Page 88 of Shadow Throne King

Save this girl. Let her sister not lose the half of her that makes her whole. I wrapped my own desires over Naî’s, and the two of us were panting, we were running across the tundra together, we were forcing our muscles to work in ways they shouldn’t, we were swimming the breadth of the Silver City’s bay, and we were winning.

I could feel Naî’s hatred, her bloodthirst rising as the creature occupying Pito began to wither, its body cracking under the frozen assault. The centipede let go of my arm, trying to crawl back into the warmth of Pito’s flesh, but as it moved, its sharp, pointed legs broke off, its armored body shattering, exposing the gooey flesh beneath.

Save her. I imagined Pito as my own sister, near death in my arms, and knew that I wouldn’t let her die. The truth of it filled the void inside me that Kacha’s man had torn when he pulled my magic from me. The certainty was like filling a broken vase from a waterfall.

There was no reality in which Tallu died.

For a second, I was disoriented, the wrong name in my heart, the wrong truth sitting under my skin. But it was just as true.Tallu would not die.

And neither would Pito. The thought glowed, so true and certain that I could feel it explode out of us, the creature screaming, echoing in the tunnels.

Then the sound stopped.

Slowly, I released my hold, and Naî jumped down, retreating and shaking herself, wiping her paws over her face like a cat trying to clean the scent of dog from its fur. Pito sank to her knees, and Topi crawled forward, grabbing at Pito’s neck, yanking what was left of the creature out. The burn of ice pinkened Pito’s skin, but the wound looked clean, the creature dead.

Naî’s opal eyes met mine.“Well, I see you have taken to your lessons.”

“Airón,” Tallu said, and he came forward immediately, checking where the creature had bitten me, where I had been injured in my fights. I hissed when he tried to move my limp arm.

But even as I could see the worry on his face, I knew something true, something that no one else could possibly understand.Tallu would not die.

Pito and Topi were talking on top of each other, speaking in shorthand and whispers, trying to catch up on weeks apart when too much had happened to both of them. Iradîo stood back, watching everything with her blue-green eyes, her expression curious. When she saw me looking, she shook her head as one might to a child who’d done something dangerous and survived.

Tallu’s eyes were dark with fury when he ran fingers along my shoulder, finding the crushed bone.

His lips were flat, and Vostop’s men were lucky they were already dead, because the expression on Tallu’s face promised a painful murder. He exhaled, nostrils flaring. Before he could say anything, Koque came to the entrance of the cave.

She was pale and looked first for Vostop. He stood, moving to her without needing to be asked. Tallu and I followed, Iradîo behind us with her hand on her sword. The twins stayed curled around each other, two halves of a broken heart, weeping against each other’s shoulders.

Inside the cavern, small pools of pale green water were lit from beneath. Water cascaded from one pool to another, starting with a small waterfall at the top of the cavern.

“The healing pools,” Vostop said in explanation.

Only one of them was occupied. A small boy drifted beneath the surface of a pool in the center of the room. His skin matched Tallu’s, although he had the delicate bone structure of hismother. He didn’t have the dwarves’ pointed ears, which meant Tallu was right: he was Millu’s son.

The blood mages surrounded the other side of the pool, Lerolian looking saddened as he stared at the boy under the water. Bubbles rose from the bottom of the pool, and Hallu breathed slowly but didn’t open his eyes.

Koque paced the side opposite from the blood mages, her hands clasped together tightly, skin white with the pressure. “Is it safe to remove him?”

She looked at Vostop, who shook his head.

“I do not know, my love. He should not even be in the water without a healer nearby.” He took a step forward, as though he was about to enter the pool himself, then hesitated.

“He’s been in there for days,” Pito Bemishu said from the doorway. She was leaning heavily on her sister and dropped her eyes when Koque turned to look at her. “The healers don’t know what’s wrong with him. They said the water is the only thing keeping him alive.”

I looked up sharply, frowning at Lerolian.

“I do not know if it is the curse,” Lerolian admitted. “He suffered the same fate as his brother.” He nodded gracefully at Tallu. “We can sense the threads that connect him to that fate, but there is something darker there, too. I do not believe it is the curse that is causing this.”

Iradîo stepped forward, cocking her head. She turned to me. “Can’t you hear it?”

I closed my eyes, listening beyond the gush of the waterfall, Koque’s unsteady breaths, and the whispers of the twins as they made their way across the path. Then I heard it, the murmur of Centipede’s poisonous voice under the water.

Blinking open my eyes, I tried to make sure I understood it. Centipede had tried to take over the boy, tried to make him a puppet for the animalia creature. The Shadow King would haveallowed it, because he assumed that Centipede taking over Hallu would benefit King Inor instead of Centipede.

Only Centipede’s control had been at odds with the curse the boy already suffered. The blood monks had trapped him in threads of fate, and even Centipede could not break those. Only Spider could do that, weaving the web that trapped us all.

“It is the creature that controlled Pito and the badgers outside,” I said. “We need to remove it.”