“I think he’ll be all right,” she told him gently. At least, he would live. How he would cope with the scars was another matter. “Do you have a blanket, something I can wrap him in?”
Argent nodded and went to fulfill her request without further question.
Naples woke as they were transferring him to the couch in the next room, wrapped in the softest blanket Argent could find. He gasped and his eyes opened, the pupils so dilated with pain that the copper was nearly hidden, giving him a look like one of the blind.
“You’re okay,” Henna said. “I’m here. You’re hurt, but you’ll heal.”
“Henna,” he gasped.
“I’m here.”
“You should get out of here,” he bit out. “It could come back. It could—”
“I’m not leaving you. Once you’re strong enough to travel we’ll bring you back to the Cobalt Hall, but until then—”
He pushed her away, and shoved himself to a sitting position.
“Don’t try to stand,” Argent advised. “You’re hurt and weak.”
Naples shook his head, black hair still matted with blood falling in his face. “Hurt, yes,” he said. “Not weak.” He closed his eyes, and as Henna watched, the bite marks along his shoulders faded to scars. The scars then softened to new pink flesh. The claw marks along his chest went next.
“Don’t burn more power than you need to,” Henna warned.
Naples ignored her.
The cuts down his chest and back didn’t fade as completely as the shallower bite marks, but they closed. Did Naples realize he was doing something none of the rest of the Order could do at all? Injuries that deep even from a non-mystical source would have been nearly impossible to heal for most of the Order’s healers. And there was no magic in the city of Mars that had been able to touch the nightmare-induced burns and slashes.
When had Naples become that much more powerful than the rest of them? Had the Terra’s instruction made the difference? Or had something else happened in the last six weeks?
“If you’re okay to ride,” she said once Naples opened his eyes, “we should get back to the Hall.”
He shook his head. “I won’t stay here, but I shouldn’t go with you. I don’t want to put anyone else in danger.”
“We’re already all in danger,” Henna said. “You’re not the only one who’s been injured like this. One of us has lost his life already. I was terrified I was going to find you the same way, and I swear I am not going to let you disappear again.”
“It killed someone?” Naples went impossibly paler. “Who?”
“Helio.” It was the second time she had bluntly informed him of a death he should have learned of in a gentler fashion, but it if was the only way she could convince him to come home with her, she felt no guilt. “You need to come home.”
He nodded slowly, his eyes closed. “Then I’ll come.”
“I’ll tell you everything that has happened while you’ve been gone,” Henna said. “And I want you to tell me what you’ve been doing, too.”
“Of course I will.”
Henna never would have been able to say what tipped her off, since there was no change in his expression, but she had known Naples too long not to recognize that he had just lied to her. For whatever reason, he had no intention of telling her what he had gone though in the last six weeks.
This was not the moment to push the issue. “Your mother has been mad with worry over you.”
At that, she saw genuine distress. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disappear the way I did.”
Henna looked up at Argent, who had been standing out of the way, awkwardly looking between Naples and Henna. “I’ve got something you can borrow to wear,” he said to Naples. “It’ll be big, but it’s better than nothing.”
Naples nodded, eyes widening a little, as if just noticing that he was naked except for a blanket. “Thank you. You’ve been really decent.”
Argent’s lips quirked in a half smile. “You weren’t bad yourself. Maybe after you’re better you can come visit sometime—if you remember me, that is.”
“You’re memorable.”
Henna’s mind was somewhere so far away—the recent disasters, horror at Naples’ earlier condition and relief that he was alive, fear and anticipation—that it took her a moment to recognize the verbal byplay as flirting. Now?
Such was the resilience of youth!
Chapter 31
Dahlia
Dahlia?
Dahlia walked along an endless white beach, disoriented and confused. How had she come here? Where was here?
“Dahlia?”
A voice called her name and she turned, but there was just more crystalline sand. Her head spun. No matter what she did, she was always walking down a strip of beach, gently lapping waves presumably on her left and rolling white dunes equally likely on her right, but no matter which way she turned she wasn’t able to face them.
It is not safe for you to see our majesty, little one. You still have work to do in the mortal realm. When that is complete, we will welcome you with open arms.
“Dahlia!”
Go, with our love.
This time when she turned, the world didn’t just rotate with her. Vertigo struck, fierce and undeniable; all sense of up and down disappeared. She wasn’t standing; she was lying on her back.
Opening her eyes took an effort. Her lashes felt gummed shut. How long had she slept?
Had she been dreaming? She thought she had.
“Oh, thank Numen,” a voice breathed. Dahlia blinked furiously, struggling to focus her eyes. There were still spots in her vision, as if she had stared into something too bright.
Lightning.
At last, the afterimages started to fade and Maddy blinked into focus.
“Did the door open?” Dahlia asked. She was surprised to discover that her voice sounded normal, not raw. She had expected her throat to hurt. It seemed like a lot of things should hurt, but nothing did.
She wasn’t numb, though. She could feel the sheets over her and the—
“Where am I?”
They weren’t in the palace ritual room anymore, but in a small room with gray stone walls warmed by woolen tapestries depicting pastoral scenes of goats grazing in a rocky pasture. It wasn’t a style Dahlia had seen anywhere in the palace, which tended toward more vivid colors and images of splendor and . . .
And white sand. Had she seen a beautiful white beach, somewhere? Maybe on a picture in the ritual room . . .
“Stay with me, Dahlia,” Maddy said. “You’ve been in and out for over a day. You’re in the Cobalt Hall now, in one of the unused rooms in the second floor living areas. We thought it best to bring you here to rest where no one would bother you.”
“Thank you.” Dahlia knew it was an honor that she’d been allowed into this sacrosanct area of the Cobalt Hall. “How badly injured am I?” There was no pain, but perhaps magic was subsuming it.
Maddy shook her head. “You have a few bumps and bruises from when you fell, but nothing serious. There was a blast of power when Celadon opened the door to Jaune’s private ritual room. You have no experience managing magic or defending yourself from it, so it overwhelmed you. We had to spend the last day clearing the remnants of it from your body. Carefully,” Maddy added hastily, seeing Dahlia’s expression.
Dahlia tried to conceal her shiver of horror. She accepted that magic was not the all-consuming evil that many Quin believed it was, but she was also one of the few who knew exactly how dangerous it could be when uncontrolled.
“The others?” she asked, pushing herself up. “Is Dove all right? And Celadon?”
“Dove was dazed for a while, but she has enough experience to clear the excess power from herself on her own. Celadon and I both have enough cold magic that we weren’t affected.”
“What of the palace?” Having shaken off the last remnants of her dreams, Dahlia wanted answers. “Did you learn anything that can help you with the wild power that’s
been harming sorcerers?”
Maddy touched Dahlia’s brow, then her cheek, like a mother checking for a child’s fever. Whatever she found must have satisfied her, because she took a deep breath and answered the questions. “The seals on the palace are broken. The doors are all now open, and the other strange phenomenon—like the inability to make a spark—have stopped. It seems safe, so Sepia is putting together a proposal to make use of palace space to house some of the stranded Tamari and Silmari.”
That sounded like Sepia, organized and efficient as always.
“We don’t know for sure what effect this will have on the wild power that’s been harming us, but there were no problems last night. And we—” Maddy’s voice broke, revealing for the first time the emotion beneath the calm composure of a healer and a member of the council. “We found Jaune’s body. We believe he died from power exhaustion.” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “It’s rare, at least among well-trained sorcerers, but it happens if a magic user is too focused on their work and doesn’t maintain their body in other ways. They burn all their physical resources to support their magic.” She swallowed thickly, and cleared her throat. “It may be what killed the Terra, too, but we never found her body.”
“Are you—”
Maddy interrupted Dahlia’s inquiry, saying swiftly, “But we found Terre Verte. He’s alive. Just barely, but it’s enough, we think. His father must have spent all his power to heal him, but afterwards Verte didn’t have enough strength to free himself of the shields Jaune put up to protect him.”
“How is—” No, that question could wait two more minutes. “How are you?”
Maddy sighed, her body sagging as if the question had finally given her permission to abandon her stoic professionalism and let herself be a human being. “I knew he was probably dead. I’ve been telling myself that, that I need to accept it and let myself grieve, for weeks now. But seeing it . . .” Dahlia took Maddy’s hand, and Maddy squeezed it tightly in response. “I feel like I’ve made a trade, one heart for another. We received word of Naples while we were in the palace. Numen willing, Henna’s gone to find him.”
For a guilt-stricken moment, Dahlia couldn’t remember who Naples was. Then she recalled an overheard, worried conversation early in the council’s collaboration with the Order of Napthol.
“Your older son,” she said aloud, confirming. No one had officially reported him missing, but Maddy’s relief made it clear she had been worried in ways she had not disclosed to the council. Dahlia couldn’t think of a follow-up question that didn’t sound accusatory—Surely he hasn’t been missing all this time? Why did no one mention it?—so she said only, “I am sure Henna will be able to bring him home.”
What did she know of the matter?
“Gobe has a stack of notes for you, whenever you’re ready,” Maddy said, changing the subject, as if uncomfortable discussing her own fears and hopes. “And Celadon wants to see you as soon as you’re up to it. He has been frantic with worry, blaming himself, even though we’ve assured him a thousand times that you will be fine. He also stayed here last night, to stay near to you.”
“You let him do that?” Despite the extraordinary circumstances, Dahlia was shocked to hear the Quin preacher had been allowed to sleep in the Order of Napthol’s private halls.
“He has a right to be here, if he chooses,” Maddy said. “His power is indisputable, and despite his personal reservations, he willingly used it to help us open the palace and find the royal family. He could have sat back on the high ground, and reminded us he’s been warning us sorcery is dangerous for years. And it’s good for him, too, that he is here. He has been asking questions. He pretends they’re casual, but he’s clearly desperate to understand his power even if it frightens him. I hope he will eventually accept formal training. Do you want me to let him know you’re up?”
“I’ll find him,” Dahlia said, swinging her feet to the floor. “If that’s all right with you? I feel like I need to stretch my legs.”
“You’re no sorcerer,” Maddy said, “but we owe you much. I feel you, too, have a right to be here. If anyone bothers you, tell them to bring their complaints to me.”
They found Celadon not in the room he had been given, but on the first floor in what Maddy called the medical wing—specifically, at the bedside of the still-unconscious Terre Verte.
Celadon looked up with a dazed expression as they entered, as if his mind had been far away. Then he jumped out of the chair he had previously occupied and rushed forward.
“You’re all right,” he breathed. “They told me you would be, but I couldn’t believe it, not . . . the way you looked when we carried you out . . .” In contrast to Maddy, who still maintained a neutral expression despite all the emotions Dahlia was certain must be roiling inside her, Celadon wore every raw emotion on his face for the world to see: relief, guilt, fear.
“I’ll leave you two alone. I’ll let Gobe know you’re awake, too, Dahlia. He’s been threatening to assault the Cobalt Hall if we don’t produce you soon, and I don’t think Jade is far behind.”
Dahlia nodded, but all her attention was on the still figure across the room, stretched out on an austere oak-framed bed. She stepped up beside Terre Verte, and a sense of wrongness washed over her.
Maddy said he was alive. It was hard to believe that was true. His skin was the gray-white color of unwashed eider down, mottled in places, and his cheeks were sunken and shadowed. Someone had brushed out his hair such that it shone in chestnut splendor around him, an obscene contrast to the rest of his features.
“Someone should have warned you,” Celadon said as Dahlia reeled at her first sight of the prince. He caught her arm to steady her.
“Words wouldn’t have been enough.”
Dahlia had grieved for his passing. She had, like everyone else, cried that it wasn’t fair, and had wanted him back. But just then, he looked like someone who should be allowed to die.
“What’s keeping him here?” she whispered.
She didn’t realize she had spoken aloud until Celadon replied, “Nothing that should be.” He paused. “I didn’t like him. I disagreed with him on many points, and I didn’t trust him. But I didn’t hate him and I never wanted . . .”
He trailed off, looking at Dahlia.
“I believe you,” she said.
He had changed in the last six weeks. They all had, but Celadon perhaps most of all. His flashfire temper and instant judgment and disdain were gone, his streak of arrogance tempered into a quiet confidence mixed with moments of honest uncertainty.
“I worry about the magic keeping him here,” Celadon said. “I worry that . . . look at him. If magic could have healed him in the market square when the Osei attacked him, I never would have argued with it, but this—”
“It doesn’t seem natural,” Dahlia agreed when he stopped again. “But if there is a way to save him, don’t we have to try?”
“Not we. Me,” Celadon answered. “I’m the one who opened that door—those doors. Maybe it would have been better to leave them sealed. I just, I don’t know.”
Dahlia remembered what Henna had told her about what the members of her Order were going through. “Have you been having nightmares?”
Celadon looked at her as if she were mad. “Haven’t we all been?” he asked at last. He let out a frustrated sound. “I don’t know where I stand anymore. I’m inside the Numen-damned Cobalt Hall, by the sickbed of a man I have opposed most of my life. A man I pulled back into this world through sorcery. And I—” He swallowed hard. “It nearly killed you, you know. That blast. I wanted to stay beside you, the way you once stayed with me, but I couldn’t, because the magic . . . my magic . . . made me even colder than you were. I couldn’t push it back the way Maddy and Dove could, so I would have frozen you to death. I carried him out, and let them take you.” He finished the tirade with his eyes closed, leaning against the wall. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t need this.”
&nbs
p; She put a hand on his shoulder. Celadon Cremnitz having an existential crisis was less terrifying than Terre Verte looking like he had been dragged bodily from the Abyss.
He had been so noble, fighting the Osei. This wasn’t the way he should go, wasting away in bed.
Celadon followed her gaze to the prince. “I wish I knew what I was seeing, when I look at him. Ever since the palace, the magic has been . . . worse, more vivid.” She had the sense that Celadon continued to look at Terre Verte as he spoke partly because he could not stand to meet her gaze while saying such things. “I can’t make myself stop seeing it. It’s strongest around Clay, which I guess makes sense, since he’s Terre Jaune’s son. But I can see it on Maddy and some of the others, too. Most of the time it’s peaceful, just a kind of haze. I can ignore it.”
The words were a confession. They would have brought opposite reactions from any follower of either the Quinacridone or the Napthol. One would hate him for something he never wanted, and one would praise him for something he had always reviled.
“And when you look at Terre Verte?” Dahlia asked.
“Whatever I’m seeing, it’s all tangled.” He frowned. “During the fire down at the docks, I was with the others, hauling water. All of a sudden a cat streaked out of the burning building, screaming like a child, its fur on fire. None of us could reach it at first, and by the time we managed to corner it and pour water on it, it was just this charred thing. Impossibly alive. Finally, one of the men with me had the courage to step forward and break its neck to put it out of its misery. That’s what the power around Verte reminds me of.
“I’m no expert at magic. But every instinct I have tells me that what I’m seeing is every bit as cruel as that fire. Letting him lie here, watching him, it’s like all of us staring in shock at that cat, soaking wet, with its fur gone and its skin rolling with blisters and blood where it wasn’t just—” He gagged, and turned away from the Terre and Dahlia both. “It’s like the magic is fighting itself and he’s just lying there in the middle, defenseless, seemingly quiet, but screaming in my head to let him go. And I don’t know what to do,” he concluded. “I don’t know if the followers of the Napthol can see it, or if it’s like that door in the palace, invisible except to me. If they can see, they’re ignoring it. If they can’t, I know they’ll never believe me when I tell them. They want him back so badly I don’t think they care what it takes. And I worry they’ll ask me to help him, like I did in the palace.”