My eyes dart between my husband and the blade on the ground.
“Do it,” Alaric says again. “Make all of this mean something.”
Now I’m crying. Sobbing. Covered in his blood.
Do it, the logical part of my mind orders.
“Do it!” Rowenna roars.
She sounds so close, like she’s standing right behind me, and I’ve never been so glad to hear her voice. I’ve finally earned her forgiveness.
I press the blade against the soft underside of Alaric’s wrist, angled toward the stones. Red as blood, pink as flesh, and white as bone.
“Now, Indira!” Rowenna bellows, and the strangest thing happens.
Alaric stiffens and turns his head.
And my entire world goes still.
Because, somehow, impossibly, he heard Rowenna too.
Forty-Four
I whirl around, certain I’m hallucinating. I have to be.
“Ro?” I whisper, blinking furiously. I must have been wrong about the bagrava cuttings. Clearly their smoke can addle your mind. It’s the only way I could be watching my dead sister stride across the mountaintop when I know for a fact her body’s decomposing beneath the fields of Tashir.
I shake my head and close my eyes, but when I open them, she’s still there—a specter made of moonlight and shadow, prowling closer. She’s paler and thinner than I remember, with eyes as dark as charcoal and tattered clothes hanging from her bony frame. The biggest difference, though, is in the way she moves. Instead of long confident strides, her gait is jerking and off-kilter, like a scarecrow come to life.
Or a corpse, risen from the grave.
“Y-you’ve returned from the Great Fields Beyond to punish me, haven’t you?” I whisper. “B-because I stopped listening. I’m sorry I was so foolish—”
Alaric’s disbelieving laughter cuts me off—wet and chilling as if his throat is filling with blood. Though, still not as chilling as what he says next. “The only place your sister has returned from is the hovel she’s been hiding in these past months. Now do youfinallybelieve I didn’t kill her?” Alaric looks at me sadly and shakes his head.
My mouth falls open as I look between Alaric and my sister’s ghost. “You can see her too?”
I’ve never heard of two people sharing the same bagrava-induced hallucination. The Marauders move in packs, but they only look out for themselves and their own needs. But the smoke in the cave was so thick, so choking. Maybe if we inhaled enough…
“Of course he can see me,” Ro says with a dramatic eye roll. “I maybe dirty and underfed, but I don’t look dreadful enough to bedead.And if I do, you’re to blame, little sister, since you took ages to catch on and carry out my plans. I suppose I must forgive you, though, since you came through in the end—like I knew you would.”
Ro winks and cuffs me under the chin, like she’s done since we were kids. As if nothing is amiss. As if I haven’t been mourning her death and hunting her killer. As if I didn’t just stab Alaric in the back to avenge her.
“I don’t understand.” It feels like someone is driving a stake through my temple. I grip my forehead and double over, but that makes everything worse because now I’m staring down at Alaric’s blood and the platinum chain lying in the rocks. A chain that supposedly contains the memory of Rowenna’s death. Except she’s very much alive.
“I don’t understand,” I babble again.
Alaric laughs, even though it clearly hurts him to do so. “She played you, Indira. Like she played all of us.”
My eyes dart back and forth between Rowenna and the chain, which is looking more like a snake every second. “Explain. Right now!”
Rowenna clutches her hands to her chest. “I thought you’d be happier to see me. You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you, how hard it’s been to watch you struggle and spin. But now I don’t have to hide anymore. We can finish this together—return home together. All we have to do is take care of this last loose end.” She wrinkles her nose as if Alaric is a slab of rotting meat. “Then I’ll happily explain everything during our journey back to Tashir.”
Ro opens her arms, as if she expects me to rush into them—the very thing I’ve imagined doing for over a year. But I step back numbly and drop to my knees beside Alaric instead, frantically pressing the shredded remains of his coat against the knife wound.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper as I lean over him, using my weight to apply pressure. “You’re going to be fine. I’ll get you to the healers.”
He musters a nod, but we’re both staring at the wad of fabric in my hands, already soaked through.
