Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
“Rowenna?” I croak, reaching for her even though I know it’s just a memory. But it’s the closest I’ve come to seeing my sister alive in over a year, and every part of me screams to grab her. Hold her.
Save her.
She’s running at full tilt, hair tangled across her face, features twisted with fury—or is that fear?—as she weaves through the darkened streets of the Fortress.
I dart a glance at Delphine. “What is this? Why would Cloudia have a memory of my sister? What is she running from?”
Delphine shakes her head, gaping at Rowenna’s apparition.
My sister careens down a residential street, leaping over stone fences that separate each yard. The moon is high, and the houses are dark, but she peers over her shoulder every few seconds, as if someone is chasing her.
In one hand, she clutches a drawstring bag to her chest, and she fists her skirt with the other, gathering speed and gazing up with determination—like she plans to leap over something impossibly high.
Like the city wall?
Right before she jumps, a shadowed figure moves in her periphery.
She crashes into the wall and fumbles to steady herself. “You!” she cries. “H-how did you know? You’re supposed to be—”
“I know everything.” The shadowed figure cuts her off, and every hair on my arm rises because I know that voice. It’s the same voice that whispered in my ear not ten minutes ago.
I watch in open-mouthed shock as Alaric materializes in the glittering haze, stepping out from a pool of shadow near the base of the Fortress wall.
He looks so much darker, so much more sinister than the boy I just danced with—like the cruel, detached version of Alaric I met on the burning fields of Tashir.
It’s almost hard to believe they’re the same person.
“I was aware of your plans as soon as you started making them,” he says with a reproachful shake of his head. “You weren’t exactly stealthy.”
Ro makes little choking noises before setting her jaw and lifting her chin. “I’m going home, and you can’t stop me. I’ve seen the hospital. I know your dirty secrets. You have no future without Tashir, which means I now have the upper hand.”
Alaric snorts. “We will always have the upper hand. Even with this new unfortunate sickness, you and your people will perish far faster. All I have to do is demolish the mountains and allow the Marauders to resume their attacks.”
Rowenna takes a bold step forward. “What if I told you we don’t need your protection anymore?” She holds up the drawstring sack and rattles the contents within.
It sounds like jangling coins.
Or rattling stones.
Alaric waves a dismissive hand. “You could have stuffed anything in there.”
Rowenna continues swinging the bag back and forth.
“When you’re the smallest, weakest plant in a gardening bed, you have to grow twice as fast—and branch out in unexpected ways—to capture enough sunlight to thrive.
So while you and Soren have been gloating in your superiority, ignoring me and the rest of your ‘inconvenient problems,’ I’ve been working myself near to death—down to my blood, flesh, and bone, you might say—to find a way to free my people. And I have.”
Alaric’s face goes pale as Rowenna rattles the bag again, her smile sharp and glinting.
My pulse beats against my temples, pounding so hard my entire head aches. Could Rowenna really have found more pieces of the gemstone triad? Alaric insisted his father destroyed the larger pieces when the Flesh of Callahan was damaged. But what if he was lying?
What if he’s been lying about other things?
Everything?
“Let’s see, shall we?” Rowenna loosens the ties and overturns the bag.
My hand flies to my mouth as three small stones plunk into her palm. Red, pink, and white. A crimson ruby, an apricot diamond, and a sparkling white quartz—identical to the stones embedded in Alaric’s wrist.
I want to drop the chain and stop the memory.
Alaric promised there were no more stones.
Just like he promised he had nothing to do with my sister’s death.
And how he also claimed to know nothing about the makeshift hospital and people drained of their life essence.
I was with him when we discovered the hospital; I saw the horror and disgust on his face. No one could be such a convincing liar.
Could they?
As if in answer, memory Alaric lunges for the stones in Rowenna’s fist. He’s as lithe and swift as a garden snake, fast enough to catch most opponents off guard.
But not Rowenna.
She dodges easily, slides the stones back into the pouch, and leaps up the Fortress wall.
I marvel at her strength, speed, and sheer brilliance as she scrabbles up the stones, creating handholds by driving two blades from her belt into the cracks.
Alaric tries to follow her, but he’s sputtering and flustered, and even though he’s stronger than Rowenna, he’s also heavier—too heavy to support his body weight with just his fingertips.
She looks down at him as she swings one leg over the top of the wall.
“You and your father are fools,” she calls.
“You brought a grain beetle into your storehouse and assumed I’d no longer eat wheat, that my appetites would change simply because you took me from my home.
Then you ignored me and underestimated me, left me to poke around at my leisure, and now you’re shocked to learn I stole your precious triad.
” She shakes her head and clucks her tongue.
“I can’t wait to see how lovely the stones look embedded in my wrist.”
Rowenna holds out her arm as if inspecting a bracelet, and I want to shake her, shout at her for being just as reckless and arrogant.
She needs to run and maintain her slight lead.
Even then, it likely won’t be enough. Alaric could level the wall with a snap of his fingers or snatch the earth out from beneath Rowenna’s feet.
This couldn’t have been her entire escape plan.
“Embedding the stones in your own skin won’t work,” Alaric says through gritted teeth. “You’re not a descendant of Callahan. The stones won’t give you our power.”
“I’d like to test that theory myself,” Rowenna says as she swings her other leg over the wall and drops to the ground.
“Give me the gemstones, Rowenna!” Alaric roars after her. “If you cooperate, I’ll convince my father to be merciful. Perhaps we can renegotiate the terms of the treaty.”
“Except you no longer have anything to negotiate with,” she calls back over her shoulder as she bounds down the moonlit path.
Alaric lets out an exasperated growl and raises both hands. A door-sized hole blasts through the city wall, and he shouts my sister’s name again as he storms through the wreckage. “You know you can’t outrun me. It’s like trying to outrun the mountain itself!”
Rowenna glances back, finally looking properly scared.
She should be. I don’t know how she ever thought this would work. She’s smarter than this, more cunning than this.
With a wave of his hand, Alaric rips the frozen path out from beneath Rowenna’s feet.
She hits the ground with a painful grunt, looking from her bloody palms to Alaric.
He strikes again before she can regroup, chipping away at the rock beneath her, forcing her closer and closer to the edge of the mountain until there’s nowhere left to go.
Except down.
Ro doesn’t beg or sob. She stares defiantly at Alaric. “Do it,” she dares him. “It might be my end, but it will be yours as well. Mark my words.”
Alaric leans forward, his face a hair’s breadth from Rowenna’s when he whispers, “Your words will never be marked. They’ll be forgotten.”
Then he clenches his fist, and the ledge Ro’s standing on breaks away.
I scream and Rowenna does too—a horrible, discordant harmony. She claws the air, grasping for solid ground, and against all odds, her fingers snag on the chain of Alaric’s waistcoat—the same obsidian-studded chain I hold in my hands now.
Ro stares at it hopefully, as if it might somehow save her.
But then the chain snaps, and my sister falls.
And all my hopes for the future plummet with her.