“No.” He grimaces. “That’s not how they’re made, Talia. They don’t lie, they don’t think. They don’t read minds and then manipulate what they learn to greatest effect. Divhs are summoned, not pushed, right? Well, skrill are drawn to darkness. They see it and they reveal it—that’s all. We see what we’re meant to see.”
He’s still scanning the walls, moving around the room, apparently oblivious to how much it still smells like a slaughterhouse. “Do we? Think about what happened here, Fortiss. Daggar and his entire family were killed. His guards. His staff. Now we’re the ones being manipulated by the skrill—singled out specifically and manipulated, because of our connection to our Divhs.”
“But how is that even possible?” he complains, sounding genuinely aggrieved. “How can the glory of being connected to a Divh be a worthwhile target? There’s so few people that are connected to Divhs.”
“Today, yes. Five hundred years ago? The only people alive, certainly the only people attacking the skrill, were those affiliated with Divhs. Maybe that’s the only way they know how to connect with us now. The only reason why we succeeded in batting them back last night was because we caught them by surprise. They couldn’t manipulate us. Tonight might be a different story, depending on what Syril sees.”
“We’re blinded by the only thing that can save us,” he mutters, while I lean back against the wall of books.
“You’ve read Daggar’s accounts. How is it the skrill have gone so long without attacking?”
He waves that question away. “Because no one has been able to summon them until Rihad. And even then, because he’s no longer connected to them, they haven’t moved with any sort of speed. If we find the crown of wings, we can control them. I’m sure of it. And I’m beginning to think they want to be controlled, Talia. Just like the Divhs want to be banded, the skrill want to be allowed into this plane.”
He glances around. “There just has to be something here.”
“I mean…” I watch him a little helplessly as he moves around the room, opening drawers, sifting through parchment pages. I slant my own gaze to the far corner of the room where the blankets are stacked and head that way. Maybe there’s a crate beneath them, filled with more books—or even the crown of wings? Maybe that’s…
I stop in my tracks.
“Fortiss,” I croak, though the words die in my throat, barely loud enough to make a soft, gusting huff. I force my feet to lurch forward one step, then another. “Fortiss,” I try again, my eyespeeling so wide, I feel like they must take up my whole skull. “For?—”
“Light, Talia, what?”
I hear him turning, but I can’t hear anything else. The horror in front of me is so loud, so terrible, it consumes all my senses. My ears, eyes, mouth, nose, hands are weighted down with the sight of the hand that flops out underneath the red-soaked blankets stacked against the wall, the thinnest curl of a tail slipping out between the gnarled fingers.
It’s still moving.
“Blood and stone!” Fortiss rushes by me in a whoosh of air, so fast it almost feels like I’m falling backward. I see the blankets peel away, the den of fat snakes flopping and undulating—too gorged on the guts of their victims to do more than ooze out of Fortiss’s way. The two men’s faces that gradually emerge as the serpents depart are little more than gore-covered skulls, but there’s no doubt in my mind who they are. If Syril’s warnings weren’t still ringing in my mind, the fact that the snakes’ skins are now a luminescent orange would demonstrate their unholy link with the defenders of the Eighth House.
“Let’s go.”
Fortiss is in front of me again, yanking me away from the lolling snakes, pulling me around to face him. His voice is hard as granite. He shakes me, hard, and I come back to my senses.
“We’ve got togo, Talia. You’re right. There’s nothing else here, but they’ll be coming now. They’ll find us, kill us, and use us to fool the others, so we’ve got togo!”
“Go…” I finally manage, but any more words than that fail me. I let him drag me out of the room. I stumble a little until I can get my feet underneath me—then I match him stride for stride.
We race back through the Eighth House and out into the courtyard, and I’m more relieved than I expect that the horsesare still there. The sun has dropped behind the Meridians and shadows even now are lengthening across the open ground, which only spurs us on. We tighten the horses’ tack and swiftly mount up, then turn them toward the gates…
That are now shut tight, a broad bolt clamped in place across thick, unyielding metal doors.
We’re trapped.
Chapter 36
“It’s an illusion—it has to be!” I practically scream, but the horses balk as we approach the gates and shy away, leaving Fortiss and me no choice but to dismount and approach the gates on foot. We race right up to them, then slow, and extend our hands outward. Sure enough, the heavy metal gates won’t let us pass. When we reach out, we encounter smooth metal.
“It’s our eyes,” Fortiss realizes. “Our eyes won’t allow it.”
“Fine,” I snap. “Then we don’t use our eyes.”
I stride out from the gates a good dozen steps, turn and square my shoulders. “We’re going to have to run right through it. If we have enough momentum, and we don’t open our eyes, and we don’t run into any actual walls, it could work. Twenty strides should do it.”
“Are you serious?” Fortiss shakes his head, but he quickly joins me, and we turn and face the gate. He reaches out and grabs my hand and we lock our fingers tight. “What if we’re wrong?”
“Well, we should keep one arm in front of our faces, like this,” I tell him, demonstrating. “If we’re wrong, we’ll break ourmomentum without smashing our faces too much. Hopefully.” I grimace. “What happens if we open our eyes in the middle of the door?”
“Light, let’s not even think about what could happen then.” He draws in a deep breath and squeezes my hand. “Ready?” he asks, closing his eyes and turning his face forward again.
