter if she stabs you, Willow whispered. Then suddenly she went still. Mateo, her voice crackled and deepened. Your sister. Your sister has the sword. Get the sword. We need the sword.

Goose bumps broke out across Mateo’s arms.

“Mateo?” Aria’s voice was a little too sharp, fear she didn’t want to show poking through. “You aren’t really having an episode, are you?”

“No. I’m—” He jerked back from the door—how had he got to the door? “I just thought I saw something outside. No, don’t you go look—” He crossed the room again and stood in front of the leaded glass, though there was little chance Aria would be able to see her sister below in the courtyard. All he could see was her aura.

The sword. The sword. The sword. Lia Seystone. Willow swelled inside him. We need to take it. We need all of it. All of them. All the energy. I’m hungry. FEED ME.

Wait! That’s not the plan. Mateo’s thoughts barely penetrated, his skin feeling as if it were going to burst. Willow twisted inside him—twisted him, this thing he’d been talking to in his head as if she were a little girl and not an abomination. A monster. Willow, wait! he cried as the ghost clouded the world around him, everything going gray and smelling of bone and rot.

“Mateo! I’m scared. You’re scaring me!” Aria had started to cry.

You aren’t big enough to hold me, Willow crooned. It’s all right. Let me take care of you, Mateo.

Then it was Mateo screaming because his arms and legs, his shoulders, his feet, his fingers—the ones Tual said had been cut off—all began to grow.

Anwei’s heart raced as she paddled the canoe away from the boat, away from Knox, away from everything that could ruin this night. I’m done, she’d said.

And his spot in her head dimmed. Broke down to almost nothing, plucking him free from her mind. The line tethering them together splintered. A cry shattered her thoughts: Anwei!

It hurt, uprooting the ties between her and Knox, like pulling teeth. She slowed, her eyes clenching shut over the awful promises of what could have been—an evening where nothing mattered. When she’d let herself forget everything and pretend nothing existed but the boat and the music and her friends. What could have been if she were a different person, and he was too. If they’d met in a market or a malt shop or class at the university. Maybe in the apothecary she’d dreamed of starting with her brother, smiling at Knox from across the counter and seeing his true smile the first time he ever looked at her rather than months later, the weight of a goddess dragging him to the earth.

But there were no malt houses, no markets, no apothecaries. There was no life to fit him into. Calsta and the snake-tooth man had made sure of that. And so had Anwei when she’d put the tiny dose of Sleeping Death in his drink, terrified it would be too much.

Any was too much. She’d broken the perfect evening to ensure that the second half of it wouldn’t be interrupted. Because that was what it all had been for.

At least, that was what she’d thought until she started kissing him in that other world where nothing mattered, so there had been no reason to stop.

Anwei cut off the thought. Left it with everything else he’d said to drown in the water behind her. Into the cave’s mouth. Around the bend, past the statue of stone consigned to holding up the sky. Into the deep water beyond, the walls glowing blue, the smell of elsparn on her clothes mixing with the overwhelming odor of lost souls. None of it was strong enough to counter how much she wanted to turn around. Knox left bleeding gashes in her thought, and her head felt as if it were being pulled to pieces.

Anwei! His voice gave one last, sad shout in her mind, then receded, leaving a space that felt like a shadow. A ghost. A tear tracked down her cheek.

She kept paddling.

Past the second statue she and Altahn had found, all the way to an impossible whirlpool in the water that led to the bottom of the lake, allowing them to row to one of the many underwater passages connected into the cliffs completely dry. She’d taken Altahn across to set up lines of salpowder, going up hundreds of stairs and skipping the ones that seemed to breathe poison into the air. They’d found banks of windows that looked down over the lake, and that was where Anwei left Altahn to pipe wet, oil lines between packets of salpowder. Once they’d come back through, they’d agreed that Altahn should remain in the waterway ready to set off the flare through the vents in the ceiling while Anwei went back for the last things they needed: a shapeshifter-killing sword, packets of Sleeping Death in the old calistet bag with its special button, and the antidote brewed in a hasty tincture with the ants she’d harvested.

How did you find the exact ingredient you needed so close to the boat? That seems awfully lucky, Lia had said. But Anwei didn’t need luck, not when the plants practically spoke to her, gushing with colors to show their every attribute. The ants had found her.

When Anwei paddled into the final chamber with the impossible whirlpool leading into the lake, something scrabbled across the ceiling over her head, the sound of claws on stone skittering across Anwei’s skin. She breathed in, searching for the scent of what it could be, her hand dipping into her medicine bag.

But just as the last bit of warmth bled from Knox’s place in her head, Anwei’s whole mind went cold. Anwei gasped, pitching forward as the space where he’d been cracked open, splitting her in half. She breathed in, then breathed in again, searching for the scent of what could be wrong with her.

Nothing.

Shoving a hand into her medicine bag, she gulped down lungfuls of air, groping for the answer to her convulsing heart and splitting skull.

The packets didn’t smell of anything at all.

Anwei sucked down another panicked breath, shoving her face into the mouth of her bag and frantically searching for the scents she knew so well—corta, lilia, linereed, and cottonflower, Sleeping Death—but they were now only faint imitations, their colors faded to gray.

Anwei almost fell as she lunged to grasp the pockmarked blade sitting there at the bottom of the canoe, one smell that would never pale. The nothing.

Usually touching the sword was enough to make her gag, but this time, it was only an uneasy feeling of wrong, a bad taste in her mouth instead of the full bite of rotten meat it was.

A bright light flashed overhead, and Anwei clapped hands over her ears, not understanding the high-pitched squeal that went with it until it ended in an echoing crack somewhere high above the cave.

The flare. She remembered the scrabbling sound of claws and looked around for Galerey. They’d had her lodge the flare up there in the vent, ready to go off at the slightest hint of trouble. Why had Altahn had sent her up there to ignite it now?

Where was he?

But then the place where Knox had been uprooted began to crack. Anwei lost her balance—her sight, her smell, her ears all screaming with something terrible. A part of her own mind seemed to be breaking free, leaving a gaping hole. Calsta above. Anwei choked on her own breath, on the tears streaming down her cheeks as she looked around for something—anything to use as a weapon or a medicine or—

I am not Calsta, a voice rang in her head, clearer than any bell. It was familiar, the same flavor as her own thoughts, like a voice she’d heard a thousand times before. It sat in the shadows of sicknesses she smelled, prickled with the herbs that itched to be combined to treat them.

It was her. Her healing, her magic. The voice of color, the one that led her to the ants.

But now it spoke. And it wasn’t her at all. It was something foreign and nameless—

I am not nameless. The voice was tortured and faint, like one last, gasping breath. And I have tolerated much from you, Anwei.

Something clapped in her head, like lightning and thunder, only worse, because it smelled like fire and stone and herbs and water and everything in the world. I’ve justified you as long as I can.

And then everything—even the last hint of plague from the sword—disappeared.

This can’t be for you, the voice croaked.

The moss, the water, the smell of nothing billowing from the cave. All the scents were there one moment, then gone the next—not blown away or thinned out, but nonexistent, as if the fabric of the world, the colors, the shapes, the touch and taste had blinked out of being.

Anwei retched, the paddle dropping from her slack fingers into the current. An energy inside her that she’d never known was anything but hers was draining away through the crack Knox had left in her head, leaving her dry. She lifted her head searching for any scent—the ruddy smell of the elsparn salve, the honey aroma of stone, the sediment-threaded water, the elsparn, for Calsta sake. Anwei knew they were there, lurking under the water with their little death lantern eyes watching her.

They were there, but their smells were gone.

Ahead of her, something very, very large streaking up through the opening to the lake, headed right for the boat.

Lia held her sword steady as Cath drew her own weapon.

“You can’t shelter Mateo Montanne, little one.” The Warlord’s voice was so gentle, consoling. “I can help you. You’re safe now. Whatever he did, it was wrong, stealing parts of you like only the nameless god can. How did he persuade you to run away and put this power over you? Tell me, and all will be forgiven, child.”

“You know Mateo is….?” Lia flinched when Vivi snarled, snaking up to glower over her shoulder because Cath had moved too close. “You can’t be serious. Mateo would rather copy reliefs than talk to actual people. He has fainting spells.” Rage filled her like acid. She pointed her sword at the Warlord’s exposed throat. “I ran away because of you!”

“That’s hardly—”

“You told Ewan Hardcastle I needed a bonded mate, that we needed more little spiriters and that it was my job to produce them, then sent us to the farthest corner of the Commonwealth where no one would stop him from making sure he was the one who got to help!”

The Warlord’s eyes widened, her sword lowering an inch.

“You sent him with me on purpose like I was a reward.” Lia advanced a step, her skin hot enough to catch fire, forgetting everything but the woman in front of her. Aria, a voice at the back of her head sang. You’re here for Aria. But Lia was shaking, the something she’d been wanting to do—to the Warlord, to the masters, to Tual Montanne and every other person who had told her to obey no matter the damage—was before her like a challenge on the training yard. The feel of the sword in her hands was the only thing that was right. “You knew what Ewan was, and you let him stay in the seclusions. You told him—”

“You know better than this, Lia.” The Warlord hadn’t moved, hadn’t even acknowledged the threat of Lia’s sword pointed at her throat. Cath’s aura sang with Calsta’s power, and Lia didn’t need to look to know she’d circled behind, forcing Vivi to move behind Lia to stay between them. “You were blessed above almost all other Devoted, studied under Master Helan, who has progressed farther in the oaths than any other Devoted in a hundred years. You tarnish your oaths by claiming to have heard thoughts like these from my mind?”

“By the time you got to Chaol, I couldn’t read thoughts anymore! What did you think happened when you found me gone and Ewan diminished when you got to Chaol? Calsta knew what had happened. She didn’t restore his oaths. But you let him keep his armor and his sword. You let him force my auroshe to bond with him—”

“You blame me? You blame him?” The Warlord shrugged one shoulder. “For your desertion of the goddess? If you didn’t want him near you, why didn’t you stab him through the heart, Lia? I’ve never once seen you struggle in the training yards.”

Lia’s insides roared, the words in her mouth far too bland for this woman who thought she was a goddess. Vivi screeched, eager for the blood spilling from Lia’s thoughts as she lunged forward, sword hacking toward the Warlord’s exposed neck. Cath was there quicker than lightning, sparks flying as her sword bit into Lia’s, thrusting it away.

Something screamed into the night air overhead, a shower of sparks flying up from behind the cliffs. Lia’s heart stopped, her sword grating against Cath’s, unable to stop herself from glancing up.

It exploded with a deafening crack, raining ash and fire of bright azure blue.

Altahn’s signal not to come.

There was a split second of quiet, the blast ringing in Lia’s ears, the Warlord’s freckles washed over in blue light. Then auras all over the compound exploded to life, faded with sleep one moment and burning bright the next, like an army of suns rising across the island. Tual Montanne’s aura burst all over in bright lights, shining white as the sun.

Lia snapped back to reality, the one where she was trapped on an island, the distraction for a heist that was apparently not going to happen, her sword drawn and fire in her blood, but not the kind that would let her win against two full Devoted with Calsta’s third oath roiling through them.

But the moment she had the thought, Calsta’s energy rushed into Lia. She spun toward the Warlord, a torrent of energy filling her humors as it hadn’t since she’d first arrived in Chaol, her arms growing strong and the earth steady under her feet.

Calsta? she breathed, and then there was no time to think because the Warlord was moving. Vivi moved at the same time, his horn spearing to block Cath as Lia dodged behind the Warlord and grabbed the woman’s sword before she could reach for it. Vivi slammed his shoulder into Cath, knocking her to the ground just as Lia spun to face the Warlord, crossing the Warlord’s sword and her own at the woman’s throat. Energy crackled inside Lia, making the air around her sing, the heartbeat of every live person on the island thumping loud in her ears. Vivi screamed, charging Cath, who threw herself away from the Warlord to avoid his long, twisted horn.

“You are determined to betray your goddess, then?” The Warlord’s voice was dead calm despite the blades pressed against the pulse fluttering in her neck. “You’re nothing but your own wants. Why don’t you just kill me? Let Calsta see what you really are.”

“Calsta is with me right now.” Lia’s muscles shook with rage, the blades pressing hard even as Aria’s name played through her head, but then a blaze of caution threaded through her. She wanted nothing more than to lop off the Warlord’s head, and her arms shook with the effort to be still as if Calsta herself had reached down from the sky to put a staying hand on Lia’s shoulder.

I do not excuse her. But I still need her, Lia. There are Devoted in the forest who Tual will kill if you dispose of her now.

The voice burned, but not half as hot as Lia’s rage. Aria. Aria. Aria. Her sister’s name twisted through her like a narmaiden’s song, fear fanning the sparks inside her to a firestorm she couldn’t contain.

If you lose yourself, Tual will win. Lia’s knees buckled with the weight of Calsta’s voice. The Warlord’s chin tilted up as if daring Lia to kill her, Cath fighting to get past Vivi. He is coming, Calsta said. Get out now.

But Aria! Lia felt as if she’d been lost since the day she climbed down from the tower thinking somehow she could be free. Tual’s aura sliced like a sword toward her, sprinting along an upstairs hall, then down a set of stairs and into the foyer.

Go! Calsta flamed, the feel of it building inside Lia to a terrible scream. Lia slammed her hilt into the Warlord’s head and shot toward the bridge without waiting to watch her drop. The whole world seemed to tip sideways as Lia ran, Vivi leaving Cath to lope giddily behind her as if he’d missed this sort of thing, blood from Calsta knew where dripping down his muzzle. Cath’s aura speared toward the Warlord behind them, then arced around to chase Lia toward the bridge.

Where is Aria, Calsta? Lia yelled in her head. Just tell me. No more games.

Get out! The goddess sputtered and disappeared, a candle blown out. Her energy raged inside Lia, not like panic or frustration or loss, but like power as she passed the tower’s massive double doors. Looking up, Lia stalled a step as her eyes crossed to the higher floors, a candle burning in one of the high windows.

There was one place she hadn’t been able to touch with her aurasight.

Vivi screeched in pain just behind her, jerking her back to the moment, to Cath with blood on her sword, and the auroshe’s teeth bared in rage. Lia pivoted past him, twisting one shoulder back to dodge Cath’s sword stabbing toward her chest, deflecting the blow with her own sword, then spinning to slice the Warlord’s toward the Devoted’s neck. Cath ducked and rolled past Lia, then jumped back to her feet.

Tual’s aura was there in the courtyard behind them, less than twenty feet away. The energy inside Lia roared, and she could almost feel him roaring in answer, ready to take everything she was, to drink her down the way Mateo had accidentally done that night in the tomb.

An arrow sang through the air—the bridge guard, yelling as she sent it toward them. The wind of it caught Lia’s cheek as she spun out of the way and dropped her sword to catch it, then threw it like a spear toward Tual’s belly. Cath slammed into Lia, taking her to the flagstones. Lia’s spine ground into the stone as she tried to curve out from under Cath’s weight as the Devoted pressed her forearm to Lia’s airway, sword arm pinned under the heavier warrior’s knee. Flashes of pain struck Lia in quick succession, of Ewan’s breath on her neck, of turning to stone, of Tual with his sword in Knox’s stomach, of life being stolen right from her chest.

But suddenly Cath’s arm across Lia’s neck went slack, and the Devoted fell like a dead weight across Lia. The golden aura crowning her head guttered, flecks of energy streaming toward—

Toward—

Tual’s aura glistened like a bonfire and starlight and Calsta herself in the sky as Cath’s aura drained into him. The Warlord lay at his feet, deathly pale.

Lia pushed Cath off her and lurched to her feet, eyes on the tower. Sheathing the Warlord’s sword, she heaved herself up onto the vines clinging to the stone, climbing up, up, away from the horrible silence where there had just been clamor. Not true silence, but the quiet of voices cut off, of bodies falling to the ground. The guard at the bridge. The flurry of white auras that had woken up at the sound of Altahn’s flare, cooks, maids, guards, hostlers, all of them dimmed to almost nothing in Lia’s head. Tual was sucking them dry.

Vivi screamed a challenge, and Lia suddenly remembered lying on the ground and Vivi not helping her, an impossibility unless he was hurt. Restrained.

Could shapeshifters drain animals?

Lia jammed her fingers between cracks in the unnatural tower wall, tears streaming down her cheeks as her boots slipped on vines, her heart refusing to beat to any rhythm but Aria, Aria, Aria. The next floor flooded into her aurasight as she heaved herself into a dark, empty window. Not a single soul was there.

Panic and power like terrible creatures inside her, Lia scrambled up to stand atop the arched window’s upper frame. The top floor opened like a blossom inside her mind, two familiar auras flickering into being: Aria and Mateo Montanne.

Lia was coming.

Lia was coming, and Mateo was full of magic, his fingers claws of black. He couldn’t breathe, and Aria had the blanket over her head to cover her scream, and the window crashed inward with a ferocity of golden aurasparks and broken glass….

It’s going to work. It’s going to work! Willow trilled. All we need is— Her voice, which had been growing stronger every moment, seemed to thin, faltering.

Lia slid through the window, sword in hand.

Something is wrong. Knox is… Willow’s voice went high and scared, almost as if she were the little girl she was pretending to be. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong….

Mateo stumbled back, trying to block out Willow’s high keen, shielding his face with monstrous hands where his artist fingers had been. His throat started to close, his whole body shaking, as if Willow’s panic was his own. “Aria…” He barely managed to get the name out from between his teeth clenching involuntarily down. There was a plan. He had to follow the plan. “Lia! Get Aria downstairs. There’s a way out—the tunnel—”

Aria was still screaming, the blanket over her head. He couldn’t see her, and she was too still, the scream echoing like he was down in the tunnel again, her body on the ground, and the sound was somehow coming from him.

Willow pulsed large in his head, filling Mateo until he began to split at the seams. He fell forward, groaning as Lia caught him, her grip like iron manacles. But Mateo couldn’t focus, couldn’t care because the thing in his head was pulling free. She was the bone and he the muscle, he the puppet, she the strings. It was like teeth being pulled from his gums, only throughout his whole body, as if his insides were made from ghost, and she was extracting herself in one ghastly wrench.

In that breath, Willow was gone. In the next, so was he.

Noa was dancing with Falan in her dream. The goddess was in her masculine form, and they were both all in gold and—

Something groaned outside the dream, pulling her back to the boat, to the coppery smell of elsparn salve and Gilesh snoring. Noa swore groggily, looking around for whatever had woken up. A groan that was still shuddering out until it rose to a scream.

Before Noa could move, it cut off in a terrible gurgle of water that sent Noa flopping from her hammock onto the floor. She tripped over her long skirts getting to the lamp still burning on its hook by the ramp, Gilesh and Bane falling from their hammocks to sprint past her on to the deck.

I was supposed to be awake. It came like a panicked lightning strike as she rushed after them, slamming into the rail where something was thrashing in the water. I don’t even remember lying down! I was supposed to keep watch. She held out the lamp with shaky hands and—

“It’s Knox!” Gilesh shouted.

Anwei’s belanvian was flailing as if he’d forgotten how to swim between now and early that morning, little shapes wriggling all around him in the water. Dropping the lantern, Noa grabbed the bowl of Anwei’s dead elsparn entrails and smeared them down her arms and legs, then dove into the water.

Quick strokes took her to Knox, little slimy bodies squirming around her, but nothing bit. She grabbed hold of his arm, and Knox’s whole body seemed to go limp as she dragged him back toward the boat. The elsparn swirled around them, catching in her skirts and darting in to nip at her shoulders and back, mouths gaping wide.

But then she was at the railing. Gilesh groped into the water to grab her hand and dragged her out of the water, Noa’s shoulder screaming. Bane took hold of Knox and towed him onto the deck, Knox splaying out like dead weight. Heaving herself over the railing, Noa spilled onto the deck in a puddle, rolling up onto her knees by Knox’s side. He was streaming blood, little bite marks all down his arms, but that wasn’t the problem. Blood was seeping out of his side, the pool spreading fast around him. Noa lifted his tunic to find the wound in his side weeping with red. “Falan help me,” she gasped. “Of all the things I can pretend, being a healer isn’t one of them. Gilesh, get me a blanket. Bane, how about some bandages?”

“We don’t speak Elantin, Noa—” Gilesh was pulling an elsparn off Knox’s leg, the thing’s hooked jaw wildly snapping at him.

“Bandages! Blankets!” she yelled in Common. She slid over to Knox’s head, pushing his wet hair back from his face. “Knox? Knox, honey, I need you to wake up. I know exactly how easy it would be for Anwei to kill me, and if she finds you like this—”

His eyelids jerked open, and a guttural roar exploded from his mouth. Knox’s back arched up from the deck, and he twisted toward her, mouth opening as if he meant to bite. Shadows erupted all down his body.

Noa screamed, skittering back until she hit the rail, only it was over before her voice hit the air, Knox limp and quiet as if she’d imagined it.

The shadows, though. Those didn’t go away, thicker than ever.

Bane and Gilesh had both jumped back as well, an elsparn weakly writhing on the deck near their feet. “What do we do now?” Gilesh whispered.

Knox’s head slowly swiveled to look at Noa. “He needs Anwei,” he rasped.

The voice wasn’t his. Even the blank, gray stare didn’t belong to Knox, as if there were something else inside him, wearing him like a skin.

Noa shrank back. Not a shadow man, she told herself. Not darkness, not a belanvian waiting to drag her into Falan knew where.

One of Knox’s arms jerked awkwardly as he tried to push himself up from the deck. “What are any of these muscles good for if they don’t work? Why is he so heavy?” Knox’s voice was worse than any ghostly caterwaul Noa had ever practiced. His head turned toward her again with a sudden jerk. “Help him! I mean help… me. I need Anwei. I can’t die yet. Not like this.”

His wounds bled and bled and bled…

Overhead something screeched up from the rocks, ending in a loud crack of blue. The flare.

Sweet Falan’s broken feet. That wasn’t supposed to happen now.

The flare couldn’t happen now. Not when Noa was the one who needed help.

She couldn’t move, frozen, because someone else was supposed to be making the decisions. Noa didn’t know what to do when things went wrong or when people were bleeding or when shadows were curling toward her feet. She was the thing that made things go wrong, the diversion to make an audience look away while Anwei and the others made magic. She was the sparkle.

“Dump him overboard, Bane.” Gilesh was moving toward the oars, his eyes up on the flare. “That’s not Knox. We can’t—”

“No,” Noa’s voice croaked, because even if she didn’t know how to be in charge, that wasn’t the right decision. Bane didn’t listen though, circling carefully out of Knox’s line of sight before moving closer, hand on his knife.

“No!” She yelled it this time, hopping up from the rail to push Bane back from Knox. “Knox needs us. Anwei and Altahn need us. Everyone needs us, so we’re going to go.”

“Miss Noa, with all due respect, I’ve seen that boy with a sword, and with all this talk of ghosts…” Bane edged around her toward Knox, who had started giggling, waving his fingers above his face even as he whispered Anwei’s name over and over again.

“Get to your oar, now!” Noa pretended to be Lia with her no-nonsense rasp, or Altahn with his casual armor of control and authority. She manufactured a cajoling smile like Anwei’s but lost it the moment she thought of how Anwei would break when she found Knox empty of everything but a ghost. This wasn’t a part to play, and Noa couldn’t magically have a plan like Anwei or threaten and stab like Lia. She couldn’t be Altahn with his salpowder and vain title. So, digging deep, Noa found something of her own, like the crackle of fire tethers in her hands, her hands spread wide before an audience. “Snap to it, sailors, or it’ll be you going in with the elsparn.”

Anwei couldn’t breathe, her nose blank of smells, her head full of a voice that wasn’t hers, and something huge and black racing toward her.

“Anwei, get out of the water!” Altahn’s voice rang out, only he was much higher than when she’d left him on the shelf of rock, clinging to the vines halfway up the cave wall.

She only had time to grab her medicine bag before the creature swished under the boat, rocking it sideways in a burst of water. It circled back through the tunnel, the top of a knobbly black head surfacing to knock into the side of the boat, sending waves cascading out in all directions.

Anwei tore open her bag, gasping for clues as to how to fight this creature. A snake, just like the snake-tooth man. Was it him inside that gnarled skin? She rifled through her packets, tears prickling in her eyes when none of it made any sense anymore, not the herbs, not the cave, the snake’s scales, muscles, and humors, not the white clouding over the creature’s eyes, not the bits of rot around its nostrils as it started toward her. It felt like standing on a bloody beach, her parents and the elders advancing with their knives while she had nothing, because all the weapons she’d found were sitting in unmarked packets. She’d always been able to tell them apart without looking, without thought. Now they were nothing more than different colors of powder.

Her mind was an empty cup, her years of healing, her training, everything draining out through the crack made by that god. She could still feel him there, watching, as if he meant to be sure she failed, no matter what she tried. Hand groping in the bag again, her fingers closed around one last hope: the fancy button that marked the packet of Sleeping Death.

“Anwei, get out of there!” Altahn yelled.

The snake was coming around again, racing toward her with its open maw gaping up above the water, a body too big, too old, too much for something so small as a packet of herbs.

“Anwei!”

Something hit the boat, and suddenly Anwei was underwater, the sword dragging her down.

The sword. She had a sword. But the current dragged it one way and wrenched her medicine bag in the opposite direction. Water pressed against every inch of her body as Anwei frantically groped through the darkness trying to find which way was up. Twisting to look for light and air and life, all she could see were black scales, black tongue, black teeth gaping toward her—

Something jetted down into the water between Anwei and the snake, exploding in a shower of bubbles and flame between them. The water roiled with the burst of burning salpowder, and the snake darted away in a cloud of black blood.

Anwei kicked up to the surface, greedily gulping down a mouthful of acrid air. She heaved the sword from the water, the metal clattering across stone.

“Get up here!” Altahn swore, a packet of salpowder in his fist, but he didn’t light it. He jumped down from where he was perched halfway up the wall. “It can’t reach this high!”

Water slopped over Anwei’s head as she tried to pull herself up onto the rocky shelf. The current sucked at her long skirts, and she could barely keep her chin above the surface, little elsparn wriggling toward her and then away again. Altahn dashed down to grab hold of her wrists, hauling her up onto the rocks. Coughing, Anwei stumbled onto her feet and followed him to the wall, only pausing to grab the sword before she clawed her way up the vines to the rocky outcropping where Altahn had been hiding. As she pulled herself onto the platform, Galerey skittered down from the ceiling. The snake broke the surface again, the blunt tip of its nose following Galerey’s progress as she hopped from vine to vine to land on Altahn’s shoulder in a sparking, scrabbling heap. Galerey dropped something onto the ground next to Altahn, but he didn’t pick it up, pulling Anwei back from the edge instead. “We have to get out of here. We’re not going to be able to set off the salpowder distraction with that thing after us.”

Only, their warning flare had already gone off, so Lia wouldn’t be on the island to distract the Warlord and Tual until the main explosions in the caves ignited. Anwei’s mouth was full of lake water and bile. They had to run. To hide again. Her plan to finally get to Tual Montanne, snake-tooth man, murderer of her life, was dead.

It couldn’t be dead. Anwei felt scraped clean inside, the gashes where the nameless god had sat inside her still bleeding. She didn’t have another plan, and she didn’t have anything else to give up.

The sword sat dull at her feet like a question.

Anwei reached out to touch it just as Galerey hopped off the outcropping, Altahn running down with her. The lizard went one way, and he went the other, Altahn bending to swipe something out of the water before sprinting back toward the wall. Galerey circled around, the snake bursting out of the water toward her little form and slamming into the wall, barely missing. Galerey scrambled up through the vines and leaves past their outcropping until she was out of reach. The snake circled again, sending the canoe—upside down and aimlessly spinning—out into the middle of the swirling water.

Altahn climbed back onto the outcropping, his chest heaving. He was holding the oar. “What do you think, Yaru? Do you have a plan that will get us out of here before Tual Montanne realizes his pet snake found some intruders?”

The snake circled back lightning fast, ignoring the boat to strike up toward Galerey again. Its coils seemed to tangle when they lashed into the canoe. It turned, bumping the canoe with its blunt snout and recoiling with a dull thrum of distress, as if it hadn’t expected to meet an obstacle.

White film across the eyes. Cataracts. The snake was blind. So how did it know where Galerey was hiding? Anwei reached out to pick up the object Galerey had dropped earlier: a little handle with flint and steel that, when you squeezed it, struck a flame. “Does Galerey have your aura right now?”

Altahn nodded, dropping the oar next to her. “You have that sword, and I have one more salpowder packet—it was meant to blow up the bigger packets, but—”

“Altahn, the snake can see auras. Probably has some kind of capacity to sense things near it or it would bump into walls, but it can’t actually see.” Anwei stood up, still hugging the sword close. It felt nice against her skin, like a plan. “Look. Come down.”

“I’m not going down there just to experiment—”

But Anwei was already sliding off the outcropping. She stumbled as she landed, going farther down than she’d meant to. The snake darted out of the water toward her, teeth glistening. Anwei scrambled back up toward the ledge where she was still in sight but out of reach, her bag catching on a vine as she tried to pull herself back to safety. “Watch her!” she yelled.

“Her?” Altahn grabbed her hand and pulled her up the rest of the way. Behind them, the snake went still, its head cocking to one side and then the other as if listening to the echoes of their voices.

Rolling onto the ledge, Anwei stared down at the creature turning back toward Galerey. “Oh, she’s obviously female.”

“Great. Tell me how we escape the giant female snake.”

“When you went down there with Galerey, the snake went for Galerey. And now that I’m out of range, she’s after your firekey again, like we’re not even here.” She smoothed a hand over the rock, remembering Knox back at the tomb saying that the rock somehow blocked his aurasight. This stone was doing the same thing, blocking her aura from the snake’s sight.

Altahn nodded slowly and dug into his open vest. The pockets were a soggy mess of salpowder, but he extracted one that was still intact, wrapped three times over in oilcloth. “This is all I’ve got. Show me your magic, goddess. We just need to get out of this chamber. I think the waterway is too shallow for the snake.”

Anwei’s eyes followed the snake’s ripples as it went into the next passage with the statue, but then abruptly turned back.

Magic. Plans. Anwei’s mind wouldn’t work, the place the nameless god had been gaping like a newly pulled tooth. And Knox—

Anwei shivered despite the dense heat coming off the water and choking the air. She felt cold and small. Hollow. The sword sat there in front of her, the thing that had been eating away at him for so long. She picked up the sword and hugged it to her chest, her mind filling with finger stumps under the bed and blood soaked into her skirts. Of her mother with a knife, her father not even looking. A storm on the beach, and a life empty as hunger.

She hugged the sword closer. There would be time enough after everything was done to fix things with Knox. “We need the boat to get to the island,” Anwei whispered, ideas beginning to crystallize in her mind.

“Get to the island?” Altahn started laughing. “No, no, no. Giant snake, Anwei. Flare already set off. I think they might know we’re coming.”

“I can’t give up.” Anwei’s grip on the sword tightened, her fingers pressing so hard they felt melded to the sheath. So many years of searching a waste if they didn’t go now. She stepped out onto the rocky outcropping and peered past the overgrown statue. “You shot salpowder through the water to get it away from me—will that last packet you have do that? It doesn’t matter if it gets wet?”

“I can’t shoot anything without a carom. All it did before was surprise the snake.”

“But salpowder will burn underwater,” Anwei pressed. “I saw it.”

He put his hands up to ward her off. “Yes, if it’s dry when it ignites. It’s that distilled, crystalized kind left over from that stuff Knox stole off the docks in Chaol.”

“The docks!” She tore open her bag and started pulling out vials from their sleeves along the side of the bag. In Chaol, Anwei had given Knox an acid to eat through the salpowder barrels, and it had caused a reaction with the crystalized salpowder, exploding the whole dock. Spreading the vials out with shaking hands, Anwei uncorked one and then the next, swearing when neither said anything back to her.

It had been clear. She separated out the ones that were clear, looking up when Galerey sent out a mournful chitter that echoed across the cave. Four vials. Acid. It had been strong enough to eat through wood in seconds, simmered over a slow fire under the temple in Chaol for weeks to achieve potency. “We’ll break the acid vial in the outer layer of oilcloth.”

“So the powder would still be dry inside all the layers after we threw it into the water, and the acid would set it off….” Altahn looked down as the snake came thrumming up out of the water toward Galerey, sending a wave of water over the boat. It had begun to dip down in the water. “How does that help us?”

“We’ll make her swallow it.” Anwei uncorked the first vial. Bracing herself, she poured a drop over her little finger. It was some kind of oil. She set it aside. “The acid will take a bit to react as it slowly leaks into the inner salpowder packets—”

“So it’ll be in her stomach when it explodes and blow her in half.” Altahn was already moving. “I’ll get that started.”

He called to Galerey something about moving, but Anwei didn’t look to see what he was doing, opening the next vial. Biting her lip, she dripped it onto her skin. It burned a little, leaving a red welt, but then it was gone. Not the right one.

Third vial. Galerey sparked as she scrambled faster and faster through the vines, the snake roaring up to bite at her. Anwei opened the vial, gritted her teeth, and—

Burning. Anwei bit back a scream, dashing her fingers through the puddle of water at her feet, then wiping it across her wet tunic. Tears in her eyes, she recorked the vial and snapped for Altahn to hand her the salpowder. “Someone will have to go down there.”

“Down… in the water?” Altahn’s voice faltered.

“She swims with her mouth open, and with the way she’s circling now we can see exactly where she’s going. Galerey has your aura, so the snake won’t see you. Jump in the water, break the vial, and make sure it goes down her throat.” Anwei stood, holding out the packet. “I’ll get the boat.”

Altahn stared up at her.

She gave him a playful nudge. “I’ll tell Noa all about it when we get back. You saving my life.”

“Will I be alive for that conversation?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, and I would really prefer to keep you in one piece. We need you.” The words came out easily, and Anwei suddenly realized they were true. Not because they’d need salpowder once they got to the snake-tooth man, or because they needed Altahn’s horses or his wagon or his money, but because she’d come to like him. His calm exterior, his joking with Noa, Galerey, even… Anwei cared if he got hurt. The same way she’d come to care about Noa. About Lia some of the time. And Knox. Most of all Knox.

She bit her tongue to stop her face crumpling, the tears that wanted to come. Anwei didn’t have room to care. Getting to Mateo and the snake-tooth man was all there could be until it was done, because everyone else kept getting in the way.

Anwei grabbed her medicine bag, then took up the sword. Altahn still hadn’t moved, but she couldn’t quite look at him, another person she’d somehow attached herself to when Anwei could only trust herself. “It’s either die up here and let the snake-tooth man have our bones or die trying to get past this thing, Altahn.”

Altahn frowned. But then he took the salpowder packet and pointed at her. “I want very specific descriptions. Lots of heroics.”

“You actually like her, don’t you?” Anwei laughed, but it was hollow like the rest of her as she forced her eyes toward the boat behind him. She pulled out the elsparn salve and smeared some extra down his arms while Altahn caked it across his neck and face. She hadn’t seen many of them since the snake appeared, but avoiding the big snake just to be eaten by the little ones seemed like a poor trade.

Sticking the sword and the paddle through the medicine bag’s straps, Anwei held her breath when Altahn jumped down from the ledge. The snake continued following Galerey’s excited chittering. But when Anwei reached out to climb toward the boat halfway underwater on the other side of the cavern, the snake slowed, nose turning toward Anwei. Freezing, Anwei swore at herself, reaching the vines above to climb higher, her heart jumping when one tore away in her hand, leaving her dangling above the water.

Galerey gave a great squeal and dove into the water. The snake lashed to the side, darting toward the spot Galerey entered the water. Moving as fast as she could, Anwei kept one eye on the boat, wishing she could see Altahn. It was too loud and too quiet in the cave all at once, water echoing off the walls, but not a single voice other than her own breath to keep her company. When she finally got to where the boat was pressed against the far wall, she tipped it to the side to empty out the water, then looked around for Altahn.

He hadn’t come up for air, so far as she could tell. And the spot he’d gone under was laced through with a predatory glow, elsparn circling in a frantic dance.

Which was when the snake surfaced again, then dove toward the ruckus. Anwei swore—the snake probably ate elsparn, the disturbance they made in the water sending vibrations she didn’t need eyes to see. She jumped into the boat and pulled out the paddle, thrashing around in the water just as Galerey did the same on the other side of the pool.

The snake didn’t change course, moving faster around the edge of the cave toward Altahn. A flurry of prayers touched Anwei’s tongue, like some terrible knee-jerk reaction to reach for the beings who had so blatantly shown her they weren’t on her side. To Calsta, who claimed souls like the worst sort of shapeshifter, or the nameless god, who’d grown inside her like a choking vine, infecting her humors and thoughts, waiting for the right moment to strike.

And there was a voice, repeating the same thing he’d said earlier before he ripped her world out from under her.

It can’t be for you.

How is this for me? she snarled in response. Her free hand flapped toward her medicine bag as if somehow it could help now and found the sword instead. She pulled the medicine bag free of her shoulder and let it drop like the dead weight it was and stood up, thrashing the water with the oar.

The snake swirled around, going deep down beneath the cluster of elsparn around Altahn. There was no way the salpowder was in its gut. There was no way Altahn could have held his breath so long, elsparn darting close, then away, but not letting him surface.

The spindly little voice didn’t seem to care. You put that man down in the water with an ancient terror holding nothing but a bit of salpowder. You sent Lia to face her worst fear, promising to get her out, then didn’t show up. You poisoned your bonded partner and left him to die because he didn’t agree with what you wanted. You’ll do the same to me if you feel it’s right in the moment.

“I did not hurt Knox.” The words tore from her, and Anwei let go of the vines as the snake circled beneath her, following Galerey. The elsparn suddenly moved together in one great shift, the snake turning to contemplate this development. “All I wanted was his goddess and his ghost out of my head!”

It was your bond holding him together, Anwei. What do you think happened when you broke it?

The snake had finally turned, the ripples heading for Anwei’s boat. Her shoulder felt bare without the medicine bag, and she suddenly couldn’t remember a time it hadn’t been there, a solid weight that meant she wasn’t powerless. That she wasn’t standing bloody on a beach, knives drawn over her head.

That was what the god had been feeding her all these years. Herbs. To fight Tual Montanne, the shape of him more gargantuan and deadly than any snake. The ripples rushed at her, and Anwei grabbed for the only sure answer that had trumped any god: the pockmarked sword.

It burned in her grip as she held it tight between her hands, because suddenly she didn’t need anything else. She never had. Only herself, and a proper weapon to kill a snake.

Before the snake’s ripples hit the boat, something slammed into the prow, and arms grabbed hold of Anwei, Altahn’s long hair streaming all around him in the water. He dragged her down, Anwei fighting hard, the sword burning in her hand as the snake streaked toward them.

And then, everything exploded.

Aria was there. Aria was screaming. Aria wouldn’t let Lia pull the blanket from her head, so Lia grabbed her around the middle and hefted her over one shoulder, energy burning like fire.

She’d found her sister.

Lia ran for the door, cringing as she stepped over Mateo, who had melted to the floor like a puddle, his eyelids fluttering and his chest still. Not clawed, shadowed, distorted the way she must have imagined seeing through the window before kicking the glass in.

She paused, looking down at him, hiding up here despite his obvious sickness, almost as if he’d been waiting for her.

Maybe it’s not what you think, Knox had said.

The fire in her humors wanted to roar and tamp down all at once. Anwei needed Mateo. That was why Anwei had really wanted to come. With Mateo they could stop Tual from killing anyone else.

Dipping down, Lia grabbed hold of his collar and dragged him out the door. Aria was wriggling so hard that Lia lurched into the railing, almost dropping her. “Aria!” she hissed, letting go of Mateo to set her sister on her feet and drag the blanket off her head. Her sister’s aura looked wrong somehow, not quite the right shape or shade, as if she were sick. “I’m here! Why are you—”

The words swelled up in her throat, choking her. It wasn’t just Aria’s aura that looked wrong. Her sister’s face was the wrong color, her hair in odd, sandpapery braids. Everything about her looked… off. There wasn’t another word for it, but then Aria was grabbing her around the middle, arms too tight. “I knew you would come,” she croaked against Lia’s ribs. She grabbed Lia’s hand and dragged her toward the stairs. “I know how to get out. We have to go fast!”

Lia lurched after her sister, dragging Mateo’s dead weight. Her aura-sight combed over Aria’s trying to find the source of wrong around her, but her sister looked healthy, rested…

“I knew you’d come.” Aria bent to pull one of Mateo’s arms over her shoulder, foot tapping madly as Lia took the other. “Come on! Quickly now!” She started down the staircase, Lia hobbling along, Mateo too heavy as if Aria wasn’t holding any of his weight. There was a servant collapsed on the next landing and two guards splayed on the stairs below, their auras watery and thin.

More auras glowed to life in Lia’s aurasight as they descended, each bled to the last drops. The Warlord flickered into Lia’s aurasight in the same place outside the tower where Lia had seen her fall, gold flecks buzzing around her like flies on a corpse. And Tual….

Tual was there too. In the courtyard, his aura thick enough to be a lightning storm. It towered over him, dimming everything else and growing every moment. He was out in the courtyard where she’d left the Warlord, aura so large it burned away even the thought of anyone else out there.

He wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he moving?

“Which way, Aria?” Lia cried, stumbling down the last steps. She almost lost her grip on Mateo, his feet dragging down the steps after her.

Aria veered under the staircase into a shadowy niche. “You have to press those tiles—”

Lia dumped Mateo to the floor, and he fell like the bags of potatoes he was. She followed Aria’s directions with shaking hands. “There’s a passageway and a glass tunnel and some stairs and a way out past that—” Her voice came faster and faster as Tual’s aura flared bright as a fallen sun just outside the tower.

“How do you know?” Lia hopped back as the door swung open. “They showed you the way out? Why did you stay here?”

“Mateo did—he always made sure I was all right. But then I got sick. Tual healed me, I guess, but probably only because Mateo told him to.” Aria tried to lift Mateo, but he was too heavy, lying limp as if she hadn’t touched him at all. Lia dragged him through the door with a curse.

And then Tual moved. He streaked toward them, outside one moment, then bursting through the tower doors the next, his aura like a war, lives swirling around him in a terrible flare. Dropping Mateo, Lia ratcheted the door shut and pulled the Warlord’s sword to smash the latch. She sheathed the sword, grabbed Aria’s hand, and ran into the tunnel.

“Wait, what about Mateo!” Aria dug in her heels, skittering along after her like an auroshe getting its first taste of a halter. “We need Mateo.”

There’s a passage, he’d tried to say before collapsing. And Aria’s little voice crowded in right after the thought: Mateo made sure I was all right. And Anwei’s: We need him as bait.

Maybe it’s not what you think, Knox had said.

Lia kept running. She needed Aria more than she needed Mateo, no matter if he was the boy she’d come to know in Chaol or something much darker. Aria’s voice rose to a feral scream that echoed off the low tunnel ceiling as she fought Lia’s grip, her fingernails digging into Lia’s wrist. “We can’t leave him there!” she screamed.

“We’re out of time, Aria!” Lia cried. “Mateo is too heavy to carry. Tual will catch us if we try to bring him.” She looked one last time at his still form on the ground before the passage turned, a pang of regret and hope like a seed planted deep inside her. But she didn’t stop to let it grow or wither or burn. She dragged Aria around the corner, shivering when all the auras above her suddenly winked out.

Solemn statues and columns stood sentinel along the passageway, and Aria tried to cling to every one as they passed, crying for Mateo as if she’d forgotten what waited above if they didn’t escape. It wasn’t until Lia’s boots hit glass that she heard Tual’s voice.

“Lia Seystone.” It hissed out from the passage behind her.

Aria tried to stop, but Lia dragged her into the glass passage, her sister’s bare feet sliding frantically across the slick floor.

The terrible aura appeared in the corridor in a fury of fire and light. Mateo’s was there too, guttering like a dying candle in Tual’s arms. “Please. Don’t go this way, Lia.” Tual’s voice was terribly calm. “You’ll die.”

Aria’s fingers were digging straight to Lia’s bones, though Aria herself seemed to flicker and twist like she were made of smoke. “This is where I got sick. I was okay one second, and the next…” Aria began shivering. “Lia, it can’t happen again. It can’t happen to you. You can’t go this way. Not without Mateo.” Her voice echoed up and down the tube, glimmers of moonlight all around them.

They’d made it halfway across, the rocks of the island dark, and little glimmers of beasts in the water gaping toward her. Lia’s muscles cried out even as Calsta fed them gold, giving her the strength to keep going. But Aria was shaking so hard she couldn’t walk, jerking to one side and then the other as if she meant to knock Lia over. “We’re almost to where it happened. Please stop, Lia!”

“You said it was a way out just a few minutes ago!”

“That was when we had Mateo to help us! Please, Lia, we need him. I can’t leave him here!”

“A sky-cursed shapeshifter is holding Mateo, Aria! And if he could get you out, he would have done it the first day you got here.” But Aria had collapsed, curling into a ball of shakes and muttering whispers. Lia fell to her knees next to her sister, trying to pick her up, trying not to think of her mother, skin of paper and thread. Of the burned remnants of their home on the Water Cay. And the terrible note. Your sister misses you. “Aria?” she cried, but Aria was wrong. Everything about this was wrong. Tual had promised to destroy her and everyone she loved if she went against him. And he didn’t seem like a man who would go back on his word. “Aria, what is the matter?”

They were almost to the end of the tunnel, the opening a gaping black mouth.

“If you don’t value your own life, at least let your sister live.” Tual’s voice crept across the glass toward her like frost.

Lia pulled Aria into her lap, heart beating like a battering ram as she hugged her close. Then she set her sister behind her, stood, and drew the Warlord’s sword.

The sword wasn’t enough. Not to face Tual Montanne. But if Tual had wanted Lia dead, he would have reached a fist right into her chest and taken every bit of her the way he had everyone else on the island.

When Tual stepped into the glass tunnel, it wasn’t just his aura that had swollen too large. His body hardly fit, too big and too thin all at once, his head ducked over his son in his arms like a mantis with a meal in its clutches. When his head cocked toward her, Lia’s whole body shuddered over the curve of Tual’s nose and the beady black bleeding into the white of his eyes, none of him quite human. Mateo drooped in his father’s claws, the ridiculous flowered jacket he was wearing hanging limp as wet butterfly wings.

Horror skittered through Lia even as her anger tried to fight it, and she found herself falling back a step. But then Tual held Mateo out like an offering, concern creasing his lined forehead. “What have you done to my son?”

“What have you done to my sister?” Lia croaked.

Tual’s auraflare sparked like a campfire’s abrupt snap, burning logs poised to crack and fall. Another step toward her, his mouth growing wide as he spoke, teeth poking out in jagged lines like an auroshe. “We are your family now, Lia.”

“What did you do to her?” Lia repeated, stepping between him and Aria’s huddled form. At least with Tual, she wasn’t frozen. With Tual, she had a voice. “How do I fix it?”

“Come back upstairs with us, and I’ll help her.” He slid forward another step, his movements oddly jerky and skittering as if no part of him left was human at all. “Unless you want to stay here, trapped in this tomb.” Mateo twitched in his arms.

Lia could feel her sister’s aura flickering like a heartbeat behind her, like nothing she’d ever seen. Tual could have drained her and Aria both, could have taken Mateo to his pots and jars and fixed him rather than standing here talking. “Are you going to let me go, or are you going to kill me, Tual?”

“No one wants you to die.” His voice lolled like a lullaby. “I can’t make you stay. You’d never forgive Mateo. All I want is for you to love him so he can live.”

“I know what you did with your own bond. What you already did to Mateo,” Lia snarled.

“I won’t force you to stay.” Darkness slipped across his features, leaving only pinpoints of light where his eyes were. “But I’m not above providing incentive. Your sister will die if you take her away from me now.”

Lia didn’t want to break her gaze from Tual to check on Aria behind her. She held the sword up—it could hurt him. Distract him, at the very least. That much she knew from their fight in the tomb. She eased sideways an inch, gauging the distance between them.

Mateo’s eyes snapped open. “Run, Lia!”

Run? In the split second before Tual moved, Lia felt Mateo’s already guttering aura dim, and something in the glass around her seemed to contract, taking the air from Lia’s lungs. She sheathed the sword, lunging toward Aria to scoop her up, only to stumble when the tube began to shift under her feet.

Hairline cracks spidered across the glass tunnel’s floor.

“Run!” Mateo croaked. “Get to the other side!”

Lia lunged for Aria again, but Aria’s tightly curled form guttered out like a candle’s last gasp. Dropping to her knees, Lia pressed her hands to the glass, trying to find the hole Aria had fallen into. She had been right there. Where was she? Water welled like blood in the tunnel’s cracks, spreading out from where Aria had been huddled, drops snaking down the walls.

A huge fissure splintered through the thick glass between Lia’s feet, and the tunnel groaned, dipping at the center so Lia began to slide backward. Water sloshed around her ankles, and everything was so dark—

“Calsta above! Run!” Mateo screamed.

Lia ran.

She was up to her knees in water and then to her waist. The end of the tunnel gaped, the darkness calling all the names of the gods. The water sucked at her clothes, pulling Lia back from the escape, her hands grasping across the stone. But the rock came away in her hands, and suddenly Lia was underwater surrounded by shards of thick glass, the current sucking her down into the dark depths of the lake.

Water pressed in on all sides around Anwei, twisting and turning her in the wake of the explosion until she couldn’t tell which way was up. She clutched the sword, refusing to let it pull her one way or another, her fingers wrapped around it numb. The water churned, and something large whooshed by. The snake was angry. Disoriented, Anwei stabbed the blade toward it and found flesh.

The creature writhed, wrenching the sword from her hands.

Lungs burning, and with one last, desperate kick, Anwei’s face broke the surface, and she gasped down a breath of stale, rotten air. The water pushed her this way and that, the current from the snake’s frantic movements seizing Anwei like a leaf caught in a stream. Blood ran like a river through the pool, stray hunks of flesh and scales knocking into Anwei as the water roiled around her.

The creature reared up out of the water over her, milky eyes pink with blood, black tongue flicking out from its mouth. Despite the sickly black holes in the side of its throat from the salpowder, it wound up, ready to strike.

Anwei screamed up at the snake, swallowing down her regrets, her anger, everything she had because she wouldn’t bow.

Which was when the snake began to shrink. The scales on the end of its blunt nose twisted up into the nostrils, it’s wide eye ridges and hooked jaws folding in on themselves like a hinge. Elsparn were massing around the snake, latching on to the bits of flesh and blood rifting through the water, swirling around Anwei’s legs. One of them nipped at her, as if the elsparn salve had washed away. It probably had.

The snake was shrinking faster and faster now, but Anwei was occupied with kicking away from the swarm of elsparn. The creatures crowded under her as she tried to float on her back and stroke out of the cave.

Teeth found her leg, then her right foot, then her shoulder, little bites that tore through her. She kept swimming as something dark and wrong unfolded at the back of her mind, like a rot of her own to match Knox’s. It was muddy, like a boil swollen hot and large in her mind, taking up space she didn’t want to give.

You left him to die—that awful voice had said it, but it wasn’t true. You were the only thing holding him together.

Her stomach roiled at the thought, worse than the elsparn gnawing at her fingers, her elbow, her back. I only wanted to leave. I didn’t want to hurt him. Did I hurt him?

Did I do what the nameless god said? Did I kill Knox? A bite tore into her side and she cried out, wondering if this was some kind of gods-conjured punishment. Death one bite at a time for the girl who wouldn’t do what they wanted. Even if it meant they didn’t get what they wanted either: Tual would live.

Her head hit something in the water, and Anwei rolled out of her frantic stroke. Noa’s ugly little ship? Hands grabbed hold of her, hoisting her onto the deck. They peeled the slimy bodies back, voices shouting for bandages. The deck was hard against her back, and another set of hands softly pulled her head up into a lap, a voice she didn’t quite recognize filtering in through her ears as if they’d been clogged with water. Bandages were pressed to her wounds, and feet pounded across the deck.

Overhead, a sea of stars came into view. Anwei breathed out in one gush. She wasn’t going to die alone in a cave, then.

Noa’s face popped into her vision, the dancer’s eyebrows knotted. “I know you must be in pain right now….” She swallowed, hands reaching for her, then pulling back. Anwei shifted, wondering who was holding her so softly, tying bandage after bandage. “But we need you.”

“It’s worse than needing.” That voice again. The one that wasn’t Lia or Noa, not any of the Trib. It wasn’t Knox. She inhaled, searching for clues, but only air came inside. “Get up, girl,” the voice said.

Anwei sat up very slowly, the feel of blood slick against her skin. An old woman was sitting next to her, chin-length gray hair wet with water and completely loose. Not a single braid or twist or tail to say what she was. Her eyes were shadowed, and what looked like an old scar flowered from the corner of her mouth and down her neck.

There was something terrible inside this woman. Anwei could feel it. Something she recognized, like the beat of a heart she’d listened to a thousand times.

“Where’s Altahn?” she said very carefully, not looking away from the woman.

“Here, Anwei. Galerey’s all right too.” His voice came from behind her.

“Where’s Knox?” she breathed, the nameless god’s words echoing through her mind.

The old woman’s chin dipped, and she looked behind Anwei.

Skin crawling, Anwei followed her gaze.

Knox was lying on the deck.

No, not Knox.

A smile that was not his own twisted Knox’s lips, and there was nothing of him in his black eyes. “I knew you’d come back for him,” he croaked in his not-voice, Willow peeking out through all the cracks.

His eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed on the deck.

“Gods and monsters—” Anwei crawled toward him, unable to go any faster, the feel of a sword in her hand where her medicine bag should have been. There was blood everywhere, his tunic soaked with it. “I need—Noa, Altahn, my things. Where are they?”

“I’ll get your trunk.” Noa ran, the others a blur as the forest went by, the oars moving fast.

“You want to save him.” It was almost a question, the old woman’s voice croaking out like dust from a grave. “I suppose we’ll see how long that lasts.”

Anwei ignored her, pulling back Knox’s tunic to find the wound open, his insides muddled. Her hands began to shake as she stared down at the awful wound, Noa dragging the last of the herbs to sit next to her. “I need…” She faltered, her nose, her smell, her magic an empty corpse inside her.

“What do you need? I’ll help you find it.” Noa tipped the trunk over onto the deck, spilling the packets inside, useless every one. She couldn’t discern one from the next, except for the one from Paran’s shop, marked so everyone would know to stay away. Sleeping Death.

Anwei’s hands dug into her braids. “I don’t… I don’t know. I can’t…” She shut her eyes, speaking to the voice in her head. Please. Whatever you are. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this.

And then, like a solidifying sheet of glass, she felt a presence in her head, a little stronger than it had been before, as if being acknowledged somehow solidified its existence. But it said only one word: No.

It was a voice Anwei knew. A voice she hated that she knew, disgusted that for so many years, she’d mixed her own thoughts up with those of a god.

Anwei groped for Knox’s buttons, then let go, not sure what she should do. Before, in the tomb, she’d only touched him, willing the parts that had been severed to grow back together. Don’t you gods have some kind of plan that involves both me and Knox? Help me fix him, or—

Threats were exactly what I expected next, Anwei Ruezi.

A bitter shock ran through Anwei at the sound of her name connected to that other name. The one she’d shed so many years ago as if escaping it would mean she could escape the clutching memories of those who’d given it to her. She’d been nothing but Anwei since the day she stepped into that leaky rowboat under a lightning-cast storm, like a goddess. Calsta. Yaru. Anwei. They didn’t need family names. Just one was enough to make their enemies shake.

Knox twisted under her hands, and something sparked in her mind. Part of him was still there, a thread caught on an exposed nail. “You’re not helping him,” the ghost whispered through his lips. “Why aren’t you helping him? You love him.”

“You’re still connected to him. Is that why—” The old woman’s voice vibrated like thunder, like earthquakes, like a storm—

“Anwei, please.” Hands pressed into Anwei’s shoulders, Noa’s face blurring in Anwei’s vision as she bent beside her. “What’s wrong? Something is terribly—”

Names have power, Anwei. I know yours. I know who and what you are. The nameless god grew louder with each word, blocking everything else out. It solidified inside Anwei, like the rock and roots he was made of, strong as pain or hunger or hate, as if her sudden acknowledgment of his presence had built him into something tangible inside her. Names tell you the shape of things. That’s why the first Warlord worked so hard to take mine. Without my name I was a formless memory she could twist into anything she wanted. A worse evil than what people had seen or experienced with their own bodies. The nameless power, the nameless evil, the nameless one, so monstrous, words fail to quantify—

“Shut up!” Anwei’s fingers were digging into her temples, and the boat was swinging side to side, making her sick, and Knox wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t breathing. “Skip the history lesson and help me fix this! I’ll do whatever you want. I know you can help me heal him, so do it. This is obviously not for me. It’s for Knox, your friend Calsta’s golden toy.”

The woman chuckled. “It’s too late. The god doesn’t even know it.”

I know exactly who this is for, Anwei. The nameless god’s voice was heavy, ropy, full of flowers and glass, the very depths of water and sharp treetops all at once, speaking only to her as if he hadn’t heard the old woman’s voice. All these years I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt. You used my power to right wrongs, to cure the sick, to stop a corrupt society from loving their things too much. But tonight you showed me it is out of pain, out of trauma, out of a need for revenge. Your brother is alive, not dead, and that knowledge has changed nothing inside you. You mean to kill him too.

He forgot me! Anwei screamed, not wanting to listen to the words. She hadn’t thought about killing him, not directly. But the truth of it burned deep in her heart. He didn’t love me. Just like everyone else! You’re the one who made me kill my family, the one who shook the whole earth and killed Altahn’s father!

The earth shook because you have no control—you used what I gave you to save Knox and brought down the whole world at the same time. Knox loves you. You would have been better off with his help tonight, but you chose to hurt him instead.

Anwei fell down next to Knox and tried to prop Knox up beside her like a banner because she was trying now. She hadn’t understood before, and fixing it was what she wanted now. I love Knox, too, but not because of you. Anwei felt hard planks against her back, the place the sword was supposed to be pinched between her shoulder blades. Knox’s arm flopped lifelessly onto her stomach because Noa was trying to move him. She couldn’t tell if the words were inside her or out, if she was speaking out loud or if it was something else entirely, only that the one thing she always knew she could rely on deep inside herself was gone.

Which left… what?

I don’t care who you love, Anwei Ruezi, Anwei the healer, Yaru the goddess, or whoever you think you are now. I care about who you actually are. Magic is power to heal or power to hurt. Power to build or power to destroy. Calsta’s strength on one side of a relationship too easily turns foul, which is why her Devoted abstain until they return Calsta’s oaths to her. There are exceptions only for those who come to the center from both sides of the magical sphere. For humans who have proved themselves to me and to Calsta time and time again, who we can trust to balance each other out. To bring their sacrifices together to represent all who they could serve. People who can listen to each other, trust each other, and see the world as a larger place as a result of who they are together. And tonight you chose yourself. You chose murder. You chose your own plan over the good of everyone else. You have shown me who you are.

Anwei twisted on the deck, Noa’s hands on her shoulders, the world a tumult she couldn’t hear, couldn’t smell, could only feel as if her head had been sucked into some new world, leaving her suspended between the reality she knew and this new one until the nameless god spat her back out. She fought, pulling as hard as she could despite the anchors he had inside her, weighing her down. Your system has worked out so very well in the past, hasn’t it! she snarled when he wouldn’t let her go. The shapeshifter wars and the five hundred years of Devoted murdering Basists are a wonderful example of how people with the power you can offer treat one another. My scars belong to you.

The presence hooked into her brain seemed to shift, a terrible sadness growing like a vine around her heart. Magic from two gods is great power. You can see clearly why there is a higher call, a higher accountability because of what you’re capable of.

I did not choose this, Anwei hissed.

I did not want to choose you either. The world is going to come apart, and we tried to stop it. The nameless god’s voice seemed to delve deeper inside her, judging every last humor from which she was made. Removing your power hurts me. It will hurt Calsta. It will hurt all in the Commonwealth who would like to breathe without fear, because without you and Knox bound together, Tual Montanne will rise. But with Knox dead and you untouched, it will be terrible.

Anwei tried to find words that would persuade him, that could stop him, to bring him to her side, but he wasn’t listening to words. He was inside her and had even less faith in her than she did. I helped create the bonds that were meant to elevate you humans and gods into something greater. In doing so, I opened the door for something foul, twisted, and monstrous. I tried to bring the orders together to stop shapeshifters from destroying all that was good and failed. I tried to stop the injustice being done to the Commonwealth and failed. I tried to stop Tual Montanne, but I failed.

His voice seemed to pry into her entire being, looking one last time. At last I have learned to be wary. You I can stop. Goodbye, Anwei.

And the world was silent, and dark, nothing but stars above her and Knox too still beside her.

Something reared up in her field of vision, blocking the pinpoints of light. “Your god is angry. He did not even see me here. Rude, after all our years together.” The woman’s husky laugh sent needlepoints down Anwei’s skin, every word twisted by an accent she’d never heard in all her travels. “He commands as if he has not already failed with you two. There is a chance, I suppose. If it weren’t possible to fix, I would have killed you already.”

Anwei looked down the length of the boat, suddenly wondering where this old crone had come from, where Noa and the others had gone. They were there, all four of them rowing. Even Noa, though Anwei had never seen her pick up an oar once in her entire life. The boat was moving fast down the tributary, all of them perfectly in sync with one another as if they couldn’t hear or see anything but the river before them, which had to be conquered. Her skin prickled, and she looked back toward the old woman, holding their minds like little parchwolf pups on a leash.

She sat up slowly, fitting the shape of the snake from the cave into this little woman’s body. A snake like the one carved into Tual’s tooth. Her hands clenched, missing the shapeshifter blade.

The woman stepped back, a littering of unused bandages around her feet. “Don’t embarrass yourself, Anwei. Do I look like that bratty little shapeshifter who’s barely learned to blow his own nose?”

Anwei cringed at the sound of her name, the nameless god’s awful accusations like a stone in her chest. “You can read my thoughts?”

“Many who have betrayed the oaths can. There’s quite a bit of variation, of course—it depends on our strengths pre-caprenum and that of our bondmate. Tual Montanne and I can both hear thoughts, and introduce new ones too, provided we have enough energy. Create triggers in someone’s mind so new memories come forward when old ones interfere. We can even change what people see right in front of their eyes.” Her head turned toward Altahn and the others at the oars. “Though I only nudge, these days. Little enough I don’t hurt anyone.”

The old woman tipped her chin up to look at the stars, light falling over her white cataract-dusted eyes, but Anwei could feel her attention like a vise closing around her. “No matter what that old god tells you, you’re already like me.” She sat down in front of Anwei and clasped her hands in her lap. “It hurts, I know. But there’s something different here, which is perhaps why he cannot see it.” Even as Anwei watched, the flowering scars at her mouth and down her neck—right where the salpowder had burned the snake—began to fade. “Tell me how you managed to put this boy in my sword without killing him all the way.” She nodded toward Knox, her eyes narrowing a hair. “Tell me how the girl who was already inside my sword still clings to life. They both live when it should be impossible. Tell me. Then maybe we’ll be able to help each other.”

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