At the landing, I grab one of the laundry wires that string across the alley and give it a hard jerk. It snaps and falls, and the freshly laundered bed linens billow to the cobbled street below.
As I hurry back down to ground level, Rhonin gathers himself, wiping at his face, and collects some of the still-damp sheets and throws them over the bodies. Blood soaks through the material on contact. He stares at the growing stains, glances at the balconies, then darts his gaze toward the mouth of the alley where someone could spy us standing over dead men any moment.
“What do we do now?” he asks. “The docks are too damn far away to dump them, and we can’t just leave them here.”
“The fuck we can’t. Come on.” I turn for the back streets as I begin constructing better glamours.
Rhonin grabs my arm. “And be seen leaving the scene of a crime? With a guy who looks like wraiths are about to crawl out of his eyes?”
I touch my face, having forgotten what I look like when I channel such immense power. I also sway a little, a twinge of nausea pinching my gut, like an aftersickness. It’s been too long
“I’d rather not end up in a Malgros prison for murder,” Rhonin continues. “Or any prison, for that matter. For any reason.”
Shaking off my dizziness, I gesture around us. “Unless you can open portals or you’re fooling us all and are skilled enough in vast magick to transport us out of here, you don’t really have another choice, now do you?”
“Sorry. Just a magickless human here, remember?”
“You won’t end up in prison,” I assure him, placing a firm hand on his shoulder, in part to steady myself. “Not as long as I’m breathing.”
Rhonin lifts his hands and in the same breath drops them at his sides. “Look, you’re quickly becoming my hero and all, but somehow that ‘long as I’m breathing’ bit doesn’t provide much comfort given your current situation.”
Even though there are two dead men in our wake, and even though I feel like shit on the bottom of a boot and am now certain I’m being hunted, I can’t help but find a shred of humor in the moment.
“If you’d rather stay with the bodies,” I tell him, “you’re welcome to do so. But I’m leaving, wearing an excellent glamour. If I were you, I’d follow your motherfucking hero.”
Though he groans his uncertainty, this time when I turn to go, Rhonin Shawcross is steady at my side.
30
RAINA
With Alexus and Rhonin gone to see Dedrick Terrowin, and Zahira and Yaz visiting the archives, I spend the morning with Nephele, Hel, and Callan at the beach. Ingrid had said to spend some time here, and so we do, though no memory reveals itself. I only know that I love the water, and that one day, if we survive this, I think I might like to live here.
Shortly after noon, when we tire of playing in the wind and sun and waves, we head back up the tor to peruse Zahira’s library.
“I could live in this room forever and never grow tired,” Nephele says, thumbing through an old tome. Her blonde curls are wild, her pale skin tinged pink from sun and wind burn.
We sit on stools placed around a tall table covered in the selected books of our choice. Every wall here is filled with them, from floor to ceiling.
Yaz provided each of us with pads of bound parchment and sticks of linen-wrapped charcoal for easier note taking, though none of us know exactly what we’re supposed to be looking for. Nephele chose books about the recent history of Malgros, no doubt searching for any information about our parents, while I selected another book about curses and one about Loria’s descended, doing the very opposite of my sister.
The book Alexus had brought to the lighthouse mentioned Soul Eaters, creatures who were once men, changed into devourers by an ancient curse cast by a faraway god on the rulers of his own lands. Though the text only skimmed the topic, it sounded so similar to the Prince of the East, I thought I’d dig deeper.
Hel glances up from The History of Tiressian War, the book she’s been reading for the last half hour, and says, “Fia Drumera once destroyed an entire Eastland fleet of over five hundred ships with a single wave of fire. That is unfathomable.”
“Summerlander magick is powerful,” Nephele says, still skimming her gaze over the open pages before her. “Especially when wielded by an ancient queen cursed with even more power over fire.”
“You know,” Callan says, their hazel eyes sparkling with thought. “I’ve sometimes wondered if Neri wasn’t a sly bastard, and we just disregarded him since he was a god.” They close their book on rune magick and exchange it for another. “If you think about it, Neri gave Fia Drumera additional means to protect her land from Thamaos. The same goes for Colden. Granted, their powers were so similar in strength that they repelled one another, so Neri did keep them apart as he agreed in his deal with Asha. However, he also made Colden’s lover immortal, giving his former Northland soldier eons to figure out how to be with her, if he wanted. And in doing so, he created two immortal weapons: one for the North and one for the Summerlands, a way to forever protect those lands from Thamaos’s rule.”
Nephele finally looks up. “Neri hated Colden because Asha wanted him, a human, more than she wanted Neri, a god. What he did to Fia and Colden was a punishment, not a blessing. For anyone.”
“If he cared about having Colden as a weapon for the North,” I sign as Nephele translates for Callan, “why did he threaten to kill Colden in the wood? Why take his power? That was done in rage, to teach Colden a morbid lesson.”
“Or perhaps Neri was in love,” a voice says from behind me. “And that made him foolish. Just a thought.”
We all turn to look at the door. Joran leans against the frame, arms crossed over his chest.
“On an entirely different note,” he says, “I thought you ladies might like to know that the Collector and the Spy are currently trudging up the beach soaking wet, like they took a swim with their clothes on.” He smiles a wolfish smile. “Looks like they met with a bit of trouble.”
