Chapter 8
I began to change myself the next day.
It hurt, shifting my lumis from what the gods intended it to be.
Hurt in a way not quite physical. Deep and raw and wrong, similar to how I felt when that assassin had sunk his blade into my diaphragm—the sensation of otherness that twisted with the shock and pain.
I realized how agonizing it must have been for Renn when I’d remade him, especially since I’d done it so quickly, hindered only by my own mortal shortcomings.
I whispered late apologies he might never hear as I worked at a careful, measured pace, taking breaks often to reorient myself, or to meditate and remember.
I had to remember what I’d seen, or this would never work.
A little here, a little there, until I scarcely recognized myself, and hardly felt myself, either.
A deep sickness took root in my core, in my bones and my blood, but I could not look back, not now.
I had to be ready. Always ready. I would not lose another opportunity.
Eight weeks after nearly murdering his wife in front of me, Adoel Nicosia returned to Rodsfell.
I had fair warning; the servants in the palace hustled, their footsteps carrying through the halls and the tree aperture.
Activity increased outside, first by the common people, then by returning soldiers.
It would be only a matter of time before Nicosia came for me, and my body ached with memories of his cruelty.
The sound of the king’s voice jarred my ears the day he returned to the palace; I heard it through the aperture in the room below. Crept to the crevice to listen, holding my hair back for fear it might slip past the tile and give me away.
“—yet, Your Majesty,” said an unfamiliar male voice.
A smack of skin on skin. “How is that even possible? You insolent fool! Why are you here if he’s alive?”
“R-Resources, Your Majesty. We were too low.”
Another smack.
“I ought to unwind you,” Nicosia seethed, and the term sent a shock through my skeleton. Unwind?
An image of Nicosia clawing at a beautiful, multicolored chandelier rose to my mind. I imagined this man’s lumis like a great tapestry, and the king’s cruel, ethereal hands tearing away at its threads—
A pause. “He’s too powerful—”
“This is your only purpose, do you not understand?” Footsteps, and the king’s voice grew distant. “Not looting, not land. Stop ravaging the women and kill their king!”
I clenched my teeth, pulse thrumming too quickly, lungs desperate for air.
The other man said something, but he’d moved too far from the aperture for me to hear.
Retreating from the tree, I pressed my hands to my heart. “Run, Renn,” I whispered. “Don’t let them have you. Please, please don’t let them win.”
Just then, my soulbinding released. I took a deep breath of air, as if I could fill the space where it had been, but I had no confidence in another shot at freedom.
Moments later, the door to the conservatory burst open, slamming into the wall behind it.
I soared to my feet, dizzy from the motion and ill with my magic, grabbing a branch of the Egroran to steady myself.
The room spun, yet Adoel Nicosia seemed unmovable, as though even my vertigo could not touch him.
He was travel worn, his hair disheveled either by weather or a helmet, but his green eyes were sharp, his mouth tight.
He still wore his military uniform with the gold bars on the collar, a belted sword, mud-caked boots.
“A disease, the lot of you,” he snapped, marching into the room without shutting the door. A mastiff whined from the corridor, but the dog did not enter.
I tried not to shrink from him as he neared, but did not altogether succeed. Yet the king did not strike me but pulled off a glove and snatched my hand only long enough to rebind me to the tree. Then he marched toward the large window, peering out onto the back of his kingdom.
“Do you know how disease works, Nym?” He tugged his glove back into place.
“It’s imperceptible, at first. The finest grains of miasma, no different from the air and the water.
It falls somewhere seemingly harmless: a horse trough, a child’s hands, a rising loaf of bread.
And yet from there it grows, and as it grows it spreads, choking one life and then another, weaving into families and communities like the branches of a tree.
” He turned toward the Egroran, pleased with his metaphor.
“Humans are much the same. Born sniveling and whining, seemingly harmless, but they grow, and they reproduce, and they spread their mortality from one community to the next, one fiefdom to the next, one kingdom to the next.” His hand formed a fist, the leather across his knuckles creaking. “Those who overcome it become gods.”
That was no doctrine I’d ever heard.
“And I . . .” He opened his hand and looked up, as though a dove were meant to fly from his palm. “. . . have almost overcome it.”
I swallowed. Eden was right. He is mad.
“Yet a few pesky mortals still stand in my way.”
He marched over to me. I knew running was futile, but I tried anyway, until he shortened my leash with the Egroran. I thumped up against the tree. Grabbing me by the neck, he shoved my back against the tree’s trunk and drew his sword.
I barely had time to gasp before he ran me through with the blade, burying its end into the trunk.
Air stopped. Thought stopped. The wrongness of it flooded me. My legs wanted to quit, and yet even as they tried, pain shocked my middle over and over again as the sword held me up. The pain echoed back and forth—Renn’s response. He felt the sword embedded in himself, too.
I dowsed on myself and hastily began picking up fallen puzzle pieces, reorganizing the new formations they’d broken from. I’d only just started when the basalt wall around me boomed as thunder. Quivered as though pelted by the storm god Rolys himself.
I realized his plan, even as I fought to save myself: distract me with my wounds while he ripped my wall apart.
I rebuilt myself, fused the blocks into place, but even as I did, more toppled over. The sword was still embedded above my navel, and I could only heal around it. I cursed, prepared myself, and returned to reality.
I couldn’t breathe.
Nicosia’s face had gone blank with dowsing, his hands around my neck.
I tried to grab the sword hilt, but it was too far, and my efforts sent blood pouring down my dress, forcing me to return to my lumis and rebuild myself.
Back in reality, I gripped the blade with my bare hands, but my grip was weak, my angle wrong.
Curses swirled through me as I returned to my lumis, Ursa shouting something I couldn’t hear over the thundering of the wall. I rebuilt myself, tied magical ropes around the pieces, and used the connection of Nicosia’s hands to enter his lumis.
I lifted my hands and pulled on Ursa and threw my strength into Nicosia’s wall, encouraged by the way it rumbled and cracked as though made from obsidian instead of basalt.
Then I changed my tactic, pulling magic from the wall itself instead of shoving new magic into it.
The black rippled like molten iron, and I parted it, absorbing the sight of Nicosia’s icy sentries, their shape and color—
Returning to reality felt like toppling from a roof. Nicosia had whipped his hands from me, seeing my ploy.
I rushed into my lumis, re-pieced the puzzle—
Shot back into reality as my knees hit the tile of the conservatory. The bloody sword dropped next to me with an earsplitting clamor.
Back in my lumis, I fixed the pieces one piece at a time, staunching the blood—
In the conservatory, Nicosia tugged on his gloves once more, seized me by my hair, and hauled me to my feet, his stale breath filling my senses.
“My time away was good for me.” He spat on my cheek. “I’ve begun to see how useless you really are. You are nothing. You have nothing. I was a fool to think keeping you would be any benefit to me.”
Renn’s panic added to my own. I desperately tried to push it away. I had to focus. I had to play this just right—
Nicosia threw me, sending me chest- and elbows-first into the floor. Almost immediately he seized my hair again and hauled me up.
“If the gods gave you no craftlock to teach me, what is the point of your existence?” He shook me, and I cried out as hairs pulled from my scalp, my not-quite-healed wound tearing, that old ache in my side—Renn’s side—throbbing.
Mouth right against my ear, he screamed, “Tell me what I want to know!”
His voice rang inside my skull, deafening.
A high-pitched whine immediately replaced it.
“One last chance, Nym.” He severed my soulbinding and rushed me from the room, fingers tight on my hair, his glove barring me from dowsing on him.
I could barely keep up with his stride, and he held my head at an angle that made it nearly impossible for me to see where we were going.
I tripped often, each stumble yanking on my scalp, splitting my middle a little more, but I could heal it later, later.
I had to focus. I had to remember our steps, spot the stairs, see the portraits.
Right. We’d gone to the right and down the stairs. I knew where the closets were, the sitting room, the narrow hallway to that awful, death-choked space—
“I am merciful. You can still have it all.” He dragged me down another narrow set of stairs I’d never seen before, my shoulder colliding with the marble wall.
Down two floors. “Citizenship, purpose, training. A new home under the greatest of kings. One more chance, but I’ll let you think about it in a more conducive environment. ”
The corridor narrowed, twisted, darkened. Marble turned to stone. Narrower stairs that barely accommodated two bodies together. The air chilled. Though I’d never been here before, I knew exactly where we were going. It had the same air, the same mildewy scent, as the one in Rove.
The dungeon.