Chapter 7
While all stayed quiet in Rodsfell, war happened elsewhere.
I knew this from Renn—from the surge of his emotions, the ebb and flow of victory and defeat, exhaustion and tumult.
I tried to craft a story around all of it, but I had no way of knowing the truth.
I could only hope and pray that the good outweighed the bad, and that Renn didn’t receive an injury that likewise crippled me.
I was pacing mindlessly around the tree a few days later, stretching my legs and working out nervous energy, when something completely unexpected happened—a release from deep within me. I thought it, at first, Renn, but no other sensations followed it—not joy nor rage nor sadness nor pain.
Then I realized, and I dared not breathe for the want of it.
I moved away from the tree. Farther, farther, until I reached the door.
I reached the door.
Shaking, I extended my arm, letting my fingertips brush its smooth wood. Gooseflesh erupted over every inch of my skin, sending shivers into my bones. My heart beat wildly in my chest.
“Nym?” Ursa asked.
“I-It’s gone,” I whispered, the shock dizzying. “The soulbinding, it’s gone.”
I heard my sister gasp. “Is he . . . ?”
“Dead?” I whispered back. Hem and the gods make it so! Had Adoel Nicosia fallen in battle? Had Renn or one of his soldiers severed his magic definitively? Surely I would feel it from Renn if he took Nicosia’s life and ended this horrible war.
It felt like too much to hope. More likely, Nicosia had needed his magic for something else or used it thoughtlessly. If a soulbinder could only bind one soul at a time, then the moment Nicosia soulbound another creature, he would release his hold on me.
Either way, for the first time in two months, I had my autonomy back. I could leave.
Sweat broke out all over my body, hot and cold at once.
“Now, Nym. Before someone realizes!”
I turned back toward the great window. Still light out, perhaps late afternoon.
It might be safer to wait until nightfall, but what if someone thought to check on me, and I lost my advantage?
What if I didn’t understand the magic at all, and Nicosia could reignite it again from wherever in the world he was?
What if more guards filtered into the palace at night?
What if they didn’t?
I couldn’t risk it. If the gods had given me an opportunity to run, I had to run.
My slick fingers gripped the door handle. It wasn’t locked; this place wasn’t intended to be a prison. I pressed my ear to the door, but it was hard to hear anything over my own pulse. Carefully I turned the latch. Inched the door open. My heart hammered so hard even my vision shook with it.
I could weep. We might not need our plan after all, I thought only, for I dared not make a sound now.
A short hallway led to my door, and from it stemmed marble walkways to either side. I swallowed. Stepped out and snicked the door shut behind me.
A distant voice, male and friendly, came up the hallway, but it drifted away. No guards outside the door. Why would I need guards when my very soul couldn’t move?
The name of every god cycled through my thoughts in quick prayer as I toed toward the hallway and peered out.
The floor seemed to be shaped as a giant oval, curving out of sight either way.
Silver sconces lined the walls, rich carpets the floor, several ferns along the way, old artwork in silver-plated frames.
I knew part of this; I knew that I’d been led left for Eden’s sham wedding.
That the shrine was two floors down. When I’d first been bound to the tree, and when Nicosia had given me his tour, he’d taken me left as well.
I had no idea what was to the right. The slapdash map of the palace I’d pieced together in my mind veered left.
Perhaps the right hallway came around and joined with the left, and the choice was ultimately moot.
But maybe Eden was to the right. West wing. I just had to hope the layout of this place made sense and led me there.
Upstairs, she’d said. West wing. Fifth floor. I was on the fourth. Would Nicosia keep Eden in his bedroom? Or was she kept in a guest room, or somewhere dourer? What if he’d moved her since our brief chat? Had he thrown her in the dungeon? Did the palace have a dungeon?
I had to get to Eden.
I steeled myself with a deep breath. Straightened my clothing and combed through my hair.
I had only slippers for my feet; they would be quiet enough.
Nicosia hadn’t paraded me around; I had a good chance most wouldn’t recognize me.
There was no notable difference, physically, between Canseren and Sestan people.
My dress, though old and in need of washing, was refined enough, albeit not in Sestan style.
It was Eden’s. Still, if I were to be spotted, perhaps better I appear as a servant or guest than an escapee.
Light on my feet, I hurried right, my senses hyperaware of every sound, smell, and movement, hindered still by my thumping chest. I peered around the bend and found stairs.
Stairs. Stairs led down from the left, too, but I couldn’t remember these two flights being within sight of one another.
And they only led down, not up. Where were the stairs to the fifth floor?
What if Eden had counted wrong? But I had so few options, I had to trust her. Fifth floor, west wing. She could see the sunset. Fourth door from the stairs.
As I neared the stairs, I passed another window. I could break the window and get out that way . . . but the noise would draw attention. The fall might be too great—
Find Eden. I needed to do that first. I’d promised her.
Passing the stairs—indeed, I could not see the other set from their well—I peered around the next corner.
There was a single room, perhaps a meeting room?
Unlikely to be a bedroom. No further stairs that I could see.
Nothing leading up. Ursa remained quiet, likely not wishing to break my concentration.
Swallowing against a dry throat, I backed up and took the stairs down, my feet moving swiftly, my slippers padding like the feet of a cat.
I heard a voice. Moved to the nearest door and opened it, but it was a closet without space to fit me. The next door was locked. Panicking, I slipped into the next just as footsteps approached. Pulled it shut behind me.
Thank the gods, the room was unoccupied.
It appeared to be a salon of some sort, a sitting room filled with furniture, with broad windows on two of four walls.
It also had another door. I glanced out the windows while crossing to that door and pushed it open, praying for stairs.
Peered outward into a hallway. Two maids conversed twenty feet away. Move, I urged them.
They did not.
I’d have to go back the way I came. My fingers, little more than ice on the knob, started to close the door, but just then the maids did start walking away, continuing their talk. They carried either sheets or table linens. It didn’t matter.
Could I accost one and steal her uniform? No, not when there were two. And not when they might scream. I was ill practiced at jumping innocent women, nor did I want to, even if they did serve a madman.
I slipped from the salon. Shut the door.
Leave everything as you found it, I thought.
I inched down the hallway. Tested another door.
It opened to a bedroom—unoccupied. No sign of luggage or it having been lived in.
The next door was the same. The next, a closet, full of linens matching what the maids had been carrying.
I pulled up my memorized map of the palace. The places I’d been. I was on the third floor. If royal bedrooms were on the fifth floor, then perhaps the stairs to them were tucked away, to keep out wanderers?
I continued onward, testing doors. My fourth opened onto an occupied room, not for Eden, but an old man I did not recognize. He was in a tub, his back to me. I quickly shut the door, wincing at the soft click it gave, as though the lock was shouting at me.
Footsteps. I dodged into an alcove sporting a lacquered box, nearly knocking it from its pedestal. No voices, just footsteps. They passed. I checked the last door in the hallway—locked. But wouldn’t Nicosia lock Eden in her room?
Feeling daring, I rapped the nail of my index finger lightly on the door. No response. Rapped again. Nothing.
I darted into the juncture of hallways, glancing to my right only to see a blue-clad guard heading my way. I’d stepped directly into his line of sight.
It took everything I had not to run, not to freeze.
Walk, walk, walk. I crossed the juncture, but he was certainly still heading my way.
Fear spiked so hard it spawned vertigo. I walked briskly down the remainder of the hall.
Heard voices coming up the next. The palace seemed sparsely occupied, but there was no way I’d check everything without being found. Without being questioned or smelled—
I searched for a hiding place, panicked. A shorter hallway branched off behind me, unlit and without windows. I jogged to it. Its narrow corridor boasted an array of silvered whatnots, but I saw none of them. I simply walked, getting as much space between me and that guard, that voice, as I could.
The passageway ended at a narrow door. Unlocked. Please be stairs. I cracked it—a room. Saw no one within and stepped inside, carefully pushing the door shut behind me—
It felt like being lowered into a half-frozen pond. A shudder started in my feet and radiated up to my crown, making every hair on my body stand on end.
Death. Death painted the walls of this room. Clung to the air and wove between the four simple beds.
I turned to confront it but found no one. Nothing. I swallowed. If this room was not full of the dying, then why did I sense such darkness here?
“Nym?” Ursa asked.