She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)
She Who Rides the Storm: Chapter 35

Lia could sense the room’s every possible exit even without Calsta’s help. The two large windows, one looking east and one south. The door she’d just come through. Mateo so very close downstairs and yet so far away. She sank to her knees, knowing it was hopeless. That if Master Helan was here, there was no escape. Not until she somehow scrubbed Calsta’s touch from her aura or stopped breathing.

The window was open, a breeze blowing at her scarf.

“You were given to Calsta when you were eleven.” Master Helan’s voice crackled like old leaves, his veil masking any hope she had for mercy.

“Yes, Master.” The words caught in Lia’s throat, strangling her.

“Our order of Devotion does not allow us to be seen, to touch, to feel. We are apart from the world, and yet you stand before me unveiled. You left the Devoted sent to protect you, and you choose instead to shelter with…” He paused, his veiled face turning an inch toward the door but not truly away from Lia. “People I wouldn’t have expected.”

Lia looked at her hands clenched tight into her skirts. Tual was downstairs too. Perhaps if she screamed…? But even Tual Montanne, the all-powerful aukincer, couldn’t fight the Warlord by himself.

Where was the Warlord? Sitting downstairs? In the dining room, eating one of Mateo’s favorite sweet rolls as she waited for her young spiriter to be subdued?

Spiriters were too valuable to kill. Lia shrank inside herself another inch, missing her armor, her auroshe. Her sword. Feeling as if she were already shackled in a white room with a white veil, her entire life gone. Ewan waiting outside her door. No.

No.

She slipped a hand up to the scarf, pulling the knots loose.

Her face would be the last thing Master Helan saw.

“I can see your mind, child.…” His voice rattled, one hand shaking as it came out from under the veil, his gloves worn and soft.

Lia ripped the scarf from her hair, tears burning down her cheeks as she leapt toward him. Praying she’d reach him before he could call for the other Devoted who had to be here. Praying to Calsta, the very goddess to whom Master Helan meant to return her.

“And I do not blame you.” A dagger flicked into Master Helan’s hands, nothing there one moment, the wicked blade glistening in the moonlight the next. “Stay where you are, child, and listen. I do not wish for you to die.”

Lia froze, the flat of the dagger pressed against her stomach. The scarf fluttered around her like she was caught in a windstorm, her curls blowing this way and that.

“What was done to you was an abomination, Lia Seystone.” Master Helan slowly stood, keeping the dagger at her. “Not only what I see Ewan has attempted, but your life from the moment you entered the seclusion. Calsta does not compel Devotion.” He sighed, his head bowing. “The Warlord is losing her people. She chooses not to ask, but to command.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Lia demanded.

“Our order used to be a sacrifice of years, not life. A desire to be close to the goddess and to serve her if you had the talent. A desire you could take up and then give back once your service was done. All Devotion was done in the service of the goddess, an exchange that taught those with power what it meant to suffer, so we would not forget what it meant to be poor, hungry, without family, forgotten.” He touched his veil, his old gloves slipping against the fabric. “What it meant to be isolated. Alone. Servants serve better when we truly understand those we serve. We served until we could bear it no more, until we were ready to return to the world, our places given to others who had not yet had the chance.”

Lia’s hand went to her head, the oaths scarred into her skin. “Calsta does not forgive broken oaths.”

“No, my child. Calsta sees Devotion in seasons, our service taking different forms that are appropriate to our place in life—our oaths are supposed to be a choice. It is the Warlord who cannot afford to forgive. When the first Warlord made an army of Devoted, those soldiers chose to be Calsta’s blades. They chose to save the people who were hungry, their strength stolen by thieves who called themselves kings, their children eaten one by one.”

Master Helan sighed again, looking down at his knife. He withdrew it from Lia’s stomach but held it ready in his fist. “In the years following the wars, it became increasingly difficult to control those with power, despite the sacrifices Calsta decreed to keep her Devoted in check. Seclusions were born. If you wished to practice Devotion to Calsta, it was under close supervision so Devoted did not become the new shapeshifters. Using their power to hurt, to steal, to terrify and destroy.”

“Like Ewan Hardcastle.”

“Yes. Like Ewan Hardcastle.” Master Helan’s veil twitched in the breeze, moonlight still bright on the knife. “The Commonwealth rests on Devoted shoulders, but Devoted are dying. The Warlord grasps, her soldiers falling between her fingers like sand as the wasting sickness takes them. She worries for our country.” He sat back down, cocking his head. “So she has accepted sacrifices from Devoted like Ewan Hardcastle. She took your life without even asking. I have been watching you, child. I have been afraid for you. I followed the Warlord’s company when they left Rentara, staying out of range so they would not stop me coming to help you.”

Lia stumbled back into a chair, grasping the scarf to her chest. “You… you knew all this? You never said anything. You never told me—”

“There was never anything I could do. For me, Devotion to Calsta is my life. It is what I’ve always wanted. I serve those who cannot choose to be hungry as I have. They cannot choose their hard beds as I did. They did not choose to leave their families as I have. I give up my life for them.” He slipped the knife into his pocket. “Your life was taken, not given as Calsta asks. You are my only student, and this opportunity could not be missed. I came here to set you free.”

Calsta’s power seemed to burn in the air around Lia, swirling just out of reach. If only she could read Master Helan’s mind. If only she could know for sure he was telling truths, not stories that would weave a new web around her. She couldn’t even sense him there, Calsta’s energy a smell in the air when she needed to drink it down. Lia covered her mouth with both hands, jumping when her fingers touched her lips and chin instead of the scarf. Her last bit of armor, finally pulled free. “How can I believe you? The Warlord isn’t going to stop hunting me.”

“You have not learned all that Calsta can do, child. Thoughts are finicky things that can be moved and reshaped.” Master Helan knelt before her chair, reaching out to touch both her shoulders with his gloved hands. Even with gloves, his hands felt warm and soft. “You don’t have to believe me. All you have to do is run.”

Knox couldn’t remember anything except for Anwei limp in his arms. His thoughts seemed to tighten around her as he sat down next to her on her bed. Her eyes were still glassy, a funny smile on her face as he pulled the blanket up over her. “I’m going to get Gulya.”

“No.” She grabbed his wrist before he could stand. “She can’t see me like this.”

“If there are lasting effects…”

“It’s going away.” Anwei waved dismissively, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. “I’ll probably have a headache in the morning, but I’m fine.” She squinted down at her robe, her undertunic buttons ripped open at her throat. Her fingers slid up to touch the scar that ran the length of her collarbone, following it to her shoulder, where it disappeared beneath her tunic. Knox watched, unable to tear his eyes away. “Thank you for carrying me out. You should probably go meet Lia. Tell her it’s all gone wrong. Check on Altahn. And then we have to come up with a new plan.”

Her other hand still circled his wrist, holding Knox there even as she ordered him away. All her braids twisted around her head like snakes, the scarf she’d worn to hide them lost down in the tomb, and her shapeshifter face paint was smudged so it was just a muddy swirl of color against her tawny skin.

Knox pulled against her grip, looking away. “Let me get a towel and some water—”

Her fingers tightened. “I saw something in that tomb. Felt something. But it didn’t smell like the snake-tooth man. What else could all that have been?” She tried to cover the white scars bared across her shoulders. Her sleeves were torn and muddied, revealing the end of another scar on the back of her wrist. “What happened to you down there, Knox?”

But Knox couldn’t answer, could only see the scars. One of her shoes had come off.…

He pulled his wrist from her hand and slid to the end of the bed to pull off her other shoe. His fingers found the line of yet another scar that cut deep across the top of her foot. And suddenly he knew what they were.

“Someone tried to cut your aura away.” The words were filled with fire and acid and the sharp sting of a blade. “One of those backwater purification rituals.”

She tugged her foot from his hand and buried it in the blankets.

“Anwei.” He looked at her. “Just tell me.”

When her mouth opened, it was like in the cave, the way it had started at the beginning, as if the two of them had somehow bled into each other.

“The shapeshifter killed my brother.” Her voice was so quiet, he shouldn’t have been able to hear without Calsta’s powers.

The bond between them mirrored everything back at Knox—he could feel his own fingers where they touched Anwei’s ankle, and the way his touch made Anwei’s skin trill. He could feel the way she liked it, that she didn’t want to but she did.

Lady of Blue. Queen of the Sky. She Who Rides the Storm.

“The day my brother died, my family didn’t remember him,” Anwei whispered. “I tried to tell them. I tried to show them. I dragged my father into the room, and my mother started screaming, but it was because she thought there was something wrong with me. They saw the blood and thought it was mine, couldn’t even remember they had a son to worry about. They were yelling, and I could smell everything in the room when I’d never been able to smell before, and there was blood and bone, and the nothing scent from the shapeshifter was eating the air, and…”

Her fingers had linked together tight against her chest, her knuckles white. “And then the jars in my father’s shop started shaking. I could feel their insides, and suddenly they could feel me, too. We were angry, and so they shook like me.”

Knox could feel her tensing, the drug in her system loosening something that had been welded shut inside her. “My parents dragged me out of Arun’s room, and they wouldn’t listen, and my brother was gone… dead.…” Her voice cracked. “And all the jars of herbs started falling off the shelves. Something fell on my mother, and the herbs were trying to help—swirling through the air, pushing us back toward my brother’s room. I made them do it. And then my father grabbed me, and…”

Her voice petered out, her eyes closing.

Knox had seen scars like Anwei’s before, though never so extensive. He moved her robe an inch or two, the scar twisting up her leg. His whole body prickled as he realized what he was doing and took his hand away.

He’d seen scars like that on a new Devoted who had come to the seclusion near the time he’d left. She hadn’t flinched when they branded her scalp with the first oath, a resolution in her face that had made his skin crawl.

And he’d seen them in a village where he’d followed a Basist’s trail. The townsfolk had tried to cleanse their potential shapeshifter. It hadn’t helped them.

“And they tried to take your powers away,” he whispered. “What… happened?”

“The whole village was there. When they cut me, something inside me broke.” She blinked, a tear running down her cheek. “And the grass started growing, and there were tree roots coming out of the ground, making holes and moving rocks. It swallowed everyone up, fighting for me until there was almost nothing left of me. Of them. And there was a storm.” Anwei licked her lips. “That was the only time I believed in Calsta, when that storm blew in out of nowhere, stopped anyone from following me. I ran to the beach and got into a boat. And all of them…”

All of them died. He could feel it in her thoughts. All of them were dead because they’d tried to kill her. The only people she’d been worried about following her were from the next town over. The Devoted, when they heard. But the storm had stopped anyone from knowing exactly what had happened, and her body hadn’t been missed among the dead.

Knox set himself on the floorboards next to her. He could feel the terror in her mind, and the fear that maybe they’d been right to try to destroy her. That her power had made her a monster.

Willow crackled in Knox’s head, but there wasn’t room for her just now. His mind was full of Anwei.

“I’m so sorry.” He propped his chin up on her bed so their faces were even. “You’ve known what you can do all along. And… now you don’t want to do it ever again.”

“No, that’s not it. I can’t do it. Not on purpose. Though tonight, in the tomb… I was close.” She stopped, staring up at him. Her eyes moved down his face, pausing on his lips. Something in him ignited, and the forbidden well of feelings burst open, flooding him even faster than it had down in the tomb. The air between them seemed to be on fire, her hand lifting to run through his hair.

Knox. Calsta’s voice exploded in his head. Who is this for?

The stark strangeness of the question jolted him up so fast that he almost slammed his head into the bed frame. Anwei blinked, her hands falling limply to the bed beside her.

What did Calsta mean, who was it for? Did it have to be for someone other than him and Anwei?

“What’s wrong?” Anwei’s face was flushed, her lips still parted, and there wasn’t a single piece of Knox that wanted any space between him and her. Every inch of him burned.

And Calsta was in his mind. The space she’d taken had left a crack, Anwei’s presence giving way to Willow’s wicked laughter.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered.

“You can’t?” Anwei’s face closed. “You’ve always acted like… but you wouldn’t…” She closed her eyes tight, her hands moving to cover them. “Just say what you mean, Knox.” She shook her head, her fingers pressed hard against her face. “No, don’t. Go away. Get out of my room.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand enough. If you don’t want to be in here, then go.”

“Calsta above, Anwei.” Knox groaned, the sound bitter and awful even in his own ears. “I do want to be in here. If it were up to me, I’d…” And then he had to stop because there were so many things he wished, but even thinking was crime enough for Calsta. Talking about it should have been more than enough for the energy inside him to drain until he was a husk. By all rights, Calsta should have drained him dry weeks ago, and he didn’t know why she’d been so lenient. Because she could see he was trying, perhaps? In that moment he didn’t want to try anymore. He didn’t want Calsta’s muscle, her hearing or sight. What had they ever done for him?

I’m going to save your sister, Knox. Calsta’s voice was soft, consoling.

Willow cackled even louder. I don’t want to be saved. Do you love me, Knox? Do what I want.

Knox shivered.

I led you here. I led you to Anwei. Your oaths aren’t so I can control you. They aren’t to make you miserable. There’s a reason. Do you trust me?

“You’d what?” Anwei’s voice was quiet. There was a tiny space in her armor, the same tiny space she’d always given him, asking him to be a part of her world.

But it wasn’t a gap he could walk through right now. It took everything to breathe in deep. And let go. “Anwei, I care about you. You are one of the closest friends I’ve ever had.”

The gap snapped shut. She shifted, staring up at the ceiling. “Okay.”

“I thought you knew about—”

My oaths, he was about to say, but Anwei cut him off. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I thought… but I thought wrong. I’m sorry.”

Knox grabbed her hand and pulled her back to face him, all thoughts of letting go suddenly scorched to ash in his head, because this was a door Anwei wasn’t going to open again. “You weren’t wrong. It’s just that right now—”

Anwei jerked her hand away from him. “Right now what? Right now you care about an invisible being who may or may not be real more than you do about what you actually want? A sky goddess no one has ever seen who gives you special power to kill people the Warlord doesn’t like. I understand completely.” She turned over to face the wall, her back a beautiful curve through her robe. Knox forced himself to look away.

“She’s not fake, Anwei. She’s been taking care of me my whole life. She talks to me, Anwei. I care about you, but I have to keep my oaths, or—”

“You’ve been hearing voices?” Anwei tensed.

“No. I mean, yes, but—”

She shook her head. “No, I can’t.… Just go. We can talk about… voices and the dig and everything else tomorrow.”

Knox closed his eyes. “It’s not like that, Anwei. Please, if you just let me explain—”

“Why did it have to be the one time I don’t have my medicine bag that you refuse to leave my room?”

Knox couldn’t look at her. He forced himself to stand. “I have given up everything for Calsta. Food and comfort. Every possession. My family.” His throat closed. “Love.”

She rolled onto her back, looking up at him. “You aren’t a Devoted anymore.”

“I’ve kept my oaths, Anwei. My sister, the one who was eaten by that sword, is trapped between here and the sky. Calsta promised me if I kept my oaths, then she would help me set her free. And she led me to you. A Basist who could help me.”

Anwei’s face crumpled for a split second, as if a crack had appeared in her armor, letting him see to her core. But then it was gone. “That’s why you’ve stayed with me, even when the Devoted came? And tonight. You carried me out of the dig because your goddess needs me alive?”

“No.” Knox’s stomach twisted. “I can honestly say I haven’t thought about Calsta at all tonight.”

Until now. Now Calsta burned like an effigy in his head, her energy swirling around him like an invitation waiting to be accepted. Willow flickered in the shadows Calsta cast.

Waiting.

Calsta had taken Ewan’s power just for even thinking about breaking his oaths, so what was this game she was playing with Knox now? She had to know what was in his heart, what he wanted. So why hadn’t she withdrawn?

A gust of wind wafted in through the window, touching his back as if Calsta herself were there behind him. You don’t understand everything yet. You will.

“I have to go.” He whispered it, hating every word. He said other things in his head to Calsta directly, but her presence didn’t dim, no matter how much he cursed.

Anwei’s expression broke him, her eyes no longer glassy but full of something dusty and cold. It was the face she showed her contacts, the gangs from the lower city. Yaru’s face.

It wasn’t Yaru who had dragged him off the street and made him her partner. It wasn’t Yaru he’d eaten with, stolen with, laughed with, ducked Gulya with. And it wasn’t Yaru he’d carried out of the compound.

Anwei was his best friend. She was… everything.

He retreated to the doorway, trying to anchor himself to the ground as he touched the cool wooden lintel. Yaru didn’t have friends.

Devoted didn’t either.

“We’re going to come up with a new plan. We’ll finish this, and then…” He didn’t know what to say, if he was even allowed to think beyond the next day. Not until Willow was no longer a monster inside a sword.

“And then what?” Anwei’s voice rasped. “It’ll just be the next thing your invisible god needs from you, and then the next after that. Gods who demand you to give up your life aren’t going to nicely hand it back when you ask. Isn’t believing in right gods and wrong ones what gave me these scars?”

Knox couldn’t replace any words to say. None that were safe.

“Once all this is done, you’re going to disappear.” The words held a raw hurt that echoed across their bond. Years of loneliness and scars that stung.

“I’m not going to disappear.” He stepped back, pulling open the door’s latch. “But I have to save my sister.” It shouldn’t have been hard to say it, but it was harder than watching the veil settle over Lia’s head and having no power to stop it. Harder than leaving the seclusion with nothing but a sword on his back and auroshes on the road behind him, screaming for his blood. “To save my sister, I have to keep my oath to love only Calsta. And every day I’m with you, I break it.”

“Anwei!” Gulya’s voice rapped against Knox’s ears. The door slammed into his back as she burst through it. The old apothecarist stumbled past him, her face growing hard when her eyes found Knox. She turned on her heel and rushed to Anwei’s side. “That boy, that Trib you were quarantining up here? You could have warned me he was an unruly patient—Anwei?” She put a hand to Anwei’s forehead. “What is wrong with you?”

“Unruly?” The hairs on the back of Knox’s neck stood on end, his aurasight suddenly pinging in his head. He hadn’t been paying attention, his whole mind full of Anwei. But when he looked into his room just on the other side of the wall—

Knox bolted past Gulya, pushing her hands away when she tried to grab hold of his tunic. “Don’t think I don’t understand what’s going on in here!” Gulya’s voice slapped at him as he ran. “You leave me with a violent man who comes down the stairs like the nameless god himself, hits me over the head, and runs away as if he was some kind of prisoner. Then I replace poor Anwei like this? What have you done to her?”

He wrenched open his bedroom door to replace Noa sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, his money box in her lap. There was no sign of the Trib.

“Where is he?” Knox demanded. He pushed open the leaded-glass window, staring out at the dark street.

“I came in here hoping to replace out the same thing.” Noa had the courtesy to flinch when he rounded on her, eyeing the box in her lap. “There’s no need to be so angry! You promised me a drugged boy.” Noa pouted, clutching the box to her chest. “I can’t help that I got bored! Just think of all the funny things he might have said.”

“Knox?” Anwei hollered, her voice hoarse. “No, Gulya, I’m fine.…”

“Don’t get up,” Knox called, fingers tearing through his hair. Noa pushed the money box back under his bed frame, her ears a little too sharp for him not to notice. “Altahn is gone.”

Mateo woke to morning light on his face. The curtains were open, and there was a book positioned on his bedside table as if someone had placed it there hoping to entice him back to life. Pulling himself up from the pillow, Mateo groaned. His muscles were all stiff, and his lungs seemed to have shrunk two sizes, but at least he wasn’t draining away to nothing as he had been the night before.

He picked up the book from his bedside table, then almost dropped it when he caught sight of the title: A Thousand Nights in Urilia in garish purple. A piece of paper had been shoved between the pages, his father’s measured handwriting peeking out from the cover. Mateo slipped it out and replaced the book on the table.

I’m not certain how much of our conversation last night you remember, Mateo, his father wrote. The Warlord has called me to her side, and I fear you will wake up angry, so I want you to remember this until I can get back: you said you would do anything to survive this sickness.

You also do not care to be commanded. This is something I understand. But I wish to present you with the solutions to our plight as I see them:

Caprenum, of course. There remains a possibility that it will be corrupted, insufficient, or simply not there in the tomb.

Mateo let the letter crumple, his arms too tired to hold it up any longer. It had always been his job to doubt. His job to despair. If his father was giving up now…

But there was more. Inching the paper up, Mateo forced himself to continue reading.

There is another way to save you, I hope. One I feared to tell you.

It has to do with your magic and the nameless god. His magic is dangerous for you to use—I fear the wasting sickness has turned you into a drain. I can feel the way it pulls your energy. It is an emptiness, a nothing that desires to consume everything around it.

Wasting sickness untethers those with magic from this world, but if we can replace you another anchor, all might not be lost. I’ve discovered evidence that Basists and Devoted have not always been at odds—that they joined together long before they were enemies. Perhaps to combat this very problem? All I have are theories.

But when my son is at stake, theories are what I work with. This is why I introduced you to Lia.

Mateo’s fingers balled into fists before he could stop them, the paper tearing. This was why his father had introduced him to Lia? This was why he’d threatened to have her whole family killed if she wouldn’t marry his son? Mateo’s fingers shook, unwilling to relax until he forced them open, then tried to piece the torn paper back together.

There is a bond. One that comes only to a Devoted and a Basist when they trust each other. When they grow close. Love each other—not always in a romantic way. Any sort of love will do, so long as you are willing to sacrifice yourself for the other. They need to be the person you reach for in a moment of crisis, someone you trust as much as a god. I believe if you could form that kind of bond with a Devoted, then your episodes would end. Lia is the only Devoted I could replace who wanted to leave the Warlord and could be put into a position forcing her to give you a chance. If the two of you bonded, you would stabilize. Both you and Lia would be safe.

Eyes blurred, Mateo let the note’s pieces fall onto his chest. Was his father going to claim they’d talked about this the night before? All he remembered was his father swearing over replaceing someone. Lia wasn’t lost, which meant there was someone else caught up in this mess whom he hadn’t even met yet. More scheming, more threats, more lies.

But even still, the idea of living sounded good. Very good. Mateo sagged back against his pillow, clocking the irregular beat of his heart. Then he picked up the bits of paper and willed his eyes to focus. There was only one line left to read.

Are you willing to at least try to give Lia your heart if it means it will continue beating?

Mateo let the papers flutter to the floor next to him. Forced his head up from the pillow, his spine to sit straight. He eased his legs over the side of the bed, shoved his feet into his favorite silenbahk-fur slippers, and pulled on the robe draped over the chair by his bed. Caprenum had always seemed like a too-simple answer to a complicated problem. A mythical substance that could cure him? Maybe it was just a distraction, something for Tual to throw Mateo at until he’d found a Devoted suitable for this new plan. One who had stepped past her oaths—or perhaps had been pushed past them?

This had always been about Lia.

Mateo tested his legs, his knees still shaky and his body made of lead, but he could stand. Walk. He stared at himself in the mirror, his cheeks hollow and his hair an ungodly mess. There were still smudges of dirt on his hands and face from lying in the entryway, bits of horsehair stuck to his neck, and the bitter taste of aukincy in his mouth.

Lia had gotten him that far. To the courtyard. Of course, she was the reason he hadn’t been at home in bed in the first place. Because… why?

“Go to your lady love!” Tual had yelled after him, as if he’d wanted a good punch to the jaw. Years of research, years of digging, of cozying up to the Warlord, fixing Devoted with the wasting sickness, spending years evaluating tomb sites, and this was what his father had come up with. And now Tual was hiding with the Warlord somewhere instead of facing Mateo head-on as he dropped this crucial bit of information.

At least his father loved him enough to look this long. To come up with a solution at all. He’d adopted Mateo, put himself at risk for so many years to replace something that would heal him. The thought warmed in Mateo’s chest even as he scrubbed a hand through his hair. He wished he’d been the one to figure out that there were more options than caprenum. That way, it wouldn’t have felt so imposed. How was he supposed to force himself to love someone? Bond with the first girl his father thrust at him?

Mateo tried storming toward the door, and when that didn’t work, he trudged with great disdain. He slogged down the stairs, refused to accept help when the upstairs maid offered him her arm. It wasn’t until he got to the kitchen and could lean on the doorjamb that he called out to the cook. “Hilaria! I need sweet rolls immediately!”

His voice died in his throat when it was Lia’s face that poked out from behind the wall enclosing the little area where the servants took their tea. Well, some of her face. Most of it was concealed behind the dark blue scarf. Swearing inside his head, he looked around the open kitchen, hoping the cook would appear. “Have… have you seen Hilaria?” he asked.

“You’re all right!” She slid out from behind the table and almost skipped toward him, her eyes wide. A red curl had escaped the scarf at her cheek, as if she’d tied it in a hurry. “I thought…” She looked him up and down when she got to him, her eyes sticking on his furry slippers. “Well, it looked bad. How are you feeling this morning?”

“Fine. Yes. All fine.” He cleared his throat, wishing he’d changed out of his silk pajamas. Then aggressively not caring that he was wearing pajamas, because he didn’t want to impress Lia. Impressing her would probably have required killing someone with his drawing pencils anyway.

“You wanted sweet rolls?” she asked, looking around. “The kitchen staff all left so I could eat.” She touched her scarf. “It was kind of them. You almost caught me without this.”

“You don’t magically absorb food through your hands? That was my vote.” Mateo inched past her into the kitchen, looking wildly about for anything edible. If he could just grab something and run—well, plod—back up the stairs, then he wouldn’t have to think about this right now. But Lia seemed to have swelled to twice her size, taking up far too much room. This girl whom he was supposed to magically fall in love with and somehow convince that she felt the same.

That was the worst part about all this. If Tual was right, it wasn’t as if Mateo could create a list of things to accomplish, set goals and then work toward them. Relationships weren’t a matter of studying all the right sources and digging until you found the prize. Lia would have to decide she liked Mateo enough to keep him alive. He doubted you could fake it, come up with a way to make the gods believe you were doing what they’d asked, the way he and Lia had tried to fool their parents over the engagement.

Lia stepped around him, hand darting out to take his arm when he sagged against the counter. “What is wrong with you? You look like you just swallowed a dead frog.”

“That’s… very specific. I don’t eat things that are slimy.”

“I don’t eat things that taste good. Maybe I should try frog.” Lia smiled up at him, or her eyes did, anyway. He couldn’t see her face under the scarf. “Come sit down—I don’t feel like dragging you back up to your room if you collapse again. I’ll pour you some tea.”

Once he was situated at the table, with a sweet roll found in the cupboard on a plate in front of him and a steaming cup of lavender tea in his hand, Mateo finally let himself look at her. Lia. With whom… he had not hated spending the last few days. She was outlined in sunlight, an unfinished crust of bread on the plate before her and her tea cold in its cup. She didn’t reach for either, the scarf tight around her nose and mouth. She kicked her feet absently as she looked out at the cliffs beyond the window. The waves had gone down, Jaxom and Castor’s battle dying away until they came too close to each other yet again.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mateo asked, setting the cup down. “You’re all… happy.”

She snorted. “Sorry, I’ll go somewhere else if I’m spoiling your morning sulk.”

“No. I’m…” The words came before he really thought about them, but they were true, so he let them spill out. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you brought me back last night. That you’re safe.”

“And that you are too?” That smile again, hidden behind her scarf.

“I am very glad to not be dead on the roadside, yes.” He took another sip of tea, nodding to her bread. “Don’t skip your breakfast on my account.”

She rolled her eyes.

“My father didn’t try to tie a bridal wreath around your head while you slept, did he? He left me a rather alarming note that made me wonder if all the ceremonies had already been performed.”

“If he did, I slept through them too. I suppose we can ask when he gets back.” Lia watched Mateo sip again, a hint of furrow in her brow. “I was really worried last night. Thank you for coming to get me before the Warlord came. And for doing it when you were so sick. It was a risk, and I’m grateful you took it, or I’d be…” She looked down, a trace of the statute girl she’d become around Ewan sliding across her face. “I don’t know where I’d be.”

A flicker of anger sprang to life in Mateo’s gut about the fact that Ewan even existed as a human being.

“I’ve been wondering about that, actually.” Lia looked back up at him, all traces of stone gone. “When we were at the compound, you lied to Ewan for me even though he had a blade to your throat. And then last night… you know the Warlord could kill you just for helping me, don’t you?”

“Well, we’re supposed to like each other, right? You’re the one who asked me to play along.” Mateo had to fight hard to hold her gaze and not look down into his cup.

“You aren’t playing anymore. Tell me why.” It was an order. From a Devoted to a… whatever he was. A hiding Devoted, she thought, not a dying Basist—a boy she would have killed without a thought if she’d had her full range of powers. Lia didn’t break his gaze either, her fingers twisting the end of her scarf. Her voice softened, and there was no mocking lilt. For once, she was just looking back. “Please tell me?”

Mateo’s mind was made of white milk, of white bread innards, of other horribly blank things. It was a good question. The reason wasn’t so complicated, and it didn’t have much to do with Tual or his sickness, either one.

Lia was terrifying. She was a sky-cursed Devoted who could pry open your mind and gobble up your bloody secrets one by one. But if the answer to his sickness lay in Lia, then whether he lived or died was out of his control. It was like the rest of Mateo’s life, his very existence depending on someone else’s favor. It felt like a crimp inside him, that Lia could be in charge of his fate, but he couldn’t be angry at her for it. He hadn’t even minded the last few days they’d been thrown together. They had been… nice.

“You know, I like you, Lia.” Mateo put down his tea. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

It was an experiment. A tentative step forward. Mateo sat back in his chair and watched her reaction. Her face changed beneath the scarf, a flicker of eyebrow peeking out from under the band of fabric shrouding her forehead. Then she sat back in her chair, cocking her head and watching him just the way he was watching her.

Then she laughed.

She threw back her head and laughed, a clear bell of a sound that was completely without restraint. It was as if she’d been wearing armor up until this very morning, her hand on the hilt of a nonexistent sword. Now it was gone. All except for the scarf. “I don’t think anyone has made liking me sound so painful.”

“Because they were too worried you’d stab them.” He picked up the sweet roll and took a bite that was far too large. The rest of what he meant to say came out a little squashed and crumby. “Or make their brains bleed out of their eyeballs while you read their minds.”

He was glad, at that moment, that Lia’s aura was so diminished.

“I’m never reading another mind. Never again.” The laugh in her voice stayed. It wasn’t Mateo’s imagination—she was acting differently. Had Tual chatted with her last night too, only he’d said she was free to go and become a silenbahk farmer or a fire dancer or whatever it was Lia wished she could do with herself? Not a plea to save his son. To love his son and keep him tethered to the earth when Calsta and the nameless god had both forsaken him.

“No mind reading?” He pointed at the scarf with his roll. “What’s that for, then?”

“Calsta requires that spiriters not see or touch anyone directly. I wore gloves and a veil for two years.” She touched the long fringe trailing over her shoulder. “At first it just felt… more normal. Then I told myself I was wearing it so Ewan wouldn’t see me.”

“But neither was true?”

“No, I think it was because I was afraid.”

Mateo swallowed his bite, his chest suddenly feeling tight. This had suddenly become a serious conversation. And he was torn between wanting to end it and wanting to continue. Refusing to see more of Lia because that’s what his father wanted, and actually wanting to see more of Lia. Heart picking up speed, he took another bite of the roll, not quite able to look at her. “Afraid of what?”

“Afraid… Calsta would see who I really was. That she’d know my heart was broken every day that I couldn’t talk to my family. That she’d see how glad I was to be away from the seclusion and back with them. That my father would see how angry I was at him. That Aria would see how scared I was. That your father would see something in me he could use. And that you…” She leaned to the side, toying with the end of the scarf. “That you’d see my face and decide being married to me would be easier than fighting off your father. That you’d go along with it, I’d lose you as an ally, and then we’d be stuck together for the rest of our lives.”

Mateo almost choked, clearing his throat once he managed to swallow. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re very, very pretty under that scarf?” The flippant answer slipped out, but Lia laughed. “You were right to be worried. I am definitely that shallow. Can’t resist red hair.”

Her hand jerked up to the scarf, replaceing the solitary curl that had escaped. She started to tuck it back but then lowered her hand. “I have been hiding for so long. Behind Vivi, my sword. My armor. Until they took it all away.” Her fingers went to the scarf’s knot. “Then it was my veil.”

Mateo’s stomach lurched as she began to untie it. “What are you doing?”

“I think…” She pulled at the knot until it came undone. Pushed the scarf back from her forehead, down from her lips and chin. She let it slide to the kitchen floor. “I think I’m done hiding.”