“Until what?” I say.
“Until the battle in Briarlock. Nora was dying, and I was just . . . I was desperate.” She looks ahead, trudging through the dense foliage. “Even then, I wasn’t sure it was real. I thought maybe it was something else. The scravers, or Tycho, or even the king himself.”
“What convinced you?” I say, and I’m genuinely curious.
Her eyes narrow ruefully. “Verin.” She frowns. “She kept hurting me in the arena.”
“And you’d heal yourself,” I say, figuring it out.
“Yes.” She frowns. “But I never did anything else! I neverwantedto do anything else. I knew how much you hated magic, Alek. And sometimes you can be so . . . prickly.”
“Prickly!”
Callyn gives me a look. “You know you’re prickly.”
“Callous, I’ll grant,” I say, musing. “Impatient.” My boot slips a little, finding a rock under the branches, and I swear. “Arrogant, perhaps—” “And you don’t see how all of this qualifies you asprickly?”
That almost makes me smile. I missed her company, and I hate it. “Very well.”
My boot finds another slick rock, and the terrain suddenly takes all our focus. We huff our way up the side of the mountain until sweat slicks the inside of my clothes and I finally abandon my jacket so I can turn my sleeves back.
When Callyn glances over, she does a double take. Her eyes linger. Not long, just for a heartbeat of time, but it’s enough.
At first, my heart sparks with intrigue, and I almost smile.
But then I remember everything else between us, and the smile slips off my face. She’s turned her attention back to the mountainside anyway.
“Do you really think they might have information on the Truthbringers?” she eventually says.
“I have no idea,” I say. “But it’s possible. Scravers have a long history with the royal families of Syhl Shallow.”
Callyn snaps her head around to look at me. “They do? I didn’t know that.”
I nod, then gesture to the pendant at her neck, which is mostly hidden by her tunic and breastplate, aside from the thin cord. “Why do you think I know about the Iishellasan steel?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“They were once treaty bound to stay on the other side of the Frozen River,” I say. “At first, magesmiths stayed with them, but they couldn’t withstand the cold, so they tried to settle in Syhl Shallow. The old queen wouldn’t let them, so they migrated into Emberfall.” I pause. “Where they clearly wreaked havoc.”
From somewhere high above, Igaa’s voice calls back to us silently.—The king of Emberfall ordered their destruction. Few survived.
Callyn turns to look at me with wide eyes. “She can hear us?” she whispers.
— Yes, magesmith. I can.
I look up and around. The scraver is well above us, her purple wings mere shadows against the sky. She’s been flying lazy circles for over an hour, demonstrating the direction we’re to go, but never too far ahead that we lose track. The sun at her back creates an optical illusion, because I can’t quite judge her size or distance. If we didn’t know any better, she could be a hawk or a falcon, soaring far overhead. If we were traveling on the road, I might glance up, but I likely wouldn’t think twice.
As soon as I have the thought, I wonder if that’s how they manage to travel across Syhl Shallow undetected. I wonder if that’s how they managed to attack the palace.
— We once gave the magesmiths our steel as a means to share our power,she says, and it’s so odd that her voice could be right beside me.—You wield it from within, while we draw it from the wind and sky. We were happy to share . . . for a time. But we learned that once the magic is in your blood, it cannot be taken away.
“Canyourmagic be taken away?” Callyn says.
This time, she doesn’t answer. It makes me wonder if it was really thecoldthe magesmiths couldn’t stand— or if the scravers drove them out to begin with. I know what kind of tragedy unfolded in Emberfall, and apparently that was only caused byone.
Then again, Igaa did just say that the king of Emberfall ordered their destruction. This all happened before I was born. Were the magesmiths reallyvictims, chased out of their homes again and again, constantly facing persecution . . . or were they the true monsters, stealing magic from the scravers and tormenting the citizens of two countries before they met their demise?
I inwardly scoff at the introspection. As far as I’m concerned, they’reallmonsters.
