I knit my eyebrows. The girl had cake in her pocket.
“For saving my life,” she says.
She’s so serious that I take half and fold the rest back into her hand. “You’ve saved mine.”
She smiles. “Twice, but who’s counting.”
I take a bite. Sugar, buttercream, and vanilla dance on my tongue. It’s good, really good.
“Three,” I say.
She doesn’t know it, but she saved me the day she planted her card in my jacket. I just hadn’t realized it at the time. I was alive but not living until I met Aeri at the Black Shoe Inn.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Sora
The Western Pass, Khitan
There’s something off about Mikail. Something in the way he’s looked at Euyn and me the last two days has been strange. I noticed the same hollowness haunting his eyes before he destroyed the crown. Which can only mean he’s planning something—some type of betrayal or secret. I’m not sure what it is yet, and I’m running out of time, since we’re nearly to the ice caves.
It’s late at night, probably one bell in the morning, when he signals for us to stop our horses.
In the distance, about a hundred and fifty yards from us, sits a towering cave sixty feet tall, maybe more, and there’s a small building nestled in the entrance. Mikail called it a mausoleum. It looks like a windowless stone house.
Why you’d put a body in one of those for all eternity is beyond me. But they believe in different gods.
Maybe theirs are kinder than ours.
Euyn has ridden on the other side of Mikail since we left Loptra and avoided me when we camped overnight. I’m not sure if it’s out of cowardice or respect, but he’s also keeping his distance from Mikail.
I’ve had time to calm down and consider what Euyn said. As much as I hate him for not telling me about my parents, he is correct that Daysum would not have been free. No one would have believed a commoner over Seok. The Count of Gain remains the real problem, even though Euyn is not fit to rule.
However, one issue at a time. My mother used to tell me to just focus on the next step when the whole problem was too daunting. We need to bring the head of Staraheli to Quilimar and convince her to help us murder King Joon for the successor to matter.
My mother, who I hated for years because I thought she traded her own daughters for gold. I haven’t begun to unravel all of those feelings. There simply isn’t time to work through it now. But there’s a thorny comfort in knowing the truth.
Euyn stops ahead of us. He dismounts, crouches closer, and scans the horizon.
“Two guards by the mausoleum,” he whispers. “Two patrolling.”
Taking out four guards isn’t bad. Well, until you start thinking about them as people you’re murdering, as stolen souls.
We found luminae in Loptra. It’s a glowing flower, and the pollen can be turned into a poison dust of the same name. It’s on my lips and in my pocket. Luminae kills with a slow, burning sensation as if you’ve been lit on fire, but it affects the mouth first, disabling the tongue. Erlingnow would’ve been kinder, as it is the fastest death, but I couldn’t find any. Every realm has its own toxins, its own ways to kill.
I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to murder anyone in Khitan other than Seok, especially not guards protecting something sacred to them. These aren’t disgusting noblemen or a gang who’d devour me as soon as look at me. But if the only way to save Daysum is to kill innocent men, then that is a trade I accepted long ago.
I want to shrink from this, to run, but I don’t. Instead, I steel myself and dismount from my horse alongside Mikail. We tie the horses to a tree. People have to die for Daysum to live. It’s a simple exchange.
Except there’s nothing simple about it. I don’t want to kill these guards or steal a head that belongs to their worshipped hero. Staraheli led downtrodden people against an oppressor—something I can relate to. A feeling of wrongness envelops me. I try to shake it off, but it clings. This isn’t a mark I have to kill or a life-or-death situation. This is a prize.
And not all of us kill for sport.
Still, on Euyn’s signal, the three of us approach the mausoleum from the side. We are nearly there when Euyn disappears. Strange. I glance at Mikail, but he doesn’t seem concerned, so I’m sure it’s fine—just another part of the plan I wasn’t told about.
We go another few steps, our feet silent on the white ground, but a guard turns and notices us. I take a breath, ready to seduce him, but Mikail grabs my arm and flings me down.
I hit the snow hard and cry out. I remember too late to muffle the sound, and now we have his full attention.
