“Think we can spar like that?” Meredy teases as she pins down one of my wrists.
Using my foot as leverage, I flip her off of me, knocking the wind out of her. That only makes her laugh, once she has the breath. “Oh,” I whisper, pushing down another stab of worry, “I think we can do better.”
XX
The Ezorans are getting closer.
We learn as much on a gray day the following week, when Valoria receives a message from another leader, King Andris, delivered by one of her own mechanical birds. The Ezorans are attacking the king’s home, Bravinia, a land located slightly east of Empress Evaria’s domain of Ocren and north of Lyris. Valoria shows me each place on a moldy old map she found in the Temple of Change, and I don’t need to ask why she looks worried to the point of sickness.
Unnerved, Valoria assigns several people to assist Noranna in making more metal soldiers. With help, she’s able to complete several new ones each day, and Karston spends his time learning how to command them to do different moves at once.
I watch him practice once or twice, impressed by the strength of his gift and his focus and dedication to his magic as the soldiers march and fight with deadly precision.
Each night, whenever we can, we all gather at the palace for supper—me, Meredy, Valoria, Jax, Simeon, Danial, and Karston,who fits in effortlessly from the first time he decides to eat with us. Like Meredy, he loves animals. Like me, he finds himself drawn to anyone attractive, regardless of gender. Like Jax, he can be surly and withdrawn. Like Simeon, he loves to tell outlandish stories. He could never replace Evander, of course, but our group feels almost whole again. Especially after one of Valoria’s aunts, upon seeing Jax with potatoes in his hair and Karston and me dueling with breadsticks, sharply declares that we have the manners of a pack of wolves and are unfit to dine with our queen.
“To the wolf pack!” I shout as the noblewoman retreats, raising my glass of mead.
Grinning, Simeon adds, “We’ll eat your heart out—literally!”
Jax and Karston chime in with a chorus of howls. Danial, shaking his head at them, lends his voice to the cause a moment later after Simeon elbows him in the ribs.
Bryn and Sarika, sitting at the opposite end of the table, catch on and join in, too. At last, so does Meredy, followed by Valoria, who raises her wolf-headed cane with a laugh.
This is the most at home I’ve felt since we returned from Sarral. Though for how long, I don’t know. Not when the Ezorans are inching ever closer to Karthia and, despite what Devran promised, there’s no end to the protests in sight. Valoria still isn’t sure he’ll accept her invitation to an air balloon ride tomorrow at sunset.
Reports of the black fever continue to arrive every morning by raven, though Meredy’s sister, Elibeth, like Kasmira, seems to be making a tenuous recovery. We wrap ourselves in scarves and gloves to bring food and other supplies to them both, as well as other fever-afflicted families, helping Jax with his meal delivery routes. That is, when we’re not training the volunteers or helping Simeon and Danial with wedding preparations.
We’re needed so often lately, in so many places, that I only get one chance to sift through the kitchen rubbish heap for the crystal Meredy claims to have thrown away. I don’t find it. I help heal her hands with Danial’s orange salve and don’t notice any new burns. Still, a cruel voice in the back of my mind won’t stop wondering if she’s lying to me whenever she has an errand to run.
Valoria’s searches for the crystal prove equally pointless—not that she has much time to look, either. Carts of supplies intended for the sick, particularly those carrying the new, stronger cough potion Valoria invented herself, keep being waylaid on their route or completely overturned. Guards attempting to clear the streets of bodies find themselves surrounded by people who won’t let them do their job until they put on the older, less secure masks that King Wylding had them wear during fever seasons past. The culprits? Devran’s rebels. They may not be able to burn anything else on the palace lawn during the quarantine, but they’re still giving Valoria plenty of headaches as she tries to care for them. They pass around their own version of a coughing potion, an older, less effective one, and seem to believe they’re actuallyhelpingthe sick more than Valoria could.
Thoughts of the dangers we face from inside and out trouble me every night, but I’m so exhausted that I somehow manage to fall asleep almost the moment my head hits the pillow.
“Dessa.” Meredy’s voice drifts through the blackness of my dreamless sleep. “Do you hear that?” She gently shakes my shoulder.
Now alert, I realize what’s bothering her before I even open my eyes to the darkened bedroom. The mysterious wailing is back, the sound I heard the night of our argument.
“It’s giving me a headache!” Meredy whispers sharply. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve heard it once before,” I murmur. “When we... you know...”
She crinkles her nose, reluctant as I am to mention our fight. “I must’ve been pretty out of it not to notice,” she says at last—the closest she’s come to mentioning the crystal in days. I try to take her hand, but she hesitates, as she usually does now when we’re not wearing gloves. She thinks I don’t trust her, that I check her palms for burns when she’s sleeping.
She’s not wrong.
“You’re a girl of many talents,” I joke, but only half-heartedly, trying to stay focused on the eerie sound. It’s almost like when someone wets their finger and runs it along the rim of a wine glass. But it can’t be that, because it has a distinct and varied melody despite its ear-bleeding qualities.
“Well, it’s definitely nothuman,” Meredy says after a while, rubbing her temples. The noise hurts my head, too. “What could it be, though? One of Valoria’s inventions?”
I shake my head. Valoria would have noticed and silenced it by now. Plus, it sounds too close to be issuing all the way from her tower.
“What about some sort of bird?” she suggests next. “A peacock being strangled?”
“Maybe,” I mutter, not quite convinced.
Meredy leans against me and yawns. “Maybe it’s Jax, rehearsing in secret so he can serenade Valoria,” she suggests, making us both laugh.
From down the hall comes a crash, a curse, and the sound of hurried footsteps.
