I reach for my sword, but just like at the Festival of Cloud, I couldn’t wear my scabbard over my dress. But I’m not completely unprepared this time. From inside my boot, I grab one of Jax’s knives and push myself off the ground, charging toward the Shade.
The hunched monster screeches, unfurling itself to its full height as I lunge with the knife and slice its flesh. It’s not moving at its usual lightning speed. It must not be doing so well with one of its arms missing.
Something sharp knocks the knife from my hand. I grope in the dirt, feeling for the hilt. The sharp thing sears my hand as it cuts deeper. It feels like the monster’s trying to peck me to death, but I didn’t think Shades had razor-sharpbeaks.
I lash out at the Shade with both hands, one good and one bloodied, tearing at its flesh the way it tore Evander open and spilled his blood before my eyes.
The Shade squeaks piteously.
“Odessa!” a girl’s voice gasps. “What the blazes are you doing?”
I shake my head to clear it, growling, “Saving the palace from this monster.”
“That’s my aunt’s favorite peacock!” Valoria cries.
I blink, and the monster changes shape beneath my hands. Rotting flesh becomes a rich cape of blue and green feathers, bright as jewels. Beady eyes stare up at me, shining with a plea formercy. I release the poor bird, backing away with a shudder. One of its wings is mangled, and its right side is scratched and bleeding. Still, it manages to hop to its long yellow feet and disappear into the garden, its trailing tail shedding a few feathers in its wake.
I hold up my shaking, bloody hands and turn to find Valoria staring at me with a mixture of shock and disgust, her glasses reflecting the distant glimmering party lights.
“I came to find you because I thought you could help,” she stammers in a voice that’s slightly off-key. “My mother’s missing. Along with several other Dead who never turned up for the party. I’ve been looking all night, and Hadrien’s too busy to...”
I lose the thread of Valoria’s words as I sway again. This time there’s no Hadrien or Jax to catch me, and when I fall to my knees, something slices through my dress. And my skin. It seems I’ve found my knife.
“Oh, Sparrow.” Valoria wraps her arms around my waist, trying to haul me to my feet, but I shake my head in protest. “I’m taking you inside. You need rest. And quite possibly a healer.”
The image of the maimed peacock feels like a gut punch. How did I get here, where I can’t tell the difference between a defenseless creature and a monster? Me, the girl who once tried to put the wings back on a trampled butterfly. The girl who coaxed reluctant plants to blossom in the convent garden. The girl so in love with life, she couldn’t harm a living thing.
I should be helping Valoria find the missing Dead right now, but instead, I’m shoving my head into a bush so she won’t see me heave up the contents of my stomach. I should be protecting the country I love and the Dead I’ve always guarded. I should consolethe worried princess who’s holding back my hair while I vomit all over the violets and marigolds.
Through the bewildering haze of too much potion and wine, the question nags at me:How did I get here?
For the first time, I’m glad Evander’s gone. Glad he can’t see how far I’ve fallen.
XIII
Iopen my eyes to a room blazing with torchlight and wide windows showing a sky as black as pitch. Pain rips through my head when I try to sit up, and someone presses a hand to the center of my chest, shoving me back down against the pillows.
“Drink this.” Valoria touches a glass of water to my lips and gently tips it until I’ve sipped about half the contents. “It’s only been a few hours. I’m surprised you’re awake already.” As she pulls a chair up to the bed—her bed—she opens her mouth like there’s something more she wants to say.
“What is it?” I gingerly check my face for crusted bits of vomit and dirt from the garden, then touch my tender right knee where the dagger kissed it. Valoria’s bandaged the wound, but even the light pressure of my fingers makes it ache.
The princess scoots to the edge of her seat, frowning. She cleans her glasses on her mint-green gown and still says nothing.
“Come on.” I manage to prop myself up on my elbows. The room spins like a pinwheel, complete with mesmerizing colors. “Out with it.”
“Fine.” Valoria sighs, meeting my eyes. “Evander Crowther is dead and gone, and no amount of drinking anything—say, too much wine, or certain potions meant to dull the senses—can bring him back.” She bends down to toy with loose threads on the rug beneath her chair. “But there are others here who need you. Two necromancers have been killed in the Deadlands. That never happens. And Duke Bevan went missing from his own province and reappeared here as a Shade.” She raises her glistening eyes to mine. “And now my mother and several other Dead, the nobility that you and Evander and your friends raised, have vanished. Something in Karthiareeks, but I can’t figure it out on my own. I need your help.”
I shake my head. “Look, Valoria. I don’t have the answers either. All I have is a score to settle and one nasty Shade waiting for me in the Deadlands.”
“Then you’re not who I thought you were.”
“Seems that way.”
Valoria rises to her feet, turning her back on me, and for the first time I notice the many curved shelves lining her tower room. She fusses with something I can’t see from here, but around her, I take note of coils of copper wire, ropes, odd silver bits, and what look like wood-and-metal arms and legs, complete with moveable joints.
I climb off the bed and approach a shelf that holds several strange glass balls with tiny wires inside. I bump one with my hand, and it fills with an orange glow that steals my breath and freezes me on the spot.
“It’s just a light,” Valoria calls from across the room. “I made them for my little sister. Ever since she saw the Shade at the Festival of Cloud, she’s been scared of the dark.”
