Chapter 4
Four
Ijolt to my feet in an instant, my fingers closing around the hilt of my knife. I swing it toward the spot where I assumed the speaker was crouched… but the blade only slices through empty air.
My gaze jerks over the room around me. I can’t see any figure in the entire room, let alone right by my side.
My pulse bangs so loudly I can barely hear my own ragged whisper. “Who’s here? What do you want?”
A light chuckle fills my head… giving the impression that it is actually coming from within my head.
The firm but sultry voice I heard before reaches me the same way, seeming to echo inside my skull rather than coming from beyond my ears. I simply thought we should talk, seeing as I can’t get anything done any other way.
My grip tightens on the knife handle, but what am I going to do with it? Stab it into my own brain? That’s not going to help me.
There are people dedicated to Jurnus—the godlen who presides over communication—who sacrificed enough to request the gift of mind-to-mind speech. Could that be what this unseen woman is doing? She’s somewhere nearby though out of sight, projecting her thoughts into my head?
If so, I need to figure out just how close she is so I can track her down and bring the conversation face to face.
I adjust my position so I can quickly spring off the folds of woolen fabric. My voice dips low—so low no one not in the room with me could possibly hear. “If you want to talk so badly, why don’t you show yourself like a normal person would?”
Another brief laugh tinkles through my head. Believe me, I wish I could arrange that. Unfortunately it appears that all that’s left of me is terribly ephemeral.
She caught the question—she’s got to be somewhere in the attic. I push to my feet and prowl slowly through the shadows, watching for any sign of movement, any object I might recognize has been displaced.
What are you doing? the voice asks with a tinge of amusement that annoys me. You can’t find me; I’m already right here.
“What do you mean?” I say through gritted teeth. “Where are you?”
Inside you, as far as I can tell.
Even in my tense state, I can’t help rolling my eyes. “I can tell you’re projecting your voice there. Where’s the rest of you?”
This is pretty much all of me at this point. The body you’re looking for, you left in a pool of blood in that putrid alley.
I draw up short with a sharper hitch of my pulse. She knows about the murdered noblewoman—she saw me there. Is this blackmail?
The voice continues on, unfazed by my silence. Not that I can blame you. I wouldn’t have wanted to dally around that scene either. Although it’d have been nice if you’d at least stayed close enough to check whether the villain who murdered me came by to gloat.
My jaw goes slack for a second before I snap my mouth shut again. The words snag in my throat before I force them out. “Your murderer…?”
Yes. Let’s keep up. Some ruthless miscreant had me slaughtered in a gods-forsaken alley, you ever-so-heroically if futilely raced to my rescue, and somehow or other when my soul left my body, it ended up in yours.
Her way of speaking does sound like a noble. Would it really make sense for there to have just happened to be another noblewoman, one with telepathic magic, hanging around in Slaughterwell to watch me stumble on that body and then managing to follow me all across the city for the rest of the day?
I press my free hand to my forehead. What sense does it make that a dead woman’s soul could have taken up residence in my head? I’ve never heard of that happening to anyone.
No matter how I look at this situation, it’s a whole lot of fucking impossible.
“How could your soul have ended up in me?” I demand.
I haven’t got a clue. I promise you, this wasn’t my idea.
“Well, gods be sure it wasn’t mine.”
I stare through the dimness, my stomach still listing uneasily. Am I really going to believe her story?
Wait. There’s a simple way to test whether she really is inside my body and not simply watching me.
I back up until my ass brushes a stack of boxes and tuck my hand behind me, still clutching my knife in the other. In the cramped space where no one could possibly see, I press two fingers against my spine. “How many fingers am I holding out?”
The voice in my head snorts derisively, but after a few seconds she must realize I do expect an answer. Two. Must we really play this game? There are more important—
My skin has chilled, but it could have been a lucky guess. I adjust my hand to extend all four fingers, including the partial stump of my pointer. “And now?”
Four. Look, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I’ve been here in your head while you’ve roved all over the city, so it’s rather difficult for me to doubt what’s going on. And that I can’t do much of anything about it.
Something about those last words sends a deeper jab of ice through my veins. What was it she said earlier—that she wanted to talk because she couldn’t ‘get things done’ otherwise?
I’ve really got a ghost in my head, and she’s been there for hours. Hours in which my head hasn’t always felt entirely normal.
Those dizzy spells that came out of the blue…
“Did you try to make me do things for you?” I have to ask. “To… to take over my mind?”
There’s a moment of silence that’s almost sheepish. Her voice returns as brashly nonchalant as before. Who wouldn’t have? Here I am, trapped in a body that’s not mine and that I don’t know, with no way of reaching out to anyone who could help unless it’s through you—how could I not try?
Somehow she makes it sound totally reasonable and not like she attempted to hijack my life.
I grimace, picturing the chestnut-haired girl in her silk dress like she must have been before someone jabbed a knife through her neck. I can practically see her arching her eyebrows and tilting her head with measured coyness.
I force myself to return to my bed, sitting down on the heap of fabric. Tension stays coiled all through my frame. “Why didn’t you just talk to me?”
You mean since that’s going so well right now? I couldn’t imagine how you’d react. It would have been much simpler if I could have borrowed you for a day or two to get my affairs in order… I promise I’d have returned you in the same state I found you in, or possibly better.
Her tone implies that better wouldn’t be too hard. I find myself clenching my jaw again.
“Considering that all I know about you is that you managed to get yourself murdered, forgive me for being skeptical.”
Well, I’m talking to you now. You do know I was murdered, so surely you can agree that justice should be done?
“I expect the powers that be will investigate whether I get involved or not. It’s not as if anyone could imagine you tripped and accidentally fell on that knife.”
That’s not the only— She pauses with a sigh of exasperation. I have the sense of her gathering her temper.
When she speaks again, it’s in a smoother, more cloying tone. We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I apologize. I should start by properly introducing myself. I’m Julita Laonek of the county of Nikodi, dedicate to Creaden, in my second year at the Sovereign College.
She may not realize how much she’s told me with that single sentence.
Her last name uses the masculine ending, which means her family styles themselves an impressive one by carrying on an earlier ancestor’s name rather than her using the common form of adapting her mother’s.
Yet she’s not even from a major family overseeing an entire province but some county I’ve never heard of.
If she’s dedicated herself to Creaden, most likely she’s planning to either take over the family estate or run her eventual husband’s. Or rather, she was, before the unfortunate incident with the knife.
Compared to me, she’s minor royalty. But to her peers at the college, she’d be little better than a nobody.
Maybe she’s gotten in the habit of laying on the airs thick to distract people from that fact.
And you are? she prods as I take everything in. I’m sure you don’t actually work for Master Radir.
The corners of my mouth kick up. “No. I’m Ivy, and I don’t work for anyone except myself.”
Ivy?
I ignore her prompt for more. There isn’t anything more to the name I took on for myself after I fled my family’s home, and I’ll be garroted before I tell her my old one.
It’s no longer really mine anyway.
Instead, I let a prick of my own curiosity guide me. “What were you doing wandering around the alleys of Slaughterwell, Julita Laonek?”
I was attempting to investigate the local temples for signs of illicit magic.
Of all the things she could have said, that’s definitely not anything I’d have guessed at.
My gut twists into a knot. “What kind of illicit magic? Are you working with the Crown’s Watch?”
She couldn’t know, or even suspect—?
My unwanted passenger gives a huff. No, they wouldn’t listen. We need more evidence first, which is why I was out looking for it. If any devouts were supporting the conspiracy, it seems most likely they’d need to be from the smaller, out of the way temples to escape notice.
I pause, knitting my brow. Not anything to do with me, then. But… “What conspiracy? What are you talking about?”
There’s much more at stake here than my life. Someone at the college is experimenting with the same sort of magic that brought on the Great Retribution.
“What?” I sputter through a jolt of deeper horror. “But—if the godlen realize—they could punish us all over again. Who would be stupid enough to try?”
People who don’t care what happens to anyone else if they can gain a little more power, Julita mutters. People who think they’re so smart they’ll manage to sneak it past the gods.
“Are you sure? At the royal college—right under the king’s nose?”
She takes on an arch tone. I know what I’ve seen. They’ve tried to cover up their rituals, but there’ve been signs. And they nearly killed the prince the last time the royal family toured the college. That’s when I knew I had to do something.