Shaw watches the exchange dispassionately before turning back to me. “That heart of yours is going to get us both in trouble someday,” he says before stomping toward the fire.
ChapterTwenty-Two
Shaw
The mood around the fire is merry, in large part to Mirren’s welcoming spirit and appetite for both questions and food. She peppers Luwei and Sura relentlessly with queries about their home and their journey here and they open up to her like petals on a midnight flower. I sit apart, uncomfortable and disquieted against a boulder a few feet from the fire. I begrudgingly admire Mirren for how she turned the siblings so easily to her side, but I can’t help but feel unfairly maligned.
We’ve come a long way from the day I tied her up, but still, she holds her trust out of my reach. I can feel it’s edges, the way it dances from my grip every time I reach for it. Are Luwei’s crimes against her really less than mine? I answer the thought before it’s fully formed.Of course, they are.He only threatened them. And judging by the boyish grin that adorns his face now that his belly is full, I’m confident he never would have carried through.
But you will always carry through. For better or worse.
That’s the unforgivable thing, the part that Mirren senses, even if she’s never said it. I will always be paying for that viciousness inside me borne of both love and darkness.
“What brings you to Nadjaa?” Mirren asks as Sura licks her fingers clean. The siblings are Xamani, a northern tribe known for their survival skills in the face of some of the harshest winters on the continent. It’s odd for members of their tribe to be so far south. They’re usually only seen in Nadjaa at the end of summer, looking to trade their furs for supplies. It’s far too early in the year for trading and these two are alone.
Luwei’s eyes darken. Grief washes over him, so great that I fight the urge to look away. “Our people were attacked. Ambushed. Sura and I only escaped because we were in the pastures with our deer, instead of in the village.”
He refers to the deer the Xamani raise as livestock. Solid, like their people, and generally the size of a small house. “Raiders?” I ask the boy gruffly. It would be unusual for a raiding party to venture so far north, but not unheard of. Desperation often pushes people to do things they normally wouldn’t.
Luwei meets my eyes and then looks away quickly, shaken by what he sees there. For a moment, I can’t hide my surprise. It’s the prevailing reaction when people feel my gaze on them, but in the short time I’ve been with Mirren, who meets my eyes with fire and acid, I’ve somehow grown unaccustomed to the feeling of being feared.
Luwei shakes his head. “Not like any raiders I’ve ever seen. They were heavily armed and in uniform. Organized. And they took nothing except for…” His voice trails off.
“Except for people,” I finish for him. He stares at the ground and his shoulders sag.
Mirren’s eyes find mine in the darkness. Fervor lights them as her mind spins in the same direction as mine. The Praeceptor. His territory borders the Xaman villages. He’s never pushed so far north before, deeming it an inhabitable waste of resources, but he always has a strategy. How has he overtaken so many territories without any resistance? And why?
“There were rumors swirling in the villages. Rumors that magic has awoken in the land,” Sura says. Mirren looks to her in alarm. “Rumors that someone has uncovered the Dead Prophecy.”
“The Dead Prophecy is nonsense,” I reply automatically. I’ve always dismissed rumors of a prophecy that can end the curse as fanciful hopes of the desperate—hope can fill an empty belly almost as surely as food can. But that was before everything. Before Denver was taken and I received a predilection instructing me to find the girl with the sea in her eyes and destroy her. Before that same girl and I witnessed a healing power greater than both our understanding. I would be a fool to write it all off as a coincidence.
Sura shrugs. “It may be nonsense, but the men that attacked our village don’t believe it to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were asking questions,” Sura’s voice cracks and I understand she means ‘interrogating’. “About a visitor to the village a month or so earlier. He was a southerner with an odd accent, and he came to meet with our Kashan,” she explains, referring to the Xamani storyteller. Every village has one and they are highly revered, the keeper of history and knowledge. “He was asking questions about the queen’s curse. So much of the story has been lost to time, but our Kashanis are meticulous in passing on the legends. The stranger said the key to discovering the whole of the prophecy was in our stories.”
She scrubs at the dirt with her foot. “I don’t know if the stranger ever found it, but the men came right after, and they…they tortured our Kashan in front of everyone. They said if…if anyone had any knowledge of the prophecy or the man and didn’t bring it forth, they would burn everyone.”
“When was your village attacked?” Dread pools in my stomach. I know the answer before Sura speaks it, but it sends a spike of fear through me anyway.
“The day of the full moon. A month ago.”
The full moon is a celebratory night in Nadjaa, an easy one to remember. People gather in the streets, eating and dancing and bathing in the lunar light. The bay is a riot of brightly lit boats, all swirling through the reflection of the moon. Denver, as the city’s Chancellor, rarely misses a celebration but he missed the last one. He packed for a long journey and only told us it was in regard to an important matter and that he had to go alone.
He never returned.
A southerner with an odd accent—it can only be him and the odd way he speaks, as if he isn’t reallyfromanywhere. And the prophecy…
I want to throttle myself for not putting it together earlier. Denver’s always taken a keen interest in history, but I never imagined it would extend as far as hunting down the words to a lost prophecy. What if he succeeded and has a way to bring magic back? As if in answer, my shoulder throbs.
What if he already succeeded? Wasthatwhy he was taken?
If magic is brought back, Ferusa will be thrown into turmoil. The warlords won’t rest until they claim such power for themselves. Balance may be restored, but at what cost?
My eyes flick to Mirren. Icy fear slides down my spine.
When Denver never returned, I grew desperate for a way to find him. I tore through Ferusa, through cities and farms, but it was as if he’d disappeared from the continent completely. Defeated, I’d gone to Aggie. Depending on who you asked, the old woman was either completely mad or gifted with a power that hasn’t been seen since the dead gods. The power of knowledge.
