The North Tower
King Orsin’s Castle
Irun back to the door. I hit it with both hands. I press my lightcraft into the wood and it cracks and holds and I hit it again and the sounds from inside have changed and I do not want to think about what that means and I keep hitting it.
A hand closes around my arm.
I spin.
Tamal.
His hood is up again. He looks at me with that face that is not cruel and is not kind and says it quietly, the way you said something to someone you needed to understand.
"Father needs the key."
"I know what he needs," I say. "I know what is happening in that room and you need to stop it."
"It is necessary."
"It is not necessary. None of this is necessary. You are standing in a corridor while your father—"
"For Maridale to live whole we need the amulet," he says. "The amulet requires a key."
I laugh bitterly. “You say key, but what you truly mean is person. Whatever this amulet is, it requires an innocent person.”
His hand tightens on my arm. "Person. Key. I don't give a fuck. In any scenario, you are in the way, dear sister."
Sister. No, it cannot be. I ignore it for now.
"Tamal—"
He picks me up and I feel myself catapulted in the air.
I do not land on the floor. Instead I am back inside the room.
The room is exactly as I left it and somehow worse.
Nox is in the chair with the dampening cuffs on her wrists and blood already at the leather where she has thrown herself against them.
Her voice is gone. Whatever sound she is making now is coming from somewhere below sound.
The three men are still there and the guards are still along the walls looking at nothing and the seer is still murmuring and I cannot stop looking at the chair and at Nox's face and at the way she cannot close her eyes because he will not let her close her eyes.
I throw my lightcraft at the deathmages. They hold.
I throw it at the guards. They hold.
I throw it at the cuffs on Nox's wrists and it presses against the dampening and goes nowhere and I scream at her and she cannot hear me and I cannot reach her and I cannot stop any of it and I press myself against the wall and wait for it to be over because there is nothing else I can do.
This is not real, Asharin. You need to leave.
I know it. And yet I cannot leave them.
When it is finally over the three men leave.
The guards leave.
The seer leaves.
The room empties until it is just Nox in the chair and the girl on the bed and me against the wall and the silence that follows something that should not have happened.
Someone unlocks the cuffs.
Nox sits where she is for a long time. Then she stands. She crosses to the bed and looks at the girl and whatever she sees there I cannot read from her face. Her face has gone somewhere I cannot reach.
She does not call for anyone. She just stands there.
Then her father comes back.
Clothed. Glamoured. Smooth-faced and handsome and entirely at ease. He offers her his hand.
"Come walk in the gardens with me, my Ivy."
Nox is pale. "Sadie--"
"Sadie has failed. She will be cared for if there is anything left." He smiles cruelly. "But I cannot care for her if I am upset or displeased, as I am sure you understand."
She stares at him, then she accepts his hand.
I follow them. I do not want to, yet my body does it anyway.
Through the palace and out into the gardens where the air is cold and the lanterns are lit and everything looks ordinary if you do not know what just happened inside.
I walk beside them through the dark and I listen to everything he says and I watch Nox's face while he says it and I watch her ask if Sadie will live and I watch the relief go through her when he says yes she is in the north tower and I want to tell her what I know about the north tower, about the yellow room and the deathmages and the screaming women with swollen bellies.
But I cannot reach her and she cannot hear me.
They walk until the north tower stands over them.
He points.
"There. She is sleeping, and her wounds are being tended."
I look at the tower and watch as they carry Sadie inside. Her body looks lifeless. Limp. I look at what I know is inside it and something cold and absolute moves through me.
"Today you taught me something, sweet Ivy,"
"I wish to see my sister."
He points to the north tower.
"She is right there. Your other sisters are in there as well." He says it kindly.
"The Key is still out there. I have daughters being born to me every day, sweet child, and I will go on looking.
But there are two I cannot account for." He said it without any change in his voice, as though he were listing debts.
"The seer tells me you are powerful. She also tells me you are not the Key.
That another strong daughter of mine is. "
He tucked her hair back from her face.
"She tells me you are the hand that delivers it to me."
"Aunt Ryaran's daughter is dead," Nox whispered.
"Yes. But there was another who went missing. She may be living. She may be in the ground. You will find out which, and you will bring me what is left of her either way."
"Morrath and the blind gate are in Rathmor keeping." He leaned down and put his mouth against her ear. "Find them. Marry their king, he can access Morrath. Bring me my daughter. Open the Blind Gate."
A pause.
"That is the only way you will ever escape me."
He pulled away and straightened his cuffs.
"No. I will not leave Sadie," she says firmly. "No matter what state her--"
He laughs before she can finish. "You know, today you have taught me something, sweet Ivy."
"Yes, Father?"
"I have realized that you are all I need." He points. "But I have spoiled you. I have made you think you are more powerful than you are."
He raises his hand, the tips of his fingers turning gray and then black.
The sound comes first. Then the ground moves. Then the tower folds in on itself and goes up in flame.
Nox screams until there was nothing left in her to scream with. He turned her into his chest and held her there and kissed the top of her head.
"Sweet Ivanoxa. I have always favored you. I would like to keep you as my wife. You remind me so much of your mother."
I want to vomit. I do not know what to do, I do not know if I run toward the tower or if I stay and watch this twisted interaction or if I run away from it all.
I cannot help it. I am already running toward the tower.
The doors are heavy and I hit them before I have fully reached them, throwing my lightcraft ahead of me, and they do not open.
I hit them again. I press everything I have against them and the wood shudders and holds and I can hear them inside, I can hear movement and voices and I cannot get through.
Behind me I hear Nox scream.
The ground moves before the sound does. A low grinding that becomes a roar that becomes everything at once.
I throw myself against the doors and they give this time, finally give, and I am inside and the ceiling is coming down in great slabs and dust is everywhere and I cannot see and I cannot breathe and I am screaming their names into the dark and nothing comes back.
Something hits my shoulder. My knee. My head.
Then a hand.
An arm around my shoulders, pulling me upright, pulling me out of the dark and the dust and the ruin of it.
"Daughter," a voice says. "I have been looking for you."
I look up.
Tamal saw me. The deathmages saw me. I do not know why, and I have not had time to wonder past the fact of it. But nothing else in this memory has looked at me the way King Orsin is looking at me now. He sees me the way you see something you already own and have simply misplaced.
Something pulls.
It starts behind my ribs and drags outward. A hook set deep and yanked. I feel it the way I felt the poison. Wrong. Cold. Taking. I try to scream and nothing comes. I try to pull back and there is nowhere to pull to.
His smile widens, pleased, the way you smile at something finally within reach.
"Daughter," he says again, quieter now, almost gentle. "I am coming for you."
Everything goes white.