Even though I felt Mikail’s hand on my arm and I know he threw me, I try to convince myself that I merely tripped. Mikail is my friend and ally. He wouldn’t hurt me.
But then he mutters something in a language I can’t understand.
The guard runs over. He shouts something, and Mikail responds, putting his arms up. He points to me and says something again—it must be Marnan. The word he uses sounds like a Khitanese slur for the pleasure houses, though. I stare up at him, bewildered, the insult stinging. What is he doing? Who is he right now?
Mikail stares at me with hate in his eyes. And then he knocks twice on the scabbard of his sword.
The signal.
I get to my knees and focus only on the guard. He’s not much older than us, even though he has a long twisting beard. His eyes are slightly too close together, but I look at him as if he contains all the hope in the world. As if I’ve suddenly fallen in love.
Once he locks eyes with me, I tip my head and let the hood of my jacket fall back. I don’t have to speak the language for this to translate. Tears swim in my eyes, and I part my lips.
“Help me,” I whisper in Khitanese in case it loosely translates.
He doesn’t seem to understand me, but he knows I’m begging and at his mercy. The nobles in Yusan love this act—the damsel in need of rescue. I assume it transcends borders, but I hold my breath, waiting.
The guard hesitates but then extends his hand to me. I show nothing but gratitude as I take his arm and slowly stand.
“Thank you,” I say in Khitanese.
It is a shame he won’t be able to understand my last words to him.
I lean forward and kiss him, giving him a mouthful of poison. He starts choking immediately, his fingers grasping at his lips and neck.
I look back at Mikail to avoid watching the guard suffer. I brush the snow off me as the man falls to the ground. “A bit overkill, don’t you think?”
He’d said he was going to pretend to be a cheated husband leaving me at the caves and therefore at the mercy of the Marnans, but I didn’t expect him to throw me.
“No, we had an audience.” He points to the tunnel entrance. I turn just in time to see two men collapse from crossbow bolts to the neck. “Are you all right, though?”
“I’m fine,” I say.
His gaze barely meets mine before he stares at the mausoleum, his eyes all hunger. “Let’s go, then. We don’t have much time.”
I don’t know where the last guard is, but he’s probably dead.
Mikail walks with careful but fast steps. With his back turned, I pause and remove a bottle from my pocket. I pour a drop into the guard’s open mouth. The guard had tried to show me kindness and got nothing but pain in return. But he doesn’t have to die.
I read in the temple that the antidote to luminae is actually made from the same source—the liquid in the stem and leaves of the poison flower. Like the poison, the antidote is slow acting. It stops the burning from spreading and gradually brings down inflammation. The guard won’t be able to move until morning, and of course he’ll remember the pain, but he will live.
It’s the best I could do. We needed him out of the way, but for minutes, not forever. Mikail and Euyn wouldn’t have understood why I wanted to spare him, so it was best to do it quietly on my own.
Euyn meets us at the entrance to the mausoleum. Surprisingly, there is a bronze door, patinaed green, on the cave side. I suppose it makes sense to have a door—they had to get the body in somehow. Mikail said Staraheli would be in a glass coffin, so perhaps they open the door for viewing.
Disturbing, if you ask me, but perhaps they think that about our funeral pyres.
Mikail pulls at the handle, and eventually, it begins to open. Strange that there wasn’t a lock. Euyn helps him, pulling as well, and together they shift the heavy door wide enough for us to creep inside.
I brace myself for what I’m about to see.
We squeeze in, them first and me last. It’s pitch black in the small room except for the ray of light coming from the doorway. But even in the dark it’s clear: the room is empty. No glass coffin, no body of Staraheli.
“What now?” Euyn asks.
He takes another step inside. All of a sudden, a cracking sound echoes through the room.
There’s barely a second to move before a net springs up from the floor.
