Chapter 22 Skylar
Skylar only sees the cat, black as the night, because she’s expecting him. Astrid was right—Bastet really is perfect for slinking through the shadows. He taps a paw against her window, and Skylar opens it as wide as she can.
THE COVEN IS QUIET, Bastet announces. She’s seen him speaking out loud to other people before—but it’s still weird.
“I take it that means it’s safe to go.”
Bastet ignores her, waiting for her to reach through the small gap in the window and take the potion tied around his neck.
She opens the vial, sniffs it. She looks from the window to the potion, then to Bastet. “Do I just… pour it on?”
CORRECT.
The cracks around the window smoke as she does so—and she hears a distinctive click. She’s impressed despite herself.
The hot night air caresses her skin as she slips outside.
Given she’s being locked in her room at night, this is the only way out.
She vaguely hopes that Simone doesn’t get in trouble as she begins to climb down the castle wall, using the crevices between the stone blocks to find purchase.
The rest of them she doesn’t care about, but Simone…
If she really didn’t choose to be here, that means she’s as trapped as Skylar, forced to work for the very people who captured her in the first place.
Forced to work for the people who have kept an Exhauster imprisoned, somewhere in this castle, for Arach knows how long.
She thinks of him, draining the life from the assassin yesterday, and can’t quite control the nausea that swirls.
She’s always known what an Exhauster could do, but seeing it like that…
No doubt it makes the king feel more powerful still, keeping the only Exhauster left alive chained right here in the castle—showing the rest of the country that he alone can control someone who was deemed by his ancestors as too dangerous to let live.
Astrid is waiting at the bottom of the wall, navy hair tied back in a ponytail. She glances up the way Skylar just came as Bastet curls around her ankles, having beaten Skylar down. “Good thing you’re not afraid of heights.”
Skylar only smirks as Astrid unstoppers another vial. “Masking Mist,” she explains. “It means we won’t be seen.”
“Got a potion for everything, don’t you?”
She tries not to think about what those potions could do to her when they are locked in that cage together. If she has a dragon, maybe she’ll be okay. Potions won’t penetrate the scales, and as long as she can stay airborne—or behind the dragon—then she might just make it out alive. But if not…
One step at a time, Lar Lar.
Right. Step one—find Cam.
They are silent as they move through the night, back into the castle and toward the king’s office. Skylar has to hand it to her, the little witch knows how to tread lightly. Astrid instructs Bastet to keep watch at the end of the corridor. Then they come to a stop outside the door to the office.
“This is where I got stuck last time,” Skylar says—slightly redundantly.
“I can deactivate the wards and unlock the door easily enough. But the door needs to be touched by the king himself in order to open.” Astrid pauses meaningfully. “Or someone with his blood.”
Skylar taps her fingers against her thigh. “How, exactly, do you know so much about Daddy Despot’s office, Little Witch?”
“Let’s just say I made sure to do my research.”
Skylar focuses back on the door. “I can feel them,” she murmurs.
“Feel what?”
“The wards.” She stretches out her hand, stops short of touching the door. She was in such a rush last time that she hadn’t noticed. But she can feel the magic now, pulsing. Her skin prickles. It feels a little like the wards around the temple, where the egg is housed.
Astrid is looking at her curiously. “And your Blooded power is…?”
Skylar snorts. “What, like, if the rest of them can’t get it out of me I’m going to tell you?”
Astrid grins—and it’s almost friendly seeming. “Worth a shot. Maybe you’re a Discerner,” she muses. “Sensing magic like that.”
“Go ahead, Little Witch, keep guessing.”
You are not Blooded, Skylar.
A Dreki, closing in on her. Nowhere left to run, girl.
And the stranger, surrounded by shadows. What are you?
She just about controls the urge to shiver. “Besides,” she says, as Astrid slips another vial out of her belt, “I’m not the only one with a secret power, am I? How about we trade—I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
Astrid gives her a look as if to say nice try, before unstoppering the vial and pouring its contents along the bottom of the door.
Like with the window, something seems to smoke.
Skylar feels the magic waver—and then it’s like she can see the wards, dissolving in front of her.
Astrid murmurs something that sounds like “avask” and the lock clicks.
“That it?” Skylar asks, and Astrid nods.
Astrid gestures for Skylar to place her hand on the doorknob, then covers it with her own.
Skylar frowns and goes to pull away, but Astrid holds her still.
“We need to be touching,” she murmurs, “so that I can get in, too.”
Skylar has a fleeting urge to shove Astrid away and tell her to get lost—but, then again, Skylar couldn’t get in without her.
Still, she doesn’t like the way it feels, touching the witch’s skin.
It’s like whatever the Blood Binding did is heightened, something inside her pulsing in recognition.
From the way Astrid is looking at their hands, Skylar knows the witch feels it, too.
Then Skylar turns the door handle, and they both step inside.
Astrid mutters another spell and a ball of light appears, hovering in the middle of the room.
Skylar glances at her. “Handy.”
She turns a circle, taking in a large drinks cabinet, the paintings on the walls—including one of the king and Bruma, of course—and a dragonglass sculpture atop the ornate desk.
Astrid heads for the bookshelves on one side of the room, running a finger along their spines as she reads the titles in turn.
The desk, Skylar thinks. The desk has got to be the best place to start.
The first drawer opens easily—presumably because the king thinks no one stands a chance of getting into this room.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Astrid asks, as she takes one of the books off the shelf, then checks to see if there are any others lurking out of sight.
“Oh, you know,” Skylar says vaguely as she flicks through what look to be nothing more than stationery supplies. “Old birthday cards, family keepsakes, that sort of thing.”
“Right.” A hint of frustration creeps into Astrid’s tone. “You know, if you told me, I might be able to help.”
There’s that word again. Help. Then again—could Astrid have heard something? She is the Arturean heir, after all.
“I want to know where the conscripts are being taken,” she says eventually. That’s vague enough, right?
“Why?”
Skylar shuts the first drawer, opens the second. “Now, now, Little Witch—we may be on breaking-in terms, but let’s not get carried away with braiding each other’s hair—or did you forget we’ve got to try to kill each other in a few weeks?”
“No,” Astrid says, her voice soft—almost sad. “I could never forget it.”
Skylar’s hands falter as she rifles through letters. “Bet you’re glad it’s not him,” she mutters, picking up a letter and trying to decipher it.
Astrid sets the book back on the shelf, then moves to stand next to Skylar. “I’m glad it’s not him.” Skylar raises her eyebrows, surprised at the honesty. “But that doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to killing you, Little Dragon.”
Skylar acknowledges that by shoving the letter in Astrid’s face, then picking up the next one.
“There’s nothing in this,” Astrid says as she reads. “It’s an execution order for a rebel, I think.”
An execution order. She wonders if that would have been the Exhauster, too. Maybe he even looks forward to the executions—she imagines him sitting in a cell, hidden from the world, waiting to be called forth.
“What are you looking for?” Skylar asks.
Astrid’s turn to hesitate. “I need information on the Heart.”
“Why? Soon enough you’ll gain control of it, won’t you?” Unless she gets a dragon.
Astrid doesn’t answer—fair enough. Skylar scans the next letter. “Nothing here, either. Just some vineyard owner complaining about the wasting away of his crops.” Skylar snorts scathingly. “Can’t supply the nobles with the finest wines with no crops, can he?”
Astrid, however, holds out her hand for the letter, then purses her lips as she reads.
“Hoping to take back a case of wine as a souvenir, were you?”
“It sounds like the land is dying,” Astrid says, ignoring her. “It sounds like…”
“Oh, that’s nothing. You want to see what’s happening down south.
I was there a year ago, everything’s gone to shit down in Brithan.
Nothing’s growing, and no one can afford to pay for Vitalas, so it’s hot as Vaar everywhere you go.
It was always more of a desert, but now it’s like a wasteland and…
What? Why are you looking at me like that? ”
“The Blight,” Astrid says slowly.
“Right. You do know I have no idea what that is, yeah?”
Astrid frowns down at the letter. “My country is experiencing natural disaster after natural disaster, has been for years. It’s why my mother had to return, because of the floods. I thought you were hoarding the Heart’s ambient magic somehow, for Vatra, but if it’s happening here…”
“Don’t lump me in with them,” Skylar mutters darkly. “Last I checked, I’m not hoarding anything.”
Astrid looks at Skylar. “No. You’re not one of them, are you? And I’m sorry.”
The easy way Astrid offers the apology makes Skylar immediately suspicious, and she narrows her eyes, waiting. Astrid only goes back to the letters, rifling through more quickly now, still clutching the one about the crops. Skylar watches her, replaying Asrid’s words in her mind.
“You care.”
“Huh?”
“You care that people are suffering. Your people.”