Chapter Thirty-Six
Knees slam into stone, then palms. My lungs drag in nothing. I scrabble for purchase, my magic depleted with the lacing outside my room. I need to tell someone. Anyone. I need to get someone to Lila, while there’s so little time left.
I crawl. Dragging my exposed torso and legs across stone. As I gasp for air, little comes. The servants’ hall stretches before me, a scaly dragon I scrape my body across but cannot conquer.
A hand grabs my shoulder.
“Please!” I scream.
“Avery?” Benji gasps. “What—”
“Lila is—”
Pebbles fill my mouth. I try to wedge the words through the Reign oath because if an oath can be sworn with blood, perhaps it’ll take blood to break it.
“From the game, you know her. She needs—”
I gag as the stones tumble down my throat, drop deep into my stomach. My belly button aches as it distends with pain, as I push and push the words: Lila needs help, Lila—
Blood sprays from my mouth.
Benji screams for help.
Footsteps pound.
“A Night Crest!” a voice calls.
“Gone mad, I think!” another says, somewhere behind me.
“No,” I wail, ripping off my golden ring and offering it up. “Lila n—”
My tooth cracks. Help her! Help her, for planes’ sake, help—
Someone throws fabric across my back, a scratchy cloak. The heft of it collapses me, the ring pinging against the stone and rolling away. Still, my fingers dig into the grooves between stones, and I heave toward it.
Hands cover me, a gentle voice begging me. No, I will not stop. I need to go—I need to get to Lila, for this was a mistake, coming here.
“Lila,” I scream again. My body ripples, blood splattering against the walls. “Needs—”
Another spray of crimson.
My arms drop, head lolling to the side. I need to tell someone, I need—
Briar.
Briar holds me, a crowd growing behind us. Faces once familiar now look on, horrified.
“Avery, honey—”
She whispers calming words, though her eyes dart around the space.
She caresses my face, just like he did, the monster in the Pith, and I recoil, hissing.
I hiss and hiss at her, but my body feels so heavy.
It is the only fight left, to show my canines like the day I swore the blood oath to Illusion.
To let her know that I hate being touched.
“Please be still.”
Tears pour down my temples, hot and burning like the blood from my lips.
“Lila,” I weep. “My—”
Briar clamps a hand over my mouth, cutting off the words and the surge of blood magic rising up from my throat.
I sob harder, wincing in her grip. What is she doing?
What the fuck is she doing? Does she not see?
Can she not understand that something has happened, something terribly, terribly wrong?
The greatest offense, the sickest act: the Mountain crushing the warmth from the strongest among us, the kindest, the best of us.
The best of us. He has killed the best of us.
Not yet, a voice whispers. Not yet.
I thrash in Briar’s arms. Still, she holds a hand over my mouth, blood seeping through her fingers.
“Please stop,” she begs. “You’re killing yourself—”
“No,” I groan against her hand. “That’s not—”
If she knew, if she understood—I thought she’d understand—she would try to break the oath as well. Someone kneels beside her, beside me, almost glowing in the dark of the corridor.
Kassandra.
Kassandra, impassive, lips pursed, pale eyes on me, in the servants’ space.
Unfeeling, uncaring, expressionless Kassandra.
What does she need now? Does she not see that there are more important matters at play?
I hate her. I hate her, I hate Briar, I hate them all.
I hate Versara, I hate Jeremee for dying, I hate myself for living. But most of all, I hate the king.
My limbs grow heavy with despair, drooping. My head pounds and the hallway wavers. Kassandra is ordering extra cloth and water, then snapping at someone for parchment as Briar wraps the cloak over my exposed chest. She is telling Benji to leave, to go to the Nest and stay with a friend.
“Not the stables,” I moan. “Anywhere but the stables.”
“Avery,” my mistress says, voice solid and firm. Not gentle or cooing or dismissive or angry. Just a robust sound, a sturdy foothold in my roiling fear. I grapple for it. “We have your ring. But remember, riddles.”
Riddles?
Her eyes flick to the space around us, the faeries who scrabble away.
Delicate hands slide beneath my back. I squirm.
I am too heavy, too tall. I am a large faerie and Kassandra is a small fae.
Then phantom hands join her own, and they lift.
For once, I do not resist. For once, I lean into the solid force and cry as Kassandra and her magic carry me from the servants’ hall. Briar runs ahead, grabbing the door.
Kassandra carries me to her room, to her large bed and crisp white sheets.
No.
No, I cannot dirty them with my blood and saliva and nakedness. No, I try to twist out of her grip, but she holds me firm, lowering me to the bed. No, I do not belong here, I cannot be coddled while Lila is suffering so, and still, no one knows despite how much I try.
“Her face,” Briar whispers. “It’s scratched up—”
“Lila,” I try again. “Lila, she—”
Blood fills my mouth, and I try to swallow it, I try, but it surges up, hot and explosive. I lean over the bed and vomit red onto the floor. Then my shoulders are being pinned to the mattress, cool fingers bracketing my forehead.
“You will stop that,” Kassandra says. “You will stop trying to break the blood oath or I will knock you unconscious, and then we won’t be able to hear your message. Do you understand?”
I think I see fear in her eyes, but perhaps it is mine. She brushes hair from my forehead like Maxian did and I wince. Her eyes scan my face. “Do you understand, Avery?”
I nod through my tears, my head pounding with pain.
“Where’s that fucking parchment?” Kassandra calls over her shoulder. A day servant trips over something in the parlor, silver clattering to the floor. “Planes-pickled idiots,” she mutters, looking back at me. “Turns out you’re hard to replace.”
I hiccup, a pause to my crying.
“That’s right. Breathe, Avery,” Briar says, but I flinch. Her face goes dark. “I’ll grab water and medicine.” As she turns, she mutters to Kassandra, “This is an assault.”
“I fear this is not the worst of it.”
“No,” I cry. “He didn’t put—”
“Quiet, Avery,” Kassandra says. “That’s an order.”
This is about Lila—
Briar swears, then exits as another faerie comes in, handing Kassandra parchment and a quill. My fae scratches out a note, and when she is done, she crumples the paper in her hands, closing her eyes. When she opens her fist, it’s gone.
I stop crying altogether.
“Mistress?” the other faerie asks.
“Leave.”
When they do, Kassandra turns to me. “Turns out you were right. I can send an experience along the plane, an Illusion that does the job, but sometimes I need help from the real thing. A hobby I’ve picked up recently since you’re not around to excessively annoy me.”
I want to ask her how and when someone taught her. But my throat is raw, my tongue cut up, my teeth aching. In slowing down, my awareness has shifted, less a cornered animal and more an exhausted one. The aching in my stomach increases. My mouth feels full of drying clay.
Kassandra ducks her head, leveling her eyes with mine. She wipes a thumb across my chin, across the tender bruise.
“He grabbed you in many places, didn’t he?” she whispers.
New tears spring to my eyes.
“But that’s not all,” she says. “Something has happened to Lila. Do not confirm it, it will only hurt. Something has happened to Lila, but help is almost here. That is what we’re going to focus on now. We will figure out the rest later.”
When Briar returns, she cups a hand under my neck, tilts my head. Still, my muscles give out as blackness spots my vision.
No, I think. I must hold on.
Briar dips a cloth in the water and squeezes it onto my lips.
It burns, but enough times, and the drying blood gives way as they work in tandem, Kassandra blotting while Briar rinses.
I swirl water in my mouth and when I spit it out, a tooth comes with it.
I blink in shock, but Briar pockets it and they move on.
Finally, I try riddles. I think of Lila’s gold ring, the wings that represented her spirit. A hummingbird.
“The hummingbird…”
Kassandra and Briar do not glance at each other, though they both believe they’re the only ones to know up until now.
“Your friend, this hummingbird,” my mistress prompts.
“The eagle…the eagle froze the hummingbird. He, the k—”
“The eagle,” Briar interrupts. “Stick to the riddle.”
“The hummingbird was shaking from the cold. The hummingbird wasn’t the right color. I think she stopped breathing—”
Someone moans in pain and when Briar brushes hair from my eyes, I realize it’s me.
“Then what happened?” Kassandra asks, face grim.
“The moth,” I gasp. “The moth saw the hummingbird flutter. The hummingbird might still be alive but doesn’t have much time.”
Kassandra does not push me for more details. She knows why.
“We need to be strategic,” she says instead. “Maxian’s father quelled the Dark Rebellion and rebuilt Versara, and his father before him united Amyria. We cannot have Maxian leveling the city in a fit of rage just to show us he can.”
Just to show that he’s still powerful, even if a halfling.
“Kassandra is right,” a voice says from the door. Eli stands on the threshold. “What has occurred? I felt rumbling from House Reign.”
“Do you know of the Reign Crest Lila?”
Eli stops in his tracks. Then his eyes take in my bloodied body, my pallor, my tears, and I see something I’ve never seen on him before, a darkness like shadows between trees, the tensing of his shoulders, the narrowing of his eyes. Fury.
“What. Happened,” he grits out.
“The king has tortured her. We need to get to her now before the cold takes her to the celestial plane,” Kassandra answers.
Eli’s gaze lands on me once more. “Why?”