Chapter 13 Mance, Without Asset, Without Livid
Mance, Without Asset, Without Livid
My first couple days in the Forest Realm have been tense. Chaotic.
My father refuses to speak to me, despite repeated requests.
I haven’t so much as seen him since my arrival, not even for meals.
My fiancé treats me with nothing but contempt, despite my attempts to be aggressively amicable.
And every time Silver gets close to me and I think I’ll get a moment’s break from planning a wedding I’d do almost anything to forestall, that white-haired girl shows up to start trouble.
I do not like her.
Meanwhile, Asset left for the Swamp Realm to make a second attempt at securing an alliance, one it appears increasingly likely we’ll need, since I’m clearly not getting anywhere.
But without her logic to ground me, my emotions are overwhelming, my animals squirming and twisting beneath my skin so intensely that I feel like I might burst.
Especially because she’s late.
She was supposed to meet me in this creepy, shadowy forest clearing an hour ago, and yet I am the only one here. What’s keeping her?
What if this all falls apart?
Somewhere, a wolf howls, cutting through the stillness of the night, and my heart rate ratchets up as my thoughts completely derail.
That wasn’t . . . my wolf, was it?
Staring into the darkness, I struggle to remember whether wolves are common to this area. I keep quiet, hoping to hear the answering calls of a pack, anything to let me know that the call I just heard was random, completely unrelated to me.
Not from the throat of the creature who responds to Livid’s summons.
But the forest is silent again, almost as though it is waiting, and I shiver.
Is she here?
Is she watching me?
Suddenly, the shadows seem closer. Darker. Inhabited.
I’m just on the edge of a full panic when a girl with my face suddenly appears in front of me, her expression dark.
I shriek and scramble backward, only to belatedly register the utilitarian bun and practical, pocket-covered pants. The swamp muck she’s covered in from head to toe.
Embarrassed, I swallow, casting one final, frantic look around before closing the distance between us and grabbing her arm.
“You’re late,” I huff. “And look at you! What happened?” But then I shake my head. “Never mind, I’ll find out in a minute.” And she’ll find out what I just heard. She’ll know what to do. I reach for my magic, ready to pull her back into my body, when—
“Wait!” Asset cries.
I pause, surprised by the show of emotion. Asset is usually so controlled. “What is it?”
She runs a hand through her slick, muddied hair, and I notice for the first time that she’s breathing hard. She looks exhausted.
“Just . . . brace yourself,” she says softly.
Apprehension prickles down my spine as I realize how badly shaken she is. My animals squirm again, causing goose bumps to break out across my arms. “For what?” I ask. “Are you all right?”
She shakes her head once, and my unease only grows. It feels like the whole forest is watching, breathing down the back of my neck.
Finally, I decide that not knowing what happened is too much. I pull her back quickly, thinking that the waiting is worse than the finding out.
I am wrong.
I see the Swamp Realm, stinking and fetid, with stringy moss and slippery mud beneath my feet. The whole realm is protected by an enormous dome of woven, magical ropes created by Prime Artro. They’re a marvel, artful in their arrangement, and in the way that they create patterns in the shadows.
But I’ve never tried to pass through them unannounced before.
I didn’t know that they had orders to attack intruders.
Until they attack me.
I—Asset—I try to yank my arm free, but it only makes the rope coil more tightly around me. Tendrils snake out from the rest of the wall and stretch for my body, twisting tight bands around my skin faster than I can fight them off.
Then they wrap around my throat.
I summon a copy of myself on the other side of the wall and she takes off running toward the castle, but it’s no use. A rope over my head lashes out and wraps around her ankle, tripping her, then dragging and binding her, too. I hear her scream.
Frantic, and starting to see spots from the lack of air, I do the only thing I can think of and summon as many copies as I can handle, in rapid succession. I thrust them through the boundary of my skin, hoping one of them will be able to evade the Prime’s magic long enough to get help.
But the ropes are seemingly omnipresent, striking and capturing and entwining until dozens and dozens of versions of me are struggling against the binding, awful power of rough hemp and magic.
And I, Mance, live every single one. I suffer scores of strangulation experiences simultaneously, one layered on top of another until I am feeling my own fear from every single angle, my own imminent death from dozens of perspectives.
I feel rope burn on every inch of my body, and I can’t stop myself from gasping against cords that are no longer there.
I fall to my knees in the dirt of the forest, begging for it all to stop.
It does, eventually, and I live through the rest of it.
Prime Artro called off the ropes, but for all that suffering, we didn’t even convince him to support us.
As if his dome weren’t enough to get the message across, he made it very clear that he and his people want nothing more than to be left alone.
He refused to back us, and when Asset pressed, he had his ropes throw her back out of his realm for good.
Not only did we not get his support today, but we may have damaged our relations with him in the future. The whole thing was a complete and utter failure.
And Asset knows it.
I feel the burn of her shame, the bitter taste of defeat in the back of my throat. I’ve visited two realms now and I have nothing to show for it. This is not going well at all.
Asset was supposed to go to the Coast Realm next, but she decided long before we merged that we should send a different part. Perhaps her blunt plans and practicality aren’t what’s needed here.
Following her train of thought, I send Poise out instead, and she appears in front of me, blinking in the starlight.
She must be just as exhausted, just as beaten down as I am, but when she stands across from me in the clearing, there is a dignity to her raised chin, an elegance to the curve of her spine.
Her face is carefully impassive as she looks at me through the gloom, absently twisting her hair into something presentable as she thinks.
“Will you be all right here without me?” she asks delicately.
“I’ll be fine,” I snap. “I don’t need you.” The words are brusque and blunt without Poise in me to soften them, but she’s too polite to point it out.
“Good luck, then,” she says, pinning the last stray hair in place. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
She turns to the east, moonlight illuminating her profile. Her eyes go distant as she fixates on something far-off. Then she disappears, leaving me alone in the dark.
After a minute, I tear my gaze away. I need to focus on what I’m doing here, and that starts with getting back to the palace as soon as possible, before anyone realizes I’m missing.
There’s no point trying to find that wolf. It was probably just a random one. They are native to the area; now that my head is clear I can remember that. Besides, if Livid were really here, she would have attacked while I was on my knees in the mud, helpless under the onslaught of memories.
So, doing my best to shake it off, I hoist myself up into the branches of a nearby pine, climbing upward to get a better vantage point, heedless of the scratch of twigs and the sticky feeling of sap beneath my fingers.
It’s been two days, and I have nothing to show for it. Only dress fittings, napkin selections, and endless consultations on music and color schemes. Which is especially irritating because I strongly suspect Reltas is only giving me all this busywork to keep me out of the way.
Since our first, tense breakfast together, he has had absolutely no interest in talking to or being around me.
Clearly, he has no need or desire for me at all beyond my hand in marriage and whatever that gains him, a subject he continues to be tight-lipped about whenever I corner him long enough to press him.
Remembering his attack on the Outskirts, the anger always seething within him, I fear the answer.
And in the meantime, I feel like an animal in a cage.
Like Livid must have felt, I suppose.
The thought startles me as soon as I have it, and I push it down, striving harder until my head finally breaks through the foliage and I can look around, searching for a clearing in the direction of the castle to transport myself into.
Only it’s darker than it was when I came here, and I can’t see as far. Clouds moved to cover the moon while I was climbing. Everything around me is just . . . black. And unfamiliar. I’m not even sure which way the palace is.
A creeping panic begins to overwhelm me as I contemplate the possibility of getting completely lost in these shadows. My creatures wriggle in the pit of my stomach as I strain to make out any kind of landmark.
Then, suddenly, I see a single light bobbing in the distance. There and gone again in a blink.
I peer at the place I saw it, hoping it appears again.
It does, and thankfully it stops in an opening between the trees, glowing brightly enough for me to see the outline of a shadowy figure holding the light aloft.
I don’t recognize the person; I’m much too far away.
But I do recognize the cloak.
It’s the one Reltas puts on every night before he leaves our chambers, always evasive about where he’s going and when he’ll be back.
Something like hope makes my animals skitter up my spine. After the day I’ve had, I could really use a win, and perhaps I’ve finally found one.
It’s time to see exactly what Reltas has been hiding.