Shimmer and Burn Read online

  Leaning closer in a drift of perfume, Bryn lowers her voice, the words sharp, cut by her perfect teeth: “But I will kill your sister if you do anything to compromise my efforts. Success or failure.”

  The change in her demeanor is arctic, like snowfall in the spring. Gone is the girl and here stands the future queen. Goose bumps chase down my back and I swallow hard, past the fear lodged in my throat.

  “I understand,” I say.

  Bryn lifts an eyebrow.

  “Your majesty,” I add softly.

  “I don’t have to touch you to hurt you, Faris. Remember that.” Flashing a smile, Bryn stands, smoothing her skirts and calling for Alistair, who emerges from the other room, a glass of amber alcohol held loose in one hand. Avoiding my eyes, he returns to his tools, straightening the lines I knocked askance before he drains his glass and trades it for a scalpel.

  “Oh,” I say bitterly, “it gets better?”

  Bryn makes a face, resting her forearm against the table. “I trust you as much as my father trusts his council.”

  “Of course he trusts them,” I say. “He branded them all with loyalty spells.”

  “Exactly.” Bryn winces as Alistair dips the blade into the smooth flesh of her wrist. A bead of blood emerges and she hisses through her teeth as it slides down the palm of her hand. “This is disgusting,” she says.

  Alistair snorts, hair falling over his eyes. “It’s only blood.”

  “But it’s my blood,” she says.

  Uncorking the vial of magic, Alistair holds it to her wrist, catching a fat drop of blood within the glass. It mixes with the liquid already there, fragmenting into ruby beads as small as those sewn on Bryn’s shoes. Balancing the vial in one hand, Alistair retrieves an empty syringe and fills it with the viscous mixture before turning to me, eyebrows raised in expectation.

  “This spell cannot be given under duress or you’ll be no better than your sister,” says Bryn. “A mindless slave.”

  I stare at the syringe with a feeling of dread. This is the spell that Thaelan feared the most as a guard in training, the one that would bind his heart to the king’s. “Where did you get that?”

  “I stole it,” she says, gloating the way I used to after stealing a handful of limes.

  “Being betrothed to the executioner has its benefits,” Alistair says flatly. “Unquestioned access to the dungeons and all its offices, including Mercer’s.” He snorts. “It cost him a finger when Perrote found out he was one spell short at the end of the week.”

  “Can’t they trace the spell?”

  “Not unless someone casts it,” he says. “Hence the needle. An injection avoids any need for transference and ensures the magic doesn’t spill.” Then, with a humorless smile, “One of my many overlooked experiments.”

  “My lovely mad scientist,” Bryn says, making a face at the track of blood running down her wrist.

  Alistair shoves up his sleeve and demonstrates a battlefield of welts and ruby scabs nestled in the crook of his elbow. “I always test my hypotheses,” he says. “Neither Perrote nor Mercer will ever know.”

  “Is that what those are?” I nod toward the ladder of scars on his wrists. “More experiments?”

  “No,” he says tightly, tugging his sleeve back down. “I consider those more of a control.”

  Like split knuckles and bruised jaws: We both wear our scars as proof of our strength, defiance of our weakness. My stomach tightens at the thought. I refuse to share anything, even this tiny human grief, with Alistair Pembrough.

  “I need your arm,” he says. “If you’re willing.”

  Bryn called it a choice but it’s just another formality. Even if they let me walk out of here, how long before the Guard storms my desolate attic? Or would they even bother with me? Maybe my father would be taken first, and then Cadence. This is a torture chamber, after all. Nobody leaves this room without suffering.

  Scowling, I extend my arm and Alistair cradles it in his hand, threading the needle under my skin with practiced familiarity. He quickly empties the plunger and steps back, tossing the syringe into the fireplace where it shatters against the brick.

  At first, I feel nothing. But then, my gods.

  The magic ignites beneath my skin, drawing bright white lines of heat that braid around my wrist before darkening to the color of charcoal. And like charcoal, the lines begin to smear, forming thorny peaks as the spell anchors itself to my flesh with a dozen tiny knots, no bigger than beads. For one terrifying moment, I feel Bryn’s heartbeat echo through my chest before my own heart thunders in reply, screaming to reclaim its territory.

  The spell cools, turning to ice, hardening like a bracelet of scars. Across from me, Bryn examines her own wrist, where her meager payment of blood has given way to a smear of ash and silver that unfurls into a crude symbol of a key, a half diamond intersected by a line beneath her skin.

  Bryn laughs, bright and delighted, before she sobers, pinching the flesh of her forearm. Pain erupts in my own arm and I clutch at it with a strike of panic. Laughing again, Bryn takes the scalpel and draws it across the pad of her thumb. My thumb bleeds while her skin remains unbroken.

  “Pem,” she says, “you are incredible.”

  And now Bryn is invincible.

  The dizziness returns and my movements turn slurred, clumsy. The magic begins to spread across my chest, staggering down my spine. I bend forward, hugging myself, pressing my forehead to the slick stone floor.

  “Here.” Bryn kneels before me, pulling a pin from her hair and pressing the slender iron ornament to my wrist. “A trick I learned from Pem. It won’t negate the spell, but it’ll mute the pain until your body finds its balance.” Forcing a quick smile, she curls my other hand over the iron until I’m holding it in place.

  “Thank you,” I manage to mumble, surprised by the kindness.

  “You’re useless to me if you’re sick,” she adds.

  Of course.

  “It’s nearly dawn,” Alistair says, fist propped against the mantel of the fireplace. “Shift change.”

  Bryn stands and approaches him, kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you, Pem,” she says.

  He doesn’t reply.

  She disappears through the doorway behind the tapestry. With a scowl, I toss her hairpin aside before pushing myself to my feet. The pin clatters across the uneven floor before stopping at the lip of a drain stained dark around its rim.

  “I wasn’t lying to you,” Alistair says, speaking into the fire. “You’ll get your sister back.”

  “Alive or dead?”

  Alistair ducks his head. “Faris—”

  “So do I walk out on my own, or will you drug me again?”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he says, turning to face me. “And I have been sorry every day since it happened. I just . . .” He looks away, teeth clenched. “I need you to know that. I need you to hear that. Thaelan—”

  “I don’t care what you need,” I spit back. “You followed me, drugged me, and injected me with magic! You forfeited any right to forgiveness when you decided you wanted a throne more than you wanted your soul!”

  “Yes, envy me, Faris: The stars themselves couldn’t have written a more convenient romance. The seventh heir to the throne and the son of an executioner! What a marriage we’ll have and what a king I would make!”

  “Why else would you do this if not for a crown?”

  “Because she chose me,” he says, stepping closer, eyes bright, “the same as she has chosen everyone who’s ever had something useful to offer her. When Bryndalin is crowned queen, I guarantee you that I will not be standing beside her.” He swallows hard, straightening. “Nobody will.”

  “Well, you chose me,” I say, “and I’m warning you that if anything happens to my sister, I hold you responsible.”

  I move toward the door but he steps ahead of me, blocking my way. “Swear to me you’ll come back and I swear to you your sister will be safe. Even if I have to outbid everyone in this kingdom to buy her.
”

  “I’m coming back,” I say. “And you won’t be the only monster in this dungeon when I do.”

  His expression shifts, turns sad. “You’re not a monster, Faris.”

  I stare him down, unflinching. “If my sister dies, you have no idea what I’ll be.”

  It’s only after I shoulder past him and enter the dark-walled sitting room beyond that I realize my mistake. An entire tray full of weapons, and I left every one of them behind.

  Seven

  THE DUNGEON SMELLS FOUL, FETID, swampy with trapped heat and the lingering odor of human excrement. Guards pace the halls with swords slung low on their hips, faces hidden by hooded cowls and hinged metal masks rubbed with oils and spices to hide the smell.

  Being down here renews a thousand dreaded memories that shadow my steps. My insatiable heart starts humming through its familiar litany of all the different endings we could have had. I would rather see Thaelan married and forbidden from me than to be reminded that he’s dead for memorizing these tunnels—tunnels I commit to memory now, keeping silent record of every move we make, just in case. It’s a lesson learned hard, but a lesson learned anyway. Pay attention, Faris. Don’t let anyone get ahead of you; don’t ever lose your way.

  “The hellborne are all intuits,” Alistair says, keeping a steady pace, his eyes accustomed to the dim light and murky shadows. “They’ll be able to smell the magic on you. Most would skin you alive to get to it.”

  “The hellborne?” I follow his lead without question, stepping where he steps, stopping when he stops, shivering despite the heavy coat he offered as we left. I didn’t want to take it, but pride begets arrogance and no god has ever deemed stupidity a virtue.

  “The infected,” he explains. “Once poisoned magic gets in your blood, it goes straight for your heart. You either die, or you feed it with the same depravities that turned it rotten in the first place. All the vices that make a man a monster.” He forces a smile, humorless and brief. “You surrender to those vices, you turn hellborne. Your blood turns to poison and you become addicted to the way it burns through your veins. But like any addiction, you grow immune. Clean blood dilutes the infection; clean magic gives it something to feed on. Either way, it gives them a high.”

  I shudder, clutching my wrist and the hard-as-scar spell that circles it. Alistair notices the movement, gaze lingering on my hands. “There are also transferents like your mother,” he says, lifting his eyes, “looking for any scrap of magic they can sell to the highest bidder. Skin on skin is all it would take for them to steal whatever they want from you—or to try. And a clumsy effort to steal that magic could easily tear it apart.”

  And magic torn at the edges will start to stagnate and decompose, working its way into my blood, eventually infecting me.

  “Trust no one,” Alistair says in conclusion. “Touch no one. Not until you reach Prince Corbin’s palace in New Prevast.”

  “How do you know all of this?” I ask.

  His smile is grim as he glances to Bryn striding ahead of us. Her dark cloak hides the plain riding dress and simple boots she changed into, her dark red hair a loose cascade down her back. “The first man I executed was an old soldier,” he says. “He fought in the war, before the borders shifted. There aren’t many of them left these days. Do you know what his crime was?”

  I shake my head.

  The smile fades, replaced with something I can’t name. “A good memory,” Alistair says. “Knowledge is power, and Perrote doesn’t allow anyone he can’t trust to have any.”

  I think of the peddler who sold me pirate stories, there one day and gone the next. “And he trusts you?”

  “He trusts her,” he says, nodding toward Bryn. “He has to. His family will inherit this kingdom and they can’t do that without knowing the truth.” He snorts, starting to walk. “Like I said: She chose me, Faris, and it wasn’t because she wanted to marry an executioner. She wanted a way out, just like the rest of us. Just like your mother.”

  I grab his arm, pulling him back. He pauses, almost hopeful. Despite everything, Alistair Pembrough still wants the one thing he can’t take from me.

  Forgiveness.

  “Did you know my mother?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer right away, staring instead at my fingers carving divots in the sleeve of his coat. “Yes,” he says at last.

  I release his arm. Words stall in my throat and I wet my lips, allowing myself a moment of weakness. “Was—was she going to take you with her?”

  Footsteps approach in the hall behind us. Silent as stone, Alistair swings me into an empty cell and pins me against the shadowed wall, keeping careful watch over his shoulder. I ball my hands in the baggy sleeves of my coat and stare at the ceiling as two guards pass, joking among themselves before they stop to urinate.

  Alistair waits until silence returns to the hall before stepping back. Hair cuts across his cheek and he rubs his mouth with one hand as I hug myself.

  “Wrong question,” he says at last. “Don’t ask what she planned to do. Ask why she changed her mind. Instead of running away, ask why she ran home.”

  She came home to kiss me good-bye and to drive a dagger into my chest. Nine perfect stitches and one unanswered question: Why?

  We continue on, passing more turns, more twists, more gloomy halls. Stupid hope rises at each one, as if I expect to see Thaelan around the next bend with a map and a dimpled smile and an explanation for where he’s been. It’s a cruel game to play, and I suffer the bitter consequences each time I look and nothing looks back but the darkness.

  Thaelan is dead, I tell myself. Pay attention, Faris.

  The tunnel finally opens into a large antechamber with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and a Rook’s Eye oculus open to the world outside, far above our heads. The worn stone floor is dusted with old straw, scraps of fabric, cigarettes turned soggy with rain. An empty wheelbarrow rests against one of the walls, its frame splintered beyond salvage. Bats roost from the wooden beams overhead, chittering with indignation at our arrival.

  The floor gently slopes toward an iron grate, hinged on one side, with a handle on the other. A dull roar rises from somewhere underneath, and while the air is still cold, it’s balmier. Rust spots spread away from the grate like scabs of old blood; beads of condensation flock the walls.

  Bryn arches an eyebrow at our delayed arrival but says nothing, moving out of the way as Alistair bends down, unlocking the grate with a key before opening it with a screech of rusted metal. He cringes and throws a look over his shoulder, toward the half a dozen tunnels that all intersect here. Nervously, I lean forward, but the torchlight barely reaches a foot past the lip of the hole. Anything could be down there.

  Avinea is down there.

  A soft scrabbling echoes through the hall as Alistair rocks back on his feet. “Shadow rat,” he warns.

  I spin. A shadow rat lumbers into view, its swollen body dragging along the ground, trailing sparks and leaving a line of fading embers. Wordlessly, Alistair strikes a match and flicks it toward the rat, who turns in our direction, nose lifting to the air a second before the match hits. Its body absorbs the flame before the rat implodes with a flash of light. A tiny stone clatters to the ground.

  “I hate these things,” Alistair says. “They’re worse than the courtiers who lurk in the halls.”

  “Won’t someone know you killed it?” I ask uneasily. “The guard who was scrying—”

  Bryn snorts. “You don’t actually believe that, do you? Men who spend their days spying through the eyes of rats and birds?” She picks up the stone and tosses it to me. I fumble the catch and it rolls toward the open grate. “We don’t have enough men for that. Most of these things are just decoys.”

  “You can tell by the color of its eyes,” Alistair says. “Black means it’s just smoke. Red means there’s blood running through it. A heartbeat. Those are the ones you hide from.”

  “It’s not real?” I bend for the stone; it’s warm in my hand, threaded with tiny
striations of silver. Of magic. They bump unevenly beneath my thumb. “I thought all the king’s golems—”

  “My father won’t waste magic when he doesn’t have to,” Bryn says. She opens her palm and I drop the stone in it. “Or men. Even the king conserves resources these days.”

  Decoys. The rats that chased me out of the tunnels that night weren’t even real. Smoke and a single guard were all that kept me from Cadence—that kept us from Avinea.

  In that instant, I don’t need a spell or stolen magic: I’ll find Prince Corbin myself so long as he promises to burn this kingdom to the ground.

  A hand falls on my arm, a sliver of clarity that cuts through my fury.

  “Here,” Alistair says. He offers me a book, bound in twine. Indigenous Flowering Species of Avinea. My mother’s book, lost in the bag I abandoned to the tunnels four months ago.

  “You kept this?” I ask with a frown. I wouldn’t have. Books are a commodity these days, and I would have sold it like I’ve sold everything else of any value.

  “I thought you should have it back.” His lips twist in a smile. “I thought it might help you to know you’re not alone.”

  My mother is the last person in the world I would choose for company, and yet, six-year-old Faris feels a flicker of yearning for the woman I might have known.

  If she hadn’t tried to kill me.

  My thumb skims the cover and I hesitate. The words taste, sour, salty—like dirty water that stagnates in my mouth. “Thank you,” I manage at last, tucking the book into the pocket of my coat.

  “Well,” Alistair says, “your head didn’t burst into flames. I’ll consider that a good start.” He extends a hand to me, features shadowed. “I’ll keep an eye on Cadence.”

  I sift through his words: Is it a threat or a promise? His earlier apology echoes through me, and for a moment, I’m tempted to believe it. This is not the boy I planned to kill, a monster who lived in the dungeons and deserved to die. This is a boy who was once friends with Thaelan. And while we will never be friends, we are something shared nevertheless—prisoners of fate who made the difficult choice to survive.