3. Chapter 3
Chapter 3
I sabel came to in the haze of twilight. A cold wind drifted across her cheeks as her eyes cracked open. Bare gray branches stretched like clawed fingers above her, outlined by a blank gray sky. A few remaining leaves still clung in places, and she watched for a moment as a gust of wind snagged one, sending it tumbling through the air.
Her fingers were cold, she realized with a jolt. She sat up, her hand reaching automatically for the dagger at her belt. Her pulse slowed when she realized it was still there, the wards sending a reassuring warmth through her fingers. A thick, blue-checkered quilt fell away from her body.
Something moved to her right, and then, she was on her feet, the knife in her hands. A man grunted as she shoved him to the ground and angled the knife at his throat. The wards gave off a fierce warning pulse, and she stilled, staring into Karim’s startled face.
“ You ,” she blurted. Her tongue was thick in her mouth, and her head pounded. It was like she had been smashed against a wall and then tossed into a sack that had been thrown off the top of a mountain.
“Yes, me ,” he snapped. He’d cleaned the blood from his face and body, and the bruises on his cheek had already turned into a mass of black, blue, and purple.
“You’re still here,” she said almost dumbly. The checkered blanket. Had he gotten that for her somehow? Her brows creased. How long had she been out?
“I didn’t think it was wise to leave the woman who’d rescued me crumpled unconscious in the woods.” His eyes flicked to the knife. “But maybe I should have.”
Isabel glared at him. “I don’t trust traitors .”
His nostrils flared again. “Did you not hear a single word I said in the throne room?”
“It was still a choice you made, no matter how much you regret it now.”
He heaved a sigh of frustration. “You’ve made your position very clear. Can you let me up now? I have no intention of hurting you. And if I’ve understood who you’re connected to, then I doubt you want to hurt me either. ”
Annoyance flared in Isabel’s chest. She shoved him down with her elbow as she pulled the knife back and retreated a few steps. He dusted himself off as he rose to his feet. He was wearing a sturdy green coat now over his threadbare tunic, its ends falling to his knees. He’d replaced his worn shoes with thick, fur-lined boots.
“Where did you get those?” she said, jerking her chin at his clothes.
Karim gave her a look, then reached for a nondescript pack that was leaning against a tree a few feet away. Isabel had never seen it before either. Like the blanket. Like his coat and boots.
“You know what,” she said. “I don’t need to know.”
“Here.” He pulled a thick slice of bread from the pack and handed it to her. “Eat this.”
She eyed him warily. She still had no reason to trust him, even if she had just saved him from the wrath of the Mediran king. Then her stomach gave a growl, and she grudgingly reached for the bread. The comforting smell wafted over her, and she took a bite before she could think better of it. It was soft and buttery on her tongue, and still warm.
He reached inside the pack again and pulled out another slice of bread, tearing off a chunk and putting it in his mouth. He closed his eyes, and Isabel remembered with a sudden heaviness that this was the best food he’d had in weeks.
Questions tumbled through her mind. He was still here, after all that. He hadn’t just left her and made a run for it. He could have. Easily. She’d gotten him out, sure, but he didn’t owe her anything. Not after the way he’d been treated, even if she weren’t Mediran.
And then there was the torrent of power and shadow that had rushed through her just before she’d passed out, the shadow that had poured out of her and turned day into chaos and night—everything except for her and Karim. They’d erupted out, away from the soldiers, as if there were nothing in their way. A hollowness settled in the pit of her stomach, and the old things the village women had whispered about her came roaring back: She’s a monster. Anyone who can control shadows can’t be trusted. There’s no telling what she’ll do.
Isabel rubbed a hand across her face. “How long was I asleep?” she asked. It was the only thing she could get her brain to hook on to.
“A few hours. Three at most.”
Her heart gave a startled thud. Three hours she’d been at this man’s mercy, and he’d given her a blanket? Surely the Medirans couldn’t be far behind. “Okay.” She bit her lip, her mind working. “Where are we? ”
“I was hoping you would know.”
“What do you mean?” she said, lowering the bread to her lap.
“I don’t know this land at all.” He shrugged. “It’s your territory. Or rather, I assume it is, since I still know nothing about you.”
“We can’t be far from the Mediran palace,” Isabel insisted, ignoring his pointed suggestion. “Maybe a bit to the south, where the forest starts.”
He was already shaking his head. “I don’t think so. I...scouted around a bit. There’s no sign of the palace or of the Mediran capital.”
She stared at him. That made no sense. They’d been behind the palace before she’d collapsed. All she’d done was get them out. “And where did you get all this again?” She held up the piece of bread.
His mouth quirked. “I thought you said you didn’t want to know.”
“I don’t,” she muttered. If they weren’t near the Mediran palace, then where were they? He had to have missed something. Something obvious.
She pulled the checkered blanket back up over her legs, thankful for its warmth in the cold evening air .
“I’ll have you know I found it somewhere it wasn’t likely to be missed,” Karim said, his eyes flickering to the quilt over her knees, as if he could read her mind.
“I feel so much better about it now, thanks,” she drawled.
“I’m not a thief.”
“Then what do you call this?” She held up the bread.
“Payment,” he said. “For damages owed.”
“So, you know exactly what you deserve then, do you?”
He glared at her, and her mind flashed back to the throne room, to an image of him facing the king in a display of defiance. Her stomach soured. Even he hadn’t deserved that.
“What in the name of the archer were you thinking anyway?” she rounded on him. “Mocking the Mediran king? Attacking a guard in the middle of the bloody throne room? Were you trying to get yourself killed?”
Karim gave a bleak laugh. “Did it really matter? They were going to kill me no matter what I did.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “So, you decided to take on the entire Archer-forsaken Mediran army single handedly?”
“Better to go out in a blaze of glory than let them dictate your death,” he said bitterly .
Her heart gave a sudden thump as she stared at him. She hated to admit how much that made sense. After all, it’s what she had done, and it had led to her position with the queen’s shadow now. “And how did that work out for you?” she asked.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
She gave him an incredulous stare. He was here. With her. Somewhere in a forest that couldn’t be far from the Mediran palace, with what was probably the entire king’s army out looking for them. She suddenly felt more tired than she had before.
He shifted into a sitting position. “I still don’t know who you are.”
“Isabel Algerin,” she said begrudgingly. She didn’t like the idea of giving up her name so easily. But her orders had been to rescue him. Rendra needed him to give them answers.
“Karim Saad of Clan Marek.”
Clan Marek. She didn’t know much about the powerful families of Ineti, but she had heard of Clan Marek. They held power in a part of the empire directly north across the sea from Medira.
“And you’re Rendran,” he said pointedly.
Isabel nodded. “I work for the Rendran queen. And Rendra needs you in one piece, especially after what happened in the dungeon. You’re our one remaining source of information on what the chanters are planning.”
“Can’t let a valuable resource go to waste,” he said bitterly.
“No,” she snapped. “I won’t let anyone treat another human being like that, no matter what they’ve done.”
He held her gaze for a moment. “And what is it you think I’ve done?”
She opened her mouth, then stopped. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure of what she’d thought she’d known about the Inetian traitors. She’d lumped them all under an umbrella of stupidity, of people who couldn’t see beyond their own huge noses. People who are motivated only by power and wealth at the expense of everyone else. But now, with him sitting here in front of her, she wasn’t sure at all anymore.
“All I know is that something drove you to join Sethos Amanakar’s plan to depose his father from the Inetian throne. And your friends back there seemed willing to risk the end of the world just for more power —”
“ Don’t ,” Karim barked. His eyes blazed wildly beneath his tangled black hair. “You know absolutely nothing about that.”
Well. She had clearly hit a nerve. “You’re right,” she said slowly, sitting back. “I don’t.”
His shoulders relaxed slightly. “The Inetian emperor is not just. He uses people for his own gain. My family was cast out by the emperor because my uncle accidentally embarrassed him. The emperor ruined the lives of dozens for the sake of his own vanity. For better or worse, I made a choice to join Amanakar. And it landed me here.” His voice was hard. “And what I said to the king was correct. I want nothing to do with the Sorothi chanters ever again.”
“And why not?” she pressed. “What did they do to you, Karim?”
He dropped his gaze. “They killed my brother.”
The world sharpened at his words, narrowing to a single point. Her heart gave a painful thump, and for a moment, she was back in that room so long ago, watching a pair of gray eyes stare glassily up at her, feeling an overly hot, limp hand clutching her own, hearing a voice begging her for help.
Karim stared out into the forest, his face eerily still. “Akil didn’t have the magic affinity that I did. He struggled to control his chant. I tried my best to help him but...” He shook his head. “He lost control. He was the one who tore the rift in the fabric of the world back in the enclave. It sucked him in. He was gone. Just like that. And there was nothing I could do. ”
Isabel remembered Cassandra’s story of the explosion at the enclave, of the horrible wrongness that had permeated the valley. To be sucked into such a rift was a fate worse than death, tangled forever in the fabric of the world, neither in earth nor shadow.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
When he looked up, his black eyes blazed with rage and purpose. “The whole thing was a bad idea from the very beginning. But neither of us had a choice. That’s why I haven’t run. If your queen is even a single iota smarter than that self-absorbed sop back in Medira, then I’m willing to help in any way I can.” His mouth tipped sardonically. “Besides, I’m not stupid. The protection of another crown is the only way I’ll survive for more than ten minutes out here.”
He wasn’t wrong. He could run, but he was wanted in Medira, Rendra, and Ineti. His best bet was to flee south into the Alliance lands, but there were bounty hunters who were willing to do just about anything to claim a reward.
Karim’s mouth twisted. “And the man who rescued the others from the dungeon... Well, let’s just say that he won’t be too happy to find out that I didn’t come when he called.”
“So, it was one of the chanters then,” Isabel said .
Karim nodded. “Yes. His name is Gustav. He’s the one who brokered the deal with Amanakar. He has an...interest in keeping us under his thumb.”
Isabel’s brows rose. “And why is that?”
His mouth tipped. “I think I’ll keep that information to myself until I’ve got a deal for protection in hand.”
Isabel narrowed her eyes, meeting him stare-for-stare. “Well then,” she said. “I can say for certain that the Rendran queen is nothing like the Mediran king.”
“Good.” His eyes slid down to the knife at her belt. “The woman who gave that to you. Who is she?”
Isabel’s hand went protectively to the dagger. “Her name is Cassandra. The Rendran queen’s shadow, and the queen’s half-sister.”
Karim blinked, and Isabel could see the cogs turning in his mind. “No wonder she didn’t want her identity revealed,” he said.
Dots were connecting in Isabel’s mind now too. Cassandra and her now-husband Arphaxad had been apprehended by the Inetians in the enclave and then entombed with the rift Karim’s brother had been sucked into in an attempt to dispose of them.
“So, she survived then,” Karim said slowly.
“She did,” Isabel sai d
“How?” he pressed. “I was there, in the cave. The earth was coming down around us and the chanters had forced her and the man with her to stay by the rift. I used that knife to sever the ropes around their wrists. To give them a fighting chance.” His fingers flexed. “I had hoped that the wards in the knife might give them some sort of protection.”
He had helped Cassandra? Isabel watched him for a long moment, her mind spinning. A traitor to his country, but still filled with so much conviction of right and wrong.
She told him briefly of Cassandra and Arphaxad’s escape, about how they’d found one of the enclave’s enchanted doors, gateways that led from one place to another, sometimes hundreds of miles apart.
“So, you gave her this dagger,” she said, pulling it out and laying it across her knees.
Karim nodded. His eyes darted from the knife up to hers. “And she gave it to you.”
A shiver moved through Isabel at his words. A strange sequence of events, of coincidence, that had led them here to this place, in a cold, quiet forest beneath a silent, gray sky.
Isabel ran her fingers along the hilt, the wards twining up her fingers, a warm, familiar comfort by now. “I don’t think she knew about the wards in it. ”
Karim’s mouth tipped. “But you do.”
She couldn’t stop the answering half-smile that rose to her lips. “I could sense them from a mile away. They’re not exactly subtle.”
“Wards don’t need to be subtle. Not many notice the magic that’s been worked around them.”
“So, they are your wards then.” It wasn’t a question so much as a statement. She didn’t know exactly how wards like these worked, but she knew those with the magic to work them were exceedingly rare.
“They are.” He grinned, his eyes flashing mischievously. “You haven’t noticed yet, have you?”
“What?”
All at once, she saw them. Wards, sequestering the space around them. They hovered in the air, crackling between the bare branches of the trees, a haze of magic meant to misdirect, to hide their makeshift camp from any prying eyes. She shook her head. He was good. Very good. “That’s...that’s impressive.”
He smirked. “I know.”
“So, your affinity somehow made you able to see through my magic?”
“I think so,” Karim said. “I’m not actually sure why though. And what you did this afternoon with shadow—I’ve never seen anything like it. ”
Isabel shifted beneath his gaze. “That was different,” she said a little too quickly. “That’s never happened to me before.”
His brows rose. “It hasn’t?”
“No,” she said. “My affinity has always allowed me to...disappear into the shadows. Misdirect the eye in the right conditions, especially in darkness. But today I...I have no idea what happened. How I did that.”
“Interesting,” he said thoughtfully.
“It doesn’t matter.” She didn’t want to talk about it, especially not with him.
“But it does matter,” he said. “The way our magic works, the way magic is supposed to work, is for those with affinities to coax elements of our world to be more of what they already are. You draw on shadows—shadows that already exist. You just coax them to be what they’ve wanted to be all along; you convince them that you are a part of them.”
Isabel’s brows drew together. She’d never heard magic described in that way before. She’d spent a lot of her life pretending her affinity didn’t exist, pretending she wasn’t the monster the villagers had claimed she was. Until she had come to work for Cassandra—then her ability to hide in shadows had proven incredibly useful. But she’d never told anyone about it .
“I’m able to weave strands of magic into physical items—into anything that has a physical form really,” Karim continued. “This magic coaxes the item to be more of what it was already meant to be. So, the wards around us now—I’ve simply encouraged the trees to be trees and the forest to be forest. That they exist more intensely than we do. And it hides us.”
Isabel sat back, her mind doing its best to catch up with what he was saying.
His lips pressed together. “But the Sorothi chanters—they use words and power to force the world around them into doing something it doesn’t want to, into being something it’s not. Those doors they tear in the fabric of the world should not be able to exist. It’s an unnatural kind of magic, one in which humans impose their own will on the earth rather than working within the bounds of what things are supposed to be.” His fingers clenched. “It’s another reason I want nothing more to do with the chanters and their magic.”
Nothing more to do with the chanters and their magic. She understood now how important it was to get him back to Rendra. The information he carried was going to be indispensable to finding the chanters, to stopping whatever they planned to do with their unnatural magic .
“So,” she said slowly. “You’re telling me that my job is to get the most wanted man in Ineti and Medira back to Rendra without tearing apart a newly budding alliance between my nation and the one I just sprung you out of.”
His mouth curved. “Sounds fun.”
She pushed herself to her feet, saving the checkered blanket from dropping into the mud. “You have a warped sense of fun.”
“Considering my idea of fun for the past few weeks involved not starving to death, I’ll take this version any day.”
Another twinge of guilt twisted in her gut. “So, we agree that we need to get you to Rendra then?” she said.
“Yep,” he tossed back.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get going. We still need to figure out where we are.” But even as the words left her mouth, she had a hunch—a terrifying hunch—that she knew exactly where they were.
Karim folded the checkered blanket and put it in the pack along with the food before shouldering it. Isabel slid the knife back in her belt, strangely comforted by its presence. Karim whispered something under his breath and flicked his fingers, and the wards came down. Isabel watched, impressed. She’d never seen anyone do anything like that before. She was used to being the only one with a magic affinity.
Karim followed her through the trees. It didn’t take long to realize that they were heading toward the top of a ridge. Ahead, the trees parted to reveal streaks of orange angling through the clouds. If they could get to the top, they might be able to figure out how far from the Mediran palace they were.
Her heart pounded as they moved through the trees, reaching for the openness on the other side of the crest. Her sinking suspicion was already proving to be far too likely.
They burst through the trees at the top of the rise. The setting sun was just piercing through the gray cloud cover, sending tendrils of gold and blue brilliantly across the horizon. In the far distance, Isabel could see the faint shimmer of the ocean. Below them, a river snaked in shining hues across the fields of cold-weather crops. She could see the outline of another river to the east.
There, nestled in a pristine valley where the two rivers met, was a plethora of man-made structures, pushing along the riverbanks and up around a hill. On the high ground was a glittering palace, at once familiar and terrifying. Isabel’s stomach did a flip .
They weren’t in Medira at all. They were staring down at the capital city of Rendra and the glittering facade of the Rendran palace. A chill crept across her body. They were a hundred miles from where they had started only a few hours before. And Isabel had no idea how.