Page 118 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Chapter 25

The Storm is a whisper at my back. I ignore it as I step farther out onto the spongy moss that covers so much of the fifth, sucking in a deep breath. The air is sweet and muggy, rotten wood mingling with a sharp green scent. I’ve never smelled anything better.

I’ve come home, but home and I are strangers now.

The Queen’s curse courses through me like a dark river, working on me and through me. I have a second shadow, a second heartbeat, and a strange new awareness of Dalca and Casvian, of things tangled inside them. Casvian’s face bears no expression, but the Queen’s curse whispers that his sorrow echoes mine, that he too hates that Izamal isn’t beside us.

My old sorrow is matched with a new one that makes itself known in the weight behind my eyes and the lump in my throat.

Dalca laces his fingers with mine. “I feel light as a feather. I feel I could fly even without my cloak.”

His eyes sweep across the path, his eyelashes dark, his lips set in a soft curve. The Storm took more than just the cord from his wrist; it took the furrow from between his brows, the tenseness from his jaw, the weight that his shoulders were always fighting.

He doesn’t seem cursed at all. He’s a portrait of fearlessness.

The Queen’s curse chills my blood as it runs under my skin, as it matches my heart, beat for beat. What is it? What does it want?

It shows me. In the center of Dalca’s chest, where his heart would be, is the carved casket. Wisps of stormcloud seep from it and sink deeper into him.

I rub my eyes, and the vision disappears.

Was it only a vision?

“What’s this?” Dalca’s voice interrupts my thoughts. I follow his narrowed gaze to several fifth-ringers trickling onto the golden road before us, others coming forth to join them. Dalca steps in front of us, hand to his gauntlet.

“Wait.” I touch Dalca’s arm.

The fifth-ringers jump back as if repelled, clearing the way. Some lower their shawls, revealing wide eyes and mouths agape.

A yellow-haired woman calls to me. “Who are you?” In her voice I hear the echo of a dream.

“I’m Vesper Vale.”

A crescendo of murmurs rises from the crowd.

“It’s the prince!”

“They truly came from the Storm?”

“Vale’s daughter?”

“Look. The Storm could not touch them.”

A puff of yellow powder hits my neck, and I jump. Many of the fifth-ringers pull pouches from their belts, fingers pinched around yellow sundust. Clouds of it fall upon us in a blessing that smells like sunbaked clay and spiced honey, like a hug from Amma.

A flurry catches Casvian across the forehead, and he starts like aman waking from a dream. Another handful catches him in the mouth, and he sputters. “What is this?”

“Sundust,” I say. “Don’t spit it out. It’s meant to ward off the Storm’s curses.”

Dalca smiles, a dash of yellow powder caught in the cupid’s bow of his lip.

“That’s an absurd superstition.” Casvian frowns at a plump-cheeked little girl, and she lowers her dust-filled hand.

I glare at him. “It’s all they have, and they’re giving it to you. To do what they can to protect you.”

He’s stunned silent. Blinking, he plasters on a smile that looks like it hurts, and bends low so the little girl can pat sundust into his cheeks. She smiles at him shyly, and Cas thanks her with as much solemnity as if she were the Regia.

When he straightens, his smile is real, soft and with a single dimple. He catches me looking, and the dimple disappears as he turns his smile into a ghost of his usual smugness. “She likes me best.”