“Careful there, careful,” Fortiss says, his orders almost cheerful. When I refocus on him, though, his face looks like it’s been set back into the cement shell I just freed him from. “The skrill are tied to you the way all your Divhs are.”
I lick my lips. “They’re…they’re not anymore. The Divhs. Connected to me.”
“Then the way all your Divhswere,” he nods, his tone still light. “I don’t remember anything after pulling the crown out of the dust. It was buried in cement, and I thought there was no way I’d be able to yank it out without damaging it or dislocating my shoulder, but it came up easily. Almost like it was waiting for me. Then—the next thing I knew, we were being hauled up into the sky by Rihad’s scorpion and flung back into battle.” He smiles at me, and pride radiates from him to fill the space between us. “Szonja caught us.”
“She did,” I say evenly while everything inside me cries out at the injustice of that. Szonja, beautiful Szonja, wasn’t the one who was supposed to catch us. Gent was supposed to catch us. Gent would always catch us—catch me. Catch Merritt.
But Gent isn’t here.
“What happened, Talia?” Fortiss prompts again.
I blow out an unsteady breath, trying to keep from screaming. “You pulled the crown out of the stone, and Zhang, um, reacted.”
“Zhang.”
“Rihad’s scorpion.” I want to meet Fortiss’s gaze, but my own sight falters. For a moment, I’m back in the land of dust and ash, standing beside the head of the great scorpion Divh, the ground scorched with his poison clearing away enough of the powder from his belly to ensure that he isn’t completely encased in cement, that he can still breathe. And not just breathe, I realize. His six enormous pairs of eyes seem to be able to focus far betterthan Gent’s. He trulyseesme. He understands who I am…or at least what I am. And he still tries to warn me.
I lick lips that have now gone as dry as the ash that surrounds us. “I don’t know why Zhang was there, but that has to be where he crashed after the Tournament of Gold. Rihad must’ve sent him over the border.”
“But why? Zhang was pretty damaged after that battle, and Rihad needed him to be strong, presumably. Why keep him from the Blessed Plane and risk him not recovering? Because he definitely wasn’t recovering where he was.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted him to guard the crown. Maybe he knew where it was, and he was content to leave it where it was until he needed it. But something happened after Zhang crashed down. He found the crown, but he could only guard it so well when he was trapped in cement.”
Fortiss blinks at me. “I freed him?” he asks, the blood draining out of his face. “By picking up the crown, I freed him?”
I offer him a weak smile. “Not exactly. He reacted strongly when you lifted it up, but it wasn’t relief or any sort of joy at being freed, though that should have been there. He was panic stricken. He said ‘no.’ He was trying to warn us about…something.”
“Well…that’s good, I guess.” Fortiss nods. “But?—”
I rush on before it he can interrupt again. “But then the skies opened up with another storm just as quick as the first one. I tried to run out, to get you to safety, but the rain struck me and turned the ash in my hair to stone.”
Fortiss visibly jerks, and his agitation contributes to my own unease. The snakes surrounding us start keening. “The crown did that? It called down the rain?”
“I don’tknow,Fortiss,” I answer, my voice too shrill, too panicked. “All I know is that the rain came and coated you and I ducked under Zhang to stay protected. By the time it ended andI could get out again, you still held the crown, but the rest of you was rooted in place, and you were covered in a layer of cement. I ran out. I didn’t know what else to do, so I took the crown from you and put it on.”
His eyes flash wide, anger and indignation warring with shock. “Youwhat?”
“I didn’t know what todo,” I repeat, rounding on him. This sets the snakes into a roiling frenzy, and I hear the distant scream of Divhs over the cacophony of the skrill’s cries. Of Divhs, but not of Gent. The arrowing loss of him adds more heat to my words. “You were totally covered in that ashy cement. You might as well have been a statue. Rihad’s Divh was now half-buried in another layer of the same blighted stone. I had to do something tofixthat. This stupid crown has been the stuff of legends for the last five hundred years, it seemed reasonable that it might—I don’t now—help. I didn’t know what else to do!”
Fortiss grimaces in what looks like actual pain, whether at my words or my tone, I don’t know, and I don’t care. I barrel on. “And it worked. Itworked, Fortiss. I saw visions of the Imperial delegation summoning the Divhs. The sky seemed to open up and this time not with more rain. Instead, the energy shifted, the Divhs showed up and rained fire on the skrill and everything was good but—but in the midst of that, I lost my connection to Gent—my other banded Divhs, too, I think.” I swallow. “I lost connection. Zhang roared again, and I wrenched the crown off. I swear I only had it on my head for a breath, but everything was different, suddenly. You’d fallen to the ground, but you were no longer covered in stone. Zhang shot straight up into the sky. and I…” I shake my head furiously, willing the tears not to come.
Fortiss is staring at me now. “Zhang picked us up,” he says, sounding strangled. “He flew us over the wall. Dropped us. Did he hurt you?”
“Some. His tail hit me in the back, hard—I don’t know if it was on purpose. That still hurts. But he saved us too. And hetriedto stop me from putting the crown on in the first place.” I search his gaze. “What have I done by doing that, Fortiss? How is the crown tied to the skrill? They’re of the blighted path! They are nothing but darkness.”
“And they apparently cleave to whoever claims the crown, if what’s happening here is any indication.” He gestures down with his chin at the crown still attached to me, snarled up in the folds of his cloak. “The dark shall draw the dark. Right now, that’s you. Rihad may have somehow channeled its power from afar at one point, but not anymore. Your proximity overrides his claim.”
“I only wore it for a fewmoments!” It’s all I can do not to shriek.
“And you carry it still, warrior Talia,” he says gently. “So why don’t you send your battle party home?”
I turn, barely enough to see over Fortiss’s shoulder, and I can’t think anymore. The crushing weight of losing Gent, losing all my Divhs, threatens to press down on me, flattening me like so many layers of cement.
Slowly, so slowly, I drop my left arm and cross it over my right, making an X over my heart. I lift my chin, and channeling my thoughts and my words into one single focus, I do as Fortiss asks.
“Retreat,” I say aloud to the wall of skrill. “Return. Reclaim your home in the Western Realms and be at peace.” Shakily, I speak that last word as it bubbles up within me, a word I can’t understand, let alone sanction, but it’s what I must say, what I’m driven to say, in fact, so I say it. “Thank you for your gifts. For now, we are at peace.”
While the snakes had seemed largely unimpressed with my speech up to that point, the repetition of the wordpeaceseems to startle them into action. They rise up, an oily black wallswirling high, and even I can hear the startled screams of the Divhs circling at a safe distance.
