“You can’t change—well—everything! Not without some dastardly, or highly foolish, plan. ” And then he realized he was alone in the forest with me. “Oh—no. Whatever you are thinking now, keep it to yourself. ” He immediately reached a hand back to create a portal as I stalked forward to stop him.

  “Have you heard of yllibrium?” I asked him, and his hand’s spinning slowed, pausing the sensation of building magic.

  “The metal that neutralizes magic?” he asked and started shaking his head right after. “It’s imaginary. ”

  “What if I told you it was not?”

  “Pah,” he said, expressing his disbelief. But I could see the curiosity that tortured all of my kind gleaming in his eyes, bright as a cat’s near a campfire, so I continued, telling him something I had never told another man or mage.

  “It’s only exceedingly rare—but I’ve gone out of my way to gather it for centuries. I needed it to more easily study magical creatures during my career. ”

  He took a moment to consider this, and his hand stopped spinning entirely. “How much do you have?” he asked with caution, and I knew I had him.

  I gave him a wicked grin. “Enough to get myself into trouble,” I said. “The Deathless have to have some magical component to them—otherwise, how do they keep working? If I didn’t believe in magic, then I’d have to believe in gods, and I’m really only up for one kind of miracle at a time here. ”

  He squinted at me and he sucked his lips. “Oh. So now you care about the war. ”

  “I do. ”

  “Because you think if you solve the Deathless, you’ll get your woman back. ” Sibyi stared me down, daring me to contradict him, and when I didn’t he pitched his voice lower than it’d been before. “Rhaim, that’s insane. You think you’re better than the world’s best mages and scholars, who’ve been working on this problem now for years?”

  “No, I don’t. But I have reason to want it more. ”

  “Rhaim—” he said, twisting away, reaching behind himself again.

  “If they’re so smart, why haven’t they solved it yet?” I asked, as the portal behind him opened. “Is it because the Deathless are an abstraction for them? Even for you? You’re out here putting out fires, but you don’t know why they’re burning, and you’re only nominally concerned about the damage they do. ” He paused in front of his portal, but he didn’t turn around, so I continued. “You care because you’ve been told to attend, and you’re young enough for that to still mean something to you. But I care because if I don’t manage this feat, I will never get her back. ”

  “Oh, Rhaim,” he said with vast disappointment, but he let his portal close nonetheless. “Jaegar still has pride, you know. ”

  I shrugged and said what I hoped would be true. “If I solve the Deathless then I can steal her away and no one would dare come for me. ” I took a step nearer him, momentarily transported by imagining the moment. “And—what’s more—it wouldn’t be stealing. I guarantee you, if Lisane were given free will, she would run to my side. ”

  All sorts of emotions warred across his face, before eventually landing on concern. “Why did you bite her, then?”

  “My beast knows she will be the death of me. ” As it was a truth Sibyi had already guessed at, it was safe for him to know. “But everything in me that’s man. . . ” Words failed me in the moment, thinking of my moth. Adoration was too slight, and love felt too cloying. Want—too selfish, need—too trite—and lust, too narrow. “She is the only creature I will never tame. Not because I cannot, but because I would not. ”

  “You’re an idiot and a fool. ” Sibyi rocked back, and I feared I’d lost him, until he went on. “And also the most violent man I know. Luckily your temper is matched only by your intellect. ” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was going to say next. “How do you envision this working, then?”

  “No one will trust me unless I bow—and that’s when I will need your help. To make sure they use me, rather than just give me punishment. ”

  Sibyi made a thoughtful sound before eyeing me like Lisane sometimes did, when she knew she was right. “So it seems then that I am your friend, after all. ”

  I snorted ruefully. “It does seem so. ”

  Sibyi dramatically clutched a hand to his chest, “Did it kill you to admit that?”

  “My soul is dying, even now,” I said, grinning at him. I put my hand out for him to take, and he swung his down so that we shook one another’s forearms. “But before it extinguishes all the way, let us see if we can’t stop the Deathless first. ”

  7

  Lisane

  By the night of my unveiling, I had done all I could to prepare to escape.

  Thanks to Finx, I was empowered, and thanks to Jelena, I had memorized a map of the encampment, and we’d chosen a location near my unveiling tent for her to go and hide my “boy” clothes for me.

  The dress I’d chosen for the occasion itself was white satin, which Finx had covered with skeins of webbing until the top of it was pearlescent. It had wide shoulder straps, and a ribbed bodice, that pinched in and then led out to a perilously large skirt. It’d been the most structurally sound of all the dresses—the one most likely to keep me standing if somehow, like sweet Lirane, I fainted from the attention—and with Finx’s help, I’d stashed whatever items I felt I might be able to sell later underneath in pouches, in its many, many underlayers.

  After that, I’d carefully applied visible jewelry from each of the countries that had “honored” me, and let Jelena paint my lips and cheeks again with berries, trying not to let memories of what had happened with Rhaim the last time we had done so distract me.

  I planned to tolerate my presentation for as long as I could—long enough to make sure it was night out, certainly—and then perform some magical display.

  Either I would use enough magic to Ascend and portal away immediately thereafter, or I would publicly ruin myself in front of all interested parties, because what Ker would want to be married to a barren mage? And given the slimmest chance for chaos after my performance, I would rip my dress’s laces out, take out the scissors that were also hidden on me and cut off all my hair, and run away in an underslip that we had dyed dark with coffee, with my bags of gemstones, until I could reach the stash of clothes that Jelena had hidden for me.

  One way or another, by the end of the night, I would be free—and then, someday after that, when I was sure it was safe, I would find my way back to Rhaim.

  “I’m sorry if this hurts,” Jelena apologized, digging jeweled hairclips in close to my scalp.

  “It is no matter,” I told her, forcing myself not to grimace for her sake, feeling small jolts of power accumulating with each new pinch.

  I ate a tiny nervous dinner, hoping that it would be my last one inside these fabric walls, and then paced as much as I was able to until Castillion arrived. Like my father, Castillion had avoided me ever since my return, and, like my father, I was unbearably mad at him.

  Especially because he appeared to be the same man I had known my entire life, considering how magic made mages age more slowly. This version of him had been my guard as a child, taught me my first magic, and had watched me grow up. The only difference between today and any other day between us was that he had on a slightly nicer vest than normal—he’d always eschewed shirts, seeing as when he would use his magic, he would ruin them.

  As he entered, he acknowledged Jelena with a curt nod. “You have done all you need to do tonight. Go,” he said, holding the door open so she could leave. She looked back at me once, knowing all the details of my plan except for anything to do with magic, then did as she was told. The open door behind her gave me a flash of a graceful carriage waiting outside, before leaving the two of us alone, and then the mage turned to me. “Your father and brother are busy entertaining the Kers, princess, so I have been sent to collect you. ”

  I couldn’t help but remember the last time I’d been in a carriage with the man. “I grieved for you,” I told him.

  Castillion gave me a weary sigh and briefly directed his gaze at the tent’s floor. “So I was told. ”

  By who? I almost asked, before realizing I knew the answer. Rhaim. I swallowed. My beast had so much to answer for.

  “Was anything true?” I asked Castillion, meaning the day that I’d been given over. I remembered him bursting into my chambers, telling me that the Deathless were on their way and that I needed to evacuate the castle immediately. I hadn’t grabbed any of my belongings. We’d been in such a rush—and I had been so innocent—that I hadn’t thought to wonder why we didn’t portal, or why the carriage I was loaded into had all its curtains drawn until it was too late, and my next memory was of waking on Rhaim’s dungeon’s floor.

  “The danger was always real, princess, as you yourself know,” he said, giving me a look that urged me to remember my mother’s passing. “And that morning, one of the mages guarding the castle died suddenly, endangering it. While the Deathless didn’t attack at that very moment, they certainly could have. ”

  “But. . . they didn’t?” I asked, needing to hear the truth.

  Castillion looked like whatever he would say next pained him. “Your father didn’t just send you to the beast to bribe him. He sent you to him because his castle flies. There was probably no safer place for you on the entire continent. ”

  I felt my brow rise as my nostrils flared. “Discounting the man himself, inside. ”

  Castillion bowed his head slightly. “I did not agree with your father’s choices, but I do as I am told, princess. ”

  I gave a bitter laugh. “You would think that’d mean we had much in common then, Castillion. ”

  And once again I found myself wanting something that I knew I would never get from him—or from my father or my brother, either.

  Just one moment of acknowledging the possibility that they could have been wrong.

  I was wracked with longing for Rhaim, not only because my body craved his attention, but because he managed to leave space for doubt—which had made every single moment I had had with him more true.

  “And will you be drugging me this time?” I asked Castillion, not archly, just daring him to be honest.

  He held his hands in front of himself, illustrating their current emptiness, before giving me a soft smile. “Not unless it is required. ”

  I could tell that he was teasing, perhaps, or that he meant for that to be comforting, but it was rather the opposite. And at the thought of that happening, of my father deciding where I was going again without informing me, and me never even getting a chance to do magic or run. . . my blood sank, and I swayed, just like poor Sweet Lirane, ready to faint in horror at the thought.

  “Princess?” Castillion asked, moving quickly to my side. “Are your ties too tight?”

  “No,” I said, clenching my hands in and out of fists to recover.

  Castillion eyed me like he didn’t believe me and gave me a moment to collect myself. “The Kers are waiting. ”

  I reached for the combed veil Finx had made for me that matched my dress and set it into the rest of the elaborate series of braids and clips already on my head. It was made of sheer silk that came down to my hips on all sides of my body, which made it just as hard for other people to see me as it was for me to see them.

  “Let us go to the carriage,” Castillion said, opening up the tent’s fabric, finally letting me outside.

  8

  Rhaim

  “I can’t believe I get to see inside your castle,” Sibyi said after I’d taken him back via my portal chamber. He was now clapping his hands together like a child impatient for a surprise in front of the door to my laboratory.

  I’d waited a week to summon him, after gaining his promise of aid. I’d spent it taking apart the cage I designed to be used for magical beasts, re-spacing the bars such that an average-sized Deathless wouldn’t be able to fit through—which left me with an extra bar of the stuff to forge into what I knew I required.

  “I’ll expect the same from you in the future, you realize,” I muttered, moving past him.

  Sibyi swung one arm in a dramatic flourish as I finished unlocking my door. “You will always be welcome in the Lightning Palace. Once I build it, that is. ”

  I eyed him with a snort. “If you call it that, I will refuse to visit. ” Sibyi chortled, and then we were in my laboratory. He gasped audibly and then began wandering around, touching everything, staring like his eyes were mouths and he needed to eat up everything he saw. “Take your time,” I told him. “I want you to be able to get back here. ”

  This stopped his impromptu tour and he turned toward me. “Why?”

  Because I had also spent the intervening week in heavy thought. “If I die, this place is yours. ”

  He puffed his chest out. “And what if I call it the Lightning Palace, then, eh?” he challenged me, before roughly exhaling. “No, really, Rhaim, I know you’re a fatalist—and also that this plan of yours is absurd—but let’s at least pretend we might succeed. It’s no fun if we don’t. ”

  “It’s not that,” I said, leading him to the staircase.

  It was that the hope I held inside my heart was beginning to feel flammable, and once I set it aflame, I wasn’t sure I would be able to return. Better to keep it tamped down, because any moment I spent thinking about Lisane and my future, was one less I had to secure it in the now.

  I opened up the stable door for Sibyi, and he walked in, wrinkling his nose.

  “What is that scent? Hay? Horse? Goat?” he asked, looking back at me for answers.

  “All three,” I said, glad his nose was unable to make out the finer memories the room held for me: the shining ambition of one perfect apprentice, and the eager way she had ground her cunt against my boot.

  “And this is made of yllibrium?” he asked, walking up to the cage that was in the center of it.

  “Yes,” I said, pushing down intrusive recollections, just in time to watch him shove his hand between the bars. “Don’t!” I shouted at him, but it was too late—Sibyi jumped back just like the cage had burned him.

  “What—is—that?!” he complained, shaking his hand with regret.

  “That is what it feels like to have your magic stolen from you,” I said, coming up beside him. I had first read about yllibrium in some of the oldest of Filigro’s journals, during my first long stay in his caverns in my youth. All knowledge of it had been lost, or perhaps purposefully destroyed or hidden by earlier mages.

  Then centuries later I’d heard stories from townspeople in an obscure village I’d set down near, of objects called hurt-stones, that sometimes children found on the bank of the Orine River, and used to chase each other around in games.

  Not all of the stones the children used hurt them—and not all of the children were hurt, all of the time—but some of them did, and were: stones with an actual quantity of yllibrium in them, and children who had enough latent magical ability to feel it torn asunder by the rocks. Often their own parents didn’t believe them though, and I did nothing to discourage that while I was there, scouring the riverbanks for rocks that looked like they had the correct crystal formation, once I thought I’d discovered what it was. An additional confounding factor was that they only worked in relation to one another. Just one wouldn’t hurt you; you needed to be in between them, so that they could create a field of depowerment.

  It had taken ages to accrue enough to use, to figure out how to impregnate it into metal, and longer still to figure out how to use it “safely. ”

  “It doesn’t hurt normal creatures,” I told him. “But for ones such as you and I—and like the Deathless, I am hoping—it’s like getting your spirit ripped out. ” I set a hand on the cage’s thick wooden top. “It doesn’t do permanent damage, though. ”

  “How would you know?” Sibyi asked me in disbelief. Then his lip curled in horror. “Wait—you’ve used this on yourself, haven’t you?”

  “I have tested it extensively. ” So much so that I’d decided not to actually use it on any magical animals. Research was one thing, torture another.

  “Rhaim, you are almost literally playing with fire here. ” Sibyi’s eyes went even wider than they’d been inside my lab. “The Kers cannot be trusted with this. ”

  “Oh, I know. And which is why I’ve never mentioned owning it before, to anyone, nor will I now—nor will you. ”

  He made a face. “Stop telling me secrets, I don’t like it—”

  I cut him off. “Learn this place, Cloudmaker. You’ll need to be able to portal here as well, if things go according to my plan. ”

  Sibyi frowned, but took a moment to scan the room, committing the place to his trained memory. “Your plan, which is?” he asked when he was through.

  “To capture one and study it. The Deathless are possessed of some mind, even if we cannot fully understand them. Maybe if we separate one from its magic or maker, we can figure out what purpose it serves. ”

  Sibyi circled the cage warily, before looking over it at me. “And what if you put one inside and it just explodes?”

  One of my eyebrows cocked up. “There is that. ”

  There were many things against this plan, and not much to recommend it. But it was the only thing I could think of that might work—or at the very least, get me close to Lisane, one last time.

  If I couldn’t figure out how to cage a Deathless—I’d never be able to free Lisane from hers.

  “Rhaim, that’s horrible,” Sibyi said, focusing on the cage again, which he was staring at as though it’d done him wrong.

  “Yes,” I wholeheartedly agreed.

  I knew because I’d made a collar for myself out of the extra bar.

  9

  Lisane

  Aside from her actual pledge ceremony to my father, and my and Helkin’s date of birth, my mother’s unveiling ceremony had been the happiest day of her life.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22