47. Isla
47
ISLA
I f I set Sofiya down, she’ll reappear, so I reach into my coat pocket for Ksenia’s dagger, which suddenly feels heavier than the woman draped over my shoulder.
Sofiya must’ve spotted the intruder because she’s gone rigid and stopped whimpering. Out of nowhere, a burst of ochre powder materializes between us and the soldier.
“Die!” Sofiya’s war cry startles the interloper, who pitches backward.
Though he rams his forearm against his mouth and nose, I catch sight of his face through the dense puff. “No! Sofiya, no! Recall your magic! He’s a friend!”
The suspended flecks immobilize before winking out of existence, leaving behind the odd aroma of mulled wine at Yuletide.
“Isles?” Elio croaks between a wheeze and a cough. “Wha—” Another cough. “What was that?”
“Powdered rowan wood bark.” Sofiya’s chest is pumping hard and fast again against my shoulder. “A spoonful in the lungs, and humans choke to death.”
“Thank the Cauldron”—Elio pounds his fist against his rattling chest, his throat spasming as he fights to wring oxygen from the air—“I’m not human.”
I walk her over to my velour pouf and lay her down.
When she reappears, she’s staring steadily at Elio. “You’re that half-blood.”
One of his eyebrows ticks up. “ That half-blood?”
“The one I thought was a Crow because of the face tattoo.” She heaves in a deep breath, forehead tilled with furrows of pain. After an arduous exhale, she blurts out, “But then my sister explained that lots of non-shifters”—she groans, shuts her eyes—“get their faces inked in Luce in order to avoid getting snacked on by Crows.”
Surprise rocks Elio so hard that it silences his coughing.
Used to Sofiya’s brand of nonsense, I deadpan, “Definitely simplifies picking out our victims.”
Elio snorts, and then he huffs out a chuckle that transforms into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Given the night this has been…that it still is, the merry sound seems out of place, nevertheless, it pares away some of the dread and rage shrouding my heart.
“El, meet Sofiya. Sofiya, meet one of my best friends, Elio.”
She hikes up her pert nose. “What’s so funny, Half-blood?”
Goddess, this woman… Why did I offer her a lift to my suite again?
Instead of setting her straight on Crow snacking-habits, I ask Elio, “How did you get here? And where are the others?”
He sobers. “We heard explosions when I was visiting the castle’s art gallery with Izolda. She forced me through a secret passageway. I thought she was following me, but when I turned around, the passage was sealed, and she wasn’t…” He sinks a hand into his black curls. “I don’t know what happened to her, Isles. I didn’t want to leave her.”
“I know.” The areas his laughter had cleared around my heart cloud with ugly feelings anew.
“Anyway, I remembered your bedroom was warded, so I jumped one of the guards and nicked his stolen uniform. All of them are rebels, by the way. None are in Konstantin’s employ.”
“I’m glad you’re safe,” I murmur.
May the rest of my friends…my family also be safe.
May their magic protect them.
“But what if Izolda?—”
“She’s Ksenia’s twin. Even if Ksenia is a two-faced trollop, she’d never kill her sister,” I tell him—partly to reassure him, partly to reassure myself.
“Ksenia?” Sofiya asks. “As in my niece , Ksenia?”
“Yes. She’s behind the coup,” I explain. “With Bohdan.”
I don’t add my suspicions that Salom might be involved.
Her lips ghost over a drawn-out, “ No .”
As she digests the news, I focus on my friend. “El, when we walked in, you were crouched in front of the safe… Did you hear anything?”
“Lach was yelling for Salom.” Worry frames Elio’s cerulean eyes.
“From the…from the—” Sofiya licks her lips, breathing hard. “Your Crow friend and Salom are in the safe?”
“No,” I tell her. “Lach was probably in the general’s quarters—that’s where I painted one of the sigils.”
“I am so confused,” Sofiya croaks.
“Did you hear anything besides shouting, El?”
“Loud pops. I was hoping he’d be with you?” The rise of his voice on the end of his sentence hangs in my walk-in closet like the treacly scent of Sofiya’s spice puff.
“Knowing Lach, he’s surely hunting down the wicked as we speak.” My false cheer doesn’t dupe Elio. My friend might not be able to see me, but that has never prevented him from seeing through me. “I need to…I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” Sofiya’s whimper halts me in my tracks. “My leg—it needs healing.”
My joints lock up, and not because I don’t feel like putting an end to her suffering—I’m not that petty—but because I don’t know how to.
“Please, Isla.” Her inhales and exhales hasten like a woman in labor. “ Please . I beg you.” She grits her teeth. “I’ll give you a bargain.”
“The bullets are made of iron,” Elio tells me in Serpent.
“What?” She stares between the two of us, drinking the air in harried sips.
“May I?” Elio gestures to Sofiya’s skirt.
She nods.
He hikes up the heavy fabric, revealing her blood-soaked stockings. “Is the bullet still inside your leg?”
“How should I”—her mouth pinches before opening around a hoarse—“ know ?”
“El, try to flush it out. I swear I’ll be right back. I just want to check Konstantin’s room.”
“He’s not there,” my friend tells me.
My heart stumbles. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” he murmurs.
But the rebels outside my door must have an idea.
“Get the bullet out. Get it out!” Sofiya is now hysterical. “ Please ,” she sobs.
As Elio asks for permission to rip open her stocking, I sprint back down the short corridor toward my bedchamber. Lo and behold, one of the men who opened fire smudges my doorstep. Did the other run to get help? Is he standing off to the side, ready to assault me with his human weapon?
I morph into shadow and streak through my visitor’s wrists, severing them from the rest of his body. His howl splinters my invisible eardrums and livens up the hallway with shouts and footfalls.
I press my mouth to my squealing visitor’s ear—whose name has just come back to me—and murmur, “We meet again, Ivan .”
A brusque inhale cuts through his sniveling, and his bloodshot eyes bulge.
I grab his jacket and haul him across the threshold—the non-verbal way to grant passage through Taytah’s wards—then I shove him forward and slam the door shut just as iron pellets make a mess of the wood.
I drag my stunned detainee down my corridor. Once I reach the closet, I ram him into my shoe wall. He reappears as he collapses, eliciting a screech from Sofiya.
“You have one second to tell me where Ksenia has taken Konstantin,” I growl at Ivan.
The asshole narrows his gaze and squints at the patch of air from which my threat emerged. “You gonna kill me anyhow, you damn whore,” he ends up saying.
“I hear waterboarding’s a horrid way to go,” Elio drops in, almost conversationally.
“I’m happy to”—Sofiya gulps in air—“pop his ugly head off with a vine.” Her wan, perspiring face is lustrous in the light of the glass wall sconces.
The man smirks. “’Xcept you ain’t gonna be long for this world, Miss Patchenkov. Not with an iron bullet swimmin’ in yer veins. Soon, the metal’s gonna poison that oh-so-superior pureling heart of yers.”
Sofiya’s mouth crooks into a smirk. “The bullet’s out, so think again, prick.”
Ivan snickers. “You mighta yanked the bullet out, but it was packed full o’ powder—an obsidian and iron mix. Bad for Crows; worse for Fae. Good luck scrapin’ that out. Oh, and Miss Patchenkov…if you get to the underworld before me, give my regards to yer dear ole daddy, will ya?”
A bladed breath stabs her throat. “Excuse me?”
“We got rid of our enemies tonight, and yer daddy was one of ’em.”
“You’re lying! Atsa was alive when I left my house.”
A slow, merciless smile unfurls on Ivan’s lips. “Not all of us traveled to the capital.”
“You’re lying !” she repeats, attempting to sit up but failing.
“He is,” Elio says, tone so firm I assume he caught something off the sigils. “I heard your parents arguing just before you got here.”
Ivan frowns, clearly confused as to how Elio would have traveled from Voshna to the capital this quickly.
She sucks in air. “What? How?”
My friend bobs his chin toward the safe.
“You bugged my home, Isla?” A bead of sweat rolls over her scarred cheek.
The scar I gave her… “Aren’t you glad I did, right now?”
“Which room?” she asks.
I crouch in front of the odious revolutionary, relishing the brisk lift of his brows when I blow on him—just to let him know how close I am.
“ Rooms ,” I tell Sofiya. “I’ll give you a full list later. Let me finish with the human turd first.”
“Not my bathing chamber, I hope,” she murmurs. “I’ve been having unusual digestive issues…”
Elio pats her hand. “Isla wouldn’t have put them in your privy.”
While he reassures Sofiya that I have some scruples, I coax my talons out of my nailbeds and gently skim them through Ivan’s hair, erasing him from sight. He jumps.
“These new weapons you all tote around may have given you the delusion of being on equal footing with Faeries,” I purr, “but the Fae have unparalleled power at their fingertips. Power that most have had centuries to wield, so odds are, your friends failed, just like you’ve failed, just like you’ll all fail.”
“Yer wrong, whore. We’re gonna win! No matter how many of us you cut down, more’ll come. King Korol’s time is up.”
“Speaking of King Korol,” I say. “Shall I reiterate my question, or do you recall it?”
“I ain’t talkin’.”
“You’re right.” I plow his scalp with the tips of my talons, adding just enough pressure to coax blood. “You’re going to sing.”
He must’ve sealed his lips to keep from screaming, because all that puffs from his mouth are labored wheezes.
“You were also right about me killing you anyway, but you see, either I’ll have mercy on your wretched soul and keep my friends from torturing you, or?—”
“Does she mean me and you?” I hear Sofiya ask Elio.
“Yes,” he tells her gently.
“I’ve never had a Crow friend.” The burn of emotion roughens Sofiya’s pitch. “Or a Shabbin one. Or a half-blood one.”
I pick up where I left off. “—or I will fillet your skull and leave you to bleed out. What do you prefer?” I wiggle my nails, drawing a scream from his lips this time. “Where are they keeping Konstantin Korol?”
Ivan pants, hollers, snivels.
“What’ll it be?” I make ribbons of his scalp. “A quick trip to the underworld or an agonizingly slow one?”
“In the Throne Room! They’re in the Throne Room!”