Page 19

“Where do I begin?” Matthias scratched his head. “The Folke have been suspicious of me from the beginning, and now the King has seen me, so I should escape before I’m caught. But there’s a bigger problem. I delivered your note to Kai, and you won’t believe what he said,” he stammered.

Ryn’s spirits lifted. “What did he tell you?” She imagined her cousin sending in the entire Priesthood in a palace-wide heist to get her out. She imagined him plotting an escape route through the Mother City and bartering with the tent folk up in the mountains for a safe place to live.

But Matthias’s throat bobbed. “First, he told me that you can’t come home. That you need to finish what you started.”

Ryn didn’t blink for several seconds. “He said that?” No, Kai wouldn’t have. Ryn hugged her arms to herself and traced her fingers over the bumps on her flesh. She recalled what Kai had said back at the Priesthood temple:

“I know the risk.”

“You could save the Adriel people.”

“Then kill him,” he’d said. “Before he kills you.”

Matthias nodded. “It was Kai.”

Ryn’s gaze fell to the floor, her fingers digging into her arms as a burning sensation crawled back behind her eyes.

Marry the King or kill the King. Those were the options Kai gave her. She’d had a moment of bravery at first, but after the escape attempts in the garden and especially after today she knew she couldn’t do those things. Would Kai really not listen even with Ryn’s life in this much danger?

“That’s not all,” Matthias went on. “You know Kai speaks many languages,” he said.

Ryn dragged her watery gaze back up to the priest. Kai spoke seven languages; it was his chosen study focus at the Priesthood. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“He overheard a plot in the market. The men spoke in Mira .” Matthias stepped closer, his hand finding Ryn’s shoulder. “B’rei Mira spies have entered Per-Siana. They mean to assassinate the King—from within the palace.”

The sky outside dropped from the heavens and crashed over the ground. Ryn stared at Matthias, unsure if she’d heard correctly. A strange story was coming out of his mouth.

Matthias reached into his pocket and pulled out a note with a name printed on the outside in Adriel letters. It was Kai’s handwriting that said: RYN.

Ryn should have been relieved. Someone else might do the job for her and she would be free—maybe she could go home to her quiet apple tree oasis and vegetable garden if the King was dead. Maybe she could wash her hands of this palace forever.

But a weight sank through her along with the story of the little boy on the island; the one surrounded by poison. She thought of the torment in the King’s eyes. Like he’d already chosen the poison and knew what it felt like.

“Why? Why does B’rei Mira want to kill the King of Per-Siana?” she rasped as she took the note and slid it under her shirt for later.

“I’m not sure.” Matthias chewed on his lip. “But Kai made me promise to tell you so you can take precautions. I told him I’d pull you out of here the moment swords were drawn. That’s why I’m going to stay with you, Ryn, even if I might get caught.”

The moment swords were drawn.

Ryn huffed a dull laugh. Swords had already been drawn. The King had drawn one, the Intelligentsia had drawn one, she’d drawn one. More would come.

She teetered. “I need to think,” she said to Matthias and Heva.

“You shouldn’t stay here alone,” Heva warned as she wandered back over. “Not now.”

Ryn waved her away. “Please,” she said. Her grip tightened on the chair in the living space. “I want to be by myself for a little while.”

Heva and Matthias exchanged a look, but they both nodded, went to the door, and shut her in.

Ryn journeyed to the window. She studied the lever that had already given her two chances to escape. Two times she’d failed to leave for good. She couldn’t try again. The King might be waiting in the garden, and besides…

The threat of tears turned her eyes hot.

She was here because of her father. And…

Kai didn’t want her back.

Even the burning wound in her side didn’t hurt as much as that.

The “little while” turned into hours, which led to nightfall. Ryn didn’t eat anything in that time, and her stomach groaned. She ignored it as she walked through the garden, the grass and path stones cooling her bare feet, the garden growing colder as the goddess Nyx licked dusk over the kingdom.

She’d found a strange comfort in scaling down the side of the palace into the garden.

Just knowing that she could do it—even with an injury—was almost enough to make her forget she was a prisoner.

She’d ripped off most of her tacky armour before coming to observe the orchard.

She was out of fresh clothes, and so far, the Priesthood hadn’t sent any of the benefactor funds they’d hoped to get from the offering plates.

She wasn’t sure she wanted it anyway—it would have been better spent on the hungry children in the cracks of the Mother City.

Marcan’s event costumes were the only clothing she owned, and she couldn’t imagine waltzing through the palace gardens in her mosaic dress.

As she walked, she unfolded the letter to read it one more time:

RYN,

B’REI MIRA SPIES WILL INFILTRATE THE PALACE AT SOME POINT DURING THE THREE-MONTH TRIAL PERIOD. THEY PLAN TO KILL THE KING WHILE HE’S BLINDFOLDED.

KEEP YOURSELF AWAY FROM HIM.

KAI

What did Kai mean, blindfolded? Why would the King be blindfolded?

And what did he want from Ryn? Kai hadn’t said in the note why he wanted her to stay, if she should continue on with the original choice he’d given her in regards to the King, or if he wanted her to help the B’rei Mira spies, or stop them, or avoid them…

Ryn sealed the note and slid it away, then crossed her arms as the wind tugged against the loose white tunic she was left with after the armour was gone. A simple, blood-stained garment, along with a pair of combat tights.

The cool wind slipped down the back of her shirt, and she shivered. When she glanced up, she nearly choked at the sight of something moving in the heavens alongside the great white dragon. Her eyes narrowed.

Back and forth the dragon slithered, its tail a river of white. Dozens, if not hundreds of black shadow creatures filled the sky around it, guiding it along, holding it up. It was as though the dragon couldn’t move without them, couldn’t stay up in the sky on its own.

“Divinities,” she cursed. She slid back a step and yelped as she stumbled over a jut in the path and fell on her rear.

But she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Had those creatures always been there?

Was this another thing she could see that others couldn’t?

Were those shadows what was holding the dragon in the sky?

She wanted to find Geovani and force the old woman to reverse whatever ‘gift’ she’d passed along to Ryn.

“Divinities is correct, for the dragon is theirs.”

Ryn nearly choked when the voice entered her mind.

She flipped onto her knees and gazed at the path behind her.

No one was there. “E… El?” she guessed. She quickly climbed to her feet, studying the shrubs and the branches overhead.

She hadn’t been able to see a person in her room last time.

She wondered if he was here with her now though.

“Do you see it now? The mirage?” he asked.

Ryn’s gaze lifted back to the sky. With the dark creatures involved, the dragon looked like a puppet. Something hollow and unliving.

“Most things are not what they seem.”

Ryn squeezed her arms to herself again. As soon as she did, a warm wind rippled along her skin, fluttering her hair and chasing off her shivers. “You must have something to ask me,” Ryn said, “otherwise, you wouldn’t have spoken to me at all.”

“I ask one question of all people, Adassah,” the voice said. “My question is this: Will you follow me?”

Ryn tapped a finger against her forearm. She wanted to ask what exactly ‘following a god’ would entail. She was in enough trouble as it was. “Follow you where?” she tried.

“Wherever I lead.”

“That seems like a dangerous commitment,” Ryn reasoned.

She chewed on her bottom lip as she strolled down the path.

The warm wind trailed beside her. He said nothing else as they moved along, but the silence was comfortable.

Ryn’s shoulders relaxed, and she stole a sidelong glance at the air around her where she imagined El hovered.

Ryn didn’t really have close friends. It wasn’t that she didn’t want any, but her neighbours were all Weylins.

She wondered if this was what it felt like to walk beside a friend—not that El was a friend .

Whether he was one of the gods or not, she didn’t know him, and she couldn’t imagine trusting a god either after the legends she’d read about gods tricking mortals and leading them into traps.

But somehow, she was sure El was moving along at her side.

They walked for several more minutes before the wind left. Ryn paused. She looked around. She nearly called El’s names to ask where he went when she spotted a white-haired woman a short distance away, lounging back against a rock and staring up at the starry sky.

“You see it, too, right?” Geovani’s unmistakable raspy voice reached Ryn. Ryn shivered as the cold air returned. She headed over to the woman. “The dragon,” Geovani clarified. “You see that it’s just for show?”

Ryn didn’t answer. It was Geovani’s fault she was seeing things.

“Didn’t I tell you there was more to the story? That the great war didn’t happen the way we think?” the old woman went on. She twisted a long, white lock of hair between her fingers. Her emerald robe was sprawled over the grass picking up bugs, but she didn’t notice.

“I never studied the great war, or the Celestial Divinities,” Ryn clarified. “And if you were trying to creep me out with all this ‘eyes to see and ears to hear’ nonsense, you’re doing a great job.”