I bit my lip. Megari didn’t know how little time I had. I was going to be burned at the stake tomorrow.
Zairena is not who she says she is,I tried to tell her.She’s the assassin. Not me, not Chiruan. She’s the real priestess of the Holy Mountains.
“Slow down, Lina. I can’t understand you.”
I reached for the paper, but the door to my cell clanged open, and Zairena entered, serenely balancing a tray with four covered bowls.
“You’d better leave, Megari,” she said. “Lina needs to sleep before her ordeal tomorrow.”
Megari whirled to face her. “What ordeal?”
“No more questions. Go, or I’ll tell Hasege that Pao let you inside.”
Zairena knelt before the bars of my cell. “What an irksome child,” she said once the girl was out of earshot. “I thought she would be my greatest hindrance, but imagine my surprise that it was you,Shiori.”
At my name, the hairs on the back of my neck bristled. She knew.
Her eyes glinted wickedly, and she busied herself with the tray she had brought, arranging the four bowls.
“Yes, I know. We priestesses of the Holy Mountains are taught to sense magic, though you…you were astonishingly untalented. I thought of you merely as a pebble in my shoe, an oddity with that bowl on your head carrying about that dirty satchel. Hardly worthy of my attention.” She paused deliberately. “Until you worked starstroke on my spinning wheel.”
She lifted the lid on the first bowl, revealing a glimmering strand of starstroke.
“Brazen of you, spinning an entire mountain’s worth on my wheel. Here I thought you were sneaking into my room to steal my thread.” She laughed at herself. “I was going to kill you for that, the same way I killed nosy old Oriyu. But then I found this little sliver of magic in your room while you were taking care of dear Megari. Useful against dragons, I hear.”
I reeled for my satchel, but Zairena swiftly evaded me. “You needn’t worry, Shiori’anma. I’m not going to give the net to Lord Yuji, that dithering fool. Or to the Wolf.” She patted the satchel. “Once he finds out I’ve engineered your death, we won’t be allies any longer.”
I clenched the iron bars, trying to rise to my feet, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate.
“Are you wondering how I knew the princess would be weaving starstroke?” Zairena asked.
No, I wasn’t. But Zairena was in a smug mood, and I had no choice but to listen.
“The Wolf told me he encountered your brothers in A’landi. They met him in the guise of his former master, a famous seer.”
Something inside me shattered, and I felt suddenly ill. Great gods! It was the Wolf who had told my brothers to make the starstroke net. He’d given us the satchel so I would bring him the starstroke from Mount Rayuna. So I would weave a net…to steal a treasure far greater…
Raikama’s pearl.
I went cold.
“I know,” Zairena pretended to sympathize. “Enchanters are a greedy lot, aren’t they? Itoldhim to forget the Nameless Queen’s pearl and just focus on your blood, but he wanted both.”
My blood?
“You didn’t know you were Kiata’s bloodsake, did you? No one can blame you. I’d guess even the gods and dragons have forgotten what it is by now—and among us mortals it’s belittled as legend. But your stepmother is clever, and that pearl of hers must have given her the power to see you for what you are. Wise of her to hide her talents from you. She must have thought you’d be safer not knowing. She was almost right.Almost.”
My thoughts were spinning; I struggled to understand.
Zairena smiled. “You see, the magic in your blood is native to Kiata. A rarity these days, and it is the only magic capable of freeing the demons held within the Holy Mountains. The Wolf has sought you out for this very reason, and I played along so he would share with me what he knew. You look confused. Rightly so; all you fools have twisted our stories and forgotten what we truly stand for.”
Her voice grew thick with pride. “We priestesses are not allied with demonkind. We belong to the Holy Mountains. Our task is to keep their evil trapped within the mountains. And so we have been waiting for you, Shiori’anma. You are the bloodsake, and therefore we cannot allow you to live.”
The words thundered in my ears. I scrabbled back, as far away from the bars as I could, reaching behind me for a loose stone or brick—but there was nothing except Megari’s paper and puddles of melted snow.
“Now, if you had told me you were the princess sooner,” Zairena went on, “I would have given you an honorable death. Less humiliating than what Hasege has planned. But I couldn’t use Four Breaths on you, not when Chiruan had already been caught….” She paused. “Still, I have to say it’s quite beautiful how it all worked out. The plan always was to collect your ashes.”
I flinched, despising myself for it. My fingers dug into the moist dirt, and I flung a pitiful handful at Zairena. My attack barely touched her, and the dirt landed instead on her tray.
