Chapter Fifty-Eight Odessa
Fifty-Eight
Odessa
Ransom sagged against the jail cell’s bars, exhausted and weak. The dark veins that had been creeping toward his throat were gone now that the Lyssa had been siphoned.
Brother Skore had left moments ago without a word.
I reached through the bars, easing down the collar of his shirt, expecting to still find them over his heart. But they were gone. Entirely.
His chest was nothing but smooth, firm skin over hard muscle.
I doubted this was the cure we desperately needed, but it was enough. It was a reprieve from the pain and rage. This would give us time.
“He’s more powerful than the High Priest,” Ransom murmured. “I’m not sure if I should be grateful or terrified.”
“Both.” I inched closer to hug his arm and thread our fingers together.
The scorching, unnatural heat from his skin was gone. His eyes were a swirl of brown and green and gray that blended to a muted hazel. It wasn’t the vibrant green I loved so much, but anything was better than silver.
“You should go,” he said. “Get some rest.”
“Not yet.” If Ransom was going to stay in this cell until we left Quentis, then I’d stay here, too.
“My father plans to exile you from Quentis. Maybe if we expedite that exile, we could all set sail in the morning. I haven’t heard any news of other crux scouts.
It gives me hope that we’ll make it home before the migration. ”
“Dess?” he whispered, his voice so groggy he sounded seconds from sleep.
“Yeah.”
“I need to tell you something. About the crux scout.” His hesitation was enough for me to know he wasn’t going to deliver good news.
“What is it? Did it kill someone else? Tillia?”
“No. She’s fine.” He shook his head. “I don’t think the migration is coming yet.”
I sat up straighter. “What? Why?”
He twisted to face me, both of his arms snaking through the bars. “The crux in Ellder was…different.”
“Different, how?” It had been as deadly and horrifying as the portraits and murals in the art gallery. It had been exactly as the stories depicted, a monster that came and killed without mercy.
“After she died, her body—it changed.” He swallowed hard. “It shifted into the body of a woman.”
“I don’t understand.” I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead to make sure the fever hadn’t returned.
He took my wrist, gently tugging it away. “I know how this sounds. Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it, either.”
I replayed every conversation we’d had about that night in Ellder. Every time he’d called the crux she. This was why.
“It became a woman? So it was a shapeshifter?” Beings I’d only ever heard about in children’s tales.
“Yes. And I don’t believe she was a scout.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Her hair.” He twined a curl of mine around his pinkie. “It was the same as yours.”
My hand lifted, touching a strand by my ear. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know, Dess. I don’t know what to think.
The reason I haven’t told you is because I can’t make sense of it.
But there hasn’t been another scout. I rode across Calandra, and there wasn’t so much as a whisper.
And it’s too early for the migration. This woman, this shifter, I believe she came on her own. Or maybe she was always here.”
The realm seemed to drop away, the sensation of falling so powerful my stomach pitched. “I don’t… What does this mean? Shapeshifters. That’s…impossible, right? And why would she come to Ellder?”
“Maybe she was looking for something.”
Not something. Someone.
“Me. You think she might have been looking for me?” I hated to even speak those words, but it fit with our other theories. That monsters were drawn to me. “She came to kill me.”
“Or me,” he said.
No, this wasn’t about him. He couldn’t feel Voster magic. He hadn’t been hunted by monsters at every turn.
“Oh gods.” I slapped a hand over my mouth as tears filled my eyes. “If the crux came to Ellder because of me, then I’m the reason your mother died.”
“No.” He took my face in his hands, pulling it close so my forehead pressed against the bars. “The crux killed her. Not you. Don’t take this on yourself.”
“But, Ranse—”
“No, Odessa. This is not because of you.”
I wanted so badly to believe him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The skeleton forest had been ten—no, eleven days ago. All those times when I’d felt like he wasn’t telling me something. This was it.
“Because I knew you’d take Ellder on yourself.”
He wasn’t wrong. So many lives lost. So many people slaughtered.
The image of Luella’s body being cleaved in two was so crisp in my memory, even when I squeezed my eyes shut, I couldn’t block it out.
“Why have I never heard of this before? If the crux are shapeshifters, it should be common knowledge.” There’d been hundreds of the monsters killed in past migrations, their carcasses burned to ash. If those corpses were human, it was this continent’s best-kept secret.
“They can’t all be shifters. She just took their form.”
My head was spinning. “What color were her eyes?”
“I didn’t look.”
“And her body?”
“I ordered it to be burned. I didn’t want rumors spreading. Her blood was green. It…it looked like mine. Those in Ellder who saw her will keep it quiet.”
Turans and their secrets.
If Thora were here now, she’d throw that right in his face.
“Does your father know? Is that why he hasn’t sent word of the scout and alerted other kingdoms to prepare for the migration?”
“No.” Ransom’s jaw clenched. “He rode to Allesaria. He never saw the body.”
So Ramsey had willingly forsaken the other kingdoms. He’d gone into hiding in his capital and left the rest of Calandra to suffer. Bastard.
“I don’t know what to think about all of this, Ranse.”
“Maybe I can help.” A voice carried from the hall.
I turned, squinting in the dim light as the guard I’d bribed earlier ambled closer. “You?”
He shifted his weight foot to foot, then moved to the side, waving forward a woman wearing a bejeweled navy gown. Her hands were clasped behind her back. Her crown’s jewels caught the lantern’s flickering light.
“Margot?”
“This is no place for a princess, Odessa.” She clicked her tongue, then looked at the guard. “Bring a fresh lantern.”
“Yes, Majesty.” He scurried off and returned a moment later with a lantern. He set it down beside the cell, then bowed to Margot.
“Leave us,” she ordered.
The guard didn’t need to be told twice.
Her posture relaxed as his footsteps retreated, and she stepped closer, inspecting Ransom’s dirty cell. “I’m sorry.”
“Can you get him out of here?”
“No. Your father kept the key himself.” She gave me a sad smile, then brought forward a book that had been hidden behind her back.
The cover was so dark a purple it was nearly black.
Margot crouched before me, her gaze roving over my hair and face. She reached for my neck, not to touch the cut on my throat, but to tug free the necklace I wore each and every day.
“I hoped you’d never find this necklace,” she said, taking the pendant in her palm. “But it called to you. She told me you’d find it one day.”
“Who?”
She let the pendant rest gently over my heart, then looked to the book. “I want you to know that I always tried to protect you. From your hair to your dresses. I only meant to keep you safe. To keep my vow.”
There were tears in her eyes when she lifted her chin. “Read this together. Your father will be on the balcony in the throne room when you’re finished.”
“What is it?” I asked, taking the book from her outstretched hand.
She cupped my face, tracing my cheekbone with her thumb. “Your dynasty.”