I can’t finish the question.
Rares squints. “Angra hasn’t found your friends in Rintiero. At least, not all of them—if he had your allies, he wouldn’t be bothering trying to track us. He’d just have them killed and let you seek him out in retaliation.”
So much about that makes me anxious. “What? How do you know? And—wait, he’s still tracking us? I thought you blocked him?”
“Blocked him from entering your mind—but his magic is still probing the world, searching for us. Once we get to Paisly, we should be safe from his intrusions entirely—the Order keeps a barrier in place. Now.” Rares clucks his tongue as if chastising himself for letting me linger on my worries and picks a leaf from the ground beside him. “Lesson two.” He lays the leaf across his palm. “Lift this leaf into the air. Your magic allows you to affect anything or anyone in existence. As you did in Putnam, when you not so gracefully threw your guards.”
Conall and Garrigan. They flew through the air because of my desperation for them to get away from me so I wouldn’t, ironically enough, use my magic on them.
“They were Winterians,” I say. “But I shouldn’t be able to affect people or objects unrelated to Winter.”
But I did affect something unrelated to Winter—in Summer, when I panicked on the roof in the palace complex and made it snow.
“Normally Royal Conduits only have enough magic in them to do things like make crops grow or bring rain during droughts,” Rares says, “and even then, only in their designated kingdoms. But being a conduit extends the limits, as you have seen through your skin-to-skin contact with other wielders—you are magic, and so are connected in a larger way. This enables you to affect other lands as well. Not other people who aren’t connected to your kingdom, unless they have magic connections themselves, but objects. It allows you to manipulate what—”
“No,” I snap. “I’m not going to manipulate anything.”
“I don’t mean manipulate as in an evil act that can feed the Decay. This leaf”—he shakes it—“knows nothing of good or evil. An evil act occurs only when it interferes with another’s ability to make their own choice and thus results in pain, sorrow, fear, or the like. Murder, for instance, when someone would be killed and therefore robbed of their ability to choose to live.”
I gape at him. “So when I threw Conall and Garrigan . . .”
Snow above, no. Did I inadvertently do something that fed the Decay?
“Your guards reeked of loyalty to you,” Rares says. “What you did to them didn’t interfere with their ability to make their own decisions—they would have chosen to do anything you asked of them. Though they did receive a few bumps and bruises, didn’t they? But again, it was something they gladly accepted, however unconsciously.”
That does shockingly little to alleviate my horror.
“Lift the leaf,” Rares prods. “I won’t let you lose control.”
My magic has remained blissfully quiet since my earlier collapse, and I’m in no hurry to awaken it. “I’d be able to stay in control if the barrier in the Tadil Mine hadn’t done something to me. Every time I open up to my magic, it comes pouring out of me, and I—”
Rares stops me with a huff. “The magic barrier would’ve hurt, but it wouldn’t have affected your magic in that way. Magic is all about choice, and somewhere in your mind, even if it was the quietest hint of wanting or panic or worry, you wanted all the things you did.”
I wheeze as though his words punched me in the gut. “This was all . . . me?”
Rares’s hand remains steady. “That’s a different lesson. All you have to do for this one is look at this leaf and want it to lift into the air.”
My mind thuds from these revelations and I twitch, rubbing my arms. Each passing minute burns my skin like the sparks from the fire. We need to leave—we need to get to Paisly so I can get what help the Order can offer, come back, get the keys from Angra, reach the magic chasm, and save everyone.
So I can die.
I grind my jaw as Rares meets my gaze.
When I filled Sir with strength in Gaos, when I blocked Hannah from speaking to me, when I made it snow in Juli, when I threw Conall and Garrigan—none of that was wanting. This is wanting—and I want this shriveled bit of vegetation to smack Rares in the face.
A chill vibrates in my chest, and all I have time to do is blink before the leaf flies at Rares and slaps him straight across the forehead.
I smack both hands over my mouth.
Rares grins as the leaf flutters into his lap. “I suppose I deserved that,” he admits. “But now you’ll better understand the rest of our journey.”
“How?”
He hops up to kick dirt over the fire. The flames extinguish with a hiss, leaving us in shadows. I barely make out Rares extending a hand to me.
“Because it will be just like what you did, only on a grander scale.”
I’m so relieved to be leaving that I take his hand.
Rares drags me to my feet, but I don’t see anything. Not just don’t—can’t, because the moment I’m standing, the forest evaporates into blackness, the moist warmth replaced by biting cold, the delicate breeze by stinging, icy wind. I gag on the sudden thinness of the air, and all I know beyond my shock is that we’re no longer in Ventralli.
Rares is moving us. And not just up slightly and back down—I feel the distance flying beneath us as surely as I see blackness all around. We’re spiraling in a surge of magic, the air sparking with electricity that eats at my skin. My heart lodges so tightly in my throat, I wonder if it will ever loosen; my palms are slick with so much sweat that I fear I’ll lose my grip on Rares’s hand and go spiraling into oblivion.
Rares must sense my terror, because he wraps his arms around me. The silence of being suspended wherever we are, of being held tight in protective arms, pulls my mind to the last time someone wrapped me up like this—Sir, in Angra’s cruel vision months ago. When I knelt on the floor of the cottage in Winter and he tucked me into his arms and everything was perfect.
No—everything was not perfect. The real Sir would never hug me like that. Like this.
I stumble back, trembling, on solid ground once again. We’re not in the forest anymore—we’re in a cave. Behind me, orange light dances.
Those details register in my mind as everything in my stomach rushes for my throat and I topple forward, retching.
Rares crouches next to me. “You handled it better than I did my first time. I vomited, passed out, woke up, and vomited again—all before I’d even reached the destination.”
I heave once more. “Passing out doesn’t feel that far off.”
Rares takes my elbow. “Let’s get you up, then. No time for unconsciousness here.”
My blubber of protest goes unheard, and as soon as I’m vertical, he shifts, pointing into the tunnel. “Can’t see it, but this leads to the widest valley on the western edge of the Paisels. Not many know of this route, but the tunnel cuts through the mountains and into Paisly—it’s a two-week trip otherwise. This shortcut was my backup option if you hadn’t been able to grasp the moving-leaf concept, but thank our lucky magic you did, because I right hate traveling, even if it’d only be a few days. The one thing about being a conduit I’ll miss—the ease of transportation.”
“You used magic to fly us to Paisly?” I choke down another roll of nausea. “Who else is capable of using their magic like that?”
But I know the answer before Rares looks at me.
“As I said, Paisly keeps a barrier up to prevent any outside magic from intruding. The only outsider who can use his magic to travel is Angra, as he’s a conduit just as we are, but he can only use that ability on his Spring citizens or himself. It isn’t technically an aspect of the Decay—not unless he intended to hurt someone with it. Basically, Angra would be a fool to use it, as he can’t transport his entire army, and that plus the barrier means you’re safe here.”
Yet again, Rares’s explanation does little to quench my t
error. But I nod, accepting it.
Rares squishes his face. “Anyway. We’re not quite in Paisly yet.”
He turns. Behind us, a man stands in the glow of the torches. Exhaustion trembles in my every limb, but I hook my thumbs into the straps of my chakram’s empty holster.
Rares waves at him. “Alin, Meira—Meira, Alin.”
Alin tips his head at me but spins away to face a solid wall of rock—the end of the tunnel.
As Alin braces his hands against the wall, Rares leans over to me.
“He’s a soldier under me in the Order. Don’t worry; I can keep him from hearing your thoughts. This entrance has been under my guard for, well, ever. The whole kingdom is in a valley, which makes controlling who comes and goes a rather respected position.”
My eyes flash wide when Alin shoves the wall, causing it to move. Like Conall and Garrigan when I threw them; like the leaf in Rares’s palm; like us as we hurtled from Ventralli to the tunnel. What had once been a solid dead end shifts bit by bit to reveal—Paisly.
Night envelops the area, but thanks to the moon, I’m able to see the gray castle that sits just below this entrance and, even farther down, a village wrapped in shadow. Even the outline of distant peaks on the horizon is visible, a contrast of darkness against the paler black-gray sky.
Rares and Alin step ahead, talking on the cliff outside the entrance, giving me a much-needed reprieve, alone in the cave.
Meira.
My heart stops with a jolt.
Did Rares drop the protection he put on my mind? He said that the Order kept a barrier around Paisly, so Angra wouldn’t be able to reach me here.
I look at the floor of the cave, then Rares outside, a stone sinking through my gut.
I’m not in Paisly yet.
5
Meira
RARES GLANCES BACK at me with a frown as I sprint for the entrance. I don’t make it two paces before a force drives me to my knees.
You thought you could escape me? Angra jeers. You’ve never escaped me, Highness, and you never will.
My vision distorts, the twitching orange of this cave rippling away in favor of utter blackness. I fight it, getting patches of Rares and Alin racing back for me interspersed with Angra materializing in the gloom of my mind, his face contorted in a snarl.
Through my terror, one clarifying thought rises from Rares’s earlier explanation: “Being part of the same magic allows for a mental connection. Touching another conduit intensifies the reaction. . . .”
I ignore everything around me—Rares and Alin shouting, Rares’s magic tingling on my skin—and see only Angra’s image in my mind. He’s there, all of him, watching me from the shadows.
Without considering the ramifications, I reach out and grab his wrist.
Shock is clear on Angra’s face. He may not be here physically, but he is in my head, and I am touching him now.
I use this one small opportunity to delve into his mind. I want to know so many things—if he caught my friends; what he made Cordell do to Winter; what his ultimate plan is—
I feel the last inquiry connect, and every other sensation dissolves around me.
A young Angra crouches in the halls of Abril’s palace, a woman’s head in his lap, her blood staining the obsidian.
I’ve seen this before—or, rather, I saw Theron’s memory of this, one of the things Angra shared with him while he was a prisoner in Spring.
In Angra’s lap, his mother’s lips quiver. “Please,” she moans. “Please stop him.”
The scene changes and I see an older Angra, huddled in one of Yakim’s universities, poring over books, then standing in Summer, beseeching their king to teach him about magic, anything he can use to overthrow his father. Because this is long ago, only the smaller conduits exist, and for every conduit Angra uses, his father has one to match. But the kingdoms of the world have no time to help a desperate Spring prince when their lands are being savaged by the Decay.
The solution to the Decay comes in the form of the Royal Conduits. Angra sees his father gather every small conduit from Spring and return from the chasm with a staff of ultimate power.
Angra tries to combat the staff. Blood and punches and magic fly, and he crawls away in a bloody heap every time. His father is too powerful now—but his father is prideful and stupid, and Angra tricks him one night into releasing the staff. One moment is all he needs.
But his father still lives, lying broken on the floor of the throne room, and Angra can’t use the staff until his father is dead. He doesn’t want to kill his father—no, he wants his father to suffer first. But how, if Angra has no magic himself?
The Decay. The other Royal Conduits made it weak, but it is strong enough to infect one sad, broken man.
Angra keeps his father alive at first. But the Decay needs magic to feed off soon, so Angra kills his father in a glorious display of blood and revenge.
The staff links to Angra, and the Decay morphs with it. Angra rejoices in the power he and the Decay accumulate over decades of control.
From that, an image unfolds—the future he wants. One of control, where all who oppose him cower as his father cowered, slaves to their darkest emotion—which he will be sure is fear. Only fear. He made it so in his kingdom, and he will make it so the world over.
He wants to make all of Primoria his Spring.
Cold air fills my lungs.
I’m crouched on the cliff outside the cave’s entrance, fingers tight on the ledge. Rares and Alin kneel on either side of me, their hands on my shoulders, panting as hard as I am.
“Meira,” Rares says. “I’m so sorry. I dropped the protection too soon—”
“No.” I shake my head, unable to get my breath under control. “I’m . . . glad for it.”
Rares stares in disbelief. I stay there, fumbling for explanation, until I realize I don’t have to explain at all.
Instead, I twist toward him and press my hand to his, willing him to open up and see what I saw.
He sits there, and all I can read on his dark face is an ancient horror. He flips his hand over to squeeze my fingers, his gaze moving to Alin.
“Stay on guard,” he says. “If anyone approaches—anyone—notify me immediately.”
Rares leaps up and starts down a sloping path carved into the mountain. I scramble to my feet as Alin returns to the cave, the wall closing behind him with a burst of air.
“Wait! We’re going to stay here?” I chase after Rares. “We know what Angra wants now—we have to warn everyone—”
“To what purpose?” Rares doesn’t stop, forcing us closer to the valley floor. “You still intend to fight him, don’t you? All this does is add urgency to our training. We know now what Angra will be doing throughout the world—and he knows you know, so you’ll be even more of a target once you reemerge.” Now Rares does stop, swinging around to face me. “Which makes it even more imperative that you leave here as prepared as possible. Doesn’t it?”
I pinch my lips together. My heartbeat eats a hole through my chest, and though my initial reaction is to scream at him, I force myself to process what he said, every word.
“Yes,” I admit. But I hate it, and myself, and him, all of this, everything standing in the way of me helping everyone I care about. But this will help them.
If it doesn’t, Angra will kill me, and any chance of ridding the world of his magic will be gone. He’ll spread his control to every kingdom in Primoria as he’s already started to do in Ventralli. I saw how much that kingdom had started to change after only one night under his rule—how long would it take him to conquer the world?
I blow past Rares, stomping ahead of him. Below, the castle sits, similar in style to Yakim’s Langlais Castle. Gray stones snuggle alongside one another, beaten smooth from centuries of existence; windows of thick glass reflect flares of moonlight if the angle is right. At the top right corner of the wall, a flag flutters, its maroon background showing a mountain beneath a beam of light.
The
symbol for the Order of the Lustrate.
“Why do you call yourselves the Order of the Lustrate?” I ask.
“Lustrate means to purify by sacrifice,” Rares explains. “We thought ourselves noble in that regard—that we were willing to sacrifice magic to sustain our kingdom’s purity.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Sacrifice,” I echo. I haven’t been able to say that word since I discovered that that was what the magic required. Saying it now, feeling each letter tumble out of my mouth . . . I don’t feel anything. But I have to, don’t I? It has to be a willing sacrifice. It has to be something I want.
But I can think of only a handful of things I truly want. To be back in Winter, tucked away with Mather and Sir and Nessa and everyone I love; to hurl my chakram at something over and over until my heart doesn’t ache anymore.
Rares jerks to a stop. I can see his eyes on me in the moonlight, and the gentleness there looks almost like sympathy.
“Wanting isn’t weak,” he says. The solid iron gate in the wall starts to creak open. “Wanting is a drive. A goal. Without wanting, what would we be? Empty, I think.”
His mouth hangs open as he studies me, seeing through me.
“I know it’s been a long trip. But . . . I think you’ll need to talk to her, before you rest.”
I frown. “Her?”
No sooner do I ask that than a door slams within the compound. Rares beckons me on.
The walls surround a complex illuminated by lanterns. Stables and a training ring take up the right, a garden fills the left—and in front of us, racing out of the castle, comes a woman just as old as Rares, with long, black hair in dozens of braids that sway against each other, beads jangling from the ends and feathers fluttering in the centers. She wears a ruby robe, the neckline and cuffs adorned with swirling gold designs, and a skirt splits at her knees, revealing a glimpse of brown boots and tan pants that show all the more when she gathers the robe in a fist to sprint faster.
“You’re here!” she cries. Before I can object, she throws her arms around me, smashing me to her chest. She smells like well-worn fabric dried in the sun, like cinnamon and thyme and other, less familiar herbs. And when she pulls back, her dark eyes glittering, I can’t help but smile. Something about her is all those things—well-worn and bright.