8. Chapter 8
Chapter 8
A cold rain misted through the trees, pattering off the thatched roofs of Medina Acil and streaming down the dirt lanes. Isabel peered into the misty haze, pulling her hood over her head and tightening the straps of her new pack against her shoulders. It was only a few miles to the citadel, but when the often-treacherous mountain paths were slick like they were this morning, they would have to be very, very careful.
Karim emerged from his room a few minutes later, his pack already slung across his back. Isabel gave him a nod as he approached, trying not to think of what had almost happened last night—his breath on her lips, the fire of his body pressed against her own, his sure hands holding her arms, pulling her close against him .
He gave her a stiff smile. “Sleep well?” The bags under his eyes told her that his night had been just as restless as hers.
“I slept great,” she said. “You?”
“Like a rock.”
They set off into the rain, Karim a few paces behind Isabel. The entire village was still asleep after last night’s carousing, which had lasted late if the music and laughter from outside her window had been any indication.
She’d tossed and turned all night, unable to get him out of her head. And when she’d finally fallen asleep, her dreams had been littered with the Inetians on the riverbank, with the soft curve of Karim’s lips as he’d smiled at her in the light of the bonfire, with the surge of the shadow power raging through her. She wasn’t sure which had been the most terrifying.
Today she would take him to the citadel, just as she’d promised Cassandra and the queen. She would do her duty. Last night had just been a been a moment of headiness brought on by the energy of the crowd, by the things he’d said to her that had made her feel seen for the first time in her life, by his closeness and the way he’d smelled. By the way she’d imagined her fingers in his hair, his lips against hers, his— She ground her teeth in frustration. She was doing it again .
The path narrowed and climbed steeply as they moved away from Medina Acil, trekking deeper into the mountains. Isabel’s legs were burning by midmorning when the misting rain finally cleared, and the sun peeked its way through the clouds. A soft warmth settled over her, and it wasn’t long before any previously chilled parts of her body had warmed in the sunshine.
It was Karim who finally motioned for them to stop. She had been pushing them hard. They were so close. And she didn’t want to stop to let herself think about anything else. Anything to do with him or with her magic or with the fact that she really, really didn’t want to be alone anymore.
Karim dropped down onto a nearby log and pulled out his water skin. Sunlight filtered through the branches of the pines, casting bronze rays along his wavy black hair. He took a long swig before capping it and putting it back in his pack. Isabel lingered a few feet away, her pack still on her back.
“How far are we from the citadel?” he asked, breaking the silence that had been prickling between them all morning.
Isabel peered along the sloping path, which disappeared around a rocky outcropping at the edge of the trees. “Another mile maybe, not more. ”
He nodded. His eyes bored maddeningly into her back, but she did her best not to look at him.
“Are you going to sit down?” he asked, his voice tight.
“I’m fine.” Her stomach gave a traitorous growl.
“Just sit down and eat something,” he said, frustration tinging his tone.
She grudgingly did as he told her, sinking down onto a pockmarked stone boulder not far from where he was sitting. She removed her pack and dug through it to find the bread and cheese she’d squirreled away from Median Acil. She was hungry and tired. It had been a long few days.
Karim took a bite of cheese from his pack. “So, when we get to the citadel, what happens?”
Isabel forced herself to meet his eyes. “Once I open the way for you, you’re in. You’ll be able to stay there, safe behind the wards.” She paused. “Cassandra will send regular couriers with updates and questions pertinent to our situation.”
Karim looked at her. “Will you be one of those couriers?”
“I might,” she said noncommittally. It was a possibility that Cassandra would send her back, especially if something truly disastrous occurred. Her job had been to keep an eye on the Inetians in the dungeon. She’d done that. And with the men gone, it would likely fall to her to continue tracking them down—and that probably entailed further interaction with Karim. But now, she needed to get back to the palace to inform Cassandra about what had happened at the river—and that Gustav would keep coming for Karim.
At least in the citadel, he would be tucked away where they would never find him.
She wrapped her arms around herself, staring up at the mountain. Suddenly, she understood Karim’s reluctance to reach the end of their venture. It would mean another end to his hard-won freedom. This time, he wouldn’t be in a squalid prison like in Medira, but he still wouldn’t be free. Her heart ached for him. Life hadn’t gone the way he’d thought it would, but he still hadn’t lost that spark, that resilience, that conviction of what was right.
“I wish—” she started, emotion rising in her like a wave. “I wish...” She didn’t know what she’d meant to say. There was nothing she could say. Nothing that wasn’t some fanciful, idealistic future where kingdoms and politics and consequences didn’t matter.
“You wish what?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing. Just stupid.” She stood abruptly and pulled her pack onto her back. “The citadel is just ahead,” she said before he could say anything, then turned and marched into the trees .
Isabel was thankful that the rain had stopped. The rocky trail was already slick, and her boots slipped more than once as they climbed.
The path ended abruptly in a sheer cliff of jagged gray stone. A few ragged trees clung along its face, but, for the most part, it was sheer. Unscalable. They stared up at it, at the wards crackling through it. These wards were very old and very powerful. They had protected kings and queens in ages past in times of warfare and strife. And now they would protect Karim too.
“How is anyone without magic supposed to get through this?” Karim asked from behind her.
“You just have to know where to look.”
Isabel moved to the left side of the path and pressed her hand into a jagged ridge in the stone, then whispered the words Cassandra had taught her. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the wards in the stone flickered, and a narrow, spiral staircase materialized in the rock. Isabel blinked. She could still see the cliff face in front of her, but there was clearly a staircase as well, as if both things existed at the same time.
Karim whistled. “That’s an incredible piece of magic. Whoever did this managed to convince both the cliff and the staircase that they exist. The precision required for something like that is...mind-blowing. ”
“The old mages of Rendra and Medira were very, very powerful,” Isabel said quietly. For the first time, she could understand why Gustav might want to achieve this kind of magic—these wards were beauty and precision and balance all woven in one. It was breathtaking.
Isabel gingerly set her foot on the first step of the staircase. It was a strange feeling to watch her boot slide through the stone. But the stair beneath her boot was solid, so she pushed herself fully into the rock face.
They emerged into a sunlit courtyard that brimmed with trees and green and life. A great white oak sat in the center of the cobbled path, its trunk so wide that Isabel didn’t think she and Karim together could reach all the way around it. The garden was ringed on one side by a white stone tower, and on the other by an elegant colonnade. Between the elaborately carved pillars, Isabel could see the southern mountains in all their glory.
Isabel swallowed. She hadn’t had time to really wonder at the beauty around them when they were trying to find their way up. But now, she was struck by the brilliance of her own kingdom. Of the miles, the distance they had traveled over the past few days. Of the beauty of the delicate wilderness around them.
A short, balding man limped out of one of the doors that led into the colonnade. His dark hair was speckled with gray, and he was dressed in a faded brown tunic and leggings. He gave them a curious look as he made his way down the colonnade and out into the courtyard.
“Carlos Luca?” Isabel asked. She pulled the sign of the queen’s shadow from beneath her tunic and held it where the old man could see it. “I am Isabel Algerin. I have come to deliver this man into your care at the behest of Elena, Queen of Rendra.”
“Ah, good,” the man said. “Then you’ve come to the right place.”
***
Luca led them along the colonnade and into the citadel tower. He hadn’t asked why Karim was here or what it was that he needed protection from. He’d simply smiled and said that knowing the queen required his protection was enough.
They followed Luca through a curved hallway lined with paintings of the kings and queens of Rendra, heavy wooden doors interspersed at intervals. He showed them the kitchen, which was stocked with all manner of meats, cheeses, breads, canned goods, and dried fruits. He kept a garden in the courtyard, he told them, that was currently brimming with squash, broccoli, and winter greens .
Isabel lingered at the door when Luca brought Karim to his room. It was unexpectedly large, with a plush red-and-gold tasseled rug that disappeared beneath an ornate four-poster bed. A velvet chair perched under a square window that looked out on the mountains.
Karim dropped his pack in the room as Luca rattled off a list of information—water could be drawn from the well in the courtyard and heated for baths; firewood was piled beside the hearth but there was more in a vestibule down the hall. Karim would be required to help with tasks around the citadel—chopping wood, cooking, and tending to the gardens.
“Is there a library?” Karim asked, his eyes sparking with interest.
Luca nodded. “An extensive one. Though I don’t think you’ll find anything out of the ordinary in it. But you’re welcome to browse.”
Isabel was glad to see, at least, that the old man was kind. That Karim wouldn’t be alone. And that the citadel would be a better kind of prison than the one he’d been stuck in in Medira. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself.
She glanced out the window. The sun was lower than she wanted to admit, and a sheen of rain clouds had moved in again. She knew she should go. Had to go, in fact, if she wanted to be back in Medina Acil by dark. But she lingered, telling herself that it had started raining again, and she didn’t want to march right back out into that. That she needed to make sure she’d seen her job through to the end.
Luca offered her food for the return journey, which she gratefully accepted, wrapping dried meats and cheeses and placing them in the pack she’d acquired in Medina Acil.
Karim followed her back to the courtyard, to the spiral staircase they had entered from. Neither of them said anything as she spent too much time securing her water skin to her pack, too much time fiddling with the straps, making sure it was snug against her back. Too much time not thinking about what had to happen next.
“So, I guess this is it then,” she said when she had run out of things to check.
Karim stood rigidly a few paces in front of her, his hands slack at his sides. “I guess so.”
“I’m sure I’ll be back,” she said in a rush. “We still have a lot of unanswered questions. And Gustav is still out there. They’ll probably try to come for you again.”
“They definitely will.” For a moment, that boyish look was back, the one she’d seen in the Mediran dungeon—a little boy afraid of the dark .
He ran a hand through his hair, as if he were deciding what to say. Finally, he sighed. “So, you really don’t want to understand what our magics can do together?”
Isabel swallowed. This again. The one thing that scared her above all else—except maybe for the emotions he’d awoken in her, emotions she thought she’d battened down when Sophia died. “You’ve seen what can happen when magic goes awry,” she said, hating how small her voice sounded. “I’d rather not end up like Gustav, always searching for the next hit of magic, of power.”
“You know it wouldn’t be like that.”
“Wouldn’t it?”
He stared at her for a moment, a hardness in his gaze. “You still don’t trust me, do you?”
She opened her mouth to protest, but then shut it again, suddenly unsure of her answer. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to trust him so badly. But the truth was, she couldn’t even trust herself.
“Do you trust anyone, Isabel?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, but her mind was scattering in all directions. Trust. How could she possibly trust when everyone she had ever loved had disappeared or rejected her? If she threw herself into his arms now, it would still all just end. And she would be left with nothing again.
“Who? ”
She wrapped her arms around herself, wanting to curl into a ball and disappear from the face of the earth.
“Who, Isabel?” he pressed when the silence stretched on.
“Cassandra,” she bit out, but the name sounded weak to her own ears.
“Do you really?” he asked, his voice hard. “Because when we left the palace, you told me not to reveal my magic affinity because those in power would use it against me. Is that the reason you haven’t told them?”
“Fine,” she ground out. “I find it very difficult to trust anyone.”
He crossed his arms. “Especially me, it seems.”
Anger surged through her then, at herself, at him, at the things the world had thrown at them both. “I have no one, Karim!” she burst out. “No family. No friends. No one who cares for a single moment if I’m sucked through a rift for all eternity! In fact, there are a lot of people back home who would claim I deserved it, for being the shadow girl, that I’d brought it on myself.”
He shook his head, tension simmering in every sinew of his body, but when he spoke, his voice was soft, which was so, so much worse than if he had snapped at her. “Things happen in life, Isabel. Bad things. But we must be better than them. We can’t let them turn us into angry, bitter shells of what we could be.”
An angry, bitter shell. That’s not what she was. She was trying the best with what she’d been given. And she thought she’d been doing a damn good job.
This couldn’t be the way it ended between them, all prickly silence and avoidant gazes. But it had always been like this for Isabel. Everything good had always ended. And now this would too.
“Here,” she said, pulling his knife from her belt. The wards twined up her arm with a tender warmth, like an old friend. “You should have this.”
Karim stared at the knife in her hand. He shook his head. “No.” His eyes flashed with a sudden intensity.
“It’s yours. You made it.” Her fingers tightened on the hilt as she held it out.
“I did make it. But it’s yours now. You need it far more than I do.”
The lump in her throat rose again. “Are you sure about that?”
He reached out and closed his fingers around hers. He pushed the knife back toward her. “I’m sure.”
Their gazes locked, and Isabel thought she might cry. It was unlikely she would ever feel his hand wrapped around hers like this again. And that was not a thought she’d allowed herself to entertain until it was staring her right in the face.
A moment passed in which neither of them moved. Isabel knew that as soon as she did, she would have to turn away, she would have to leave, and he would stay here, and all this, everything between them, would be over.
She was the one to move first, the one to break his gaze, to step back and shove the knife back into its sheath on her belt, just as she always was. The disappointment in his gaze was palpable. She had to leave soon, or she was going to do something really, really stupid.
“Goodbye, Karim,” she said, an echo of her goodnight the evening before, when the whole world had seemed to open to her for one brilliant moment. “I’m sure I’ll see you again.”
“Yes.” His smile was sad. “I really, really hope so.”
Isabel turned away, and slipped into the staircase, her hair already damp from the misting rain. It wasn’t until she had exited the citadel and made her way into the dense canopy of trees that she allowed the tears to fall.
She had only been walking for ten minutes when the wards in the knife gave off a loud warning pulse, the shock waves of power vibrating through her body as the forest was bathed in a wash of wrongness. Bile rose, hot and sour, in her throat. A strange white light, like the one she had seen in the dungeon in Medira, radiated from the citadel behind her into the misting rain. She turned and saw that the wards had turned an ugly mottled red, great faults opening through them like a spiderweb made of fire.
Isabel gave a strangled cry and threw herself back up the hill, back toward whatever terrible magic was smashing against the ancient wards of the citadel, and back toward him.
It was the only right thing she had wanted for years. And now she had another chance.