We snake through a side yard as shutters open and lamps burst on beside us. A woman begins screaming at us like we’re vermin in the pantry. “Out of my garden! Out!”
We push through her front gate, hoping for a free moment to wind around the fence’s corner and headstraight into the adjacent town.
Instead, we come face-to-face with a pair of guards. There’s the slightest hesitation as one guard can’t decide if he should yell an alarm or tackle us. As the other starts to scream, his hand fumbles for the pistol at his side. In my wooziness, their reactions play out like the last tendrils of a song, and it gives me just enough time to find a spell on the tip of my tongue.
“Ómegin! Rata! Ómegin! Rata!”I cry, pointing my words and my effort at the idiot with the gun and then to the other the moment his hand snags a length of Alia’s skirt.
Blessedly, the magic comes again, just as it did outside the king’s quarters. It’s enough that they’re both falling to the ground, sound dying from the one guard’s lips. Alia grabs my hand. Her dress is ripped, white skin of a leg flashing in the night. The fuzz clears from my head, a close call making everything suddenly sharp enough to draw blood anywhere I look.
We’re running again, this time on an actual street, pointed toward the slope of town as it climbs up Lille Bjerg Pass. Shops stream by as we gain speed. Alia is my compass, picking her way across the cobblestones, through the shadows, and dodging down alleys. Behind us, voices ring out. We’re not moving fast enough, but I can barely keep up this speed. My head is throbbing now, and the bloodis sitting, matted in my hair, despite the rain. Again, my senses go woozy as my adrenaline wanes. Head down, I watch the path before me and Alia’s feet as she navigates. I have to see each step before I take it, or I know for sure I’ll fall facedown on the cobblestones.
Impossibly, Alia quickens her pace, dragging me like a downed whale. When I blink up from the ground, I see why—we’ve reached the place where the street ends and the mountain trail begins. Past the trailhead, there’s an immediate curve into the trees. We’ve finally reached some cover. I gulp in a huge breath, heart hammering in my throat. But we can’t stop now. Up we climb, sprinting through the rain over rocky paths rife with sticks and brambles cut loose from the storm, until the world is a thick canopy of brush and trees.
From our spot above, we track the guards’ path, peeking through the brambles to watch streetlamps flicker on as they knock on doors and search for anyone who’s seen us.
As I take the first step toward the countryside, Alia grabs my hand—this time to stop me.
I meet her expression, and I know I’m in for it. That anger building as she kept it locked away long enough to get us off the grounds.
I loved him.
It’s a statement but there are only questions in her eyes.How could you murder him? How could you murder the man I love? How could we think it was the right thing to do? We just killed the king!
My pounding heart flutters with every recrimination in those questions. That I’m a monster. That I wasn’t clever enough to find another way. And the worst, that we failed, so he never needed to die. Yet, my anger and frustration and the helplessness of it all compounds until I explode on her, my voice a whisper but deafening in her accusatory silence. “You agreed! And you know he didn’t love you!”
Runa,she signs, and I nearly fall over because she hasn’t actually used my name since I’ve been here. The sign is simply two fingers—one, Alia; two, Runa.
There’s no me without her.
In all the years since we came up with these signs, I never knew how true that was.
He didn’t deserve to die.
I swallow. No one deserves to die. But, but, but... I grit my teeth.
“How could you still have any love in your heart for him after you knew he could build a weapon of war and sell it to the highest bidder? One that could destroy our home, our people too?”
I walk away from her, taking those first steps down the other side of the mountain. The air is heavy with rain that’s begun to let up, and my dress sticks to my skin, itsgrip growing stronger with each step. When it dries, it’ll be a part of me.
Alia catches up and grabs my arm to get my attention, and then her hands are flying through one sign and another, her lips moving furiously in the weak light.
I didn’t know at first.
But you heard Sofie; he was marrying her for money. For his subjects.
This war has already disrupted trade. Who knows how long that’ll go on.
Those boats were a transaction meant to feed his people—plain and simple.
I keep walking, and she runs ahead of me and grabs both my hands in hers, blocking the path so I’m forced to look at her. She uses the two inches she has on me to the best of her ability as she glowers down—logic and heartache and our failure in the defiant set of her shoulders.
Niklas was a good man.
Alia drives that knife in and waits for me to explode again, just like she knew I would. I’m the sister who tells her the hard truth, but that doesn’t mean I want anyone to toss it back at me in kind. Especially not about this.
I grimace and slap her hands away. “Do you know how foolish you sound? I know you’re a romantic, but how can you be so blind? How?”
The cords of my neck rise, and Alia lets my anger rollover her like pain she’d been waiting for. Yearning for. Like picking at a scab that you know will bleed. Want to bleed.
