She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)
She Who Rides the Storm: Chapter 30

Mateo stumbled back from the carving of the nameless god, an impossible thing no one had ever found intact in years. Something that wouldn’t matter when he was squashed flat by the ceiling sinking toward them. He stared up at Calsta’s mask, which was reflecting sunlight from… somewhere? That meant there was a way out of this room; he just had to find it.

Lia grabbed his arm, hauling him to the edge of the room even as Mateo pushed his mind into all the nooks and crannies of stone, finding little vents and passages for the light and air to filter through but nothing big enough for them to escape out of. Half of it he couldn’t see properly because it was so wrong, twisting inside his head. Not normal stone, but a tortured leftover, like a body that had been sewn together with another body and told to live. The ceiling, a good ten feet over their heads when they’d walked in, was now only about four feet away. But then Mateo felt something beneath them shift. The nameless god’s mouth opened, and something rose out of it, slow and poisonous like a snake.

He grabbed Lia’s hand, pulling her toward it. The thing rising from the floor was linked to something below; he could feel it. Another room, another… something. It snagged in his mind, just the way the trapdoor up in the antechamber had. Staying off the reliefs while running was impossible, and Mateo felt his heart crack as stone crunched under his boots. Lia was right with him, every bit of her clenched as if she meant to fight.

There wasn’t anything to fight.

The stone rising from the nameless god’s mouth was painted black, a little platform at the top stark white in the light blazing down from Calsta. Mateo climbed onto the platform, the ceiling lowering to press down on his head and shoulders. All of these traps, everything in this tomb, were meant to warn him away from something, which only served to beckon him on.

The pedestal jerked under him as if the nameless god himself were awakening.

“Mateo!” Lia screamed, her hands clawing at his legs.

But he had come here looking for answers, and he wasn’t going to leave without them. He reached out with his mind again, and he could feel the pressure plates engaging beneath him. The feel of something unfolding below, and then…

Lia hauled him off the platform and onto the ground. “No!” he cried. “There’s a place down underneath—it’s the burial chamber! He’s down there!”

Something swung by him, rushing past in a whistle of stone and metal, a horrible crash filling Mateo’s ears. He lay on the ground, cheek against the rocky fill, the smell of bone in his nose. When Lia finally tugged on his arm, he sat up to find two horizontal columns of stone slowly ratcheting back into their positions on opposite sides of the room. They’d crashed together right where he’d been standing on the platform, the gnarled spikes on the ends stained with old blood. But it wasn’t that old.

Mateo thought he knew what had happened to the two men who had fallen down here. But where had their bodies gone?

“Look,” Lia breathed, pointing to the black column.

Sitting the rest of the way up, Mateo stared at the ring of floor around the black column where the nameless god’s head and aura had been. The stone floor had segmented like a meat pie, dropping down to reveal a black hole.

The groans of rock lowering from above had stopped, and there was nothing to hear but the dark splash of waves coming from the pit.

Sounds began to come back, pleading sobs from the workers, Lia’s frenzied breaths, and the whoosh of brackish sea air streaming up from below. Mateo shakily stood, swearing when his head hit the ceiling, low enough that he had to crick his neck a little to one side.

“The burial chamber is down there,” Mateo whispered, the black maw calling to him. “I feel…” He looked around at Lia and the workers, shutting his mouth before he could spill out any more about the jagged edges of shapeshifter-hewn stone he could feel below. It was too dark to see anything down there, too dark for any human to know what they’d find. But Mateo knew.

There was a door. It was calling to him. The long-dead king? Or maybe it was caprenum beckoning him deeper.

“When the light was still shining…” He looked at Lia, flinching when he saw the dirt splashed across her scarf in the dribbles of light still filtering down from Calsta, blood oozing through the fabric over Lia’s nose. “I saw it. The burial chamber door is down there. Are you… all right?”

She twisted to look at the walls where the spiked columns had returned, her shoulders hunched. Then to the hole. “You almost died just now. You like this kind of work?”

The weight of what had just happened—almost being crushed, almost falling into the dark hole—hit Mateo. Lia’s hand was still firm on his arm. He reached out and pulled her closer into a hug. “Thank you for what you just did. If you hadn’t grabbed me—”

Her fist rammed into his stomach. Mateo’s knees wobbled, and he hunched forward, gasping for breath, just in time to catch her elbow snapping across his cheekbone. Suddenly he was on the ground, ancient dirt in his mouth and stone digging into his side.

And Lia just stood there over him. Glowering. “Do not touch me.”

Mateo stayed down, almost too surprised to feel the pain cracking out from his stomach and down his cheek. Almost. “I’m… sorry? I was just trying to say thank you.”

“Just say it, then, Mateo.” A flicker of embarrassment crossed her face as he gingerly stood up, and she looked away, pointing toward the pit. “You’re not going to try going down there right now, are you?”

“Lia, you just…” Mateo coughed, gagging a little at the pain in his stomach. But then he rolled over and made himself stand, not sure what to say. Lia was fun to talk to and nice to have behind him in a fight—or doing all the actual fighting in a fight—but when it came down to it, all either of them had ever wanted was to see the back of the other. Mateo dusted himself off and started toward the hole, trying to think of the nameless god’s face and aura that had been there instead of Lia being awkward just behind him. Excitement had filled him to the chin only moments ago, but Lia had managed to knock it out of him. It was enough to know the burial chamber was down there, but he had to tell his father before Van found out. They had to get in first.

That was it. That was all he wanted.

“I don’t mean to be ice in a cook fire, but would you mind terribly if we…?” Lia pointed to the door, which had opened again but was now partially obscured by the lowered ceiling. All the workers had already run back up the stairs, leaving them behind with the gaping hole.

“Yes, of course.” Mateo coughed again, mildly gratified when he managed to play off his undignified hunch around his stomach as a result of the low ceiling. She went first through the golden door, the slab of rock that had fallen down to lock them in pulled back into the wall once more. Bits of the mechanism, whatever it was, flickered in Mateo’s mind. He hadn’t seen it on the way in. He should have been looking.

But he’d been so excited about what they’d find, excited to show Lia, too. And using his magic meant risking episodes…

All the excuses poured through him, giving his thoughts a fiery, annoyed edge. Van wasn’t here, so episodes shouldn’t be a problem anyway. He’d used his aura when he’d looked into the rocks, and nothing had happened to him, so that proved his theory, didn’t it? Van was a shapeshifter who sucked the life out of him whenever he came here.

It wasn’t until Mateo got to the antechamber—Lia practically ran past him, making for the ladder—that he noticed the flurry happening around them.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked a worker in stumbling Eastern Forge. He understood more than he could speak.

The man shook his head, pushing past him. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Another worker waved, a helpful smile plastered across what was obviously fear underneath. “They’re clearing the stable. You and your lady had best go move your horses.”

Mateo’s insides went tight. They cleared the stable only when auroshes were coming. “Lia, stop!” He tipped up his chin, his stomach still hurting like the nameless god had pulled out his insides with one stone fist. She looked down from her spot halfway up the ladder, her scarf turning bright blue in the column of light. Blue spotted with blood. “You have to hide.”

Mateo swore as Lia darted past him into the maze of sheds that had been built for restoring and preserving artifacts from the tomb. He tried to run after her, his lungs tightening with every step, his limbs already starting to shake. No. Director Van wasn’t here! This shouldn’t be happening. An attack now wasn’t fair. Especially after Lia’s unprovoked fist to his stomach.

When he caught up to her, Lia was hiding behind the toolshed that bore burn marks. From the ghost attack, Mateo realized. It was the same shed Van had blocked Mateo from seeing inside the day he’d taken him down into the tomb and threatened him.

“I’m sure it’s just Roosters,” he gasped. “Come on. I’ll take you out the side gate, then double back for the horses.”

Lia didn’t respond as if she’d frozen there. Mateo peered around the corner of the shed to find a man tying a dappled auroshe in the stable. Little golden flecks erupted around him in a flurry that made Mateo swear inside his head. It was Ewan.

Bella and the mare Lia had ridden were shuffling at the extreme other end of the enclosure, whites showing around their eyes.

“He won’t see us. You don’t need to fight him like…” Mateo pitched his voice low, trying not to think of the Rooster Lia had left broken on his stable floor. “This one’s easy, Lia. He can’t see auras, so we’ll just sneak out. Come on.”

The auroshe gave a keening wail, throwing its head back toward the sky. Ewan swore, jerking the creature’s lead so it bowed before him. He thrust a hand against the auroshe’s forehead just under the horn with an air of great frustration, as if he’d done it a thousand times before.

Mateo squinted. That was what Lia had done to tame Rosie, what she’d had him do to keep Rosie from attacking him. The mare—all teeth and skeleton under a stretched hide—always seemed to smile at him when he went to check on her. Why would Ewan need to calm his own auroshe again?

“He…”

Mateo’s attention jerked back to Lia, her voice scraped thin.

“He took Vivi.”

“That’s Vivi? Your auroshe?” A burst of anger on Lia’s behalf flamed up in Mateo’s chest as he took in the creature, silver-dappled and fierce—a lion next to Rosie’s slightly rabid house cat. But causing a stir would only call attention to Lia. “Now’s not the time to fix it.” He prepared himself to stop her from barreling out toward Ewan, maybe with a shovel or a particularly sharp excavation brush.…

Lia put a hand to the blood-speckled scarf covering her mouth, shrinking against the shed wall. Wholly unlike the girl who had just pulled him from the brink of death with a war whoop.

“Lia?” he breathed. “Lia, what’s wrong?”

She was terrified. “He’s riding… how could he…”

The auroshe screamed again and lunged in Bella’s direction, but Ewan grabbed hold of the creature’s horn and forced his head down once again. Bending to put his cheek next to the auroshe’s, Ewan began murmuring softly to the monster, running a hand possessively down his neck. The auroshe began to shudder, his head dipping until his single horn was grounded, though his teeth were still bared. His long tongue flicked out to taste the man’s boots. Lia was shaking, just like her auroshe.

“Lia, please,” Mateo whispered, both exasperated and torn. Obviously, taking someone else’s auroshe was not done, but it wasn’t worth getting dragged back to the seclusion over. “At least we know where Vivi is—we’ll figure out what to do about that later. Right now we need to get out of here.”

Lia still didn’t move, the fingers pressing against her mouth turning white. Like she was frozen.

Mateo looked from her to the Devoted. Ewan was just standing there, jabbering at the foul auroshe as if he were a kitten that had done something especially charming. But something was wrong. Really wrong. Lia had attacked Mateo just because—

Because he’d touched her.

Oh, gods above and below. Mateo’s breath caught in his throat, everything his father had said rushing back to him in one poisonous wave. Father had said it as if it were a theory. A possibility Lia had run away from. But here she was, her feet merged with the ground as if she’d melted into a statue of a girl instead of the one who could stand her ground in front of a charging silenbahk, flip onto Mateo’s horse at the last second, then insult him as they ran away.

“I froze,” she’d said. Even Lia had tried to tell him.

Mateo slipped between her and the Devoted, bending down to block her view. “We’re going, Lia.”

She blinked once, her eyes focusing on him. He smiled, gesturing toward the path behind her. “This way.”

She let him herd her around the back of the shed, craning her neck to keep the Devoted in sight when they got to the other side. Just as she peered around the corner, Ewan looked up.

Lia flinched, and the Devoted’s eyes focused on her, her scarf a spot of blue in a sea of brown dirt.

She bolted.

Mateo ran after her. She went against the flow of people toward the compound’s back wall, darting between workers and upsetting a wheelbarrow full of dirt into the path. Mateo swore, cursing his heavy shoes when the toes caught in the dirt, tripping him.

In the split second he was looking down, Lia disappeared. Ewan was nowhere to be seen. Twisting around, Mateo could see only workers milling past him as if they couldn’t feel the frantic chase happening in their midst. Mateo closed his eyes, searching for her aura, the faded golden twinkle leading him to the worker barracks on the southern wall. He found Lia curled just inside one of the rooms, much the way he’d found her in the pantry the very first day in her father’s house.

“You’re the one who taught me that hiding is a bad idea. There’s a back way out of here.” He held out a hand to her. She stared at his palm without taking it, as if she’d forgotten what the gesture meant. “If there’s something you want me to do other than getting you out of here, then tell me.”

That, where nothing else had worked, jolted her from her state. “You?” She took his hand and let him pull her up from the ground. “What would you do, throw those ridiculous boots at him?”

Mateo gritted his teeth. “There’s the Lia I know. Come on.” He started toward the large tables where the artifacts were cleaned. He could feel Lia less than a step behind him, practically clinging to his coattails, her breathing rusty and sharp. Two archeologists piecing together a small statue of a silenbahk looked up as Mateo broke into a jog to get to the cover of dirt mounds around the refuse gate.

“Where is he?” Lia hissed.

“He saw you behind the shed, but I don’t think he came after us.” Mateo forced his aurasight to open again, the effort causing beads of sweat to blossom across his forehead. Ewan’s sickly aura appeared in his mind at the middle of the compound, near the tomb’s opening, as if he was casually trailing the path of Lia’s flight.

“Wait, is he following—”

Lia pulled Mateo to a stop when Vivi’s sickly caterwaul shot up through the air from the stable, the sound sending the horses into fits of frightened squeals that carried across the entire compound. Mateo could almost feel the air twisting around Lia, as if it could sense her getting ready to run again.

“Don’t.” Mateo carefully placed a hand on each of her shoulders, and her attention jerked away from the stable to meet his. “I’m sorry.” He pulled his hands away. “You don’t want me to touch you, so I won’t. But please let me help you?” She was so short, and where before she’d been a solid block, a wall, Lia had suddenly become insubstantial, as if she’d forgotten how to exist. “Listen to me. The side gate is just on the other side of this building. You get out of the compound. I’ll get the horses and meet you outside the gate. It’s going to be okay.”

Lia closed her eyes and shook her head, a frantic movement that was wholly unlike her. “You have no idea what you are talking about.”

“That’s usually true, unfortunately.” Even as Mateo led Lia to the large piles of dirt waiting to be carted outside, he could feel Ewan’s aura drifting past the barracks where Lia had hidden, then turn past the artifact sheds.

The dirt piles were, mercifully, deserted, though Mateo thought it less a mercy when he saw the heavy iron lock on the gate. A guard standing on the upper walkway stared down at him.

Ewan’s aura marched closer.

Bumps breaking out across his neck and arms, Mateo pulled his focus away from Ewan’s aura. Away from Lia grabbing hold of his hand, her fingers crushing his, away from the smell of dirt, the tickling hints of minerals registering in his mind, to the lock on the door.

“Where is he?” she hissed. “I can’t see anything.”

“Coming. He’s coming.” Mateo pushed his mind into the lock. Iron, as he’d thought, with brass decoration. He could feel the pins and tumblers inside, but he could also feel the energy streaming from him every second he tried to look at it, as if he’d sprung a leak. Lia let go of his hand, but he didn’t look up, forcing his mind to focus, to find every detail, every notch, every sliver of metal.

His knees wobbled.

I know I haven’t made the proper oaths. I would if I were able. But let me move the pins in this lock. Please. It isn’t for me.

He pulled on the lock, praying, willing it to open. But it didn’t move. “Lia?” he whispered. Her aurasparks were no longer beside him.

“What are you doing?” Ewan’s voice lanced through Mateo.

Mateo forced himself to turn. The Devoted stood there, made from leather and muscle. Three white scars marred the side of his head, his hair shaved to show them as if they were trophies. Mateo flinched as Ewan casually placed a hand on the hilt of his sword. The Warlord’s crest was tooled into his leather cuirass, two auroshes with their horns crossed.

Ewan himself smelled like auroshe, an awful mix of horse and dried blood.

“What are you doing inside the compound?” Mateo drew himself up. “I was under the impression that all Devoted were with Director Van in Chaol.”

“I was under the impression that all Commonwealth citizens answer to Calsta’s Devoted.” Ewan didn’t even bother to take on a mocking tone. “Why are you trying to break open that gate?”

Mateo cleared his throat. “Van will be angry when he finds out you came when he wasn’t here. He can be quite fussy about who walks into his dig. Especially if they leave great big bloodsucking beasts near his horse.”

Ewan’s hand tightened on his sword, but he didn’t draw it. Mateo breathed out a sigh of relief. Whatever assignment he’d been given, Ewan clearly wasn’t allowed free rein to deal death in the compound as he liked.

“Who are you?”

“Mateo Montanne.”

Ewan sniffed. “There was a girl with you.”

“My…” Mateo racked his brain. “My assistant?”

“Where is she now?”

“I’m not sure.” Mateo gave the lock an annoyed rattle, swearing at it, at the nameless god, at Calsta, and every other god he could remember. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t murder her when you’ve managed to track her down. She has admirable penmanship.”

Ewan stepped into Mateo’s space, grabbing the lapels of his coat and pulling him in so only his toes touched the ground. His breath snuffed on Mateo’s face like a bull ready to charge. “Where did she go, Mateo Montanne?”

Mateo wrenched back his head, hating that Lia was watching him dangle from Ewan’s fists like a broken doll. His mind flicked through all the elements present: dirt, clay, the brass buckles on Ewan’s armor, the steel of his sword. The old Basists could tear stone from the ground with their thoughts, strangle a man with his own necklace, turn a sword against its bearer. But Mateo only bled, his energy and life streaming out of him. “Why don’t you ask your goddess?” he finally choked out. “Or doesn’t she help you harass girls?”

Ewan threw him down, Mateo’s already weak knees buckling under him so he landed in the dirt. A flicker of movement above them on the wall registered at the corner of his mind, the guard set to watch over the gate slipping away from his post and the violence he didn’t want to witness.

The Devoted drew his sword and held the point at Mateo’s chin. “Refusing to help me is refusing to help the Warlord. I’m only going to ask you one more time—”

“I’m here on the Warlord’s behalf.” Mateo tipped up his chin, meeting Ewan’s eyes. “Or don’t you want us to find a cure to the wasting sickness?”

Ewan’s eyes narrowed.

“The Warlord is only digging this place up because of me and my father. We’re looking for ingredients that could stop your kind from dying their horrible, slow deaths.” Mateo tried to sound nonchalant, but the proper cadence was difficult to produce with a sword at his throat. “So I’d think twice before threatening me any more. The Warlord would be more upset about me disappearing than you.”

Ewan lowered the sword to rest on the ground beside Mateo. “You really believe some medicine is more important to the Warlord than my sword?”

“If my father wrote a letter asking the Warlord to burn those scars off your head, I think she’d listen. She’ll be here soon, so we can test it, if you like. You’re already going to be in trouble for losing her spiriter.”

“What do you know about spiriters?” When Ewan stepped back, a smile flickered across his face. It was a horrible, violent thing that was worse than the sword. He sheathed his weapon and crouched down next to Mateo. “You tell your ‘assistant’ that I know the way she walks. The way she runs. I like that she’s hiding. I’m not in a hurry to find her. Wherever she is… out there in a field of sugarcane. Running as fast as she can back toward Chaol. Huddled in a ditch. I’m coming for her. I want her to know that.”

Fear twisted in Mateo’s belly. “Is terrorizing archeologists something you normally do? And do you have an immediate superior I could notify of such erratic behavior?”

An impossibly loud crack shattered the air. Ewan and Mateo both twisted to look toward the sound, a narrow plume of black smoke shooting up into the air over the stable. Mateo’s eyes froze on the ashy trail blustering into the sky. A second explosion sounded, and then a third, coming from the general direction of the archeologist quarters.

Ewan started toward the smoke, hardly looking back at Mateo to say, “Tell Lia that Vivi sends his love. I only had to use a razor bit the first day.”

Mateo couldn’t understand the shape of the smoke pouring up into the sky, only glad it hadn’t come from the tomb or any of the artifact sheds. Hopefully, no one was hurt, but his father could fix burns, not destroyed artifacts. He picked himself up from the ground, anger building inside him at whoever was stupid enough to mix anything dangerous inside the compound, because it was easier than facing what had just happened. Being knocked to the ground. Threatened.

What Ewan had said about Lia. I know the way she walks.

Mateo dusted off his pants and closed his eyes to look for Lia’s aura, but everything inside his head wavered, his eyesight crackling with darkness at the edges. Leaning with one hand against the wall, Mateo took a long breath, willing his body to remain upright when it so very much wanted to collapse.

Lia exploded from between two piles of dirt, her scarf wet with tears and a shovel in her hand. Her eyes darted past Mateo to the catwalk above, to the piles of dirt surrounding them. “What… where…” She wiped a hand across her eyes.

Mateo couldn’t quite control his breathing. “He’s gone.”

Lia raised the shovel blade and lurched toward him. Mateo sagged against the wall, laughing at himself for pitying her—were all Devoted completely unbalanced? But she slammed the shovel’s blade against the lock, once, twice, until the metal crumpled and it fell to the ground with a dead thud.

Throwing down the shovel, Lia pushed open the gate. She grabbed his arm, her fingers pressing painfully into his skin as she dragged him through.

It took more than an hour to walk home, winding through the fields with Lia’s sharp eyes on the road. Once they got back to the cliff house, Lia didn’t even speak. She just went to the stable, saddled Tual’s horse, and mounted.

Mateo could hardly hold himself up. This happens every time I go to the dig. But Van wasn’t there today. “Wait.” He grabbed hold of the reins. “We need to talk about this,” he said, his words slurring as if an episode would come at any moment.

Lia shook her head, silent, as she had been since they left the compound.

“Ewan knew you were there. He knows you’re connected to me now.”

She looked up at the sky as if to ask for some kind of help. “So we have to put the bridal wreaths aside until he’s gone. It’s fine.” Reaching up to brush away a tear, Lia tried to kick the horse forward, but the mare was old and more interested in gumming Mateo’s arm than listening to a rider she didn’t know. “For my own safety, right? At least until your father tells the Warlord my father’s a traitor.”

Mateo shook his head. “That crackpot is hunting you, Lia.” Every word out of Ewan’s mouth had been caked in a noxious confidence, an improper delight in standing over another man and pressing a sword to his throat. He seemed to relish the thought of Lia huddling in a ditch praying that Calsta would slow his feet, and absolutely certain the goddess would do no such thing.

“My father wasn’t lying about being able to protect you. Maybe it would be safer for you to stay with us until the Warlord has come and gone.”

Lia’s head was already shaking. She pulled the reins out of his hand. “You just said Ewan will know to look here.”

“But he’s just a Devoted. If he tries to search our house or goes against my father, he’ll be creating huge political problems for himself, and he knows it. We can figure out the rest later.” He put out a hand to steady himself against the horse. “You’d be safer here even if Ewan saw you standing in the window.”

“I have to go.” She dug her heels into the horse’s side, urging her forward, and galloped out the gate.

Mateo staggered after her, propping himself up against a gatepost to watch her disappear into the dust hanging over the road to Chaol. Was that panic? A rejection? For some reason it felt like both.

Hoofbeats pounded the road behind him. Mateo turned to look, barely in time to catch the auroshe as it blazed past, Ewan on its back.

Mateo ran to the stable, but Bella was still at the dig. Lia had taken his father’s horse. Harlan and the other hostlers had beasts here, and Rosie was down on the beach.…

Harlan appeared in the stable door, two maids flanking him. “I need you to come inside, sir.” He kept his eyes down.

“No, I need a horse. I need—”

“I’m sorry, Master Montanne. Your father gave strict instructions that you stay here once you got back from the dig. He told us we were to stop you leaving, even if it gets messy.” The hostler swallowed, moving to block the door. “I don’t want to, but those were my orders. I’m sorry.”

Mateo’s gut clenched at the thought of two scrawny maids and a hostler being able to keep him from going after Ewan and Lia. Anger burst out inside of him, but anger had never done much for him. His hands were shaking, the world was shaking, and Lia was out there with no idea Ewan was right behind her. He had to be like Lia. No stern words, all action. “I’m taking one of the horses. You get out of my way, or I’ll run over the top of you.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” Harlan finally looked him in the eye, and all Mateo wanted to do was take his apologies and burn them. “But I’m not going to let that happen.”

Knox wiped the sweat from his forehead as he pulled the boat in after the last of the errands and hopped onto the dock to tie it. What would Anwei say if he told her he had a ghost in his head?

That the ghost wanted him to kill her?

That the connection between them had pushed the ghost away… but now Willow was getting too strong, even for that?

Noa had gone to the Firelily, leaving Altahn less talkative as he helped unload the last of the supplies—a small recurved bow and blunted arrows, the extra herbs, the goats, one of which kept butting Knox in the leg. Knox was supposed to be watching Altahn, but instead his feet took him to the stairs. To Anwei’s door. He opened it and there she was, her braids pulled up high on her head and sweat across her forehead as she crouched over the trivet.

Willow glimmered in his mind. Please, Knox. There was an undercurrent of a growl he’d never heard in her voice before, as if she was growing, transforming into something new and even less human. Find me.

“Success?” Anwei asked, looking up from the bubbling pot. She smiled when he nodded. “Good. Come in and sit down, I need to check you over. You’ve been improving, but if I can’t get you to rest—”

“I need to talk to you.” He hung back in the hallway, nodding to Altahn when he went into Knox’s room to prepare the rest of the supplies for their planned assault on the dig the next evening.

Anwei came to the door and held it open so he would come inside. He hesitated a moment before crossing the threshold. He could keep Willow down. He had to, if only for the next few days, until they’d gotten the shapeshifter. Then he’d be able to get Willow out of his head once and for all.

He stepped into the room, keeping a healthy distance between himself and his partner. The easiness that had always been between them seemed to have shattered, as if this job, the shapeshifter, all of it, had irreversibly destroyed the comfortable partnership that had asked so little of either of them.

Knowing more about Anwei made him like her more. Notice her more. Made Willow notice her even more than she already had.

And Anwei knowing more about Knox had made everything trickier, too. She wasn’t supposed to know anything about him at all. It was in his oaths.

Maybe that was why Calsta was pulling back. The oaths were there inside him, Calsta’s power was still there, waiting for him to take it. But maybe he hadn’t kept them well enough, and so the goddess herself was gone.

Anwei sighed, sinking onto the bed and pulling out her new medicine bag. “Come over here. That poison pushed all your humors out of balance, and if we’re going to go steal a sword and destroy a shapeshifter, I kind of need you to be healthy.”

“I haven’t heard from Lia.”

Hand pausing, Anwei sighed again, then opened her bag. “I know. I haven’t heard from Jecks, either. We’re going to have to make do with what we have. Going into the tomb with nothing but Shale’s less-than-helpful maps seems…”

“Like a death wish?”

“Sort of. But we can’t wait any longer. Every second we hold Altahn, especially with the Warlord arriving soon, is dangerous. We have to get the shapeshifter and the sword now.”

“I just can’t shake the feeling that Altahn’s extreme helpfulness will evaporate in the middle of the night and—”

Anwei stood abruptly. She reached out, her fingers brushing lightly across his neck. Knox froze, holding his breath. Her fingers stopped on the pulse jumping at the base of his throat, her eyes glazed as she started counting. Oblivious to the way her breath brushed his collarbone…

“Your pulse is too fast.” Her brow furrowed. She bent down and shoved her head against his chest. “Breathe in.”

“But you’re right, we can’t wait any longer.” He forced himself to keep talking, frantically looking at the ceiling, the door, the medicine bag, anything not to look down at Anwei’s cheek against his chest. There were so many walls inside his mind, it felt impossible to tell where one started and the other ended. The one between him and Calsta’s energy. The one between him and Willow. And the one that held the other two up, the wall between him and Anwei. “I’ve lived my whole life at the beck and call of a bloody sword.…” The words spilled out, not even making sense. “A ghost. Trying to follow my Devoted masters, who may or may not have been speaking for Calsta…”

Anwei’s hand squeezed his arm, pulling him closer. “Breathe, Knox.”

But he couldn’t, speaking quickly as if he could build the wall back up with words. “I need this to be over. The only decision I’ve made for myself in six years was to stay here. With you.”

Knox pressed his lips together. Calsta had told him to stay here. She’d hinted that Anwei was the answer to the sword and Willow and all of it, so he’d stayed. Set up in a thief’s house, followed her on jobs, watched her Basist glow.

He’d obeyed. But that wasn’t the real reason he’d spent the last year climbing walls and stealing high khonins’ ugly art. The reality of it burned in his chest, the truth he wasn’t allowed to acknowledge.

Inside him, Calsta’s power seemed to waver. He put a hand to the wall, his heart beating erratically. Anwei’s hands dropped to her sides, her expression almost frightened. “What’s going on, Knox? I can’t…” She dove for her medicine bag on the bed. “I can’t… I can’t smell it. You have to tell me where it hurts.”

“I’m fine.” He wasn’t. The glittering inside him guttered like a campfire in high wind.

Focus, Calsta hissed inside his head. The flicker of energy didn’t siphon away. But even the momentary lapse had left him feeling as if he’d skipped a stair.

Anwei pulled him toward her desk and sat him in the chair. She barely had time to say “Don’t move” before she ran from the room.

Knox grasped inside himself, filling himself with Calsta’s energy and holding it tight. His eyes pinched shut, and every muscle seemed to clench, as if he could hold the Sky Painter inside him. Please. You put me here with Anwei. I’ve devoted my life to you for the last six years. I’ve never so much as smelled a caramel cake or looked at a pair of fancy shoes. Help me.

I can’t right now, Knox. I can’t, or he’ll see.

What is that supposed to mean? Who will see?

Why do you think Willow has grown so strong inside you, Knox? He’s close. If she tells him even a little… I can’t say. Anything is too much.

Holding all that energy forced Knox’s aurasight out beyond the room—Altahn’s aura sat on Knox’s bed, Anwei’s was darting between jars downstairs, with Gulya’s aged aura following her worriedly, and the surrounding alleys and canals were littered with globe after globe of white.

Until his mind latched on to one globe that was not white.

It held a trace of gold in it. Lia.

And there was another one trailing after her. Ewan Hardcastle.

Lia was nearly to the apothecary gates, Ewan on the skybridge between islands less than a hundred paces behind.

Knox forced Calsta’s energy back to her side of the wall and stood. Lia was coming. Lia wasn’t supposed to come here. She wasn’t even supposed to know where to find Knox. But there she was, outside. With Ewan in tow.

Knox pushed through Anwei’s door and sprinted down the stairs, his legs wobbling with every step, though whether it was because Calsta was distant, because of what he’d said to Anwei, or because of poison, it was difficult to tell.

Bursting into the herb room, Knox found Anwei furiously grinding something in a stone bowl, her knuckles white. “You weren’t supposed to move!” She inhaled deep, her nose wrinkling. “I can’t smell anything on you—”

“Lia’s coming this way,” he interrupted.

Anwei’s fingers didn’t stop grinding, her face pale. “Sit down, Knox.”

“She’s with the other Devoted, Anwei! Doesn’t seem like she’s bringing a map.”

“What is going on?” Altahn asked from the top of the stairs.

“So it was a trap.” Anwei’s fingers slowed. “Is that why everything is going all haywire inside you? I could hardly even read your pulse.” She dropped the mortar and pestle and grabbed her medicine bag. “Doesn’t matter. You sit down, I’ll take care of it.”

Willow perked up inside him. You need me for this. You needed me when you escaped the seclusion, and that was just Roosters. Knox tried to push the voice back, hating that she was right. He had used the sword to get out of the seclusion. But he didn’t want to ever again. He’d never wanted to use any sword. What Lia wanted might be something else entirely.

Knox followed Anwei to the other side of the table, not wanting to believe that Lia, his closest friend for so many years, his sister, had learned to lie.

He needed the sword. Knox couldn’t tell if the thought was his or Willow’s. “Where is it?” The words came out too quickly, and Anwei turned in surprise. “The sword. Where is my sword?”

She brought the stone bowl up to her nose to smell. “You drop this in a knuckle of boiled water and don’t move until you feel steady again.”

“I’m not sick.” He grabbed the bowl away from her. “Where is my sword, Anwei?”

She shouldered her medicine bag and streaked for the back door. “You think I can’t take on two powerless Devoted on my own?”

“Devoted are coming here?” Altahn asked, quite a bit louder than before. He rattled off a string of words in Trib that Knox didn’t understand.

“Watch your mouth,” Anwei hissed at Altahn before going to the door. “Where is Lia now?”

“Where is my sword?” The need for it itched and burned inside him. He couldn’t let Lia or Ewan in here. Either of them could destroy the whole place without a single spark of Calsta’s power. It was a righteous need. One that Calsta would approve of.

Was it Willow or he who thought that? Which was it?

Anwei’s hand caught his own and held it still, though he hadn’t realized he was groping for the sword in the first place. Suddenly he could feel the force of her inside his head, and the need for the sword dulled and then winked out. “You can’t have it, Knox,” she murmured. “Now sit.”

Knox breathed in, embracing his aurasight, and almost startled to find Lia hopping over the back wall into the courtyard. Ewan was following the canal walkway, steadily coming closer. “She’s in the courtyard.”

“Stay there.” Grabbing something from her bag, Anwei shouldered her way through the door without waiting to hear any more. Knox ran after her but stopped himself short when he could see properly outside.

Lia was sitting just inside the gates, her back against the stone wall. Some of her bright coppery curls had slipped free from the scarf over her face. Her long skirts were muddy at the hems, and she was curled over her knees, hand covering her eyes as if she was crying.

“You must be Knox’s friend.” Anwei’s voice was about three times warmer than it should have been, breaking Knox from his momentary surprise. His partner was holding the little envelope of who-knew-what behind her back.

“Get down, Knox.” Lia hiccuped. “Hide!”

Knox could feel Ewan’s aura stalk near… as if he was chasing after Lia, not the second arm to an attack.

If Lia didn’t want Ewan to find her, why hadn’t she dragged him up a skybridge ladder and taken care of him? After years of fighting Lia, Knox knew she was capable of killing with her bare hands if needed, but instead she was here, folded in on herself as she had been the day Master Helan had come for her. Terrified.

What did Lia have to be terrified about?

Knox stepped past Anwei, putting a hand on his partner’s shoulder. Since seeing Lia a few days before, he’d hated the way this new life of hiding had turned his mind into a horrible pool where suspicion sat like stagnant water. But what else could Lia be doing here other than helping Ewan complete the hunt he’d failed a year ago?

“I tried to lose him in the tunnels. Had to leave my horse. But he left Vivi and ran after me.…” Lia’s whisper was a knife in his stomach.

Ewan’s aura gusted into the street fronting the apothecary, then stormed by and turned the corner to where the courtyard wall stood between the road and Knox, Anwei, and Lia. Knox slipped down, the top of Ewan’s head just visible over the wall.

The Devoted stopped outside. Hands knotted around her scarf, Lia watched Knox’s face as if she could somehow steal his aurasight and see where Ewan was. Anwei looked between them and slipped out through the outer gate.

Her voice came over the wall, cheery and all too helpful. “You’re looking for the apothecary? The entrance is just around that way. Oh, I can tell from your look… no, you don’t need to be so embarrassed. Come with me, we have all the herbs you could need for those downstairs problems of yours.…”

It was only a second before Ewan’s aura stormed the rest of the way down the street, then up a skybridge to the next island in the Coil’s little chain, disappearing from Knox’s aurasight. Anwei’s aura returned via the shop’s front door and walked through the herb room, and then Anwei herself appeared on the back step, an herb envelope clutched in her hand. “What in Calsta’s dirty bathwater is going on right now?” Her cheery tones had faded, her eyes sharp as she looked between Knox and Lia.

“Yeah, I’m confused too,” Altahn said over Anwei’s shoulder, looking Lia up and down. “Hi. I don’t think we’ve met before.”

“Get upstairs now, Altahn, unless you want to end up asleep for another week.” Anwei gestured menacingly with the envelope. The Trib put his hands up and retreated back into the room, but Knox could see his aura hovering just inside, well within earshot.

But Lia showing up here was too big for him to process, her crumpled form looking far too helpless for the girl who he knew could slit grown men’s throats.

“Why are you here, Lia?” His voice broke a little. “Please tell me something I’ll believe.”

Lia swallowed. “Where is Ewan now?”

“Gone.” Anwei walked over to crouch next to Knox. “And you’d better do as Knox said or you will be too.”

Lia let her hands sink away from her face, the whites of her eyes stained red from crying. She focused on him. “I ran away because they wanted me to have a child, Knox. Master Helan always seemed a little unhappy about it all, but he never stood up for me. And Ewan was the one the Warlord wanted. I went to the dig like you asked, and Ewan caught me out in the open.…”

It felt as if all of Knox’s muscles had gone soft, leaving him to sag to the ground. He turned and sat next to her, back against the wall. “They asked you to break your oaths?”

Lia’s hands covered her face again. “Ewan knew, and it was killing his aura. My touching him was enough to make him lose it entirely, and I did it so he wouldn’t see you up on the wall.”

“That’s why your aura is gone? Storm Rider, Lia, why didn’t you tell me before?”

“After our auras were gone, he… attacked me.” Lia’s words came out sharp; each of her breaths shuddered in and out. “I should be stronger than this. I am stronger than this.” Her eyes pinched closed. “Why does this hurt so much? Why couldn’t I have just killed him when I saw him at the dig? I’ve killed before.”

“Will someone please translate?” Anwei’s hands were still full of herbs.

Knox reached for Lia’s hand. She let him take it, squeezing his fingers hard. Her palms were wet from tears. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Her breaths were coming too fast, almost like hiccups. “Seeing him shouldn’t matter. I got away. But then I saw him following me, and he’s hurting Vivi, and he told Mateo he was going to hunt me down, and—”

“Lia, calm down.” Knox moved closer, kneeling in front of her.

Lia contracted forward, one of her hands digging into her chest. “I can’t.”

Knox twisted toward Anwei to plead for help, but she was already barking at Altahn to do something, running after him as if the nameless god himself were in her shadow. Lia’s fingernails were digging into Knox’s hand, pulling him closer.

“Lia, listen to me. Ewan didn’t see you come in here. Even if he tried to hurt you, I would… you could…” The sentences were hard to form, images of Ewan tearing off Lia’s veil stuck in Knox’s brain. His sister, offered to a man as if she were some kind of bargaining chip to keep Devoted alive.

“I can’t…” She tried to gulp down a breath of air. “I couldn’t.” Another gasp. “That day…” Gasp. “I just stood there.…” Gasp. “And he was hurting me.…” Gasp. “Aria surprised him.…”

And then Anwei was pushing Knox aside, holding one of the soft leather bags from the apothecary up to Lia’s mouth. “Hold it over your mouth and nose.” Her voice was calm, soft, but brooked no argument. “Just breathe into the bag. Take it slow. Breathe from your stomach instead of your chest. Six deep breaths into the bag, okay? I’ll count.”

Knox felt as if he was hovering at the edge of something extremely important but couldn’t figure out how to make himself useful, so he just held Lia’s hand. Anwei was so calm and convincing, looking right into Lia’s eyes as she counted out breaths.

“All right. Now take the bag away. Purse your lips and breathe in. From your stomach. Slow.” Anwei took Lia’s other hand and placed it over Lia’s stomach. “Feel it go up and down with every breath.”

Lia’s eyes closed and she breathed, air flowing into her slowly and then out again. When she finally opened her eyes, her breaths had slowed. Knox waited for Anwei to say something Anwei-ish, like how Lia looked nice in that color of blue. Instead she met Lia’s eyes straight on. “Whatever that boy did, it wasn’t your fault. Not being able to fight wasn’t your fault. You aren’t to blame. Ewan is the one who has something wrong with him, not you.”

“But I got away.” Lia’s face crumpled, and Anwei folded her arms around her, pulling her close as she cried. “I could fight him now. But… I can’t. Why can’t I?”

Watching Anwei prop up Lia despite the fact they’d never met before warmed Knox’s chest. He still remembered the feeling of her hand on his shoulder as she helped him to sit up in the street a year ago. We can try burying you, if you’re game.

When Lia’s tears had stopped, Anwei settled in next to her against the wall. “Even if it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, it was still bad.” She took Lia’s other hand, so the three of them were linked in a row. “You can’t compare what did happen to what could have happened. What you should or shouldn’t feel. Your feelings are your feelings, and that’s all there is to it.”

Lia’s hand tightened around Knox’s again, but she didn’t say anything for a minute. When she finally did, the words were still wet, squeezed so much smaller than he’d ever seen from her. “You’re Knox’s partner. He told me about you.”

Anwei smiled, but it wasn’t her carefree, happy smile. Despite what she was doing for Lia, it was makeup, a mask, a lie. Knox caught her eye and nodded. She blinked and reset her shoulders, as if that nod had been enough to make her open the door.

Anwei lived in a world of open doors, but most of them went only one way—she pranced through other people’s lives but didn’t allow them to follow her back to her life. Her space. Her heart. But in that moment he could see her cracking it open a little just because he’d asked her to. Because somehow Knox was on the same side of the door as Anwei. After a year of pretending they were separate, suddenly he could see just how ridiculous a fantasy it was.

This time Anwei’s smile was much smaller, but the hint of it was real, not a mask. “Yes. I’m Anwei. We met the other day when you came in with that aukincer. You’re Lia?”

Lia nodded. “I grew up with Knox at the seclusion.”

“But you left. And you’re going to map the dig for us?”

Lia sat up from the wall, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I went to the excavation compound today. I can draw it out right now if you let me come inside.”

Anwei barely glanced at Knox before standing, offering her hand to help Lia up from the ground. She kept her head down as she led Lia toward the workroom. But once they were inside, a sheet of vellum with ink and a quill before Lia on the table, Lia did not begin to draw. She looked at Anwei instead, her eyes focused hard. “What are you doing for Knox? It has to be you who is hiding him.”

Anwei shrugged. “He’s been lucky. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

Lia’s eyes narrowed a fraction, and she glanced at him from between swollen lids. Knox shrugged the way Anwei had, not sure what there was to say. The moment Lia recovered her aurasight, she’d be able to see for herself. Or… maybe she wouldn’t. Because if Anwei was hiding his aura, perhaps he was hiding hers as well.

“You aren’t counting on him staying lucky.” Lia’s voice was too steady and calm. She’d always been good at hiding behind whatever it was she was supposed to be doing. “You’re leaving here once whatever you’re doing at the dig is done, and Knox said you’d be able to bring me and my family with you.”

“Did he?” Anwei glanced at Knox, and he nodded.

“She’s family, Anwei.”

Altahn settled at the other end of the table, and Knox could feel Anwei’s fingers tensing, one hand twitching toward her bag. It was difficult to know what Altahn had gleaned about them since joining the household or what he’d take back to Shale once they set him free.

Anwei didn’t open her bag to threaten Altahn away, allowing him to stay at the table as Lia started talking again. “I’ll draw you a map, but I need a promise, an oath even, that when you leave, we’ll be with you.” She toyed with the vial of ink. “You’re getting something valuable from that dig. Getting paid for it?” She looked from Knox to Anwei to Altahn. Knox tipped his chair back and laced his fingers across his stomach. Since when had Lia become a bargainer? “You’re going to take the money and leave the country, go where Knox will be safe from the Devoted, and you…” She cocked her head at Anwei, narrowing her eyes. “I wish I knew why you want to leave. But you definitely do.”

Knox shivered a little. Even he hadn’t liked the idea of Lia reading his thoughts. He was glad she was out from under the veil for more than one reason.

“My mother is sick and will need a healer to take care of her.” Lia traced her eyes over Anwei’s Beildan braids. “My father might need to be drugged to get him out of this place, but I’m not above that. And my sister is young, not even thirteen. Over the border she might have a chance at a life that is free.”

Knox’s heart broke as Lia’s voice did over the word. Free. Calsta’s rules had always felt like a framework of strength to him. A code that kept him focused, that kept his feet on a path that was going to lead him to the places he wanted to go. Protected by a goddess who had the world’s best interests in mind, even if she was kind of mouthy in person. But he’d always known Lia didn’t see things the same way.

Anwei’s face remained unreadable, but he could feel her mind swirling.

Not just her mind. Swirls of purple darkened in her aura. They almost seemed to reach up toward the leaves, the petals, the stalks and flowers all around them. Anwei’s weapons of choice.

You’ll have to help Anwei. Calsta’s voice crackled in Knox’s head as he stared at the purple fronds of aurasparks flowering around her like tree branches. She still believes she’s broken, and if you cannot help her use her power, you will fail.

Fail? To get the sword? Knox went still, a thread of panic running through him at Calsta’s words. She’d said she couldn’t help, couldn’t tell him anything, so why was this so important even with the apparent risk that someone would hear? Fail to find the shapeshifter? he asked. Or do you mean he’ll find us first and grind us between his snake-carved teeth? But Calsta’s burning voice didn’t speak again. And what do you mean Anwei believes she’s broken?

Anwei’s chin tipped up as she looked into her garden of remedies and back to Lia. There were things in this unnatural forest that could encourage Lia to help them—poisons with antidotes only Anwei knew, herbs that caused pain or took away too much of it. The gamtooth serum they were preparing for the shapeshifter himself that would make anyone tell the truth. But just as the purple filaments swelled around Anwei, she looked at Knox the way she had when Lia had finished crying. It was a question.

Knox nodded, only enough for her to see. He didn’t believe Lia was going to trap them or use them. Only that she wanted to escape. That was all she’d ever wanted.

Altahn’s chair squeaked as he leaned on the table, watching all of them with his button-black eyes. “I think I can help with this, actually. If you want.”

Knox let his chair fall to the floor, turning to the Trib. Altahn’s excessive team play was beginning to grate on him. It wasn’t normal to volunteer to help the people who had kidnapped you.

Lia’s eyes flicked over to the Trib. “Who are you?”

“No one important. But I could get all of you to the border safely. Trib trails will get you through firekey breeding land near the border. They don’t watch things quite as closely up that far north because the lizards take care of most threats, and Trib don’t cross lines they’ve promised not to. You haven’t promised, though.”

Anwei pushed one of her braids back behind her ear. Knox could feel caution seething through her, reaching out to meet his own. “That’s a very generous offer, Altahn. Though I doubt your father would feel inclined to participate in a plan that involves helping us after we kidnapped you and held you here against your will.”

“Is that what you’re doing? I thought he tried to place me here at the beginning, when we first started talking about the job.”

Knox’s stomach twisted. Anwei hadn’t mentioned that. But it would change a few things so they made sense. What if Altahn had a way to communicate that they didn’t know about? What if everything they’d done would end in a prison cell under the drum tower, Ewan standing over them with Willow’s sword in his hand?

“You know,” Knox stood, “I think it’s getting a little crowded down here. It’s way past your bedtime anyway, Altahn.”

“It’s midafternoon. And Father only wants the sword, so if I can help get it…”

But Knox herded him toward the stairs, and Altahn argued only for as long as it took to get him to the first step, before compliantly walking up to Knox’s room. From the top of the stairway, Knox caught the end of Anwei and Lia’s conversation, barely loud enough for him to hear.

“You help us, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get your family out of here,” Anwei was saying. “You have my word.”

“When?” Lia asked.

“Get them as far as Gretis by the time Jaxom’s at his apex tomorrow night. We’ll all leave together. Now start drawing.”

Sᴇarch the FindNovel.net website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.