Page 28 of A Court of Truth and Thorns (Royal Scout #2)

KALI

I run through the hidden passages toward the exit, my sword pounding against my thigh, my heart keeping beat with my steps. Leaf’s words haunt my every breath. My face, drained of blood, stares without seeing. Stars. Stars. What have we done?

I don’t see the man stepping from the shadows until his arms are around my waist, pulling me in toward him. Only his scent stays my arm from launching a dagger.

“I thought you’d turn up here sooner or later.” Rune’s voice drips with both reprimand and relief. He pulls me away from him long enough to place his hand over my galloping heart. “Something’s happened.” Not a question.

I nod anyway. It’s all I can manage.

“Something so big, you are not even cursing me for almost getting myself skewered just now,” says Rune.

I meet his gaze, no longer caring whether he condemns me for going after Leaf.

“I know why Bahir enslaves whisperers,” I say, the words tumbling from my mouth.

“It’s not just that he’s a mage and wants no competition from them.

He needs them. To keep the Eye of the Goddess stable.

That orb, it’s not just an oversized light crystal.

It produces light, yes, but it does more than that.

Leaf, she’s done research, taken soil samples, and,” I swallow, “and she touched the Eye when Bahir’s guards held her in the abbey.

Bahir uses his captive whisperers to keep it tuned. ”

Rune puts his hands on either side of my head. “What did Leaf learn?” he asks softly.

“The Eye affects Dansil’s climate. Its magic is toxic. If—when—the Eye loses tune, the toxic rays will scatter like wildfire. They will kill every person in half the kingdom’s radius.”

Rune stiffens, his face tight as his mind comprehends the words. “The Drought?”

“Even tuned and controlled, the Eye spills some toxins in its rays. Infants are too weak to survive it.” Drawing a breath, I steel myself against the passage wall, the screams of Zalia’s pregnant friend, who we forced to accompany the whisperers, fresh in my memory.

“There is more. Bahir has been spawning with his female followers. The pregnant mothers are warned that going aboveground will kill the child.”

“The latter might be a lie to keep the girls in line,” says Rune. In thought, not challenge. “Is there evidence that staying belowground protects the infants?”

“Yes. There is no Drought in the Order, Rune. Bahir houses the whisperers in the abbey, but the young children and pregnant mothers are all kept beneath the ground.” I shut my eyes. “He doesn’t just want to rule Dansil. He wants to be a god.”

For a heartbeat, the only sounds in the passage are the quiet whispers of our breaths. Then Rune speaks, softly but without fear. “Is the Eye tuned to Bahir’s blood? Were the girls mistaken when they said it was not?”

“No.” I wince. “I can only draw a crystal’s magic if it’s tuned to my blood, but Bahir must know another way of tapping into a crystal’s magic and is doing so with the Eye.” I shake myself. “But that little matters now. With the whisperers gone, the Eye will become unstable shortly.”

“When?” asks Rune, calculations dancing through his eyes. “Months? Weeks? Days?”

“Hours,” I whisper. “Unless I stop it.”

“Unless we stop it,” corrects Rune.

“This plan is ludicrous.” Rune secures the rope around my waist and shifts the pack on his shoulders into a more comfortable position.

We stand in shadow by a far temple wall.

Around us, the moonlit stillness of night shatters against the uproar in the abbey behind the temple, where all the roses are now flocking, trying to close the proverbial barn gates after the horses have already run.

Guards shout to each other. Voices argue the merits of going after the whisperers immediately, while the trail remains hot, or waiting until morning so there is light to see by.

So long as they keep arguing there instead of patrolling here, they are welcome to debate all they like.

“You have a better one?” I slide my hand along the rough wall. The climb would be palatable if not for the small barrels of explosive powder we each carry on our backs. “Plus, I recall us saying something similar a couple weeks ago about freeing the whisperers from the abbey.”

“You mean the mess we are trying to clear up now?”

Well, there is that.

“I suppose we could go inside instead and ask one of the holy guardsmen to show us to the roof. ”

Rune growls. “Hilarious.”

“I know.” I test the rope, a curtain of shadow secure around Rune and me.

My reserve of magic is nearly drained, but once we are on the roof, there should be little need for darkness.

I step up to the wall and find my first foothold.

Standing on the ground, Rune feeds the rope out as I climb the first few paces and anchor in.

With a tug, I signal my success to Rune and climb on by feel only until I find the next attractive point to drive in an anchor spike.

Secure the second anchor. Signal. Climb again.

When the rope reaches its full length, my shadow stretching below me to cover us both, I find solid footing and take in the line while Rune climbs up to my ledge.

Then we do it again, brushing our fingers along each other’s flesh in reassurance each time we pass within reach.

My arms tremble by the time we scale the temple’s sloping roof toward the flat platform at its zenith.

I release my hold on the shadow. The wind, as if offended at the intrusion, picks up with a howl.

My hair whips across my cheeks. Grasping the platform’s edge, I haul myself onto it, only to jerk back when the Eye’s brightness hits me with the force of a physical blow.

My sweaty hand springs reflexively to my eyes, my precarious hold wobbling. Rune’s hand presses solidly into the small of my back. My balance steadies. Tapping deeper into my precious well of magic, I deflect the Eye’s light until it no longer threatens to burn our eyes.

“Thank the stars,” Rune breathes. His hand leaves my back, though I still feel the ghost of his touch lingering on my skin. With battlefield efficiency, Rune unties the rope from his waist and secures the line to a stone gargoyle at the eastern corner of the roof.

I start to ease my pack off my shoulders and feel Rune behind me, taking its weight. We repeat the same trick with Rune’s pack. Neither of us dares breathe until the barrels of powder stand solid on the roof floor.

Turning my back to the pedestal holding the Eye, I survey the city sprawling beneath us. Small houses. Shops. The occasional night worker scurrying along empty streets. Delta going about its life, oblivious to the death looming over it.

“Are you certain about this?” Rune asks. “You are permitted to change your mind, if your gut tells you to.”

I swallow. “I’m certain.”

His gray gaze skips up to mine, his silvery hair whipping around his angled face in the wind. He squints in the Eye’s fluctuating light despite my efforts to shield us from it. “And I’m certain in you.”

Warmth rises in my chest and I press my lips against his, indulging in a moment of stolen pleasure before yanking myself back.

Focus on the bloody barrels of black powder.

The Eye flashes, the light striking deep into my eyes despite my deflection.

Stars dance in my vision, a headache cutting through my brain.

I realize I’ve stopped moving only when Rune calls my name.

Rain has joined the rising wind, and I blink both away.

“The pack’s cloth is too thin, and the barrels aren’t watertight,” Rune says, positioning himself to shield the fuse and powder from the rain. He shouts to be heard over the wind’s howl. “They won’t keep the powder dry enough to work. Can you deflect the rain the way you do light and sound?”

Right. “I love trying new things in the middle of a bloody storm with explosives in my hands,” I murmur. But Rune is right. I reach into my magic reserves and beg the stars to make deflecting water easier than absorbing sound.

It isn’t. It feels like pushing back a river with my bare hands. For each particle of the streaking water that I manage to capture and deflect, a hundred more stream by like arrows.

“It’s not working,” Rune informs me, his voice so calm I want to kick him. “Try something else.” Another gust of cold, wet wind.

My barrel of powder shudders. I grab for it, miss, and watch the fuse topple to the stone.

A scream builds in my lungs, stopping in my throat as the fuse rolls back and forth like a child’s toy on the roof.

I snatch it up. The terror of certain death ebbs, but the stupidity of this whole plan hits me full force.

I know nothing of explosives, and I’m trying to save a kingdom by blowing a living crystal the size of three men into pieces when I can’t even keep control of the fuse.

“It’s all right, Kali,” says Rune. Calm. Steady. Strong. A bloody excellent liar. “You are all right.”

I draw in a shaking breath. I have to shield the powder against wind and rain. Have to. If I don’t, I fail Leaf and all the people in Dansil whose lives I so carelessly toyed with. My chest clenches into a painful knot.

I plunge into my magic and throw it with abandon at the elements. No portioning, no reserves. Just the rawness of whatever power I have within me against the wind and the rain and the world.

The world laughs.

It might have worked had I any magic left in my well. My throat closes with a sob.

“Enough!” Rune’s order battles the wind. He grabs the barrels of black powder and the fuse from my hand and covers them with his body. “We set the fuse as is. Let’s move.”

Even that proves more difficult than I expected. The light of the Eye increases exponentially with each step. Rune hisses in pain, covering his eyes with a forearm.

I scrape my magic dry, forcing every bit of my life force into the effort to keep the Eye’s light from scorching us blind.

My limbs feel like they’re swimming through sand.

I focus on words, hold on to them like a rope as we prepare to set our charge.

“How... do you think... whisperers get close... enough to tune this?”

“They work from beneath the roof.”

It takes me a heartbeat to realize the answering voice is not Rune’s, but Bahir’s.