‘What now?’ I don’t know why I’m whispering – we’re the only ones here.
Fox shushes me, his eyes closed. ‘I’m concentrating.’
I resist pulling a face and cast my eyes around the willow tree. Is this really where he’s been living? My gaze lands on the bedroll, medical supplies, pungent herbs and plants, until, quite suddenly, I don’t see them any more. I see a boy wearing an eyepatch. He’s walking beneath a leafy canopy, his dark curls wet and glistening.
Flint.
It’s him. It’s really him.
Then he’s gone. My surroundings fade back in, and I’m once again sitting face-to-face with the Earth Cleaver.
I feel overcome with the urge to cry – or laugh. ‘Flint’s alive.’
‘Told you.’
‘How … how did you do that?’ I breathe.
‘Practice.’ Fox smirks infuriatingly, dragging the pad of his thumb across my palm. He does it again, his touch feather-light, sending small shivers down the nape of my neck.
I draw my hand back quickly. That’s when another realization hits me. ‘The Ceremony,’ I say. ‘When the Eye gave you that vision …’
It’s instantaneous the way the amused expression slides off Fox’s face.
‘I was able to see it too,’ I continue, ‘because I – I touched you.’
‘I’m aware.’ His entire demeanour has changed, become cool and emotionless. ‘It’s how I discovered I’m able to let others see what I see, if I wish it.’
I open my mouth, then close it again, thinking of what he saw that day. His sister, Freya, a little girl no older thanRenly is now. I remember the way her green eyes had bulged as she choked, wild and desperate, then glassy and unseeing.
‘Who else knows?’ I ask quietly. ‘About what your uncle did?’
‘Very few, I imagine.’
‘What about Hal?’
Fox shakes his head, then cracks his neck.
‘Why didn’t you tell him?’
‘You don’t think I tried?’
‘But now you can prove it,’ I say. ‘You can use the Eye to show him the whole story.’
‘I think you’re forgetting one small detail,’ says Fox. ‘I’ve been exiled.’
‘But you’re not in exile,’ I point out. ‘You’re still here in Ostacre.’
‘As ever, Storm Weaver, your observational skills are second to none.’
I scowl, growing impatient. ‘He’s your brother –’
‘Half-brother,’ Fox corrects. ‘And I assure you, whatever familial bond existed between us has long since been severed.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ I say, remembering the way they had looked at one another in my chambers the night I returned Elva’s magic – Fox’s offer of help, Hal’s reluctant acceptance, a flicker of an old trust, fragile yet unbroken.
Fox leans forward. ‘Then tell me, wouldyourbrother ever turn you away? Refuse to hear you out? Threaten to have you killed if you returned?’
I stare at him. After the Ceremony, many called for the Earth Cleaver’s execution, demanding his life as payment for the deaths of the Council, but I never for one momentimagined that Hal would consider such a thing. And not just because killing an Heir is an insult to the Gods, but because, for better or for worse, Fox is his family.
