Page 32

Portals

Reven pushes away from me like he can’t get space between us fast enough. Checking around the corner, he grunts. “ These are the people you rule and lead?”

I sigh as we move into the street. “The sad truth is they aren’t wrong. Aryd became poorer during my grandmother’s reign, and hotter, and the people angrier.”

“And she did nothing?”

“As far as I can tell, she was unaware.” I tried to tell her once and never again after that. I should have tried harder, but instead hung my hope on when Tabra would reign.

“How did you know?”

“When I wasn’t here pretending to be Tabra, I lived in the city of Enora to the northeast. There I was known only as another poor city waif.” I glance around at buildings that, here at least, aren’t crumbling yet, at streets still clean that don’t smell of piss, even on the outskirts where we’re headed. “Oaesys may not be as desperate as Enora yet, but it’s starting to show signs of the same sort of slow rot. Meanwhile, the glass walls hold in the heat, and while we are desert people, we do have our limits. The people have reason to be angry.”

Reven stops me with a hand on my arm. “You fight for them?”

Not even Tabra has figured out that subtle difference for me entirely.

I fight for her, of course, for our throne, but mostly because of what I want her…us…to do with it if we get the chance.

I shoulder past him to keep us moving.

“Meren—”

“I lived among them, but never with them. A pretender who never truly hungered, or thirsted, or really had to work a day in my life. But that didn’t mean I didn’t see their struggle or feel for them. As their princess…definitely as their queen…I’m supposed to be their hope, the one who fights for their better lives. I want to be that.”

“I thought you lived with the Wanderers?”

“No.” I shake my head. “I met Cain as a child when I ran away from Omma. He had no idea I was a princess until very recently. But even as a kid, I was only playing at being a Wanderer.”

Now, though…now I’ve spent actual time among Cain’s people. I’ve hoisted my own tent, wondered where the next meal might come from, fought beside them, and blistered under the harsh, unforgiving sun.

And aside from all that, I have lost loved ones and friends. I have sacrificed my bondmate. I have fought, and fought, and fought. If not for Tabra and for our people, then what did I do any of that for? “Eidolon’s rule can only make my people’s lives worse. He will never understand Aryd. I can’t let him keep her.”

A distinctive clomp, clomp, clomp , not of hooves but of booted feet, echoes through the cobblestone streets, giving us plenty of time to tuck away behind a building. The Tyndran soldiers in their white armor are so confident that they’ll be feared and obeyed that they don’t bother to be quiet. More than that, they assume the mere sound of them patrolling the streets will scare any cowed citizens back into their homes.

“We should give them plenty of time to clear out,” Reven murmurs.

“Okay.”

He’s looking out into the street. He’s only an arm’s length away. Does he have to be so far from me?

“I worry about my people tomorrow.” The words come out on their own. Maybe because we were just talking about them. Or maybe because, once the secrets between us were gone, I was always able to tell him things like that. Things I wouldn’t burden Tabra with. Not even Cain these days. He has enough weight to carry with his zariphate.

“That they’ll fight against you?” Reven asks.

I pause, then wrinkle my nose. “Well, now I’m worried about that, too.”

His lips twitch, and my stomach does a little flip. I love it when I can crack through that super serious personality.

“What were you worried about first?” he asks.

I lean around him to check the street. The lanterns have been doused for the night, but a few glassless windows in the buildings around us are lit. I imagine I can hear the people inside snoring or turning in their sleep. “Honestly, while the realistic part of me expects many of them to join the fighting tomorrow—Arydians are not cowards—the protective part of me hopes they don’t.”

“They would be fighting for their homes, their lives, their futures.”

“I know.” I twitch a shoulder. “But they’re also innocent. They didn’t ask for this. Is the sacrifice too high?”

“You’re asking the wrong question.”

The distinctive clomping of the soldiers’ steps returns, and we shrink back into our hiding spot as they pass by again.

“If they’re making a smaller circling pass, we shouldn’t wait,” I point out.

Reven straightens, and together we scurry away from our spot in the opposite direction, careful to hug the buildings and stick to the shadows. We don’t talk again until we get to the edge of an open space. I pause, scanning the area.

The buildings here, all one-story structures, are buried under dunes of white-ish tan sand. The farther away from the city border where people still live, the higher the dunes get, so that the structures farthest out are entirely covered, but those closest to us have maybe a foot of sand inside and around them.

“What happened here?” Reven asks.

“It was an experimental community. A colony of people from Tropikis who moved here and tried to stay together, apart from Arydians. Only it didn’t work. After the abundance of their rainforests, they couldn’t handle the dryness and lack of water in the desert. I believe they relocated to Mariana, which is closer to their original climate. The abandoned buildings were never occupied because they’d built them poorly for this area, the walls not thick enough, windows too large, letting all the heat in. The desert took over.”

Something about that makes me smile. Maybe because I’ve always been in awe of the power of my dominion. We humans survive here by the grace of the goddesses, and our work and wits.

A chime rings softly but insistently throughout the city, and I count it. Except it keeps going when I expect it to stop.

Four chimes. Curse the fates. “We took too long to get here,” I tell Reven. No more stopping to admire each other or trying to conjure up his memories. “Let’s go.”

I trace a path that others often walk—mostly children who come out here to play—so that our footprints are disguised. I hurry to a building halfway into the abandoned neighborhood. One full wall of the bone-white structure with its red roof is buried, but if we go around to the opposite side, the drifts have left it more open. We duck through the door.

“Make yourself useful,” I say to Reven.

“How?”

“Make sure my light can’t be seen.”

The glow of the three moons dims slightly, like clouds passed in front of them, which I know is impossible on this cloudless night. I don’t know what Reven did, exactly, but I trust that it will mask what I’m doing.

Immediately the golden yellow light of my own power fills the room and reflects off the harsh features of Reven’s face. As fast as I can, I build the portal out of the sand so readily available here. I push myself to go fast. We have to build four more tonight, before dawn breaks, and traveling the city is taking more time than I counted on.

As soon as the glass is finished, I don’t hesitate, placing a hand to it and picturing the portal I already made for the group that will come through this way. On the other side stands Istrella and Trysolde and their army behind them in the temple of Wildernyss.

“Do you see?” I say, giving them a chance to look hard at where they’ll need to open the portal again.

“Got it,” Trysolde says.

Istrella—for once not wearing the impressive velvet dresses she favors but a simple tunic and pants, her long hair braided out of her way—offers a tense smile. “Go with the goddesses, Mereneith.”

“May they look upon all of us with favor,” I offer in return. “You know the appointed hour.” With that, I turn my power off and the glass is just glass once more.

As soon as we step outside, I can hear voices in the distance. We both pause and listen. At first, they seem to be coming closer, but then they drift off again. Even so, that was close. I glance over my shoulder at the portal visible inside.

When we were planning with all the zariphates, we discussed my using shadow to hide the portals, as an extra safety protocol. I’d hoped to be able to get away with not doing that. Because of Eidolon. The king already told me he senses when I access his power, but I’ve used it enough that I have my doubts that’s true every single time.

Still, they were right about hiding these.

“I think we have no choice,” I say to Reven quietly. “We can’t risk someone wandering in before it’s time, so we need to disguise it with shadow.”

Reven eyes the building. “Let me try first.”

Good idea. I wave at him to go ahead.

The moonlight dims again as his hands ignite, and I know Reven is masking us. Darkness shoots out from his hands and fills the space of the doorway to the building where the new portal hides. It spreads and grows, smoothing into a barrier until it blocks the view inside. But it’s so thick, it’s too obvious.

“Can you thin it out?” I ask.

Lips a grim slash, Reven shakes his head.

He’s still relearning his power.

What he’s left me to do is small, though. A matter of seconds, I think. Do I dare risk it?

“Let me just…”

This time, the glow that comes from my palms is purple, and my blood turns cold as I siphon Eidolon’s power.

Eidolon’s Shadows immediately writhe within me, when I’ve had them silent and still and locked away. Even for something this tiny. Clearly those things are drawn to the power I’m using. Their power. The king’s power.

Reven’s power.

Shit. This isn’t going to work. I shut it down fast. “It’ll have to do like it is. Hopefully that will keep anyone wandering somewhere they shouldn’t.” It’s better than nothing.

“Meren?” There’s an odd note to his voice. “Meren? Did you hear me?”

I turn his way. “Of course, I heard you—”

Reven surges closer, eyes turning from wide horror to determined anger so fast I take a jerking step back.

“What are you doing?” Those are the words that I form with my mouth, that I think in my head. But another voice comes out, a deeper, raspier voice, and the words aren’t mine. “Leave if you know what’s good for you.”

The Shadows? No. I can’t feel them. Not even like I did just a moment ago. How is this—

Reven’s face spasms. “Don’t make me do this, Meren.”

Terror leaks into my blood like poison, heat scouring through the cold of Eidolon’s power in my veins, but not enough to douse it. I look down at my hands, glowing even brighter.

“You could try, runt.” The words come out of me but I’m not saying them. I’m not doing this.

Stop.

I try to shove the Shadows back down in the prison I keep them in. But I still can’t feel them or what they’re doing in me. I don’t know how to stop them. How do I grasp something ungraspable?

“Give me the Shadows,” Reven demands.

Everything about his posture, the way he watches me as if I might attack him in the next blink, tells me that he’s seeing things. Are the faces cycling across my features? Are they pressing out from my body the way they did with him?

I shake my head. “It’s not me,” I try to tell him.

But that voice speaks for me again. “Never.”