I don’t—not fully. But I can’t deny that Iwantto. It would be so nice to fully trust someone.
I’m about to step forward when Rowenna’s voice howls past on a gust of wind.Have you completely lost your mind?
Instead of bringing comfort and relief as it always has before, though, I feel my hackles rise. She can’t just vanish in a huff when I fail to follow her orders, then expect me to listen the next time she graces me with her presence. That’s not how alliances work.
That’s not howfriendshipworks.
I’m doing this because you’ve left me with no other choice, I say, eventhough I know, on some level, she’s right. Participating in Vanzadorian prayers would be reckless—dangerous, even—but I’m out of ideas. And patience. And part of me wants to make Rowenna mad. Part of me wants her to feel even a fraction of the frustration I’ve felt, trying to navigate her riddles and contradictions.
You know she can’t actually feel anything, my darkest inner voice whispers.Just like you know, deep down, it isn’t her voice you’ve been hearing.
I immediately banish the thought. Rowenna has always been the voice inside my head. She’d never leave me alone or let something as inconvenient as death come between us.
I wait for her affirmation, but once again, she’s gone disconcertingly quiet, and as I strain to hear her through the silence, I hear something else instead. Something that sounds unnervingly similar to the tread of boots on rock.
I stiffen and glance at Delphine. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” she asks.
Instead of answering, I creep to the cave opening and squint into the snow-swept darkness. “Look! There!” I point at a smear of shadow that could be nothing more than a crooked tree waving in the wind. Except trees don’t grow up here, and they definitely don’t wear coats with golden buttons that reflect the snow and moonlight.
The wind feels suddenly colder and the hairs on my arms stand at attention. “Why would Alaric be up here, where Rowenna just so happened to be exploring?”
“Maybe he followed her?” Delphine whispers shakily. “Or maybeshefollowedhim, and he killed her because she saw something incriminating?”
“Only one way to find out,” I say as I step out of the cave and into the wind, which dampens the sound of our footsteps on the scree. Boulders provide adequate cover as we tail Alaric through the rocky maze until he eventually ducks into a cave that looks no different from all the rest.
Delphine and I share a nervous glance, then follow, chasing the sound of his boots through the dark. The tunnel seems to go on forever, and the deeper we wind, the lower the ceiling gets, eventually forcing us to crawl on our bellies. Just when I think I might suffocate, the ground beneath us shudders and heaves. A deluge of dirt and pebbles rains down, and I cover my head with my hands, braced for the entire cave to collapse. That’s probably why Alaric led us here—to squash us from existence like bugs. But then the earth stops bucking, and the low murmur of Alaric’s voice fills the silence. A second later, a shaft of moonlight spills into the tunnel, pouring through a gash in the ceiling that wasn’t there before.
Alaric’s shadow climbs through the hole. I sink my fingertips into the dirt and drag myself down the narrow passage, not about to let him get away. By the time we emerge through the hole at the back of the cave, Delphine and I are sweaty and panting, and the blast of frigid air is a welcome reprieve. Compared to the blackness of the claustrophobic tunnel, the night no longer seems as endlessly black either. In fact, I easily spot Alaric’s shadow, weaving through a series of boulders.
We seem to have emergedbehindthe system of caves, in a small clearing accessible only through a tunnel that doesn’t usually exist. Which means, if we hadn’t spotted Alaric, I could have spent my entire life searching without ever finding a trace of my sister—assuming she has anything to do with his sneaking around up here.
But she must.
It’s too much of a coincidence to believe they were trekking up here separately. Ro must have followed him. Or he followed her. Or I suppose they could have been working together and meeting in secret.
The thought turns my stomach, but I have to consider every possibility, even if it seems completely out of character for Rowenna and contradicts all of Alaric’s assurances.
Up ahead, he scrambles nimbly across the slick rock, faster than Delphine and I can manage. Mercifully, the clearing is almost as barrenas the Tomb Flats, so it isn’t hard to keep him in our sights. This will also be our downfall if Alaric senses our presence and turns around, but for now, he plows ahead, not stopping until he reaches a particularly large boulder, where he drops to his knees and gingerly removes his gloves.
All the air whooshes out of me when I realize that he’s digging.
The only reason he’d have to dig is if something’s buried up here.
Something he doesn’t want anyone else to find.
Even though it’s completely irrational—IsawRowenna’s body in Tashir—my mind still conjures images of her broken bones and decaying flesh beneath the frozen soil.
“Quiet!” Delphine elbows me in the ribs, which is when I realize I’m whimpering.
To my immense relief, Alaric stops digging when the hole is still relatively shallow—much too shallow for a body—and whatever he extracts fits inside his fist. He uncurls his fingers and stares down at the object for a long moment before glancing back over his shoulder.
Delphine and I flatten ourselves against the ground, waiting for him to call us out, but Alaric returns his attention to his treasure. He seems to be whispering to it as he settles cross-legged in the dirt, one hand over his eyes while the other hand holds the object flush against the ground.
A minute passes. Then two. And the longer I watch, the more my jaw clenches. There’s no way Alaric Alaverdi came all this way just to pray.
But after five full minutes, Delphine gives an exhausted sigh and pushes to her knees. “Let’s go. This is a waste of time.”
