Mellifera's Blizzard Thread
8 posts in this topic.
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So I don't have to post all my chapters at once and also don't have to worry about dividing for next week *finger guns*
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Week Forty-Two Total Word Count: 6,285/5,000
Chapter 24.1Spoiler
Gideon was moving towards the cave the moment he was sure it had been the allotted ten minutes that Isha needed in order to dispatch of the guards.
Well, no. That was not strictly true. He got up after what had likely been five minutes and Finn had grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him back down with a disappointed grunt.
The point was, after Finn finally let him go after what felt like an hour, Gideon sprung to his feet and was halfway towards the cavern mouth before Finn could raise a single finger.
He forced himself to go slow into the tunnel. The cave veered sharply left and Gideon paused next to the corner. He listened- nothing. Then he peered around the corner, squinting to see in the darkness.
On the ground, he could make out the figure of a body on the floor. He couldn’t see or hear anyone else, and so he made his way forward. He glanced down at the body as he passed it. Blood splattered across the floor from the gouge in the centre of the corpse’s throat. Gideon’s own tightened, and he swallowed, before he made his way deeper in.
Once he was far enough, Gideon could see the flicker of torches and the gradually rising din of low voices. The clink of armour. An open passage turned into a room, smoothed out likely when the coterie had first discovered it. There were still a few stalagmites and stalactites, rising out of the ground and stretching towards the icicle like stone hanging down from the ceiling.
There were only a few people in there. Gideon recognised some of them. There were four, three of them were Vasile’s men while the last had to have been a Fire Forger. On the far wall, in opposite corners, are two more tunnels.
He could take them. Gideon assessed them, frowning as he considered his options. But it won’t be a quick thing- he could take them, but it would take longer to get to Carter.
There were several crates of questionable material close to the entrance Gideon was standing in. It was a risky plan, but it was also the only one he had. He sent a glance towards the occupants of the room, and when nobody was looking his way, he darted forward and crouched behind the crates.
“Shouldn’t somebody be posted at the entrance?” one of the people asked. “The blonde only had François. What about Gaspard?”
“We haven’t been assigned,” another replied. “And nobody can get past us anyway if they’re coming through this entrance.”
Someone coughed. “You know that blonde is Vasile’s daughter, right?”
“Yeah, and how much trouble do you think we’ll get into if someone finds out we’ve just decided to stand around here, leaving the entrance completely defenceless? I mean- someone just broke in. I don’t care if she’s the Comtesse’s daughter. Shouldn’t we do something more than stand here? What if she brought friends? Shouldn’t someone at least check?”
They argue for several more minutes than Gideon had the patience for, but he forced himself to stay still until they finally concede to check out the entrance. The Fire Forger is the only one who doesn’t join them, claiming instead that she would go to find Corin and inform him of the situation at hand in case Vasile needed help with it.
He finally made it towards the tunnel on the right, the opposite of the one the Fire Forger had disappeared down and tried to make up for time lost by moving as fast as he could without making too much noise.
It got worse as he went further in. It wasn’t too complex of a cave system thankfully, which made Gideon wonder if the coteries were keeping the rest of their people somewhere else. That didn’t mean there weren’t members wandering the halls, filling the rooms, or generally existing and therefore being in Gideon’s way. It also didn’t help that his eyes were constantly adjusting to the darkness of the long passages without light to suddenly coming to a junction filled with lanterns.
But he wasn’t raised an assassin for nothing. He didn’t get where he was in the coteries by screwing up – well, that wasn’t strictly true. But he had grown out of that, of failure. It had stopped being an option for him early on. Slinking around the coteries’ nest was no different, and Gideon knew he couldn’t slip up. He couldn’t.
It was ironic, almost. He’d been trained to do this with someone’s life hanging in the balance- someone he would kill in the end. Now he was doing it because Carter’s life was on the tip of a knife, and Gideon had to save him. It wasn’t quite bitter in his mouth, but the familiarity flooding back through his veins, sinking into his bones, is enough to go sour.
He knew they’d hold Carter in a room. A small one, likely, if they were set on interrogating him. Gideon tried any door he came across except for the one he could hear a multitude of voices behind.
Hopelessness started to rise in his throat like bile and choke him. What if it was a trap? What if Carter was hidden away somewhere, or worse- with Adrienne or Clarisse? What if Gideon was just chasing his tail around?
As it turned out, Gideon nearly overlooked the splintering door. He opened it and began to close it until his eyes caught the chair in the centre of the room. Strapped thoroughly to the chair was a figure, whimpering quietly with head lolling around.
Gideon slipped inside the room quickly and then shut the door behind him. The click of the door shutting made the person in the chair stiffen and fall silent. They’re tall, with dark, soft looking skin. There was a wool hood over their head, but Gideon knew it was Carter. It was hard not to know it was Carter.
He only got a moment for the blood to start rushing to his head and his heart to beat irritably hard against his chest before Gideon’s stomach twisted. Carter’s shirt was ripped in half. It lay uselessly at his sides.
It did nothing to cover up the swirling brand set square on the centre of Carter’s chest.
When he’d heard it- Gideon had been furious but he hadn’t seen it. He could pretend it didn’t exist. But now he was staring at it and- and-
“Please,” Carter whimpered. Gideon’s breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t move. “Please le-leave me… alone.” If there was any doubt that this was Carter, it was gone now.
A soft sob, muffled by the wool hood, kicked Gideon back into focus. He blinked quickly, his eyes stinging. He didn’t know why, not truly. He was moving though and didn’t stop until he was in front of Carter. There was a sickly-looking cut on his leg. Rémi. Truthfully, it wasn’t that deep, but it was festering and that was worse.
Gideon reached out to undo the strap around Carter’s neck, mouth dry as parchment and throat tight, and froze when Carter flinched at his touch. “I don’t- I don’t know-” Carter broke off by another choked sob and a hiccup. In fact, the room smelled like-
Laudanum. Fire filled Gideon’s veins. They were giving him laudanum.
“Carter, it’s me,” Gideon murmured, kicking himself for staying silent when Carter couldn’t see him. “It’s Gideon, I’m here to get you out.”
Carter went still under him, and Gideon could hear the catch in his breath before he hiccupped again. Gideon took it as allowance and undid the strap around Carter’s throat, and then carefully pulled off the woollen hood.
There was a torch in the room, lit and flickering behind them with a soft crackling. Carter winced at the light, but he was soon squinting at Gideon. His eyes were dark and bloodshot, dark circles like soot shoved beneath his eyes, and lips pale and cracking. Tears glisten in his eyes and Gideon felt it like a knife twisting in his heart.
“Gideon?” Carter said his name with a trembling voice and blinked at him furiously. Another tear tracked down his face. “Gideon- you’re here?”
He sounded so in awe that Gideon’s eyes begin to sting for real. He didn’t try to rub them, only because he could barely even bring himself to blink. He couldn’t look away from Carter, he couldn’t.
“Of course, I am,” Gideon said. His own voice is gentler then he’s ever heard it. His hands found one of the clasps over Carter’s wrists.
“You came,” Carter whispered. He sounded reverent, and it was odd to hear him like that. His voice was thick, hoarse, but his eyes are suddenly bright, and he looked like he was trying to smile but lost the muscle memory to do so. He leaned forward until he was almost uncomfortably close the Gideon, still squinting as if unsure of his own vision. Gideon could feel Carter’s breath hot against his cheek and nose and mouth. “You came. For me?”
His intonation made it sound like a question, and Gideon had to glance down at the clasp on Carter’s hand because they’re practically touching foreheads now and it- it was odd. His stomach wriggled. “Of course,” he repeated. “For you.”
No sooner did he get the strap undone then Carter was awkwardly raising his hand, stiff from lack of movement, and brushing his fingertips against Gideon’s face. Gideon froze, absolutely unprepared with this situation and how to handle it. Carter’s eyes are glazed, and his face is still wet with tears. He giggled a little, and his curls tickled Gideon’s forehead. His fingers were still tickling Gideon’s cheek.
“You’re soft,” Carter observed. Gideon could feel every muscle in his body tense and found that he was, once more, rendered incapable of moving. Carter did not appear concerned at all. He sighed, and the warm breath fanned across Gideon’s face again.
“You’re softer.” Gideon didn’t know why he said it. He looked up in surprise, meeting Carter’s heavy, tired gaze, as if Carter had been the one to say it. But Carter just watched him, with half-lidded eyes and a stretched, tired smile.
A lot happened in the next moment. Gideon wasn’t sure what Carter intended to do, but somehow, he ended up with his lips pressed to the corner of Gideon’s mouth. He didn’t do anything, except to nuzzle Gideon’s cheek with his nose. His lips are chapped and they taste of blood and bile and alcohol, but Gideon can’t help thinking about turning his head slightly to the side until he could press fully against Carter, push him back a little until he didn’t have to slump over and maybe feel that sigh in his mouth-
His cheeks were hot, but it took him a moment to realise there was something feverish about Carter. If Gideon was hot, Carter was burning. And oh God, he was drunk and exhausted and-
Gideon’s heart pounded, crawling into his throat as he jerked back a little too quickly. Carter made an unhappy noise from the back of his throat but did little more than slump forward as he suddenly lost the support Gideon had been providing him. His hand also fell away from Gideon’s face and rested limply in his lap.
Even though Gideon felt like he needed to scrub every inch of his skin with ice water, he still reached up to press his knuckles into Carter’s forehead. Carter leaned into the touch, eyes closed. His skin was like fire on Gideon’s hand. Gideon swore under his breath, and Carter opened his eyes to blink sluggishly at him. He made an inquisitive noise, as if that was the extent of his vocal abilities anymore.
“You’re burning,” Gideon murmured. He had a fever. As if the situation wasn’t already bad enough.
Carter lips twitched lazily, and Gideon fought not to watch the motions. “So’s this,” he slurred, and then reached up to touch the black, dead skin where the circular brand swirled on his chest. If it wasn’t so horrifying, it might even look like a flower. Of course.
“It’s not funny,” Gideon said, incredulous. Carter snorted, but his eyes were still closed, and the smile quickly evaporated from his face.
“Only because you’re grumpy,” Carter mumbled, nearly incoherent. Gideon stared at him. He refrained from saying unbelievable because it was the only thing that applied to this conversation. And the fact that Carter was, apparently, a lot bolder when intoxicated, which seemed counterintuitive.
Thankfully, Carter did not offer anymore surprises for Gideon as he began to undo the second clasp on Carter’s other wrist. He did have to gently push Carter to sit back on the chair, however, and was careful not to touch the red-rimmed brand still fresh on his chest.
It was as he got the second clasp undone, and Carter pulled his hand back – the skin was rubbed raw on both his wrists and Gideon needed to get him out of here because he was in terrible shape – then the tell-tale click of the door echoed from behind them.
Gideon was on his feet and already pulling out his short swords when the door opened. As he readied the blades by his sides, his heart dropped to his toes.
Adrienne hesitated only a moment when she saw him, and then shut the door behind her like she wasn’t surprised to see Gideon at all.
Chapter 24.2Spoiler
She didn’t have her broadsword, Gideon noted. Instead, she pulled out two long daggers, which seemed ironic with what Gideon was carrying, and dipped her chin towards him.
“Colour me surprised,” Adrienne said. Her voice was like listening to a whetstone run across a steel blade, and Gideon schooled his expression into careful neutrality, so he didn’t wince. “I didn’t think you’d come for the cannon fodder.”
“You always did like underestimating me,” Gideon said. The words were out before he could even think about them- he always thought about his words before he spoke to Adrienne.
But now that they were out, Gideon found he didn’t care. He should have been scared, but he felt eerily calm. He can feel his body, high strung, but unwavering. He’d been scared his whole life of her- and why? She was human. Nasty, dangerous, but not invincible. She’d hurt Gideon, she’d hurt children, she’d hurt Carter. She’d branded Carter, tortured him.
No, maybe he wasn’t calm. He was enraged. It was pumping through his bloodstream, but it was not overwhelming him.
“And yet, here we are. You have nowhere to go, your backup is indisposed and so is your chicken chaser.” Adrienne was not in a defensive position. She was confident, he realised, that he would simply crumble and crawl right back to her so she could throw him in a cell to rot. Or maybe she wouldn’t, maybe she’d kill him, or worse.
But she was still not ready. “He looks after horses,” Gideon snapped, and then lunged forward with a downward slash.
Surprise lit up her pale eyes for a moment, but she still caught his swing and parried it, throwing it off. Gideon brought up his other short sword towards the gap in her leather armour at her hip. She shifted and brought her other dagger down on his blade.
Then Adrienne kicked out and Gideon hissed as her steel-toed boot connected with his unarmoured knee. She swiped a dagger at his face and Gideon ducked. Pain flared up his leg at the motion, but he grit his teeth and stood up again. He was up in time to block another blow.
Gideon made sure to keep himself between Adrienne and Carter. If she got past him-
He blocked both her daggers as they came towards him, putting his strength into the sweep this time. As they fell away, Gideon took a step forward and used the momentum to slam his forehead into Adrienne’s nose.
She staggered back, hitting the door with a thud. Blood began to flow from her nose and her eyes lit up with rage.
Adrienne launched at him and Gideon could feel sweat trickling down his forehead as he fought to block the frenzy of blows. His pulse throbbed in his ears as he ducked and swivelled away from Adrienne. But she knew she had him pinned now, that he wouldn’t dare move in a way that allowed her to get past him to Carter.
She looked like a terror- white-blonde hair falling out of her braid to frizz around her face, cheekbones sharp, eyes bright, and blood streaming down over her mouth.
And then he dodged a slash by only an inch and couldn’t bring his sword back before she was coming back with the same dagger. It cut a jagged line just above his hip bone, and Gideon hissed as blood began to spill out of the wound.
Her hand was close enough and triumph too alight on her face that Gideon took his chance, biting through the pain. He twisted his short sword and a flick of his wrist around the dagger she’d caught him with, and it went flying into the wall. He used his other sword to thrust at her, but she shifted, and it clanked harmlessly off her armour.
This was perhaps a stupid plan. Adrienne was wearing armour and Gideon had civilian clothes on. He hadn’t fought her in years. Maybe he’d been wrong, there was that doubt. It gnawed at the corner of his mind, venom dripping from sharp fangs sinking in through his skull. If he had been stimulated, maybe, but he hadn’t-
She reached next to her. Gideon didn’t notice the water bucket that had been sitting there until she was yanking out a long iron rod. It had the same swirl at the end that Carter had on his chest. He blinked- and that was where it went wrong.
The hesitation. Adrienne had yanked the branding iron free and swung it at him, and Gideon didn’t even think it was harmful- until it slammed into the side of his lower leg.
Stars burst across his vision and he might have shouted, his throat certainly burned to testify to it, but he didn’t hear it if he did. His lungs worked harder than if he’d run miles, aching like suddenly all the air had been stolen from the room. And the pain, oh God, the pain filled his leg-
“Gideon!”
Carter’s voice pulled him back so fast it was like whiplash. He was on the ground, kneeling on his right leg with his left splayed out behind him awkwardly. Adrienne’s eyes were pulled above him, and she was looking at Carter now. Gideon couldn’t hear the torch flickering on the wall anymore, only the rush of blood in his ears.
Adrienne lifted her dagger just as Gideon could take in the scene.
And then she threw it at Carter.
One of Gideon’s flaws in training, and even in fighting, was that he thought too much. Adrienne used to hound on him about it all the time. He was fast, but he still second-guessed himself, and it was the reason she could beat him every time they trained. He didn’t have the instinct, even after years of it, didn’t have the reflex.
He didn’t think now. Adrenaline shot through his veins; he didn’t even feel the pain in his leg as he leapt to his feet.
Gideon could only see that column of her throat, uncovered by her armour. His mind was all blank, listless, as he raised his sword and then slashed it across that line of exposed skin.
Her mouth fell open and the branding rod clattered to the floor as her hands flew up to cup her throat. As if she could stem the flow of blood gushing down her neck, through and over her armour. Her eyes rolled towards Gideon, wide and wild, and if she had looked surprised earlier, it was nothing compared to how she stared at him now.
She crumpled to the ground and Gideon watched her. Everything was still white noise, still a blank slate in his mind. Blood ran across the floor where she’d fallen on her stomach. It stood out, stark, against her ghostly pale skin.
His pulse beat steady in Gideon’s ears. He stared at her, slowly aware of the ache in his chest as his lungs fought for air.
He was already on the ground again when he became, once again, aware of the pain in his leg. For a minute, Gideon forgot how to breathe. It hurt, it hurt bad, and he couldn’t remember pain like that. Funny, that it had been so long-
Carter.
He turned so quickly his neck cracked. The momentary wash of almost calm overwhelmed by debilitating pain dissolved. He’d seen Adrienne throw a dagger from great distances. She could stick one in someone’s eye from a distance.
But there was no hilt sticking out of Carter’s face. In fact, Gideon couldn’t even see his face. He had his arms up, blocking his face. His right arm, the forefront of the two, had been gouged open with a long trail of scarlet. The dagger lay dormant on the ground. Gideon stared at Carter as he started to lower his arms, his face screwed up in pain.
Gideon swore, and it caught Carter’s attention. He glanced towards Gideon, and Gideon’s face ran hot again. Embers danced in the pit of his stomach. “You saw a dagger flying at you, and the first thing you do is try to swat it away with your bare arm?” His voice was low and coarse, but Gideon felt he was allowed as much.
Carter tried to peer at the other side of his forearm, where blood was beginning to flow and stain his dark skin a deep red like he’d accidentally pressed it into paint. “Is that what they’re called?” Carter wondered, words still blending together.
Then his eyes fell on Adrienne on the floor, and Gideon can see the moment Carter went absolutely still.
He turned too, following Carter’s gaze. Her head was twisted, facing them, and her eyes were open and still that numbingly piercing shade of blue. Blood was sprayed across her face.
And Gideon would be lying if he said he’d never thought about it. About killing her. He had thought it would feel good, thought that the revenge for all the horror she’d caused him would empower him.
Instead, bile bubbled at the back of his throat. He didn’t have time to try to stifle it before he turned and threw up on the floor, stomaching lurching so violently it hurt.
Once he had finished, he sat back and tried to straighten his leg. It wasn’t without swearing and Gideon squeezing his eyes shut from the pain, but he finally managed. The skin wasn’t broken, but when he rolled up his pants, the area was swollen. It hadn’t bruised yet, obviously, but he knew it would. He wouldn’t hold his breath on it not being broken. He didn’t have time to be embarrassed about Carter seeing him like that, not really. There was a tiny part at the back of his mind, but it wasn’t like Carter was doing any better. And besides, the pain was taking precedence.
He let out a long breath. Adrienne was down, but she wasn’t the whole coterie. There would be more.
“We need to go,” Gideon said. He pulled himself across the floor and unfastened the shackles around Carter’s ankles. His hands were shaking. Gideon felt like he was back in withdrawals.
He forced himself to his feet, balancing almost entirely on his right leg. Carter eyed his left leg when Gideon offered his hand. “Your leg,” Carter said. Gideon grabbed his uninjured arm and pulled Carter up. The movement nearly sent them both toppling.
“We’ll lean on each other,” Gideon told him as Carter oozed against him. Suddenly, Carter’s physique and height are so much less attractive as he became a near-deadweight on Gideon’s shoulder. But Carter likely hasn’t gotten to his feet since Gideon last saw him, and they probably haven’t fed him much.
They get into the corridor – in which Gideon became unsure how far he can keep this up for, he’s limping heavily and every time it disturbs Carter’s weight against him, distributing an almost toppling balance on Gideon – and Gideon made the decision to go the opposite way he’d come from. He’d never make it back, not with Carter and a broken leg.
Coterie dens often had multiple entrances. Gideon just had to hope this was one of them.
Chapter 25Spoiler
Isha didn’t know how long she had been sitting in the cell already.
The chill had grown worse. Isha was dizzy enough that she’d curled up in one of the corners and hadn’t moved since, unsure how well she could stand on her own anymore. She was shivering, shifting between being too hot and being too cold. Her throat had begun to ache, and it felt like there was something inside her trying to pick apart her flesh.
She was sick now, on top of everything. A fever, likely, but not one Isha knew where it’d come from. She didn’t have an infection, to her knowledge- which was useless if she had one anyway. Although, to her knowledge, fevers didn’t feel like getting stretched out or crawling sensations under her skin.
And her mother had predicted everything. She’d sent Adrienne after Gideon knowing Adrienne was the best candidate to take down Gideon. He’d won a battle with Adrienne enough times for Isha to count on her fingers, and she didn’t count escaping like they’d done the night of the ambush.
If Gideon didn’t get to Carter first, she’d kill him. Isha knew it like she knew her hair was flaxen. Adrienne would take any chance she could get to lord something over Gideon and killing Carter would be like finding a gold mine to her. Which was a bad analogy, because of how famous the island had once been for its gold.
Her eyelids droop over her eyes constantly, but there was a buzzing running through Isha’s body. She can’t sleep, she won’t allow herself to, not with the crawling in her throat. The unknown of whether Gideon and Carter would be okay.
And what about the others? They’d lost the only two people who knew the coteries. And Isha couldn’t trust that Shiloh wouldn’t do something irritational if something happened to Carter, or if they didn’t return.
But despite her best intentions, worrying wasn’t a suitable replacement for sleep. Isha drifted away, burning up and an itch encasing her whole body.
She got woken up when something hard hit her shoulder. Isha stirred, pain filling her mouth like blood. She shivered, not quite sure of her own consciousness at first. Then something hit her in the hip, again, hard. Her eyes snapped open.
“Looks like sleeping beauty has awoken. And by getting pelted by rocks, no less.”
Isha’s eyelids are heavy and feel sticky and her vision was blurred for a moment as she blinked, but she still scowled at Finn’s voice.
Finn’s voice.
She sat up quick enough to make her head throb. Isha rubbed her eyes, a headache pulsing in her skull and an aching all over her body. Her skin was slick with sweat, and her legs felt like lead. Still, she can make out Finn crouching in front of her cell door. He had some kind of tools in his fingers, and it took Isha a moment to realise he was picking the lock.
“Finn?” Isha asked. Or, tried to. It came out as an unintelligible grumble. Isha cleared her throat. “Finn?” she tried again, and it came out at least cohesive that time. Finn glanced over to see her watching and wiggled his pinkies at her in a mock wave.
Her eyes scan the surrounding area for adversaries. She found Whisper instead. There was a glow around their head, almost too imperceptible to make out. Beside them stood Michel. Isha’s heart rabbited in her chest. Whisper was watching Finn and therefore did not notice Isha’s distress, their brow scrunched as if in concentration. Michel, on the other hand, stared at the wall vacantly. He twitched occasionally.
The click of the lock brought Isha’s attention back to Finn, even though she wanted nothing more than to keep her eyes on Michel. She didn’t trust him, he’d always been a snitch, getting her and Gideon in trouble as often as possible.
Finn pocketed his tools and stood, kicking open the door and entering the cell. Isha began to gather herself, trying to stand, but as she got to her knees, her head spun. She almost fell back over, but Finn caught her in time and grabbed her arms. He steadied her, and Isha frowned up at him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, after clearing her throat. Finn rolled his eyes.
“When will it go through here,” he tapped on her head and Isha winced as it reverberated through her skull, “that I’m not the enemy? I’m here to rescue you, sunshine.” Despite the lightness of his voice, Finn frowned and put his hand on her forehead. “Yikes. You’re burning up.”
“She’s sick?” Whisper asked. Isha could see them from the corner of her eyes, standing just outside the cell now. Michel hadn’t moved. “Isha, are you sick?”
Isha all but ignored Whisper to squint at Finn instead. He’d infiltrated a coterie den, with Whisper no less, had no visible injuries, and was rescuing her? “Help me up,” she said instead. Finn hesitated only a moment, before pulling up on her arms. He caught Isha, as the second she got to her feet, she got light-headed and lost all feeling in her legs.
Nothing was tying Finn to them. He’d come ‘because he was bored’ and if that was the truth, there was nothing stopping him from walking away when things went sideways. But instead, he had put himself in harm’s way to help. And they’d only ever been hard on him.
The irritation she normally felt towards him softened, and Isha gratefully allowed him to support her as they staggered out of the cell.
“You and Gideon have been gone for hours. I waited outside forever, and then I went to go find Whisper and Shiloh. That took me several more hours, but then I found them with the horses, all of them, and we came to figure out what happened to you,” Finn explained. Isha nodded distractedly, still feeling like lead, and stared suspiciously at Michel who was still unmoving and twitching.
“Where’s Shiloh then?” she asked. “And more importantly, how in the Divines’ name did you get in here?”
Whisper had approached them after Finn brought Isha out of the cell and placed their hand on Isha’s forehead. Whisper’s lips pinched together.
“Oh, Shiloh’s with the horses,” Finn said dismissively, and then grinned at Whisper. “We knew we couldn’t get in like you or Gideon could, so we needed a fool proof way to make sure nobody attacked us. Which was why Whisper and our little friend is here. Coterie lackeys can’t attack us if they’re being mind controlled. You should have seen it- a group of them and discarding their weapons and armour and getting sent off to various sections of the cave system. Whisper glowed. I’m not entirely convinced they’re not some kind of angel.”
Winnie shifted uncomfortably, eyes flickering skyward as if they would see a halo floating above their head. Maybe that was what the glow had been.
Isha glanced at Michel. That explained that then. She let out a long breath and let some of her muscles relax at the knowledge it wasn’t him, not truly.
“We have to go find Gideon and Carter-”
“We can’t,” Whisper said, expression twisting. “We don’t know where they are, Isha, and even if we did, I can’t hold that many people at one time. I don’t have the practise for it. We need to get out, or I won’t be able to hold them off.” As Isha opened her mouth, Whisper shook their head. “I’m sure they’ll be okay. I have to believe that.”
She wasn’t sure if Whisper said that to sway Isha or for their own benefit, but Isha’s shoulders slumped further than they already had. She knew Winnie was right, knew that she couldn’t last in the state she was in either. She’d already pushed herself. Finn was the only fighter they had. He couldn’t fight off the whole coterie.
“Okay,” Isha whispered. Her throat was hot and ached and talking wasn’t doing her any good.
She just had to believe Gideon could get to Carter first and get him out.
Winnie approached Michel and for a moment, nothing happened. Then, Michel straightened. His eyes were brighter now, and Isha’s stomach clenched warily. Then, he turned, and started marching away. Winnie gestured after him, expression still pinched with discomfort. “I… asked him to lead us to an exit with the least amount of guards.”
Finn grinned as he started leading Isha forward, holding the arm she had cast across his shoulders. “I love magic,” he said, to no one in particular, as followed Michel down the tunnels.
* * *
By the time they get to the entrance, where Whisper had magicked away the guards or whatever it was they did, Isha felt considerably worse. Not just physically.
She’d walked away. She’d left Gideon in there knowing full well that Adrienne was heading towards him. She should have shouldered through the bug or fever or whatever, should have insisted. They were partners. And she’d left him.
Isha sucked fresh air in through her nose and took note of the tiny pricks of sunlight piercing through the canopy. She’d been in there a day. Her heart sunk in her chest as she realised that, even if she had gone back, Gideon and Carter likely would either be gone or dead or moved elsewhere with heavier guard. She’d slept through it all.
Frustration bubbled in her chest, though she couldn’t have been much imposing how she was practically draped across Finn. Still, she glowered at Michel for proximity. “We have to kill him, or they’ll be on trails in an instant.”
Winnie gave her an unimpressed glance. “We do not have to kill him,” they said firmly. They turned to Michel, placed their hands on his head and closed their eyes.
They stayed like that for a few minutes until Isha started shifting impatiently against Finn and he exaggerated a heavy sigh. Then Whisper finally opened their eyes and took their hands back, and Michel turned and wandered back inside. Isha’s mouth parted, and she pointed accusingly down the passage.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “As soon as your spell or whatever washes off, he’ll tell my mother and-”
“That’s why I took his memories,” Whisper interrupted. When Isha only blinked, they sighed and began to trek into the forest. “Comtesse Aelina is not the only one who can fiddle with memories.”
It was odd to hear Winnie refer to Aelina by her title. If someone was trying to kill her, Isha wouldn’t be referring to them politely at all.
She did not offer any more resistance or protest as Finn started after Whisper, who had pulled a compass out of their trousers at some point. If Isha had to guess, she’d assume they were heading southwest. If Shiloh was in the direction they’d come from, anyway.
Birds began to chirp the longer than walked, the sun still cutting through the leaves in a way that gives no clear indication about how far it had grown into the day. Probably after noon, by this point.
The fresh air was the first balm to Isha, but she could really go for some cool water and something to eat. She’d probably have gotten stale bread if Finn and Whisper hadn’t liberated her. Stale bread was a crime, Gideon had said once. It was only because she knew he adored freshly baked bread, and the smell even more so.
“How do you know where to find Shiloh?” Isha finally asked, when it seemed like they’d just been walking in a jagged line since they’d left the cave. Her feet and legs were aching, her head still spun and throbbed, and despite the fact she was in otherwise fit shape, she had a stitch in her side. It felt like they had been walking for hours, and they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Shiloh.
Whisper opened their mouth to say something when the sound of undergrowth crunching around them cut them off. A moment later, they were being surrounded.
Finn tightened his arm around her waist and Isha’s hand twitched towards the dagger in the sheathe on his thigh.
One of the ambushers stepped forward. A short woman with dark skin that looked almost as if to gleam in the small slices of sunlight cutting through the canopy. She had coils of hair twisted back into some kind of bun at the back of her head. And on her face, streaks and speckles of white paint, a blunt contrast to how dark her skin was.
“Who are you?” Isha asked sharply, though the deliverance was defeated by the rasp in her voice.
Before the woman could do more than open her mouth, Finn was sighing underneath Isha.
“It’s the Okories, Ish. Their the Pirate Queen’s coterie.” -
Week Forty-Two Total Word Count: 36,630/30,000
oop I'm gonna be super annoying and upload this as I wrote it by day because I think I remember the formatting getting wonky if you put too much in?? also I realise, as a rogue, I don't have to do this, but here we are
Chapter 26Spoiler
They’d been walking for what felt like hours.
Everything ached and Carter was so hot. Sweat trickled down his brow, down his spine, and his shirt fluttered uselessly by his sides. His arm and throat were the worst, and as his head throbbed and he slowly came to more clarity, he agreed with Gideon’s outrage of catching the knife – dagger – on his arm.
The rocks and jagged cuts of the cave bit in Carter’s feet and he could feel the sticky warmth of blood coating them. He was trying to put more of his weight into them, however, because they’d gradually slowed to a crawl. Gideon was limping badly, and Carter could feel the guilty crawling in his stomach as he leaned onto him. Adrienne had hit his leg hard. And Carter was only making it worse.
As they delved further into the cave, Carter grew steadily more sure that they were lost. They were no longer traversing the coterie’s territory. There was no one back here, no patrols wandering around or torches flickering around the corners. It was inky black, though Carter’s vision had adjusted, and frigid.
The brand was still hot on his skin. And it didn’t escape his notice how much Gideon’s gaze flickered sideways.
“Can we stop?” Carter asked finally. His voice was subdued, cracking, but he knew Gideon was too stubborn to say anything. For all his wits, he was pretty dumb that way. God- Carter was exhausted.
Gideon stiffened under Carter’s arm. “Are you all right?” he asked, guiding Carter over towards an alcove in the wall of the cave. Carter slipped away from Gideon to perch on the wall. Gideon hardly restrained himself before he collapsed against the wall, leaning on his right hip and taking all the weight off his left leg. He blinked sluggishly.
“Um,” Carter replied. He was tired, he was one giant bruise, and his stomach felt like it’d been torn apart. He was dizzy, head pounding behind his eyes and every noise echoing in the cave another stab to the brain. He’d never felt this bad in his life- Bazzoli had been awful, but never… this.
He bit into his cheek. His mouth tasted like bile and poison. Whatever Adrienne had been giving him had crept into every crevice in his teeth and melted into the flesh of his tongue.
No. He wasn’t okay. Gideon was watching him with a frown, and Carter let out a puff. Gideon had come after him. Gideon was with him.
And oh Divines, Carter had kissed him. What had he been thinking?
“Your arm,” Gideon said. Carter lifted his arm to peer at it. The blood had dried by now, but Carter knew he’d lost more than was healthy. He yawned as Gideon stepped around him to inspect it. “I don’t have anything to wrap it with,” Gideon told him. He wasn’t meeting Carter’s gaze, and his mouth was tight. Carter’s chest felt oddly constricted.
“Use my shirt,” Carter said, under his breath. Not like the shirt was doing much for him anyway. He pulled his arm away from Gideon and began to attempt wiggling out of it. He swallowed back a whimper as his arm stretched out or tried to.
He heard a sharp breath and then Gideon was swatting his hands away. “Stop, stop. Let me get it off your left arm first.” Carter stilled as Gideon pulled his sleeve off his left arm, over his head, and then carefully down to his right arm. He looked pained. Carter hated how uncomfortable he was making Gideon, all because he couldn’t perform simple tasks alone.
When Gideon began to wrap his arm, he gave no warning. He hesitated only a moment when Carter flinched at the sudden pressure against the wound, but then forced himself to settle again so Gideon could finish. They should have washed it first, but it wasn’t as though either of them had water lying around.
After the shirt was wrapped tight around Carter’s arm, Gideon’s eyes caught on the brand at the centre of Carter’s chest again. Carter glanced down – he couldn’t decide if it looked more like a vortex or a flower – and then forced a small smile. He needed Gideon to stop looking at it, at him. Carter knew this had been a disaster, and it was all his fault. He knew, and he dreaded the moment Gideon would point it out.
“Am I a part of the um, the club now?” Carter asked, trying pathetically to keep his tone light. It came out as more of a whisper. He’d been spending too much time around Finn.
The skin on Gideon’s knuckles turned white and he clenched them into fists tight enough that his fingers could bruise, Carter was sure. “It’s not funny,” Gideon snapped. Carter’s breath stopped somewhere between his lungs and his nose, and he dropped his gaze.
He shouldn’t have said that. He was making everything worse. Carter wanted nothing more than to curl up on the cave’s icy, jagged floor, and take a year-long nap.
Gideon sighed and Carter saw his hand rise from the corner of his gaze, to rub at his face strictly more aggressively than necessary. “No, I didn’t-” his voice was tight. His other hand twitched at his side. “I meant it shouldn’t have happened. I mean- Carter, I’m so sorry. I should never have let you go off alone, I should have come with you. I should have done something.” He dropped his voice. “I should never have let you come.”
Carter could hardly do more than stare, and blink dumbly at Gideon. His mind was swimming, rolling in circles, chest constricting- “Um.” He cleared his throat. “I- um, what? Gideon, um. You didn’t ask the coterie to come after me?” Carter meant it as a statement, but his voice rose at the end confusedly. He was desperately ignoring the pitiful ache in his chest at never should have let you come.
But Gideon only continued to stare down at Carter’s arm, flexing his fingers as if trying to grip an invisible blade.
“I could have said something too? It’s not- um, Gideon it’s not your fault,” Carter murmured. He put as much honesty in his tone as he possibly could. He meant it; he did. He just wished he could make it sound like he did. “Why- um, why did you think that?”
Finally, Gideon glanced up at him. His brow was bent, but it was not a frown or a scowl. He considered Carter, mouth slightly parted. His gaze darted downwards for a moment- but then he jerked his chin back up and pulled away from Carter. A shiver ran through Carter, a chill washing through him.
“I forgot, trying to get you out- we have Shiloh. We found her, she’s okay.” Gideon’s expression softened, but Carter still noticed his fists tensed.
Still, his chest swelled with a sudden warmth and Carter leaned forward to grab one of Gideon’s hand. He needed to stop, he knew he needed to stop touching Gideon, but he needed to ground himself more. Gideon blinked at him, staring down at their hands, as Carter sucked in a deep breath.
“Oh- oh,” Carter said. Intelligently. “She’s- she is? She’s okay? She-” His mind was racing, and Carter couldn’t get out a coherent sentence. He was beaming, feeling like a flower come under the sunlight.
A deeper, private piece wondered why Gideon had gone from apologising, from feeling guilty about letting Carter get caught by the coterie, to Shiloh. And his chest wilted somewhere. Shiloh had done all this, had lied to him, about what? Protection? What if she had said something to Gideon?
He yawned again, and his eyelids drooped. Gideon frowned, and gave him a gentle tug on his hand that Carter was still clasping in a vice grip. “We should get moving again so you can see her again.” He winced as he shifted on his hip. “I’m sorry we can’t rest longer.”
Carter rolled his shoulders and slid from his perch. He, reluctantly, let go of Gideon’s hand, though Gideon still hovered at his side. “It’s okay,” Carter said quietly. “I think I’m okay now. I can walk. Whatever she gave me is giving me a headache, but I’m okay.”
“Absinthe,” Gideon said without hesitation. “She was giving you absinthe. Did she give you a lot?”
Nausea boiled in Carter’s stomach and he swallowed back bile that climbed in his throat. Absinthe? No wonder he had felt so inhibited. But he didn’t want to think about it. He’d rather pretend that those hours stuck in that tiny room with the constant stench of blood and bile hadn’t happened. It was a nightmare. “A lot,” he whispered.
Gideon didn’t react at first, only watched him with a guarded expression. Either he picked up Carter’s discomfort on his face or he felt guilty enough not to press, because he cleared his throat and murmured a quiet “let’s go”.
Despite the aches and the dizziness, Carter still had to watch his pace. Gideon was limping, and Carter could see the twist on his features every time he put weight on his leg. He didn’t want Gideon to think he was holding them back and push himself more than he already was.
He didn’t know how long had passed as they walked in an upward arch that bent left, but his feet had started to burn again when Gideon steered them down a left passage.
“We’re lost,” Carter pointed out, peering down the widening cavern.
He glanced at Gideon and found him ducking his head. He was trying to scowl, but if Carter squinted enough, he could swear he saw Gideon’s blushing. “Shut up,” Gideon grumbled. There was no heat behind it.
Carter tried not to laugh too audibly, snuffing quietly in a way that made Gideon glance up at him oddly.
But it didn’t matter, because Gideon had still come for him.
Chapter 27Spoiler
Despite how worn down she felt, Isha straightened at Finn’s words. She set her jaw, blooding running hot – as was everything else – as she stared down at the woman standing in front of her.
“No,” Isha said. “No more coteries. I’m done with them, I refuse to a part of anymore dealings with them, or you!” She probably didn’t cut an imposing figure, draped so heavily on Finn as she was, but Isha didn’t care. She wasn’t even scared- she was angry. They had just escaped the Fire Forgers, The Dragon’s Associates, her parents. Isha wasn’t going to let some newbie baby coterie snatch her and make this all the more knotted than it already was.
To her surprise, however, the woman’s face split into a grin and she laughed. She had a bright, clear laugh, and what was more, it sounded genuine.
“Then it is a good thing that we are not one of your coteries,” the woman said once she was done laughing. Isha opened her mouth to rebuff her- and stopped. She blinked. Finn shifted beside her, and she could see him frowning and squinting at the same time in confusion.
“What?” he asked, eyes sifting through the crowd of ambushers. All of them had weapons, mostly spears, but none of them were held threateningly. They were standing passively, watching the interaction almost curiously. One or two had smiles on their faces as their eyes flicked between Isha, Finn, and Whisper, and the woman standing in front of them.
The woman was still smiling widely, teeth a sharp contrast to the darkness of her skin. Her eyes glinted. “We are not one of your coteries. Which is convenient for us, because our Pirate Queen wants to speak with you. Your friend, Shiloh, your horses, and your handsome feline companion are being tended to by our company. They are not hostages.” The last sentence was sharper, more pointed, as Isha bristled and tightened her grasp on Finn. She ignored his wince.
Trap was spelled out all over the woman’s proposition, but what choice did they have? They had Shiloh and all the horses. Isha wasn’t sure she could fight a boulder and win in her current state. Whisper couldn’t use her powers over all of them, if what the woman said was true and they had more numbers – which would be true of a coterie, but supposedly they weren’t. Still, they likely had moderate numbers. Finn couldn’t take them all alone.
She exchanged a glance with Finn, and then Whisper. Whisper dipped their head and stepped forward. Isha let out a soft breath as the woman turned to study Whisper. She didn’t want to admit defeat, and Whisper was allowing her to step away from the position.
“We will come without resistance, if your hospitality is so generous,” Winnie said. Isha watched them and couldn’t help now but think how much less of a clutter Île D'or would be if Winnie was the Comtesse. Which was another mess they hadn’t even gotten a chance to address. “What can we use to address our guidance?”
The woman’s grin, if possible, widened. “Aren’t you so much more pleasant then the company you keep?” She glanced at Finn and Isha but there was nothing abrasive in her tone and Isha tried to ignore her. “My apologies. I am Sauda, and you may call me as such. I’m the right hand of Malika, and the position comes with no other adornments. Aside from Valérie, I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”
Isha bit her cheek. Hard, but not hard enough to draw blood. “It’s Isha,” she corrected. “I don’t go by Valérie.” Isha wanted to ask why, how she knew, but held her tongue. She’d ask Malika instead, if the entitled Pirate Queen wanted to talk to her so badly.
“What our darling ball of sunshine means is that her name is that she goes by Isha, the dim one in the hat is Finn, and our lovely common sense filter is Whisper,” Finn cut in, gesturing to everyone in turn with a stupidly smug grin on his face. Isha stomped on his foot, pulling it only a little. It was a mercy, for what she might have done if Finn hadn’t just gone through the trouble of dragging her out of a rotting cell.
Sauda laughed again and gestured in the direction they had already been travelling. “A merry band of misfits you three are, aren’t you? Malika will be delighted.”
Frankly, Isha didn’t care if Malika threw a fit the moment she saw them. Isha couldn’t help but slump farther against Finn when Sauda turned away and he tried to nudge her forward. Whisper shot her a concerned glance and drifted to her other side, setting a blessedly cool hand on Isha’s arm. “Are you all right?” they asked.
“Wonderful,” Isha muttered. Then she sighed- this wasn’t Winnie’s fault. “I’m sorry. No, but I’ll be all right enough for… whatever this is.” She swallowed tightly. “I just hope Gideon and Carter are okay.”
Finn hoisted her further up, as if trying to balance her hip on his, but he was the only person aside from Carter who could compete with her for height. Once he got her situated enough, it was more comfortable, and they trekked on through the woods. Sauda led them and the others, all dark skin and neutral-coloured attire, dispersed around them. One of them approached Whisper timidly, and they began a quiet conversation that Isha couldn’t be bothered to try to eavesdrop on.
As they came into the more open forests and the trees grew sparser, the sun cut through the canopy and touched Isha’s skin. Despite her moments of burning heat, it felt good, and she could feel herself growing more at ease in Finn’s arm. Finn, whose grip was continuously tightening on her the further she sank down.
She heard the company – were they still the Okories? What did they call themselves? What were they? – before she saw them. A warm commotion that weaved through the trees.
Isha didn’t know when they had entered what looked to be a makeshift camp, only that they were now surrounded by many more people than the few that had been following Sauda. Whisper was no longer talking with the young man Isha had seen before. Her eyelids were heavy, and she wondered if she hadn’t somehow managed to doze off as they entered camp.
She couldn’t help but notice some cots set up, where discomforted individuals were set up. The tell tale ring of coughs or people wrapped in blankets made her wonder over the condition of the camp.
Sauda was still leading them forward, straight towards a fire in the middle of a ring of stumps. To the left, Isha’s heart lifted as she saw Fabella, Reese, Villa, Achille, and Napoleon all tied to a log. They weren’t tacked up, and Achille looked offset by the clamour around him, but otherwise, they all looked peaceful enough. Isha breathed a sigh of relief. Carter would be pleased, were he with them.
There were two occupants of the stumps. One was a woman who could likely be Isha’s height standing, with a navy-blue bandana over short, braided raven-feather black hair. She had dark skin, like Sauda, and red streaks of paint over her cheeks. There was a thick gold necklace resting on her sternum, and she wore a brilliant kind of smirk.
The other person was Shiloh, who had her hair tied back as best she could with how short and ragged she had cut it. On her lap, Koshar was asleep.
It was the woman, who Isha had a strange instinct was Malika, who glanced over at them first. Her gaze met Isha’s and the smile did not diminish. There was something calculating in her gaze as she studied Isha, and Isha found herself almost shying back. The woman radiated a kind of confidence Isha could only achieve by faking. Her legs were spread at the knees and she leaned forward on them with the kind of ease that Isha saw mostly men oozing.
She hoped that it wasn’t Malika. Isha could feel a glimmer of admiration as it began to spark.
Shiloh stood up from the stump when she saw them, and there was no such delight in her expression. Koshar fell to the ground with an irritated mrrow. Well, for a moment there was, but then it was gone. “You’ve been gone for a day!” she cried, addressing mostly Isha. “What happened? What happened to you? Finn came back in the middle of the night saying you’d disappeared- And where is Carter and Gideon?”
Isha tried not to look too visibly aggravated. Any guises of secrecy regarding Gideon and Carter, them as a vulnerability to the rest of them, and the urgency to find them were out the window now. “I don’t know,” she ground out. It was hard enough to know she had left them behind. She didn’t need Shiloh to start guilt-tripping her because Gideon wasn’t around. “It doesn’t matter. My distraction was pointless. They already knew.” She ignored Shiloh’s question about her wellbeing.
“Now we’re missing Carter and Gideon?” Shiloh asked. The high pitch of her voice betrayed her worry, if her words weren’t enough. Then she crumpled back down onto the stump and ran an errant hand through her hair, pulling clumps out of the tie. “Sweet Divines…”
“Gideon is the Italian boy?” the woman who could be Malika asked. When Isha turned to her, she stood with a smile that dripped charisma and approached the three of them. “Formalities escape me. I am Malika, and you are-”
“Isha,” Finn cut in. Malika paused at his interruption and watched him carefully. He offered her a shrug and his own grin. “She’s fussy about it. Thought I’d go for the damage control first. I’m Finn and this is Whisper.”
Malika – because of course it was Malika, who else could she be? – considered them. Isha’s frustration had diminished enough to worry that Finn was being to brash, but Malika’s smile never wavered. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one.
But something more pressing weighed of Isha’s mind, and she didn’t want to want for propriety. “You’re not a coterie,” she said, meaning to ask a question and instead making a dry statement. Her head was swimming, and she was shivering from the gentle wind again, and figured she was allowed the dropping of pretexts. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see Whisper had bent down and picked up Koshar and was now cradling him in their arms.
“No,” Malika agreed. “Where do you believe that originated from? Your pretty jewel sitting on the throne caught wind of a crew sailing to her island, making port, and inhabiting unclaimed territory. Suddenly, we’re a dangerous organisation who becomes a threat to this island. I don’t know if it’s because we came from the sea, because we were slaves, or because we have numbers, and frankly, I don’t care. She can say what she will about us- it does not make it true.”
Isha glanced between Malika, Sauda, and her own companions. As Malika spoke, it made a surprising amount of sense. But Isha was not about the forgo all caution and trust a stranger like Malika. Even Isha knew that was dangerous. “How do you know who I am, then? What did you want to talk to me about?”
“The coteries are callous about their servants,” Malika said in the way of explanation. “Tell me, Isha, what do you plan on doing about the poisoning of the Comtesse?”
She stared at Malika right before a wave of vertigo hit her like a sack of flour and she swayed on her feet. Finn guided her towards the stump next to Shiloh, and then they all took respective seats on the stumps. Malika resumed her easy, splayed out posture, and Finn shifted his stump closer to Isha even though he was giving her an odd look. Whisper was the only one still standing, watching Isha with a frown.
In truth, Isha had shucked the thought from her mind almost entirely after her and Gideon’s conversation at The Spire, save for when she had mentioned it to her mother. She hadn’t planned on anything that had to do with the Comtesse. Aelina wasn’t her problem. “I’m more concerned about my own companions right now,” she said and at least tried to keep her tone neutral.
“The Comtesse is getting poisoned?” Finn asked before Whisper could do more than open their mouth. “And you didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”
“No,” Isha replied tersely. “It never came up, anyway.”
Finn laughed dryly. “It never came up? Did you consider that I might want her alive, Isha? I’m trying to give Carter and Gideon the advantage her, I am, but I’m allowed this part of selfishness, aren’t I?”
“Regardless of personal gain,” Malika interrupted before Isha could say anything about the part where nobody was planning to kill the Comtesse, “the poisoning was why I wanted to talk to you. The poisoning, and the secret betrothal of the Comtesse to Jacques Fraser.” Isha froze. “I trust you know the name.”
Isha took a steadying breath and rubbed her face, where sweat was started to accumulate on her forehead. “He’s the Monk’s son,” she breathed. Waylon Fraser, better known as the Monk or leader of the Highlanders. “Betrothal? She’s getting married to one of the Highlanders? That doesn’t-” make sense? Nothing made sense anymore.
Ah, back a month, or maybe months by now, when all they were doing was looking for Shiloh. Isha didn’t bother asking how Malika knew. Spies, then, likely.
“They want to reform the island. It has something to do with the return of magic, or so they say. And the Comtesse needs an heir. After her father’s death, she’s had no living relatives. If she dies, there’s going to be a bloodbath as every noble family on Île D'or makes a grab for power,” Malika explained. “I want to stop the poisoning, and I want your help. I have something for you in return.”
It was probably telling of her, but Isha couldn’t help but send a glance in Winnie’s direction when Malika said living relatives. On her right, Finn was doing the same, but was notably more subtle about it then she was. Isha quickly turned back to Malika and saw her brow twitch as she glanced between Whisper and Isha.
“You want to stop it,” Finn clarified. Malika nodded, and he rubbed at his nose. “But it sounded like you don’t like the Comtesse. Why would you want to save her?”
“Because if what she says is true, and Corin and my parents poison Aelina, it’ll start a civil war,” Isha explained, life seeping away from her tone. “Corin wants to poison Aelina to marry her, not to kill her. But Waylon won’t know that. He’ll go after the coterie that threatens the position he gets from his son marrying her, and Corin doesn’t have the discipline not the retaliate. All caution is thrown to the wind, casualties all over the island, and any trust left from the citizens for our leader left in pieces,” Isha said. Malika nodded in approval.
Isha wished she could dissolve into the ground. Become a flower. Flowers didn’t get sick and they certainly get headaches as bad as hers. Divines, this was a bloody predicament.
“It’s a wonder this Monk does,” Malika said. “The other agreement between them was that the Highlanders provide her with any and all bodies of all skirmishes.”
Finn’s eyebrows had disappeared beneath his hat, while Whisper frowned deeply. Shiloh looked pale and a little pained. “Bodies as in- dead bodies?” Finn asked.
Malika nodded. “I do not know what she is planning, but I do know that this island, without question, needs to be saved from her. I do not want her killed unless that is the measure it comes to.” Malika glanced towards Sauda, and some of the brightness exuding from her dimmed. “I landed on this island for refuge and resupply, but I cannot leave now that I’ve seen it’s state.”
It took a moment for Isha to process the statement, but when she did, she narrowed her eyes dubiously. She wrapped her arms around herself as more shivers wracked her body. “You want to rule,” she said, and didn’t intone it like a question. When Malika’s smile turned to a smirk, Isha sighed. “I’d hate to dampen your spirit, but don’t you think that will prove a challenge considering-”
“I was a slave? I was a pirate? I’m black? Aelina isn’t a fresh slice of white bread either, not with that father of hers. If the island ends up destroying itself, so be it.” Malika leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “But I intend offer a chance at redemption anyway.”
“Many won’t see it that way,” Whisper pointed out quietly, stroking Koshar’s head. “Many won’t be able see your intentions behind your skin. The Comtesse gets a pass only because she has the bloodline. Most still disregard her unfavourably.”
Before anyone could get anything more in, Shiloh suddenly cried out. Isha nearly fell off her stump in surprise as Shiloh collapsed to the ground, fingers digging into the soil like claws. Finn was on his feet, hovering beside Isha, and Whisper was already at Shiloh’s side, Koshar once again dumped to the ground. When they reached out to touch her, however, they jerked back as if Shiloh was a hot iron.
Threads of golden light began to swirl around Shiloh’s body and some of it sunk into the ground. Shiloh was still crying out in pain and reached on hand up to clutch at her chest. The lights were pulsing violently, and so bright that Isha had to turn away as it started to burn into her eyes like looking at the sun.
The ground rolled beneath her, as if the Earth itself was trembling, and Isha was unbalanced enough that she tumbled off her stump. Finn barely caught her, and Isha hit her hip awkwardly.
She heard someone shouting, like a chant almost. The words were indecipherable even though Isha was sure that whoever was talking wasn’t speaking a different language. The gold light was flooding the clearing now, the fire wavering rapidly as if caught in wild gusts of wind.
And there was something tearing through Isha’s mind, as if yanking on her to pull her towards Shiloh. It spread through her body, as if to rip her apart, and she bit down on her tongue hard enough now to make it bleed just to stop herself from screaming.
Then, she heard another, much louder shout of AWAY, and then it was gone. Isha was trembling against Finn, who was holding her with one hand and covering his face contorted in extreme pain with the other.
Lifting her head weakly, Isha glanced at Shiloh and Whisper. Shiloh was slack on the ground, and Whisper was beside her, panting and leaning on their hands and knees. Koshar was beside them, rubbing against their arms and face. Little sparks of gold like lightning crackled around Shiloh still and hissed around her, the only evidence that anything had happened. That, and the fire had turned to gold, as had the place in the dirt where Shiloh’s fingers had dug in.
The clearing was silent as death, only broken by the spitting of the fire and Whisper’s wheezing. Isha squeezed her eyes shut and wondered how she had thought that the pain she was in had been bad. It felt like a blessing now, compared to the pain of- whatever had just happened.
Her lungs constricted in her chest and Isha realised Whisper wasn’t the only one struggling to breathe. It stung her throat, and she could hear the nasally, wet rasps coming from her throat.
Finn had apparently recovered faster than she had, or at least whatever pain he’d experienced was severally lessened, because he was still cringing in pain, but he was looking down on her with concern.
She ignored him in favour of watching Whisper shift over to put their hand on Shiloh’s forehead. Shiloh lay still, though Isha could still see the rise and fall of her shoulders.
“Okay,” Finn said finally, only a little breathless. Lucky him. Finn laughed, and it was all kinds of wrong. “What… what?”
Whisper sat back, tucking their legs close to them, and shut their eyes. Koshar settled into their lap and Isha could hear the distant rumble of his purr. “It’s the magic,” they murmured. They were slowly regaining their breath. “I was afraid of this happening.”
Isha was pretty sure if she opened her mouth, she’d throw up, and instead let her head fall back against Finn’s shoulder. Her eyelids felt heavy. There were miniscule tremors running up Finn’s arms. “What is this? My head felt like it was splitting open!”
“It’s the magic. It’s unstable, trying to pull anything it can grab onto,” Whisper explained, though threw a look of caution in Finn’s direction. “When Shiloh went down underneath the Spire, she did something that unleashed the magic. And it had to go somewhere, so it latched on to her. That’s all in her body now, magic that’s supposed to be distributed across the whole island.” Whisper’s mouth turned to a thin line, one hand splayed motionless over Koshar. “I’m worried it may kill her to escape from her body.”
“You’re the ones that released the magic then. It was not Von Brandt.”
In retrospect- no, they couldn’t have prevented it from happening. Still, Isha forgot Malika and Sauda were there with them. Neither of them looked worse for wear. God, Isha wanted to go to sleep and forget about all this.
“She didn’t intend to,” Winnie countered. “She was trying to remove it so the coteries couldn’t get it. She couldn’t have known what was going to happen.”
“That wasn’t accusatory,” Sauda said before Malika could. “We are just trying to understand.”
Malika’s eyes glittered. “You certainly are some interesting folk.” She glanced momentarily at Whisper before turning towards where Finn was still holding up Isha. Her expression softened. “I’d like to ask questions, Whisper, if you don’t mind. But first, Isha, you need rest, and a healer. As does your friend, Shiloh.”
Isha drank in a deep breath of smoke-tinged air, pulling herself up by the sleeve of Finn’s shirt. She met Malika’s gaze, and tilted her chin up as best you could. “You never said why we should be helping you with all this. You said you had something for us too.”
“Yes,” Malika agreed. The smile was back across her features as she began to turn away. “I told you the coteries pay no mind to their help. I have girls in both the Fire Forgers and your daddy’s coterie. One should return tomorrow. She’ll tell you about your two friends, and we’ll talk about them then.”
Of all the things she had expected, Isha hadn’t counted on Malika extending an olive branch for Gideon and Carter. She’d imagined currency, or maybe passage away if she knew so much about them already, all which Isha could have refused in a heartbeat. But a promise to help Gideon and Carter-
“Done,” Isha rasped. “Can’t wait to stop a civil war.”
She felt rather than heard the rumble of Finn’s silent laughter. -
Chapter 28
Spoiler
Isha woke up on a stretch of linen with a cool, damp cloth on her forehead.
The canopy stretched above her, a diluted ivory light streaming through the foliage above. It looked hardly different than when she’d fallen asleep, and Isha wasn’t sure if that meant that she hadn’t slept or that she’d slept for another day.
For feeling so poorly, she was having surprisingly little trouble sleeping.
“Good morning.” Isha tilted her head with a wince, head and neck throbbing, to see Sauda pouring water into a mug beside her. She sent the bucket aside and offered the cup to Isha, before using her hand on Isha’s upper back to help prop her up so she could drink.
And Isha was far too weary to complain, her throat too sore to reject the cool trickle of water. It hurt to swallow, but that was a minor nuisance.
Once she had finished and Sauda took the mug away, Isha propped herself up with her elbow and watched Sauda carefully. The cloth fell from her face. “Where- where is everyone?” she asked, and meant where are my friends?
Thankfully, Sauda smiled brightly and waved her hands. “You friends are with Malika. They were trying to puzzle your illness out. Some of our people have it as well. I can go get them, if you feel well enough.”
The answer to that question was uncertain, but Isha still swung her lets over the cot she’d been set upon to sit up and nodded. She pawed at her face, the reprieve from the cloth quickly fading to make way for her fever or whatever it was. It didn’t feel like a normal fever.
Was this how Gideon had felt every time he’d gone through withdrawals? Isha had a sudden, new appreciation for how much he had struggled.
She felt like she’d barely blinked, before Sauda was returning with Finn, Whisper, Malika, and an exhausted but unharmed appearing Shiloh.
“Good thing I didn’t have to throw rocks at you to wake you up this time,” Finn said in lieu of greeting. He was smiling, but there were greyish crescents underneath his eyes. Isha wondered when the last time he slept was.
“Hey Sunflower,” Isha rasped. Shiloh glanced up at her. “How you feeling?”
Shiloh smiled wryly. She sat down with her legs crossed and let out a drawn breath. “I should be asking you that,” she said. “But okay, I guess. Tired, aching, but I’m not sick.”
“Speaking of,” Malika cut in, before Isha could ask Whisper the same. They’d stopped the magic, after all, and they’d been worn out by that. She did notice Koshar trotting beside his owner’s feet, weaving between their legs. “We’ve been discussing as such, and it has come to our attention only those born on the island are the ones who have gotten sick. None of my crew from the ship have gotten sick despite exposure.”
Isha glanced towards Whisper, Shiloh, and Finn pointedly. “But-”
“We know,” Winnie cut in, setting their hand on Isha’s knee as they settled on the cot beside her. “The working theory is that it has something to do with the release of magic. You started experiencing symptoms soon after that, and don’t deny it, we could all see it. We think that Shiloh and I haven’t gotten it because of my magic and her… absorption of magic.” They glanced at Finn. “We don’t know about Finn.”
“I could not be a native,” Finn suggested. He shrugged and looked unsure of his claim.
Koshar leapt up onto the cot and climbed into Isha’s lap. She buried her hand into his soft pelt. “Well- what about the memory lock? I mean, that wouldn’t protect you though. Would it?”
Everybody went quiet and considerate, save for Malika, who glanced between Isha and Finn with her sharp eyes alight with curiosity. “Memory lock?”
“Our dear Comtesse, the only other known wielder of magic supposedly, didn’t want me to remember the first nine years of my life for some reason,” Finn explained. His smile had a bitter edge, and for once, Isha made herself consider what she would have done if she was missing nine years of her life.
“The Comtesse has magic?” Sauda asked, frowning. “That complicates things. But even so, why would that keep the sickness from affecting him?” She gestured towards Finn and glanced at Whisper. “I thought you said you couldn’t heal with your magic.”
Whisper’s brow furrowed and they considered. Isha wiped at her face with the hand she wasn’t using to pet Koshar and yawned. She felt only marginally better than she had when she’d fallen asleep, but the sickness didn’t feel as if to get any better. If it was magic- what if she never did get better?
At least, if it only affected natives, Gideon would be safe. But Carter won’t be.
“One of the first to hold to title of Comte was Etienne,” Winnie finally said. “Comte Guillaume was of noble birth before he married Comtesse Charlotte. The bloodline of the title of Comte supposedly has sustained from Etienne, and if that’s the case… well, Etienne was the master of healing, and Charlotte would be descended from him. Guillaume was chosen because there are records that connect him to Melisende, supposedly.” Winnie glanced at Finn, head tilted, and eyes lit up with fascination. “Maybe the Comtesse’s magic is laced with the healing properties and it’s preventing you from catching the illness.”
Isha was once again left marvelling over Winnie’s knowledge. Even they looked pleased with themselves, and Isha couldn’t but straighten slightly at the gentle wave of energy radiating from them.
“If all this is the case, Carter will be sick too,” Shiloh said quietly. “Winnie, do you think Aelina would be able to heal anyone who has- whatever I released?”
“Possibly,” Winnie conceded. “It’s the best chance we have as of right now.” Then, their brows furrowed deeply. “If the illness is related to magic, it makes you wonder why magic was taken away in the first place. It might not even be an illness. It could be a curse.”
An uneasy quiet settled over the clearing. Isha glanced down at Koshar, who blinked up at her lazily with deep amber eyes. She didn’t do all this magic tomfoolery. She didn’t like it. It was all too theoretical for her to be comfortable. Isha knew how to lead a squad of warriors, or how to strangle someone, or how to sew clothing. She didn’t do with “possibilities”.
One of the armoured warriors approached them then, leading a petite girl with hair frizzed and pulled back into a disaster of a bun. She had a cream bandana over some of it to tame it, but it was of little use. Her skin was lighter then Malika and Sauda’s, but much darker than Isha’s or Finn’s. Closer to Shiloh’s. Malika’s shoulders set forward and she nodded towards the man that had led the girl there. He nodded back and turned away to leave.
“Ana,” Malika greeted. She approached the girl and set a hand on her shoulder, steering her towards Isha’s cot. She stopped and held out her hand. “These are our guests.” Malika went through the list and named them all. Then, “This is Ana. You have news, then? You’re back early.”
Isha wasn’t sure who exactly this Ana was, but she had a gentle smile and a twinkle to her eyes that looked soft spoken. Her gaze lingered on Isha. “Everyone’s in an uproar. Now was as good as any time to slip away.” Then, her eyes narrowed. “Malika, you know that is the LeRoy’s girl? Valérie-”
“I am aware,” Malika said. “Trust me when I say to trust her. She’s on our side. She wants as little to do with her parents as anyone.”
Ana still hesitated. It suddenly dawned on Isha that she looked familiar, but she couldn’t place where or why. Finally, Ana let out a breath. “All right, well. Everyone is panicking because the boy that they grabbed from the Spire wasn’t giving anything up, and actually blatantly lying, supposedly-”
“The boy from the Spire? Carter?” Shiloh was on her feet again but as soon as she was, she winced like she regretted it. Isha shot Shiloh a glare at the same time Ana’s lip curled in displeasure for having been interrupted again.
“I believe that was his name, yes. But it doesn’t matter, because after she-” Ana nodded towards Isha, “caused a stir by returning, one of Jemima’s generals, Desmoulins, went to kill the boy.” She sent a wary look in Shiloh’s direction when her mouth opened, but then Shiloh shut it again and started to gnaw on her lips instead. “When her general did not return for some time, someone went to check to see what had happened. Desmoulins was found, well, assassinated by the looks of it. The prisoner was gone.”
For a moment, nothing went through Isha’s mind. She knew Adrienne had gone to kill Carter after Isha had gotten there but-
“Adrienne’s dead,” Isha said, the world starting to tilt around her. She couldn’t feel the cot beneath her anymore, a sensation of free falling causing her stomach to drop. Her eyes grew fuzzy with white. After a moment had passed, Isha realised she was giggling, and it was starting to turn hysterical. “She’s dead. Gideon killed her. Gideon and Carter escaped.”
Shiloh’s eyes widened as Isha spoke, but then she let out a long breath at her last sentence. Then, she collapsed back to the ground, and buried her face in her hands.
And- that was that. Adrienne had been killed, by Gideon. She had no doubt about that. And God, Isha wished she’d have been there. Adrienne had that coming from the first day she’d started training Gideon and broke one of his fingers. Isha didn’t often enjoy the grisly business of death, but even though she hadn’t been there, she suddenly felt renewed. It was sweet.
Ana was talking again, and Isha glanced back up, still grinning manically. “-else you should know. During Valérie’s escape-”
“Isha,” Finn chirped unhelpfully.
“-some of the guards and fighters said that someone came in and controlled their mind.” Ana glanced in Isha’s direction, furrowing her brow again.
Malika was nodding, glancing off thoughtfully into the sparse woods. Sauda watched her patiently, as if waiting for a direction.
“Yes, that was Whisper here.” Malika waved her hand in Winnie’s direction dismissively. “Ana, do you know where the prisoner and his saviour could have escaped if they did not come back through the main tunnels?”
“The cave system is expansive,” Ana said. “The coterie doesn’t occupy all of it, too big. They post guards to patrol around the back ways, but otherwise it should be abandoned. They could have gone down there, and I’d bet money that they did since nobody’s seen the prisoner or this other boy for two days.” Then she glanced towards the west and tipped her chin back. “Curls around and leads out somewhere near Grand Verterre, I believe.”
And Malika was nodding again. “Good. Ready the horses we have, Sauda, and check on all our men. Seems like all our compasses are pointing towards the Capital. We will make camp by the cave entrance, and if your friends have no already emerged by the time we arrive, we will send parties to recover them. Then, I believe the Comtesse has some questions to answer for.”
Without another word, Malika was setting off, with Ana sending them one last cautious glance before hurrying to catch up with her. Sauda dipped her head in Isha and her companion’s direction, and then scurried off to enact on Malika’s instruction.
Isha didn’t realise her eyes were beginning to sting with tears until Koshar yelped when she dug her fingers too tightly into fur and he hopped away. Winnie touched her shoulder with a questioning sort of concern in their expression, and Isha let out a shuddering breath. The pain had subsided a little after learning Gideon and Carter were all right, but her heart beat was thundering in her chest without real cause to be doing so.
Gideon and Carter were okay. Adrienne was dead. Isha hoped that Gideon was actually okay.
A painful jolt of vulnerability shot through Isha’s chest. She hated how weak she was, how softened she’d become since running from the coterie. She only put up minimal protest when Winnie pulled her into a reassuring hug, and Isha tried to steady her breathing. She didn’t start crying, but it didn’t matter. She felt so exposed, so naked.
It’s worth it, she told herself firmly. It is worth it.
Chapter 29Spoiler
Even after all the time that had passed, it was hard for Gideon not to keep looking at the bold, angry brand on Carter’s chest.
After the first, what, day? First several hours? Time was meaningless in a cave that knew only cold and darkness, but it felt like they’d been walking forever. Either way, Gideon had forced Carter to take his shirt because it wasn’t dark enough not to notice how badly Carter would shiver at times. Carter tried to refuse but Gideon didn’t hear it. His shirt was about two sizes too small for Carter.
This was still his fault, wasn’t it? He shouldn’t have let Carter come. He should have gone with him under the Spire. It seemed Gideon’s sole purpose was the do the wrong thing. Too slow, too loud, too small, too merciful. Too cruel, too harsh, too blunt. He was never going to be just right.
Worse, he was starting to suspect Carter wasn’t calling rests for himself, but for Gideon. He noticed after then eighth time, that Carter’s gaze had been lingering on Gideon’s lower leg right before he asked to stop. Gideon was trying, he was. He tried to walk faster, grit his teeth against the pain. He could do that, he could.
Carter had been hurt worse than he had. Gideon had nothing to complain about. He’d been hit with a metal stick and it hadn’t even broken the skin. It hurt, but so did a lot of other things. It was just a little pain.
A lot of pain. It hurt a lot.
They’d been steadily climbing upwards for some time now, and Gideon was careful to keep his breathing quiet. Carter was starting to grow short on breath beside him, which made it easier, but he wasn’t about to let Carter try to suffer at his own expense. They were both dehydrated, but Carter hadn’t had any kind of sustenance likely, or at least very little. He needed to be out of the cave as soon as possible.
And then they had to find the others again. Somehow.
Gideon fought a groan. This was such a headache. He hated the coteries. Hated himself for allowing this to happen.
“Can we stop a minute?” Carter asked, voice soft. Gideon glanced over in time to see Carter’s gaze travelling up from his leg. Gideon scowled.
“No,” he said. It sounded more like a growl, and Gideon’s chest grew constricted when Carter drew away. He hunched his shoulders, as if trying to make himself smaller, and Gideon glanced away, trying to soften. “We have to be getting close to an entrance soon.” He wasn’t sure if he sounded any friendlier than he had a moment ago.
The cave arched into a bend to their right. There had been little divergence in the cave system, oddly enough, only variations of wide caverns leading them forward melding into small passageways they had to take one at a time.
They were walking in a moderate sized passage. Carter was close enough that Gideon could feel the heat rolling off his skin, and their arms brushed every so often. It set Gideon’s nerves on fire, and he tried not to flinch and startle Carter.
It was also close enough to feel Carter still shivering. Gideon’s stomach rolled. He couldn’t help. He’d once been one of the most coveted assassins and fighters for his respective coteries, and yet he could do nothing as Carter suffered beside him.
Then he realised Carter had been talking, and Gideon shook his head. “What?”
Carter ducked his head. He was playing with his hands, and Gideon could see that even in the lowlighting, there was a faint shimmer of sweat of his brow. “Um. Did you mean what you, um, said? That you should never have let- never should have let me come?”
Of all the things Carter could have said, Gideon hadn’t expected that one. Then again, there was a lot of things Carter had done that Gideon hadn’t expected. Kissing him, for one. He was drunk. “You won’t be hurt if I hadn’t,” Gideon pointed out, levelling his tone.
He heard an odd noise echo through the caves, and it took him a moment to realise that it had been Carter. A noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh. Gideon wrinkled his brow, and Carter avoided his gaze. He wrapped his arms around himself instead.
“What?” Gideon asked again. He could feel something unspoken emitting from Carter, something he didn’t know how to decipher. It also struck him that this was one of the most confrontational tones he’d ever heard from Carter despite the staggering.
“It’s just- you couldn’t have, um. You couldn’t have known that,” Carter said. Now he turned to meet Gideon’s gaze. His eyes seemed to glitter faintly, but it could easily have been Gideon’s eyes acting up after so long in the dark. “You found me. What’s to say the coteries wouldn’t have too?”
Gideon opened his mouth and- and shut it. He didn’t have an answer to that. He hadn’t considered it, honestly. But- but still-
“I could be dead now,” Carter said. He made it sound conversational, and Gideon’s heart palpitated. “I mean, um. Well, you and Isha and Whisper. Finn. It was probably the safest, um. Safest place for me.” Gideon could see the second his expression dropped. He tried to concentrate on the dirt smeared across Carter’s cheek, so he didn’t have to look at his crushed look. “You really don’t, um. You really dislike me with you, don’t you? Um, really dislike… um, me.”
Gideon stopped so abruptly he had to bite back a yelp of pain that tried to escape his throat. He gurgled, a strangled, strange noise that bounced off the cavern walls. Carter paused and turned to face him, and Gideon tried not to openly gape at him. “You think I don’t like you?” Gideon asked, blinking.
Carter shrunk farther back into his shoulders and shrugged awkwardly. There was a distant dripping noise from somewhere else in the cave. “I mean- um, yeah? I’m really inconvenient, I don’t know how to, um, fight. You don’t like horses.” His brow was so deeply furrowed Gideon worried it might get stuck there. “You haven’t- um well, given me reason to think otherwise.”
Thinking back- oh. Gideon hadn’t, had he? Had he always been so abrasive to Carter? Yes. Too cruel, too harsh, too blunt. A weapon.
“Carter, I-” Gideon’s stomach turned, nausea crawling in his gut and in his throat. He tried to force himself not to look down, at the ground or at the place the brand was on Carter’s chest. “No? No, it’s- the opposite. I like you, I do, I’m just… rotten at this, I guess. Isha’s the only friend I’ve ever had? I don’t- I wasn’t raised to for this, I don’t know… I love that you love the horses so much, that you don’t know how to fight. You’re so gentle with them. I don’t know how to do that, I don’t know how to be gentle. I don’t know how-” Carter was watching him with an expression Gideon had never seen on him before and he had to swallow around a thickness in his throat. “I don’t know how to brave like you.”
For a moment, Carter only watched him, and Gideon suddenly felt dumb for saying all that. That’s what he got for trying to be sentimental, trying to be gentle. He was no good at it- and why had he said that he loved the things about Carter?
Then Carter blinked at him, several times, and tilted his head. Gideon did not think about stretching up to kiss him now that he was sober. He did not.
“Brave?” Carter asked, and then laughed breathily. “Gideon- I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but um. I’m not brave? I’m terrified- um. All the time. Everything terrifies me. I’m the opposite of brave. Why-?”
“But you do everything anyway,” Gideon said. He swallowed again. “You’re scared and you do it all anyway. I couldn’t do half the things you could.”
Carter’s mouth pinched. Gideon tried not to stare. “What? Yes, you could-”
He was impulsive. He was stupidly impulsive. Gideon wouldn’t be able to answer why he had done it later, only that his mind had gotten hazy and his leg hurt, and he couldn’t get the image of Carter leaning down to press gently against Gideon out of his mind.
Except when he stepped forward and leaned up to kiss Carter, he ended up practically headbutting him and smashed their noses together. Carter flinched, and Gideon was immediately drawing away.
“See? See, I don’t know how to be gentle-” Gideon was maybe breathing a little too hard. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Carter. I didn’t-”
And then Carter had bent down, carefully taking Gideon’s wrist in his hand, and pressed into Gideon’s mouth.
What- oh. What was he supposed to do? Where did his hands go? His nose was throbbing, and his leg had begun to burn when he’d tried to stretch on it. But Carter was warm – warmer than he should be, but it was so icy down here that Gideon had to stop caring in that moment. His lips were dry and cracking but so were Gideon. He tasted a bit foul, like copper and bile and old socks, but Gideon didn’t care. He probably did too.
His hands had found their way up to the back of Carter’s neck and he’d twisted away from having another nose collision.
And he was kissing Carter.
A shriek suddenly echoed through the cave around them and they sprang apart. Carter raised his hand to touch his mouth and Gideon was pretty sure he had just bit Carter’s mouth and hurt him and he was the worst-
Carter was laughing. Carter had dropped his hand again. His eyes were crinkled, and Gideon could see the off-white of his teeth. And he was laughing, bright and lovely and beautiful. And Gideon found that he was too. A small band of bats flew by then, and Carter followed them with his eyes still sparkling.
If someone had told him years ago that he’d actually kiss someone, a beautiful boy in a dank and musty cave no less, Gideon would have scoffed. He didn’t do this, the soft or the romantic. Or any of it.
“Who’s there?”
And just like that, the moment was shattered. Gideon grabbed Carter to pull behind him and yanked his short swords out, muscles aching at how quickly he grew tense. Carter grabbed his arm, and Gideon forced himself to allow it despite how impractical it was.
“Who’s asking?” Gideon called back. His knuckles turned white around the hilts of his blades, and his leg killed as he put weight on it to go into a defensive stance.
“My name is Félix. Your turn.”
He could feel a shiver from Carter behind him, and Gideon set his jaw together. It could easily be another coterie trap. Out of one danger and into another, or something like that. “Gideon.”
There was a pause. Then- “You don’t happen to have a Carter with you, do you?” Gideon felt his fingers twitch on the hilts of his blade. He frowned and glanced over his shoulder at Carter’s widened eyes. There were dark smudges beneath them, and Gideon was made once again uncomfortably aware of their situation. “The two of you are expected by your companions. Isha, Whisper, Finn, and Shiloh. Isha said that you wouldn’t trust it wasn’t a trap. She told me that a kitten was with you?”
Carter’s hand squeezed Gideon’s arm, and Gideon felt some of the tension drained through his fingers. He still held on to his blades, but pulled Carter forward with him as he made his way towards the voice.
They found the man standing with a woman beside him. Both had long spears, but they were both holding them idly, making no motions to use them. The man, Félix, pulled a waterskin off his belt and held it out to Gideon without taking a step forward, letting Gideon be the first to approach.
He shifted his hand backwards and offered his left blade to Carter, who did not take it at first. When Gideon glanced back, Carter stared at him with wide eyes. Gideon shifted it towards his hand and hope he got the message. He just wanted it to ready, wanted Carter to be ready, in case.
When Carter finally grabbed the blade from Gideon, Gideon turned back and shifted towards Félix and the woman. He pointedly made sure not to visibly limp, even though it sparked pain enough to see white. He took the waterskin and stepped back again. He pushed the waterskin at Carter. “But-” Carter started, and Gideon shoved it at his chest again.
Gideon didn’t wait to watch Carter drink. He allowed himself to relax, somewhat, and eyed Félix and the woman cautiously. “Isha and the others, they are okay then?” he asked.
“They are. Though one of them is ill, and the other girl, something happened to her,” Félix said. Gideon felt the waterskin against the back of his hand and gratefully took it from Carter. He tipped his head back and downed the rest of what Carter had not, the cool liquid easing the cracking of his throat and lips. He was breathing heavier when he finished, and Carter watched him with a slight frown.
“Let’s return to camp,” the woman said, eyeing them both with an unreadable expression. “I’m sure the others are anxious to see you both again.”
Glancing back at Carter, Gideon let out a sigh. It still could be a trap, but how would anyone else know that Isha called Carter Kitten? They weren’t associated with Vasile anyway, or they would have referred to her as Valérie.
He made it only a few strides forward with Carter when Félix insisted Gideon take his spear as a walking stick. Gideon was reluctantly grateful but took it less for himself and more because Carter had watched him with wide, hopeful eyes. And then there was the pleased little twitch of his lips.
He’d kissed those lips. It left Gideon with an odd sort of contentment- oh. The content quickly soured.
Shiloh was going to kill him.
* * *
Carter stayed behind Gideon the rest of the time and tried not to act too visibly giddy. Which, considering how miserable he felt generally and the fact that every time he blinked, he saw Adrienne’s slit throat behind his eyelids, was probably off.
But Gideon had kissed him back. Sure, he’d bitten him too, but Carter couldn’t bring himself to care about that. His mouth was fine now anyway – and the pain was a far cry from the rest of his wounds.
He was exhausted though, and he was sure his feet would fall off at any given moment. The blood had dried for the most part once they’d gotten out of the cave and they hadn’t been given a chance to cut themselves on the soft undergrowth. The pine needles and sticks weren’t necessarily nice, but they were feathers compared to the jagged stone.
That was all forgotten the moment he saw Shiloh sitting beside Whisper in front of a fire, petting Koshar on her lap. Isha was sitting nearby, pale and sickly looking, and Finn was hovering nearby with a… stick in his mouth?
He froze for a moment, and it meant that when Isha glanced up, she saw Gideon first. She let out a quiet cry and scrambled to her feet with some difficulty. Gideon made a step forward as if to help her, and nearly collapsed to the ground when he put too much weight on his injured leg.
Everyone was glancing over then, however, and it took mere seconds for Shiloh to spot him. Carter’s heart swelled in his chest and already, tears stung in his eyes.
“Carter!” she cried, already on her feet and knocking Koshar off. She was in front of him in the blink of an eye and tears were already rolling down her face.
He wrapped his arms around her, and Shiloh tilted her nose into his shoulder. They were both shaking, and Carter knew now he was crying. He squeezed her, maybe a little hard, but he hadn’t seen Shiloh in- in- months? Had it been months now? It was longest he’d been away from his sister and-
“Divines, Carter, you’re so hot.” Shiloh pulled away and put her hand on his face, tears staining her cheeks as he expression twisted in concern. “And your arm! What did they do to you?”
Carter suddenly felt a childish fear rise in his chest and drew away from Shiloh’s wandering hands. She looked a little startled. “It’s okay, I’m okay,” he assured her, but his voice hardly worked. He swallowed back the sobs rising in his throat. Then, breathing shallowly, he murmured, “I missed you.”
A sob tore itself from his throat, and he buried his face in his hands. He had missed her, and he wasn’t sure she was what he remembered at all. Her hair was short, there was something dark in her eyes, and there was the brains behind it all, behind all the years of lying.
“Shiloh,” he heard Winnie’s soothing voice, and then a noise of protest. A moment later, cool fingers were wrapping around his wrists and easing his hands away from his face. He found Winnie in front of him and allowed them to pull him in a hug that allowed him a moment to regain his breath and his mind.
He had so many questions, there was so much racing through his mind. It had been easy, in the cave, despite everything. It had been quiet and normally that was grounds for his mind making a cacophony to fill the silence, but it had settled into him. He’d been too tired, maybe, he wasn’t sure. But now it was all back, and it tore at his stomach and chewed on his mind and he was swimming and he hated how fast everything was spinning.
And the fear- it was back. There were so many people and what if one of them got it into their head to hurt him, to hurt them. Everything was so loud, and so bright, and his nose ached. He could imagine the wool again, back over his head and diluting his senses, stealing away his means of-
“Carter,” Winnie murmured, drawing away. “You’re here with us, you’re safe.”
Something in the way they said it made Carter take a moment to catch his breath, made him believe them. He shivered, Gideon’s shirt too small and too thin to give him any protection from the nip of the wind sifting through the trees. It was more than that however, and he knew it.
He wiped at his cheeks and took deep breaths. Winnie smiled at him as he calmed down, and from the corner of his eyes, he could see Shiloh watching him with a despondent expression. His heart twisted.
Winnie stepped away and Isha had extracted herself from a hug for Gideon to do the same to Carter. Carter wrapped his arms around her. “It’s good to have you back, Kitten,” she murmured. Carter found he was chuckling, and it was wet, but he meant it.
“Yeah, um-” he took another deep breath. “It’s um, it’s really good to be back.”
And then he began to sob again, the burn of the laudanum at the back of his throat returning like he’d never left.
Finn did not hug him in the end but did offer him a soft smile and a dip of his hat and said, “Horses missed you.” Which, of course, made Carter feel instantly ten times better and he insisted to be led to them.
The group followed him, Shiloh hovering back at his side and Carter allowing her with a smile that he wasn’t sure whether he could really mean right now or not. It was too much, too fast, and he just- needed time.
Reese nuzzled him affectionately when he hugged her neck, and even Villa offered a sweet lick to his hand – even though he was sure she only was looking for treating when he held out his palm. Fabella nicked excitedly and he rubbed her nose. Achille sniffed him. Napoleon pricked his ears forward and breathed heavily onto his face.
He glanced over to see Gideon, still standing for goodness knew what reason, and looking incredibly put out and in pain that Carter turned to make the suggestion they sit down.
And then a tall woman, almost as tall as Isha, approached them with a much shorter woman, and approached Carter with a bright smile. Carter eyed her dubiously and shifted closer to Shiloh who allowed him to grab her wrist.
“You must be Carter,” the woman said. Gideon shuffled closer at Isha prompting and the woman glanced at him. “And you must be Gideon. I’ve heard about you both from your friends here. My name is Malika, and this is my right hand, Sauda.”
“Malika as in Malika Okorie?” Gideon asked, a half-scowl forming on his expression. “You found another coterie, Isha?”
Sauda snorted and grinned unabashedly. Malika’s eyes glittered as her smile widened. “You two are in need of healers and sustenance,” she declared, “and there are some matters to catch you up on, I’m sure. Let us attend to such matters, and I will explain everything you missed escaping one of your coteries.”
And because Villa couldn’t be mistaken for a sweet mare, she leaned forward, and nipped Carter’s shoulder. When he yelped, she reeled back in surprise, and then whinnied as if in triumph.
Yeah. He was safe with them. -
Chapter 30
Spoiler
Two days after they’d been rescued by Malika’s crew and reunited with their own, they had packed up and were making for Grand Verterre.
Carter was on Reese and his grip on the reins was maybe a little tight. Reese was a saint mare and didn’t throw her head until he pulled too hard and Carter pat her neck in apology. He saw Isha shoot him a worried look when he said nothing aloud- he normally did.
He wasn’t sure he could open his mouth with getting sick.
There was so much to wrap his head around. Shiloh was back, Whisper did have magic, they were a bastard child of the last Comte, Isha was sick, Finn had a memory lock put on by the Comtesse. And more. He was so tired. Hadn’t it been “get Shiloh”? When had this turned into some kind of power grab? He hadn’t voiced his complaints. Didn’t want to, not when everyone seemed all for this idea.
And Gideon was avoiding him. Carter hadn’t been certain at first, but now he knew. Gideon had been disappearing every time Carter was looking for him, a feat with a possibly broken leg. Or he needed rest. Or Shiloh was pulling him away to talk to him.
Maybe Carter was trying to avoid Shiloh just a little bit. They hadn’t talked about the whole lying and coterie thing yet. Carter was putting it off, he knew, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to have to look Shiloh in the eyes when she told him she had been lying all this time. And for what? To protect him? He wasn’t a fragile, sickly child anymore.
“Hey,” Shiloh greeted quietly. Carter’s stomach twisted into knots, but he turned to face her as she rode up beside him nonetheless. She was riding one of Malika’s horses, a big, pretty chestnut gelding. Shiloh smiled when he glanced in her direction. Carter swallowed. “How are you feeling?”
He shrugged. He didn’t know anymore. Carter caught Gideon’s gaze where he rode several yards to the left, ahead of Carter and Shiloh, next to Isha. Gideon flinched and glanced away. With a sigh, Carter glanced down at his reins. “I’m okay,” he said. He was lying and couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty about it. Not after what she’d done.
“Are you sure?” Shiloh asked. She sounded so genuine Carter wanted to cry. He’d thought she’d been genuine before too, and he’d been wrong. How did he know when she was being honest with him anymore? “Is there anything I can get you? There’s water, or food. I can go grab some-”
“Shiloh,” he murmured, cheeks turning hot. “Please, I’m, um. I’m okay.”
A frown settled across his sister’s features and despite everything, Carter’s shoulders slumped at the sight. He tried to focus on the crunch of Reese’s hooves against the lush grass of the plains-forest border they were skirting the edge of.
“I just want to-”
“Shiloh, stop fussing over him,” Isha called. She had guided Fabella closer to them, and Gideon had followed with what looked like reservation. He wouldn’t meet Carter’s gaze.
Shiloh’s fingers flexed on her reins. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she said, but sounded more put out then her words implied. Carter shot Isha a grateful look, and if Gideon noticed- well.
“She’s right,” Gideon said, quietly. “Isha is.”
And then, something Carter had rarely seen from his sister- Shiloh bristled. She turned a sharp look the Carter only caught a trace of on Gideon. “He’s branded because of you,” she snapped. Gideon glanced down at Villa’s ears, jaw tightening, and made no attempts to say anything back.
Gideon had jumped straight from Carter’s question of why he thought everything was his fault to Shiloh. A pit opened in his stomach, but more importantly, his brow settled forward and anger simmered in his chest. “It’s not his fault, Shiloh,” Carter said. He was surprised by how low and steady his own voice was, and by the startled look on Shiloh’s face as she whirled around to face him, she was too.
Then her expression hardened again- nothing like the look she’d given Gideon though. “None of this would have happened if he could leave well enough alone,” she said. For how much malice was in her words, her tone was surprisingly gentle, and it made Carter’s chest contract. He clacked his teeth together, unable to glance at Shiloh. The anger grew hot. “You don’t know him like I do, Carter,” Shiloh said quietly, as if to amend for what she was saying.
“I don’t know you like I thought I did either,” he bit out without missing a beat. And there it was, the truth of it all. The festering, grisly wound of honesty. It was the most genuine thing between them right now, and it was the thing that hurt the most.
Everyone around them, idle chatter and peals of laughter, fell silent. The caravan was filled with the muted crunch of hooves and the sweet call of birdsong, and the tension that seemed to crackle through the air.
Shiloh was silent and staring at him with widened eyes. Past her, Gideon was watching Carter, something almost curious in his expression. The anger twisted in Carter’s chest and he set his shoulders, turning back to his sister.
“Gideon did not ask me to come, did not force me to come. He did not, um, he did not ask the coteries to capture me. He did not ask them to- to brand me. You know what he did, every time I was in danger? He saved me. A lot. But-” Carter had to look away now, a lump rising in his throat. “But you scared me. You disappeared and you assumed- you decided that I should just be okay with that.
“I wasn’t. I didn’t know what to do – you left me a note, Shiloh, a note. I only had Whisper left, and they knew as much as I did. I had to be told by two strangers that you were in a coterie, who didn’t know I existed. You could have died, and I would never have known. You’ve been lying to me for years, for- for- for years. You know how I am and you should have known it would be easier for me to kno- to know every-everything. It hurt, um… it hurts to know you don’t trust me and I don’t- I don’t care what you say about keeping me safe. I, um. What would telling me have done? Prepared me for what- you- what you were getting yourself into?” Tears burned his eyes and Carter clenched his jaw shut, the anger dissipating from his chest. His mind churned and he was so tired of crying, over and over again. He tried to laugh instead, and it was strangled. “So dangerous. Knowl-knowledge. Preparation.”
He scrubbed at his cheeks and stared resolutely down at Villa’s neck. There it was it- that was it. That was all of it. Everything that had been tearing him apart since the day he’d found the note, evolved overtime to take different forms, but still the same beast in the end.
“I- I thought you would be uncomfortable knowing,” Shiloh said, and sounded uncharacteristically small. Carter still didn’t look at her, but there was a strain to her voice that spoke of unshed tears of her own. Carter once more wiped at his cheeks and this time, the gesture was more aggressive. “I didn’t want to involve you.”
“I, um. I wish that, um, you had let me decide,” Carter murmured. He took a deep breath and blinked sharply away any tears planning to fall. He would not crumble, not this time. “Involving and informing are different things.”
There was a long moment of silence from his sister that quickly made Carter believe she wasn’t going to say anything to that. After all of that- nothing. She wouldn’t say anything. But then he heard the squeak of her saddle as she shifted, and a sniff. “I’m sorry,” she said, hardly more than a whisper. “I’m so sorry, Carter.”
All the fight left Carter’s body and he was once again just- tired. He was tired. He didn’t want to be riding to the Capital, did not want to worry about civil wars or the island or coteries. It’s for Finn. He needs this too.
“Just-” Carter glanced up and tightened his reins. “Give me, um. Time. To forgive you, to think. Please.”
He turned Reese around sharply and rode in a wide arc behind Shiloh, before nudging Reese with his left foot – still aching and sore from all the cuts but at least he had boots now – and riding up to Gideon’s left side.
Gideon was looking at him with wide, uncertain eyes, as if completely bewildered by Carter’s company. Carter ignored the look in favour of glancing behind, where Whisper and Finn were riding Achille and Napoleon close together, in discussion. But they’d heard, it was clear by the way both of them were watching him.
But where Finn glanced away as if to look for birds in the canopy, Whisper offered him one of their quiet smiles and waved. Maybe it was strange for him to wave back, to feel a little more comforted by seeing Winnie when they’d lied to him too.
Or, not so much lied as never told him the truth. But they’d been protecting themselves, and while it stung that they might not have trusted Carter enough to tell the truth, he could understand it more than Shiloh’s reasoning.
He turned back around. Villa had twisted her neck to sniff Reese, who was stoutly ignoring her. Villa squealed in annoyance, and flicked her tail, but then returned to simply trudging forward. Gideon, Carter could spy from his peripheral vision, was still watching him oddly.
“Hey, Kitten,” Isha leaned forward so Carter could see her behind Gideon. She grinned, and despite the gauntness of her cheeks and how frizzed her hair was, she still looked more alive than he felt. It loosened his chest a little bit more. “Anyone ever teach you how to bake?”
He shook his head and Isha sat back, spurring Fabella forward slightly so they could talk while Gideon sat idle between them. Gideon didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.
“Sounds like it’s time for you to learn. As soon as we have a kitchen and proper supplies. You might know how to make salads but learn how to make bread and you can make Gideon do anything you want.”
Carter glanced at Gideon now and found his cheeks a deep, ruddy hue. Something warmed in his gut- not that he wasn’t already from the illness, but at least this one was pleasant. He loved Isha for taking him mind off all the things he didn’t want to think about.
“Freshly baked bread is good,” Gideon grumbled. Carter pursed him lips, his cheeks still sticky with dried tears but at least the compression was gone. Gideon shot him a glance, and his features softened when he saw- well, whatever he saw.
“Introduce him to pastries. You’ll probably destroy any notions of danger Gideon thinks he has left.”
Fabella tossed her head and bounced, as if in agreement, and Carter allowed himself to smile now. Gideon was still pretending to look sour about it, but- but this was good. Despite the circumstances and the lies and all the bad stuff in between, Carter had never known joy like this before.
He’d never known what it was to have a proper family. And maybe this wasn’t it, but this was where he felt warmest, felt safest.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to forgive Shiloh. He needed to know where she fit into this new pattern, where she belonged now that everything had changed. And he needed her to understand that he wasn’t glass, which she seemed to believe now. He was still five again, to her. Still lying in bed with the same illness that took their mother, small and weak and crying because he didn’t understand what was happening.
But he wasn’t five anymore. And he needed Shiloh to get that before anything else.
* * *
“Carter! I have dinner!”
Carter was up so quickly he nodded over the books he’d stacked into a makeshift castle. He ignored the mess he’d just created in favour of sprinting into the kitchen to find Shiloh setting down what looked to be leftover chicken scraps. He beamed and allowed Shiloh only enough time to step away from the table before he ran to her and wrapped his arms around her waist.
He could feel the tremble of her gentle laugh and squeezed slightly. “Missed you,” he murmured into her hip. Her hand carded though his curls and Carter sighed happily, melted into her touch.
“I’ve been cleaning in Bazzoli’s house most of the day,” she chuckled. Carter reached up to tug on her hair, in his own turn, and had little trouble considering how long it was. “And you were only in the barn.”
“Yeah, but you went to market during the afternoon,” he said. He finally pulled away then and clamoured up onto one of the three wooden chairs. Shiloh reached over to ruffle his tight curls once more, which Carter screwed his face up for and ducked away. It made Shiloh smile though, so even though Carter pretended to be dissatisfied, his chest was warm. He was cosy.
He did his best to keep himself still as Shiloh collected plates and silverware for them. She left only to get them water, and then returned to split the chicken between them. If she gave extra to Carter, he didn’t notice.
“Did you see Clarice?” Carter asked, shifting in his seat to pull his legs underneath him.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Shiloh scolded. Carter swallowed and murmured an apology before shifting again. “I did. She says hi. I can try to take you into town next time I go,” she promised. Carter squirmed with ill-concealed excitement and stuffed another too-large bite of chicken into his mouth. Shiloh eyed him with a slight frown, pausing as if readying herself to leap up if he began to choke.
That didn’t happen, and Shiloh relaxed once again.
Carter was sent to bed with a great measure of reluctance and only after Shiloh had promised a story. He observed the clutter of books across the floor, and began to put them back on the shelf before Shiloh came in. He didn’t want to worry her with the messes he was creating, and he needed to clean it up anyway.
He had only started to scramble into his bed and under the scratchy, raggedy blankets when Shiloh slipped through their bedroom door. She eyed him, mouth twitching at his shifting, and he grinned at her. It was toothy, he knew, missing the teeth to both sides of his fronts.
“What trouble were you getting into?” she asked, as it was clear he had not gotten into bed when she had told him too. She walked over to her bed across the room and opened the dresser beside it to pull out her nightclothes. She set the aside, on her bed, and then approached the chair next to Carter’s bedside.
“Nothing,” he said quickly. Shiloh gave him a look and Carter shrugged, feigning as much innocence as he could.
Shiloh finally hummed and sat down beside him. “What kind of story do you want? We’ve gone through all the books in the house five times over. Surely, you can’t want any of those? Besides, you can read them all yourself now.”
Considering, Carter chewed on his fingers. Shiloh pulled his hand away from his mouth, as she always did when she caught him down this.
Then he straightened against his pillow. “A horse story!” he declared.
His sister laughed and shook her head in exasperation. “You ask for a horse story every night,” she pointed out. “You really don’t want to hear about anything else?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Horses. They’re my friends! I always want to hear about them.”
“Okay,” Shiloh said, smiling down at him. She set her hands in her lap and pursed her lips together for a moment. Then she hummed. “Okay. There are some that believe that horses with the tails of a whale exist in lakes. I’ve heard it’s a thing over in the United Kingdom, or something like that. The sailors from Meera that drift into town sometimes talk about it.”
Carter’s eyes were bright and wide, mouth slightly parted. “But Merra’s all the way in the north!” As if that was the point Shiloh was making at all.
“Ailes is all the way in the northeast. Merra is below that, almost directly east of the centre of the island,” Shiloh explained. They were the only two coastal towns, however, and he got them mixed up all the time.
He considered this. “Where the Spire is?” Carter wondered, trying to imagine a big black tower sticking out of the ground. That’s what Clarice had said, anyway. Something about a big, tall tower. Maybe it wasn’t black- he couldn’t remember what she had said.
“Yes. Bit south of it,” Shiloh said. “But you’re getting better at geography.”
His face screwed up. “Don’t care about gee- don’t care. Tell me about water ponies.”
Shiloh laughed, and went back into the tails of mythical horses that dwelled in lakes. Carter tried to picture it- a horse with fins or a fish’s tail for hindquarters. He tried to imagine Ginger as a water pony. She was the smallest horse they owned, a Mérens, and maybe she wasn’t the best candidate for it. She was pregnant then.
Then Carter frowned as Shiloh continued to talk. How was a water horse supposed to give birth? He’d watched a doctor help one of their Mérens deliver a filly last year – a young horse Carter adored he’d called Reese when Bazzoli didn’t name her, like he didn’t name any of his horses – and he couldn’t imagine a horse having a whale’s tail and trying to do that.
He was half-listening to Shiloh and half trying to figure out how a water horse would even function, and Carter was so caught up in doing both that he didn’t notice when his eyelids began to feel heavy. He didn’t notice was Shiloh’s voice drifted away.
And he was already asleep when Shiloh shifted him lower on his bed, so he wasn’t sleeping propped up on the wall, when she tucked the covers over his shoulders and leaned down to press a kiss into his dark curls. He didn’t hear her say “I love you” or “goodnight”, but she smiled anyway, and put out the lantern Carter must have put on at some point as the night had fallen.
Carter dreamed of water horses, in a world he wasn’t afraid to swim, and the sun baked the land with a pleasant warmth.
Chapter 31Spoiler
Gideon did not have any kind of eye for beauty or art, as Isha liked to remind him constantly throughout his whole life.
However, he could admit that Grand Verterre was a true marvel. Although, if he was more delighted by the wonder on Carter’s face as he stared at the looming stone walls. Made out of slabs of multi-hued stone, the sun reflected off them like a diluted prism, and Gideon could at least concede he understood where Carter’s awe was coming from.
It was quiet as they walked through the city gate- huge, gilded iron, with swirling designs that settled nicely beneath a pale, curling archway. The click of their horses’ hooves against the cobblestone pathway and clink of the guard’s armour that were granting them passage was the only noise that filled the air. Until they drew further into the city, where the bustle of life and commotion filled the air.
The buildings were founded on stone, but some had deigned to build sturdy wooden structure as well. The city inside was diverse inside as it was outside- some houses were two stories and made of stone with wooden flourishes, some were only one, and made of wood or brick.
They’d split up early that morning. The group that entered the Capital now was Gideon, Isha, Carter, Finn, Shiloh, Malika, two more of her crew that Gideon didn’t know the names of. And Whisper, who had a hood drawn up that concealed their face from prying eyes or, more importantly, assassin’s eyes. They had debated doing the same to Finn, but Finn had possessively grabbed his hat and refused.
And to Whisper’s disappointment, they’d had to leave Koshar behind. They didn’t want him getting lost, magically attuned to them or not, and if the assassins knew Whisper had a cat, that was also a no-go. Sauda had promised to take good care of him.
Days after the argument between Carter and Shiloh, and Carter was still hovering mostly at Whisper’s side or between Gideon and Isha. Isha was doing her best to entertain him much of the time, but it was clear she was getting weaker. Carter was too, swaying on his horse or coughing hard enough to make Gideon’s throat ache in sympathy.
At a distance, Shiloh could be seen watching him, eyebrows upturned and mouth so pinch together her lips turned white. She was respecting Carter’s request for space, at least, and she had apologised to Gideon one night. She’d looked reserved about it, but Gideon accepted it anyway.
He probably needed as much leverage as he could get for when it inevitably came out that he and Carter were… something.
Who was he kidding? She was still going to kill him when she found out they’d kissed back in the cave.
Gideon jumped when he felt a hand suddenly grip his arm. He found Carter, turned away from him, and followed the path of his gaze to see a squadron of guards riding a variety of different, glossy-pelted horses. Carter’s hand clenched on Gideon’s arm and Gideon tried not to wriggle with excitement.
Ever since the cave, it’d been something new he’d learned about Carter. He was incredibly touchy. Gideon didn’t know how it had never come up, but thinking back, he had always liked to reach out to Whisper at any given opportunity. Gideon just regretted it had taken this long for Carter to get comfortable with him.
“Look at how well they collect! And their proportions! And their coats-” Carter broke off to make an incomprehensible noise. He turned them, beaming, and then subdued himself as he gauged Gideon’s interest level in what he was talking about.
Honestly, Gideon had no idea what Carter was saying at all. What was so exciting about how a horse was proportioned? What was collecting? What about their coats? But Carter looked more alive than he had in days, and even though the sickness burned bright in his eyes, so did excitement.
“I don’t know a word of what you just said,” Gideon said, and then winced when Carter deflated. He grabbed Carter’s hand before he could pull away and tried to offer his best, reassuring smile. “But tell me about it?”
Carter started off quietly, uncertain. But when Gideon tried to keep him engaged, trying to think of the least dumb-sounding questions about horses, and Carter slowly grew more animated. He was saying something about toplines, and the centre of a horse’s balance, and the muscles in their neck and how to keep them fit and healthy.
He noticed Isha had drifted to Shiloh’s side at some point. They were sneaking glances over in Gideon and Carter’s direction. Shiloh still carried that put out look she had ever since their fight, but whatever Isha was saying seemed to be making her carry herself a little taller and make her eyes gleam slightly. Gideon hoped that was a good gleam and not a gold, stormy gleam.
Malika cut into their conversation as Carter started talking about horse colours, from Gideon’s prompting, and told them they should find a stable to give the horses rest and then an inn they could stay at.
They dismounted their horses afterwards, save for Gideon who had a splint under his trousers but was still having difficulty walking. Carter went through all their steeds to check how hot they were and how their legs were – he was looking for swelling, he had told Gideon – and then they stopped a guard to ask for a stable. The guard had glanced back towards where Whisper had their hood pulled too far forward to see their face and then waved them off towards the eastern wall.
As they walked, Gideon noticed two things that stood out about the city. One, a tower that stretched just taller than the fortress’ walls – because it was the Capital city, but it was still a fortress and had been built for defences after the Spanish-French territory dispute over the island – that curled to a sharp point. Two, the Ivory Cathedral’s twin steeples. He could see the bells glint in the sun, and the third and final apex in the centre, stretching up as if to reach for the Heavens, with a brilliant white cross at the point.
“You know, this wouldn’t actually be too bad a place to set up shop.” Gideon glanced at Isha, who had drifted back to his side. He sent a glance towards Carter, still nearby. Whisper was pointing things out to him, with Finn interjecting every few moments with commentary of his own.
“You’d want to live here?” Gideon asked, eyeing Isha a little warily. She shrugged. He tried not to frown too hard at how pale she looked under the sunlight and the sweat glistening on her forehead. “You want my jacket? It’s in my saddlebag.”
She shook her head. Her hair followed the motion listlessly. “Seriously? I’m burning up. I’ll just be glad when this dumb thing is gone.” Isha then sobered slightly and exhaled a drawn-out breath. There were rings under her eyes, despite the amount of sleep she’d been getting. “Hey, you notice how quiet it is? I mean, I don’t know what it’s like all the time, but for the Comte’s Keep its… quiet.”
Gideon paused and tried to listen. There was commotion all around them, birds flittering overhead, passer-by’s talking with bowed heads, horse hooves clacking against the cobblestone. There was a lovely, cool breeze that drifted through the giant pathways. Wide enough to march an army through without difficulty, Gideon noted.
But Isha was right, it was… quieter than one would expect a city to be. And then there was the sound of coughs from someone in the street, and more than one person looked gaunt or exhausted.
“I think Winnie had a point,” Isha said, likely seeing the dawning on his expression. “It probably happened after the release of the magic, and what place has the most natives in one place on Île D'or?”
“If the Comtesse can heal them, why doesn’t she?” Gideon asked, keeping his voice down.
Isha shrugged. “Do I look like I know the woman’s motivations? She’s in league with the Frasers. Maybe it’s part of the plan? To reform the island, or whatever?”
“Does reforming the island mean wiping out the entire native population? The Highlanders are mostly natives to the island,” Gideon pointed out. They were coming to the stables- a tall, beautiful building with an almost flat roof and windows open all through the building. From the side, Gideon could see a few horse heads stretching out of their stalls.
When he glanced back at Isha and found her pursing her lips. She didn’t reply to that, not that Gideon had expected her to. He didn’t know how to answer that either.
And what about the origin? Where had this magical illness even come from?
Maybe he’d pull aside Whisper later to find out if they’d contemplated this anymore and come to any conclusions.
* * *
They got into an inn in the southeast sector of Grand Verterre. A relatively quiet, small place, but it had small buildings for rent, and it allowed them all to be in the same space. The Bacchiad was run by a small family, who were all sick according to the not-so-healthy looking barkeep who had been sweeping when they had walked in.
Everyone had hardly stepped into their little house and began to set down their supplies when Malika had made herself comfortable at the centre table and said, “We’re here to stop the poisoning of Comtesse Aelina. I suggest telling her.”
Gideon exchanged a glance with Isha as he set aside his saddlebag. Isha tugged Carter down onto a loveseat, where they both looked relieved to be sitting down. Carter’s breathing had become a soft wheeze, and he was already removing his boots to reveal the wraps on his feet. He might as well have been Finn, looking like that.
“Can we even get a private audience with her? Who’s going to talk to her?” Isha asked. Gideon collected his waterskin and held it out to her. She gratefully accepted it and took a long sip. Then she handed it to Carter. “You? No offence, but would she listen to you? She must know who you are.”
Malika and her two crew members had taken the paint off their face, but Gideon still had to agree with Isha on that front.
“Oh, I don’t dispute that,” Malika said. “You and the stable boy are in no fit state to be convincing anyone of anything. Hardly to be moving, in fact.”
“I can’t go,” Whisper said gently, from where they stood next to Shiloh in the little kitchen. Finn had settled at the table with Malika, who was gazing curiously at Whisper. “I fear the Comtesse knows who I am and… disagrees with me on personal grounds.”
Finn snorted and Isha threw- well, she threw something at him. Gideon could see what it was and it hardly disturbed Finn anyway. Gideon, his lower leg aching something fierce, sat down at the table despite partially wishing he’d gotten a place at the loveseat to stretch it out.
“So, um. Finn and Shiloh?” Carter asked, glancing between everyone.
Well- that only seemed like a terrible idea.
“I can go,” Gideon interjected before anyone could confirm anything. Carter looked nervous by this prospect, while Isha didn’t even try to hide her glare at him. “The three of us. We’re not going to be fighting, just talking. I’ll be fine.”
He didn’t want to have to say aloud that he didn’t trust Shiloh and Finn to get along to see the Comtesse. Not because anyone could set off Shiloh the way he could, but Finn and Shiloh knew each other the least of all of them. Gideon could at least act as a middle ground.
“But your leg,” Shiloh said. Gideon looked over at her in surprise. She looked a little pale against the wooden walls behind her, which was odd considering she didn’t have the illness as well. “You shouldn’t strain yourself.”
“But he’s got a point,” Finn said. This only added to further the surprise. “And also- what if the Comtesse recognises me? I mean, she put a memory lock on me for a reason. What if my presence makes her decide not to listen to us?”
“Or it might help,” Isha argued. “You know what, it’s settled. Gideon, Finn, and Shiloh. But Gideon, you will take a stick, or a cane, or something. I’ll break your other leg if you injure yourself anymore.”
Carter still looked uncertain beside her. “That seems, um. Counterproductive.”
Gideon didn’t have much time to react positively to Carter’s comment when he heard a sharp intake of breath to his right. He turned to see Shiloh with her eyes screwed shut, and a white-knuckle grip on the counter behind her.
“Shiloh?” Whisper said. They reached up to touch her cheek gently, as if feeling for a temperature. Shiloh flinched away and began to gasp for air.
Her legs started to buckle and, as they did, her eyes opened. They glowed, brilliant gold, much brighter than Gideon had seen them before. Threads of a similar golden light began to flicker all around her body, and a popping noise filled the air.
“Shiloh!” Carter was trying to rush past to get to his sister, and Finn caught his wrist before he could get close. Carter was colourless enough he looked like he might pass out, and Finn pushed him back.
“Don’t get near her, it’ll hurt you,” Finn hissed. Carter struggled against him, but it was clear who the stronger of the two was in that moment. Carter probably could have won, if he wasn’t weakened by the illness. Gideon watched, and wondered if he should be trying to help, but he turned back to Shiloh and was transfixed by whatever was happening to her.
He heard Carter calling for Shiloh, but a shrill whistle emanating from Shiloh was drowning him out. Whisper was holding Shiloh’s wrist with a wince carved into their features and saying something Gideon couldn’t make out. It sounded like “away”, but he couldn’t be sure.
His attention was dragged elsewhere when he saw a scuffle from the corner of his eyes. There was a stinging sensation through his body, but Carter was crumpling to the ground and Finn was trying to ease him down more gently with his own expression marred with pain.
Gideon was on his feet when he realised Isha was the same, curled into a ball with her hands fisted in her hair-
The shrill whistle suddenly disappeared, as did the stinging sensation in his body. The flare of pain from standing up throbbing in Gideon’s leg, but otherwise, he was all right.
Whisper was holding Shiloh up against the counter, and Shiloh was breathing heavily while staring at the floor somewhat drearily. Her head was lolled forward, like her neck had forgotten its own function. There were still faint gold lights wrapping around her.
Malika, nor her two crewmates, had moved. She looked between everyone mildly, and then back over at Shiloh and Whisper, who was murmuring something quietly to Shiloh that looked to be revitalising her. A little, in any case.
“Well,” Malika said, addressing the whole group. “What a well-put together bunch we make.”
Gideon glanced down at Carter, who looked small for all his height and had his knees now tucked to his chest. Finn, beside him, was rubbing his face vigorously.
Yeah. They’d be perfect when they went to go tell the Comtesse she was about to be poisoned. -
Chapter 32
Spoiler
Waiting for an audience with the Comtesse might have been all right. If they had decided to split the group up literally any other way.
Gideon sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair. They were waiting in the hallway of Comte’s Hall, which was a dining room plus throne room that served to act as a means of communication between the Comtesse and her people.
A guard at the end of the corridor watched them, standing in front of the door that supposed led up to the off-limits second story. A scribe had disappeared up there several minutes ago to ask for audience with the Comtesse.
“You’d think this would be just as noticeable as the White Cathedral or the… uh, tower. Towards the northwest,” Shiloh said. Her voice was tight, strained, and Gideon winced at the attempt to spark conversation.
Why had he agreed to this again?
He tapped his makeshift cane against the floor. Malika had asked one of her two companions, a woman who tended after Carter and Isha in their illness named Elizabeth. The other, a tall stoic man called Abraham, tended to keep to himself as he kept look-out for- well. Gideon couldn’t imagine anyone was coming after them yet, but he could appreciate the caution.
“The Spiral Tower?” Finn asked. He was standing up and Shiloh’s words at least stopped him from pacing. Gideon could appreciate that too. It’d been driving Gideon nuts. “It’s the Comtesse’s.”
“How do you know that?” Gideon asked. Finn’s eyes narrowed, but Gideon was trying hard to sound curious and not suspicious. That’s why he’d come, right? To try to keep the tension down? He was rubbish at this. Carter should have been here instead. Gideon would have taken a thousand illnesses if it meant Carter was okay.
Finn seemed to deem the question appropriate or at least non-offensive and tilted his chin. “It’s a popular landmark, but if you’re asking if I heard of it since entering the city… no. I know nobody’s allowed to go up there unless the Comtesse allows them to, but otherwise?” Finn shrugged and resumed pacing again. Gideon closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose. “I know that I know it, but I don’t know how. Probably where she keeps all the skeletons or something.” Finn snorted to himself.
Shiloh fidgeted on the chair beside Gideon. When he opened his eyes and glanced over at her, she was picking threads out of her skirt. Gideon reached over to swat her hand. “Stop,” he muttered, and kept his hand over her wrists. She frowned but allowed the gesture and flipped her hands over to tap on the side of his palm instead.
The corridor was tearfully boring. The wait might have made only slightly better if there had been something, anything. A painting, a plant. But it was just lacquered wooden planks that glistened in the lights that lined the white walls. There were shapes indented in them, but no other colours. There was probably some cultural or architectural message he was missing. Gideon didn’t care one way or another.
Then the door, also white, opened and nearly knocked into the guard. The scribe who’d been sent earlier apologised profusely with cheeks the colour of apples Gideon had seen in a market stall on the way over. The guard grunted and waved him off. He approached Gideon, Shiloh, and Finn with some amount of trepidation.
“The Comtesse- Lady- Comtesse Aelina will see you now!” If possible, the scribe flushed more, and bowed his head. “If you would follow me please, to her dayroom. The Comtesse’s. Please.”
Gideon stood up and did not wince as his leg burned. He tightened his grip on the half-spear and led the other two on after the scribe.
They were brought up a shadow-filled spiral staircase, and then down another corridor with more white walls. This one had paintings and portraits on the walls, however. They passed several doorways until the scribe brought them to the last door in the corner and gestured them inside. Gideon paused, expecting him to go first, but limped in when the scribe made no motions to do so.
The door opened into a high-vaulted ceiling of glass. Flowers blossomed around them, stretching up as if to reach the sunlight filtering in. The small pathway through the flora led to a large, open centre. A powder blue, ornamental rug covered much of the floor there. Chairs were set around a squat long table, white and wicker, and behind that, a loveseat. Sitting in the loveseat was, presumably, Comtesse Aelina.
After the revelation that this was Whisper’s half-sister, Gideon had expected someone that looked like them. Dark skin and hair and eyes that swam with a sort of hidden knowledge. She was none of that.
Her skin was considerably lighter than Whisper’s, lighter than even Carter’s, Gideon was sure. His lips were a muted red-pink sort of colour. They looked like they couldn’t decide, and it looked unsettling. As another contrast to Whisper, she had pale blonde hair that was almost a silvery colour. It wasn’t as light as Finn or Isha’s. It was plaited partially back, and the rest ran in long rivulets over her shoulders.
She was smiling at them, and Gideon realised he’d paused in the middle of the pathway. “Please,” she spoke, and her voice sounded the way something sparkly looked. She was so pristine, it was off-putting. “Sit.” And she gestured with a clean, soft looking hand towards three of the chairs in front of her.
Shiloh kicked the foot of his good leg and Gideon approached warily. Aelina was still smiling – her eyes were pale, he noticed, and she looked nothing like Whisper. She was wearing a baby pink dress too, and Gideon’s stomach rolled at how expensive it looked. He’d noticed many ladies in the Capital in lovely dresses like that, and then thought about all the tears in Isha’s attire, and his eyes began to hurt.
The three of them sat down and Gideon’s skin crawled. Along with Carter, he wished Whisper had come. Everything felt weird, like time was slowed down, and Aelina almost appeared to glow. They’d know what to do better then anyone in this situation.
Aelina studied them all, and Gideon couldn’t help but imagine that her eyes lingered on both Finn and Shiloh for a moment. He thought he saw the barest twitch in her otherwise perfect demeanour, but then it was gone, and she was looking straight at him. He tried to suppress his shiver.
Her eyes flickered down, and Gideon immediately knew what she was looking at and wanted to bash his head into the white wicker table in front of him. Apparently, none of them had though to cover up the giant, obvious brand on his neck before sending him and the others off to meet with the Comtesse.
“A child of the coteries,” she observed, raising an eyebrow several shades darker than her hair.
“Oh I’m-” he swallowed, his throat so dry it felt as if cracking, “I’m not a part of any coterie anymore.”
She laughed, like he’d told her a joke instead of attempting to convince her that he was a part of a possibly rival organisation to the one she was supposedly aligning herself with. “Oh, don’t worry yourself. I believe you,” Aelina said, cheerfully, once she’d stopped laughing.
His stomach twisted and he flexed his fingers around the cane. He stopped himself from saying, Oh, well, that doesn’t make me feel better, but it was an oddly near thing. Gideon tried not to wince- he felt dizzy even though he was sitting down, mind covered in a hazy fog. He blinked.
“So,” Aelina glanced between them, still smiling, but turned back to Gideon again, “What brings you to seek an audience with me?”
“You’re going to be poisoned,” Gideon said immediately. Wait- what? He frowned and glanced down at his hands as if they held an answer. He- well, he didn’t know what he was going to say but it certainly hadn’t been that.
Finn laughed. It was tight. “Deliver it any gentler, Gideon, why don’t you?”
Aelina’s cherry mouth twitched. “It wouldn’t be the first time. But where are my manners- you know my name but I’m at a loss for yours.” They went through the introductions and, once again, Gideon was sure he saw Aelina’s expression twitch as she glanced over Shiloh and Finn. But then she was smiling and looking at him and- he shook his head absently. “That aside, how did you come unto knowing of this poisoning attempt?”
“Corin Von Brandt, the leader of the Fire Forgers, planned to poison you in an attempt to secure an engagement.” Gideon was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be saying it all like that, but he was overcome with the need to keep going. “I was supposed to be a part of that mission.”
Shiloh and Finn were both staring at him now. Finn was picking at the wicker of his chair. “Haha, Gideon,” he said through gritted teeth and an incredibly false laugh. “You’re not supposed to tell her that.”
I know! I know! Gideon reached up to rub his eyes. Aelina didn’t look the slightest bit concerned, but she did continue to stare at him. “And is that all you’re here for?”
His throat began to burn as he tried to swallow back the words clawing out of his throat. Then, “No,” he croaked, wincing. “No, I- to save my friend and my-” His eyes stung, not with tears but- “friend.” He began to cough, and he could see Shiloh watching him with scrutiny. Aelina raised her eyebrow at him but she might as well had shoved him. Friend? “Friend,” he tried again, “I’m… in… love with.”
Gideon’s throat stopped burning but he continued to cough. His chest was tight, and his cheeks were hot- why had he said that? Not saying them felt like trying to scale a smooth, vertical wall. He couldn’t even glance near Shiloh, heart hammering in his chest.
Aelina’s head was tilted, but that smile never wavered on her face. But then, as if nothing had just happened, she was turning away, and Gideon knew without having to turn she was looking at Finn. He couldn’t turn- Shiloh was sitting in between them. She had to know. She was going to kill him as soon as they stepped out of the Comte’s Hall.
“Why are you here?” Aelina was asking Finn. Gideon gripped the arm of the wicker chair as his stomach pitched. Why was she asking him? Gideon had just told her. What was going on?
“Uh.” Finn made an unintelligible noise. “Uh, same reason?” he said, but spoke it like a question.
And there- Aelina was raising her eyebrows again. “Are you sure?”
Now Gideon glanced over. Shiloh had just turned too, to glance at him, but instead of the fury he expected, she looked alarmed. They both glanced at Finn, who looked like he was trying not to cry out in pain. “No, no, I…” Finn’s knuckles had turned white where he had fisted his hands in his lap. “I want my memories back.”
“Finn,” Shiloh murmured in distress.
She has magic, she has magic, shehasmagic-
“Perfect,” Aelina chirped. She stood, her dress flowing around her legs with the motion. Her gaze swept over them and Gideon- felt immobilised. He tried to shift his hands but them as if in invisible shackles. Shiloh leapt to her feet, but Finn still had a look on contorted pain on his face. “You’ve all been incredibly helpful-”
“Wait-” Shiloh began.
“Go to sleep,” Aelina said, firmer than anything else she’d already said. And just like that, everything felt heavy and Gideon felt his muscles go limp and-
The last thing Gideon saw was her eerily sweet, charming smile.
Chapter 33Spoiler
“Did you know that- um. The crypts have been closed? For near a decade now?”
Whisper glanced up from the kitchen table where they’d been idly writing something down on a piece of parchment. “Carter,” they said with a heavy dose of exasperation. That tone had gradually been growing over the last hour. “You can’t go to the crypts, that are off-limits, because you’re restless.”
He stood up and walked over to a window. His whole body ached, bones and joints creaking as if he’d aged centuries, but at least the brand had stopped hurting a while back. It was just itchy sometimes now. He heard a rustling and watched Isha splay herself across the loveseat now that Carter wasn’t on it anymore. “How do you have so much energy? I’m exhausted.”
Carter was too, but he wasn’t about to be near ready to sleep with Shiloh, Gideon, and Finn gone, for several hours now. Malika had disappeared some time ago and Carter hadn’t asked about it.
“The citizens complain about the crypts being shut down,” Abraham, one of Malika’s companions, commented from his post by the door. Elizabeth was sitting by his feet, playing with what looked like cards. “The Comtesse claims its for renovation, but no crews have gone down there. There’s some,” he winced, “fantastical tales about it.”
“But isn’t it weird?” Carter said and walked over to the table. He sat down, and began to bounce his leg up and down, jitters running through his body. Isha was watching him with something akin to envy. Carter had been sick so often when he was younger, though, and given up letting exhaustion get a hold on him. “I mean- that’s kinda when Finn left the Capital.” He sent a glance towards Whisper. “It’s when you left the Capital.”
They hummed absently. “If you’re asking what I remember about it, I don’t. She probably didn’t do it until after I had left.” Then they put their hand on Carter’s thigh. “You know they’ll be okay, right?”
He shrugged but tried to concentrate on not bouncing his leg. He tried to itch his arm instead, but that bandages wrapped around the gash in his arm prevented any meaningful solution to how bad it prickled. “I know,” he said quickly. “I just- are we just going to sit here? What if- um, what if there’s something down there. Um, you know what happened that year too? Ten years ago?”
“Comte Guillaume died,” Abraham chirped from the door. Elizabeth glanced up but deigned to return to her cards.
Carter stood up again. His chair squeaked against the floorboards. “See! It’s weird, right?” Then he grabbed a jacket he’d set out on the loveseat.
“Carter,” Winnie said. This time, they stood up. “You can’t go to the crypts. It’s getting dark out, and it’s off-limits. Shiloh, Gideon, and Finn will be back soon.”
“Are you- well, um. Are you going to stop me?” Carter asked. Abraham frowned at him, as if unsure of whether he should be allowing Carter outside or not. Carter ignored the trickle of sweat running down his spine.
Whisper sighed, and he noticed Isha had stood up too. She still looked pale, but she was grabbing a jacket too and that made Carter pause. She waved dismissively at the look he sent her. “Someone has to watch you two,” she said. “Besides, fresh air will probably do me some good.”
“The air won’t be fresh in an ancient crypt,” Whisper muttered, but was shrugging on their own jacket. They grabbed a lantern, too, and Carter was sure that he would appreciate their foresight later. He appreciated now, already.
Despite the look Abraham had been sending them, he allowed them through the door without trouble. Carter’s chest loosened as he stepped outside. It was growing chillier, and he was glad he’d grabbed his jacket. But he was tired of sitting still. First, as a prisoner of the coteries, then riding to the Capital, and now here. Waiting for Gideon, Shiloh, and Finn.
Also, he was pretty sure if he did sit still, he’d start freaking out. Meeting the Comtesse didn’t take this long, it had been hours. Surely, they were done by now? Surely, they should have gotten by now? You know they’ll be okay, right?
No, Carter didn’t. Not really. Who could?
* * *
For being off-limits, the crypts are surprising easy to sneak into.
Whisper lead them to a private entrance that was relatively close to the Comte’s Hall. Which Carter glanced at longingly, hoping to spot Gideon, Shiloh, or Finn. He saw none of them, and pretended that his chest hadn’t just caved, pressing hard against his rapidly beating heart.
There was a guard, but it hadn’t been hard to wait for him to drift away momentarily. Isha was already at the door by the time Carter realised what was happening, picking the lock. Every moment she spent there, metal clinking against metal as she crouched in front of it and worked it open, felt like hours. Carter kept glancing at where the guard had disappeared to.
Then he heard the click of the lock and Isha was unravelling the chains. She opened the right door and waved inside, glancing at Carter. “It was your idea. You first.” Her hair looked like dust in the dying light, and her cheeks looked gaunt. Carter felt a pang of regret for her being her.
But then she shoved him inside and he felt less guilty. She wasn’t fragile. The illness was draining her, but it wasn’t breaking her.
Inside the crypt was dank and musty. Frigid too, even just inside the doors. He tugged his jacket around himself tighter, but the cool air was welcome against his flushed skin.
He ended up appreciating Whisper’s foresight more, because they pulled out the lantern from earlier and lit it with one deft motion. Isha hummed as she stepped inside and closed the door. “Should have realised the crypts weren’t going to be all ready for us to explore,” she said, but sounded more alive than she had before. Carter realised she had a dagger strapped to her thigh – was it a dagger? It looked kind of like the one Gideon had said was a dagger.
Was she expecting danger? It was an empty crypt. Right? Who would even be down here?
Whisper took the lead this time, since they were the one holding the lantern. The ground was made of gravel that crunched underfoot. Even though Carter’s feet had begun to heal – and like all his other injuries, itched something fierce – he still winced at the noise. He had a newfound appreciation for shoes.
The crypts were black as an inkwell, the only light the flickering lantern in Whisper’s hand they held up in an attempt to illuminate as much of the space as possible. The ceilings towered above them and, on the walls surrounding them, there appeared to be some kind of marbled pillars that stretched into an arch above them.
“We haven’t even gotten to the sarcophagi or burial places yet,” Isha said breathily. She was glancing up at the ceiling, and the walls, eyes wide as she tried to take in the darkness. Carter couldn’t help but feel the way she sounded- a little awe filled. “Is this place really so big?”
“It was here before Grand Verterre,” Whisper told them, but sounded no less in wonder than the two of them were. “It was a mine before this. Biggest gold mine on the island when the French first landed here. It was already set up, like people had been here before them. There were settlements too. And the Spire.”
The passage turned twice, once right and then several yards later, back to the left. There, the walls became lined with cut-outs in the wall. Carter’s stomach rolled as the stench hit him, and he realised he could make out wrapped bodies lying in the alcoves in the wall.
“So, they found this gold mine and decided it should become a crypt?” Isha asked, sceptically. She approached on of the alcoves and Carter watched as he played with the bandages on his arm.
“No. A part of the gold mine collapsed and killed many of the miners down here. As they started construction to building the fortress, they also began clearing out the rubble and strengthening the support systems. Then it became a crypt,” Whisper explained. They’d paused for a moment, waiting patiently for Isha to be done with the corpse. “It spans the whole length of Grand Verterre
Isha noticed them watching her and quickly abandoned the body. She began to trek just ahead of Whisper. “Who needs a crypt this big? What, was someone planning mass genocide?”
Nobody had an answer to that, and they fell back into silence as they delved further. The path began to sink down, and Carter realised after a pause that they were starting to travel downwards.
The farther down they travelled, the colder it got. Carter started getting a strange sensation prickling up his arms. He also began to slow down, his feet aching. He hoped he wasn’t reopening any wounds – Shiloh would kill him when she got back from meeting with the Comtesse.
“There’s magic down here,” Whisper said abruptly. They were glancing around the passages, splitting off into several hallways now on the walls and leading into more darkness and further parts of the crypt. Carter could hear a nearby shuffling and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. There were also a few rooms, some with doors shut and other that were too crumbled to hope to get through to the burial rooms on the other side.
The shuffling grew loudly. Or rather, not a shuffling, but footsteps. Carter hesitated. It had to be just Isha, or Whisper. The crypts were off-limits. They weren’t even supposed to be down there. Unless the Comtesse had guards patrolling in the crypts as well as above them.
“Carter,” Isha called, turning on her heel and keeping up with Winnie by walking backwards.
“I’m com-”
He heard the snarl before he saw the person. Carter whirled around to face the direction of the noise- only to be tackled by a solid wall of somebody ramming into him.
His feet betrayed him and sent him sprawling to the ground. The person crawled on top of him and began to scratch at any available skin, still snarling and spitting and attacking without abandon. He heard his name shouted several times by both Winnie and Isha. Carter’s stomach dropped at the smell- the man smelled like decay so horrid it was appalling even to Carter. He’d smelled bad things before but- not this grisly, death smell.
And then Isha was standing behind his attacker – who was wearing an ill-fitting helmet that blocked his face from view – and she’d driven her dagger into his back. She gave him a kick for good measure, and he tumbled off Carter.
“You okay?” Isha asked, her voice breathy. She offered her hand and he took it, brushing dirt off of himself. His heart pounded against his chest, but he took deep breaths and tried to recollect himself. He’d gotten a few scratches that had begun to bleed, but considering everything else he’d been through already, it didn’t feel significant.
“I’m okay,” he confirmed. Isha looked pale, but offered him a smile-
And then there was another snarl and Carter glanced down to see the man rolling over, scrambling to his feet again. Isha, bless her reflexes, yanked him back away from the man. Her face was pale, eyes wide as she stared at the man who was already back to standing up.
He bent his arm around to his back in a way that an arm should definitely not be able to bend. Carter continued to stagger back with Isha, and his heart crawled into his throat. “Oh- wha- what? What?” he said. If his voice was an octave high- well.
The man yanked the dagger out of his back with a squelching noise that made bile sting at the back of Carter’s throat.
“There’s some kind of magic on him,” Whisper said urgently behind them. “Come on.” The man turned back to them with the dagger in his hand, dripping blood. For a moment, Carter thought he saw something glowing red under his helmet. And a long gash down his neck that no person should be able to live with. “Come on!” Whisper insisted.
Isha yanked on Carter’s wrist but he didn’t need the urging. He turned with her and they began to run.
A wrathful howl that sounded inhuman came from behind them, and Carter could hear the thud of the man’s footsteps as he followed behind them.
They only stopped when Isha shouted, “Get into one of the burial chambers!” Whisper shoved through one of the sturdier looking doors. They held it open long enough for Isha and Carter to tumble through. Then they slammed it and braced it with their shoulder. Isha let go of Carter’s wrist to join Whisper at the door.
She got there just in time for the door to shudder with the weight of their pursuer, likely throwing himself at the door. Another inhuman wail come from outside. A pounding came from the other side of the door and Isha had broke into a sweat now. The lantern lay on the ground, miraculously not broken.
Carter saw a pile of debris where a chunk of the ceiling must have fallen. He bounced to his feet, adrenaline singing in his ears. He lifted a piece of the rubble, wincing at the effort. He brought it over to the door and dropped it at Isha and Whisper’s feet.
He repeated this a few times until at least half the pile was barricading the door. Isha and Winnie tentatively stepped away towards Carter, who was panting in a way that he wouldn’t have back at Bazzoli’s. He could have moved the whole pile in that amount of time.
Their pursuer continued to pound on the door – with his fists? – and the door wriggled but did not move. A moment later, there came an odd, snapping noise that sounded like bone. Images began to sprout in Carter’s mind, and he promptly threw up to the side of the room.
He sat down on the icy, stone floor then. Isha was bent over, with her hands on her knees, breathing heavily. Whisper was the only one of the three of them that was staring at the door, quiet, with a slight frown on their face.
“Did you notice that his eyes looked like they were glowing red?” Whisper asked. They sounded less like they were asking Isha and Carter and more as though they were simply speculating aloud. The pounding continued and Carter shivered at the noises.
Isha laughed, and it flirted the line of hysterical. “Hey, did you notice that I severed his spine and he didn’t die?!”
Carter stared at the doorway and pulled his knees to his chest. “Hey, um. Did you notice he- that he um, smelled like death?”
The other two both glanced at Carter. Isha wiped her face. Her hand was trembling just enough to notice, and she joined him on the floor.
After a few moments of silence from the three of them, the thudding against the door stopped. Carter heard a muffled gargling noise, and then it went quiet. He shivered, feeling no better in the absence of noise that he had in the presence of it. His stomach still turned with displeasure.
“The legends say that Etienne could heal any injury or illness,” Whisper murmured finally. They settled down, but now there was a deeply troubled frown etched across their features. “Aelina’s been asking for dead bodies.”
There was a pause where they all exchanged panicked glances. Then Isha began to laugh again, and it was about as genuine as it had been before. “No, of course not!” Isha said, as if Whisper had just told them a joke. When Carter and Whisper did not join in her strained merriment, she sobered and took several deep breaths. “You don’t… you really think so?”
Carter stared at the floor. The animalistic scratching of the man burned on the back of his eyelids and the stench tickled his nose as though he were back there again. He buried his face in his hands, his throat tight.
Nobody said anything for a long time. Carter tried to wrap his head around everything, but his mind was so loud and all over the place and-
He’d come to find Shiloh. Now he was hiding in a forbidden crypt, locked in a burial room to escape some sort of risen corpse that the leader of the island was magicking back to life?
Let nobody say that Carter’s luck was anything but rotten anyway. -
Chapter 34
Spoiler
When Gideon woke up, he was definitely not in the place he last remembered.
He sat up, stiff, and swung his legs over the side of a rickety cot. The first thing he noticed was the cell bars. Then the uneven, cave-like floor with questionable looking water and patches of moss.
“Wakey wakey.” He glanced over to see Finn sitting in the cell to his right. He was watching Gideon idly, before he picked a stone off the ground and threw it half-heartedly away from him. His hat was gone, and Gideon wrinkled his nose at the sight. It was viscerally wrong to see Finn without his hat.
“Finn woke up right before you did,” Shiloh said to his left. He glanced over to see her leaning on the bars that separated their conjoined cell. “I’ve been awake the whole time. Whatever magic Aelina used only affected the two of you.” Her mouth was twisted downwards unhappily.
Gideon stood up, bracing himself for the bursts of pain in his lower leg. But he was on his feet and- nothing. There was no pain, not even a stinging or any kind of throbbing. He frowned down at his leg.
“Gideon,” Shiloh murmured, “your leg.”
“I noticed,” Gideon said. His voice was raspy, and it made him wonder how long they’d been out for. He lifted the bottom of his shirt up to check for the place Adrienne had caught him with her sword. Nothing, not even a scar. He glanced at his hands, narrowing his eyes.
He glanced up at Shiloh to see her chewing on her lips. “She did something to you before she left. She must have healed you then, I suppose.” She was watching him with something unsettled in her expression, and Gideon had to glance away from that look.
It was cold enough in the cell to warrant goose flesh prickling at his arms, and to make him wish for a jacket. He crossed his arms over his chest and approached the door of the cell, that led to a hallway split between another row of cells pressed into the opposite wall.
Posts lining the hallway carried torches that flickered and cast the corridor in flickering orange light. Gideon glanced both directions in an attempt to figure out where they were, but it was no use. They could have been above ground in the middle of Grand Verterre, and Gideon wouldn’t have been able to navigate.
“Gideon,” Shiloh said again, her voice quiet and uncertain. He forced himself to glance over at her, only to find her looking mournfully down at her hands. “Did you mean- um, well. I mean, do you really love Carter?”
His throat went dry, and Gideon tightened his grip on the bars he’d reached up toe grab. He set his jaw. It was just Shiloh, it was just one of his best friends. It was just feelings he wasn’t ready to confront, it was just he hadn’t meant to say that even if it was true, it was just that he didn’t know what in God’s name he was doing.
Shiloh glanced up at him and pinned with those now-soft eyes, dark in the low light, Gideon sighed and swallowed hard enough to hurt. “I- I- well, it’s- Carter’s-” he frowned, face growing hot. He finally dropped Shiloh’s gaze, and realised he was trembling. “Yeah,” he murmured. He hoped he’d said it quiet enough not for Shiloh to hear so he could pretend he hadn’t said it at all. He wasn’t under anyone’s thrall, he couldn’t work around it anymore.
There was a momentary silence, broken only by the sound of Finn’s rocks hitting the ground every time he threw another one. He was blessedly silent, however, leaving them alone to talk about their feelings. Or maybe it was cursedly silent. If Finn spoke, it meant that Gideon could focus on him and not on what Shiloh was trying to wheedle out of him.
“I-” Shiloh began. Gideon recoiled his chin back with surprise when he heard the break in her voice. Her head was bent, and she looked- unhappy. Just really unhappy. “I’m sorry. I mean- about everything. Not just about recently, but about all the times I’ve blamed you for things you didn’t have control over. Carter was right and I just- God, we’re supposed to be friends.” She laughed, and it sounded choked. “And I haven’t once tried to take your side or supported you when you were having a hard time or… I was scared, when I found out you and Carter might be-” she made a noncommittal noise. “I’ve always had to take care of him, and I- I don’t know how to give that up. Isha was right, I’m controlling him, I’m trying to put a collar on him and it’s- it’s not fair to either of you. I don’t actually hate that he chose you of all people. I know you, and you take care of people you care about.”
Gideon was left vaguely uncomfortable by the time Shiloh was done, but his chest felt unusually unburdened. Shiloh glanced up at him, and offered him a wobbly smile, and Gideon let out a deep breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. ///
He didn’t know what he could say in response to her, but it didn’t matter, because the sound of approaching footsteps halted his mind. Gideon leaned against the front of the cell, and he could see Shiloh stand off the bars, alerted. As he turned to the right, where the distinct tap was coming from, he watched Finn cease to throw rocks and watch down the hallway instead with narrowed eyes.
It was a guard, with a helmet that seemed to jostle on his head and an odd limp to his gait. Gideon supposed he was only watching prisoners, and they probably didn’t except him to do any fighting. Though it was odd that Aelina would not heal the injuries of her own guards but would those of her prisoners.
And then, as the guard turned his head just so slightly towards them, Gideon could swear he saw something red between the slots in the glinting steel of his helmet. He frowned, keeping close to the front of the cell.
As the guard drifted closer, Gideon tried not to visibly clench his fists. The corridor, if walked in the centre, was too far out of range for him to do anything. But the guard was walking closer to their cells and craning his neck forward, as if having trouble seeing them.
The guard was about halfway past Gideon’s cell, right in front of him, when Gideon reached out to grab at his neck.
But the guard seemed to either have known Gideon’s intentions or saw him coming, because he began to stagger away. Instead of getting an arm around the guard’s neck, Gideon only grabbed it with his hand. The guard jerked away and-
And his neck ripped off in Gideon’s hand.
Gideon shouted and staggered backwards so quickly he nearly tripped over his own feet. The guard was snarling at him but made no audible noises of pain or distress or said anything. Gideon, the world spinning around him and the only thing he could focus on being the squishy, wet- thing in his hand, dropped it. Whatever “it” was.
The guard muttered something and either it was a collection of mumbles without words or it was in a foreign language. He bared his teeth at all thing of them, and there was no glint in the firelight. Just the faint stench of rot and the ivory of his teeth turned yellow.
And then he turned, and limped away, and Gideon didn’t know when, but he’d sat down on his cot and was breathing too hard to be normal.
He saw movement to his right and distantly registered that Finn had stood up and was staring into his cell. Gideon ignored him in favour of looking down at his hand. It was covered in blood and a thin, almost membrane-like white liquid. His stomach turned and he glanced up across at the other cells instead, trying to calm himself.
“Did you just… rip a chunk of that guy’s neck of?” Finn asked. He sounded more discomforted than Gideon had ever heard him.
How was Gideon supposed to answer that? He wasn’t even sure what had just happened. Except that there was a chunk of something that resembled bloodied, sickly flesh to a horrifying degree. For everything Gideon had seen, had done, in his life, he probably shouldn’t have been so unsettled. But he’d never ripped someone’s skin clean off.
“That’s really gross,” Shiloh said. “And definitely not physically possible.” She sounded calmer about the situation than Finn or Gideon did. He glanced up at her and found her looking down at the flesh-thing with a downward twist to her mouth. She met his gaze then, and her expression softened. “Gideon?”
He pursed his lips, and swallowed the bile rising in his throat. He’d seen so much worse; he wasn’t going to be made sick by a little chunk of flesh. He wasn’t.
When he was sure it was safe to talk, he winced. “I- I don’t know. I went to grab him, but-” Gideon swallowed again, hard. “It came right off. No resistance. It just…” He clenched his hands into fists and instantly regretted it at the squelching noise of his right hand. Without anything better to handle the situation with, he wiped his hand on his pants and pointedly did not look down to see the stains.
There was a long stretch of silence. Gideon looked back down at the flesh-thing. It sat on the floor of his cell, perfectly innocuous except for the fact Gideon had just ripped it from some guy’s neck. That should definitely not be a thing.
“You notice his eyes glowed?” Finn finally asked, when nobody else said anything. Gideon nodded, a little numb, and didn’t bother to see if Shiloh confirmed it as well. “Right,” Finn said after a pause. “Well, nothing let getting thrown in jail for no apparent charges and having guards with skin like dough that you can rip off, right?”
“This happen to you often?” Shiloh asked dryly. Gideon stood up and kicked the chunk of flesh under his cot so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. The smell of decay still filled the air, however, and Gideon approached the far corner of his cell and settled against the bars instead.
Gideon heard the rustle of Finn’s clothing as he sunk back down to the floor. “Can’t say I remember ever being arrested in the first place. I’m discreet.”
Shiloh sighed, and followed both their leads. “Carter’s going to freak out,” she said mournfully. Gideon’s chest grew tighter, and he nodded solemnly, before taking to staring up at the ceiling and trying to think of anything but their current situation.
Chapter 35Spoiler
Shiloh had fallen asleep first and to be honest, she’d had it coming after waiting for both Finn and Gideon to wake up for however long that Aelina had put them to sleep. Gideon was next, though didn’t look even remotely comfortable squashed in the corner of his cell the way he was.
With the faint odour emitting from underneath his cot, however, Finn couldn’t blame him for choosing the corner instead. Or, well, Finn didn’t think he’d meant to fall asleep, but he had.
Sometime after the guard and chunk-of-neck debacle, Finn had run out of stones to throw. He’d taken to pacing his cell instead, and was thankful Gideon was not awake to shoot death glares in his direction for doing so. But Finn couldn’t exactly help it- he was stuck in a little space of moulding, damp rock, and had nothing to do but to rot away. And rotting away whilst sitting down idle seemed like an undesirable way to go.
He didn’t know how long the other two had been asleep, but after pacing his cell at least a thousand times, Finn heard the clomping of metal against the stone floor and paused. Another guard, then.
The man that came down the corridor moved much more fluidly than the one Gideon had attacked. He also stopped in front of Finn’s cell, and pulled out a ring of keys. Finn watched attentively, though couldn’t help the frown that fell upon his features.
This man still wore a helmet, but there was a visor over his eyes and Finn couldn’t detect any ominous or unnatural reddish glows like he seen on the other guard.
“I don’t suppose that blonds get a pardon from prison,” Finn remarked. He folded his arms over his chest as the guard opened his cell door.
“Her Ladyship wants to speak with you,” the guard replied, voice deep and muffled by his helmet. God, how did he breathe? Finn was glad he wasn’t a guard.
Finn glanced over at Gideon and Shiloh, who were still asleep and blissfully oblivious to what was happening. Finn considered trying to take out the guard, but he was no Isha or Gideon. He also wasn’t sure what the repercussions of doing so would entail, though grabbing the keys from an unconscious guard and freeing Gideon and Shiloh sounded like a delightful scenario. Proving all doubts about himself wrong again? Coming to the group’s rescue once again? It would never get old.
But as Finn marvelled over such scenarios, the guard had already approached him and was clapping shackles around his wrists. The iron was cold, and he hummed with disapproval as the guard gave them an experimental tug towards the cell entrance. “Ever heard of the word gentler? You could use some brushing up on it. I have sensitive wrists,” Finn told the guard. The guard did not turn back towards him, only dragged him from the cell and set them on a path down the corridor.
They came to a spiral staircase – the Capital really liked their spiral staircases, he supposed – and the guard led him up it with little regard to Finn’s “sensitive wrists”. They came into a stone chamber with an iron gate partitioning the centre of the room. There were two guards, one on either side, who stoutly ignored Finn and his guard as they passed through, save for opening the gate in the middle for them to pass through.
As the guard led him up another staircase, that was not a spiral staircase to his surprise and which Finn commented on impishly, Finn began to keep note of where the guard was leading him. Up the stone stairwell out of the chamber with the gate leading down to the cells. Through a dim-lit wooden hall that turned left twice. He was led outside, and it was well into the night. Back to the Comte’s Hall. From there, it did not matter so much were he went. Only that he knew how to escape the prison.
He was brought up not one, but two spiral staircases, into the smaller third story of the building where Finn knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that the Comtesse’s bed chamber was hidden away.
They arrived on the third story to a small wooden platform and a door. There was little else in the way of decoration and probably for the best- there was no room for it anyway. The guard, still gripping Finn’s shackles with one hand, rapped on the door thrice.
“Enter,” a voice called from within. The sweet, innocent sound of the Comtesse. Finn’s jaw twitched. Innocent.
The guard opened the door, but instead of leading Finn inside, he let go of the shackles and put his hand on Finn’s shoulder blade before shoving him inside and then shutting the door.
Inside, the room was lavishly adorned. A huge rug that must have once belonged to a great bear spread across the floor and above it, a gilded iron-wrought bed with gold wrapped around some of its edges. There was an ivory vanity left of the bed, closer to Finn, with a great mirror and various bottles and containers Finn wondered over the contents of.
Aelina sat in what looked to be a place on would take tea. Two stuffed chairs sat in front of a small, round table with a marble slab counter. She was sitting in one of the chairs, watching him with the same smile she’d had when he and the others had first been admitted to seeing her. Her pale hair was loose, spilling all over her shoulders and down her back. She was also wearing a night gown, to which Finn tried hard not to squint at.
“Inviting a prisoner up to your chambers in the middle of the night, with nothing but a sheer night gown on.” Finn tsked and crossed his arms across his chest with only minimal difficulty due to the shackles. Aelina’s smile broadened, and her eyes glittered in the flicker of candles spread across the room in various places. “What will the people say?”
“And yet, you wouldn’t dare to touch me,” Aelina said, tilting her head. “Even if I asked. Even if I commanded it, no?” She held up a golden goblet, her mouth twitching. Despite her words, her tone suggested that he wouldn’t have a choice if she did so command it. Finn deigned not to react. He was sure any way he did, she would take as some kind of mistaken victory on her part. Aelina raised a sculpted eyebrow and nodded towards the seat beside hers. “Sit, will you?”
Once again, Finn made no motions to do anything of the sort. This time, to his delight, Aelina’s smiled wavered. Only slightly, but it was still a crack. She was not marble, and she was not virtuous.
“I have a proposition for you,” she said. She took a pointed sip of her wine and Finn allowed himself a smile of his own.
“I thought you just acknowledged my disinclination to join you in your bed,” Finn said. “Besides, you have me at an uncomfortable disadvantage.” He held up his hands and the shackles that bound them. Aelina took the goblet from her lips, now stained a vivid and deep red.
She raised an eyebrow at his shackles but made no motions to assist him with them. She waved to the tray that held a pitcher of wine and the second golden goblet that sat on it. Finn wondered if she was trying to poison him- and of course, it led back to the thorn digging into his side. How well did she know him and why had she stolen his memories?
“You seek your memories, or have I gotten that incorrect?” Aelina wondered. Finn tried not to visibly let his demeanour falter at all, but by the renewed twitch of her lips, he was unsuccessful. She set her goblet aside and folded her hands over her thighs the dress did nothing to conceal. “I am willing to grant you that. I am even willing to allow your friend to go free. Goodness knows I have no use for a washed-out coterie assassin when I have you.”
In the pit of Finn’s stomach, something opened and churned, and he set his teeth together firmly. What was that supposed to mean?
“And Shiloh?” Finn asked instead, despite the desperation clawing in his chest to ask about the assassin comment. “Why not allow her to go free?”
Aelina glanced down at her hands in her lap, something dangerous edging into his smile. “I need her for something more. For the magic she possesses.” Then she glanced back up at Finn as he raised his eyebrows. “Don’t act surprised. You know about the memory lock. You know about her magic too.”
And so do you, apparently, he didn’t say. Why did you take my memories? he didn’t ask. He wanted to, badly, but this wasn’t just about him. “Then what do you want from me?”
She picked the goblet back up and sipped it, then spread her arms almost as if to say she didn’t already have a plan in mind. “I’d like you to do some favours for me, if I call on you to do so,” she said. Her tone implied that I’d like you to was less about what she wanted and more about what she would get. It settled like a jagged stone in his stomach.
“What kinds of favours?”
“Oh, don’t worry about them now!” Aelina laughed, like this situation was somehow funny. She curled her chin closer to her chest and blinked in a coquettish manner. Finn watched her dubiously. “You can either accept the arrangement or not. It’s a fair offer.”
He wanted to say yes. Finn wanted to simply accept and damn the consequences so badly it hurt in his chest, because he’d get his memories back. Ten years of his life with the blank unknown before it, never knowing who he was or what he’d done or if he had anyone who had ever cared about him. To know was all he’d ever wanted, ever since the moment he’d “awoken” on a grey horse fleeing from the Capital.
Finn bit his tongue and rolled it between his teeth, so hard it drew blood. He swallowed it. “No,” he said. Something howled in his chest. “No. Not unless Shiloh goes free too.”
Aelina raised her eyebrow. Her smile did not falter but it did change. That edge of something dangerous grew sharper, and her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Do you image you’re in a place to be making demands? Your word is meaningless to me.” She tilted her head again. “You don’t remember, but you disobeyed a direct order from my father ten years ago.” She shrugged, and her eyes glinted. “Treason is punishable by beheading.”
Every word drove the thorn in Finn’s side deeper. It was snug and barbed, resting between his ribs now. He wanted to put his hands behind his back, to look more composed but more importantly to hide the tremble in his fingers. What was she talking about? What had he done? He had known Comte Guillaume? How? Why? Who was he?
He swallowed and it tasted of the blood still welling in his mouth. He may not remember who he was, but at least he was clever enough to know the deadly intrigues of court and what might happen to his neck if he spoke out of turn.
If he didn’t accept the offer, he, Gideon, and Shiloh would be no further then they’d been before. Finn would likely be passing on his only chance to regain his memories he had. But if he did, he could be condemning Shiloh to whatever Aelina had in the works for her. Still, at least Gideon would be free. He could get help.
It was as walking on the edge of the knife. Finn managed a wry smile and ducked his chin. “Gideon and Shiloh go free,” he said, “or you can throw me back in the dungeons and watch us all rot.”
Aelina watched him for a long time. Her smile had faded, and she was so still she could have been mistaken for a dark sandstone statue.
She finally stirred and threw back her neck to finish the rest of her wine. Then she leaned forward to set the goblet down at stood up. Her dress was even more revealing upright that it had been, partially shadowed by the arms of the chair.
“You’ve grown up,” she said quietly. Contemplatively. “The little blacksmith’s boy, playing a diplomat.” Finn’s heart jumped and he latched onto the detail like a leech hungry for blood. “And does he have any other requests?”
Yes. But he didn’t want her to know about Carter and Isha, didn’t want her to have any kind of advantage. Over him, or Gideon, or Shiloh. Especially not with someone like Carter- he’d be torn apart, court intrigue or blades, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t made for either of those things.
He glanced around for an idea, a spark. His eyes landed on the pitcher of wine. He tapped a finger against the cold metal of his shackles. “Two vials of wine. Laced with your supposed healing magic.” He smirked lazily in a way that would have had Gideon or Isha bristling. “Let’s see if you’re as good as the legends say Etienne was. He was your ancestor, wasn’t he?” He thanked any deity he would listen that Whisper had gone on in length about this. “Did he produce heirs of any worth, I wonder? And you never know when you might need a pick up.”
Aelina studied him for a moment. He wondered if she could see through his words, through the subterfuge he was attempting. He wondered if she already knew, about Carter and Isha, or even Malika, Abraham, and Elizabeth. She seemed to know a lot already, he wouldn’t put it past her. But he hoped.
Finally, she let out a breath and that unsettlingly smile was back. “Very well. You drive a hard bargain… Finn, was it? That’s what you’re calling yourself now?”
He gritted his teeth under his smirk. He recognised the dig for what it was. She knew exactly who he was, probably knew his real name too.
“Gideon and Shiloh go free first,” he added. “I don’t care what order the rest comes in, but they go free and I make sure of it.”
She laughed, eyes crinkling in the corners. She would be beautiful, he thought, if she wasn’t so venomous. At least Isha wore the danger she wielded on her sleeve, and Shiloh carried the traces of it in the way she protected Carter. Aelina was all smoke and mirrors.
“Self-sacrificing. You really have changed,” she said, approaching her vanity across the room and opening a drawer. She produced two tube-shaped glass vials and then returned to where the wine sat at the marble table.
“I can only be self-sacrificing if by favours you intend to kill me,” Finn pointed out. Aelina laughed again as she poured the wine into the two vials, filling them up with the dark crimson liquid. Too thin to be blood but certainly the colour was unsightly enough to be.
“I have no intentions of the such at all,” she said. At least, in that, she sounded genuine, but Finn wasn’t inclined to trust her anyway.
Her expression sobered as she set the pitcher back down and wrapped both hands around each vial respectively. She closed her eyes, mouth parting and moving just so slightly. Miniscule, copper-coloured threads of light weaved around the vials until the wine itself began to glow.
Then, not a moment later, the light had evaporated and Aelina’s eyes were open. Finn noted in the back of him mind that he could have killed her, if he had wanted. He could have snuck over and wrapped his shackles around her throat and he probably could have covered her nose and mouth so she couldn’t scream to alert the guard.
Those kinds of thoughts sometimes just occurred to Finn, and it scared him how easily they came to him. It scared him how easily he had killed the assassin after Whisper, that one time they’d been attacked in the woods. He had just known.
She put two corks in the top of vials to cover them, before she approached Finn. She was standing awful close and Finn had to crane his neck to peer down at her. Her gaze never met his as she reached unabashedly into his jacket and set the vials into a pocket he hadn’t even known was there. Finn forced himself to remain still and not to look away from her, despite the strong urge to shift away, or squirm. Or literally anything that would remove him from being two centimetres away from her.
“Allow me to change into proper attire,” Aelina said quietly, still uncomfortably close to him. Then, finally, she stepped back, and Finn took a silent, deep breath of non-toxic air. Her lips twitched as she watched him. “Wouldn’t want to send the wrong impression to the people, no?”
“Then I shouldn’t either,” he said as she began to untie her night gown. He inhaled deeply. “I shall wait for her Ladyship outside.”
Aelina raised an eyebrow in his direction, but Finn was already turning away and striding stiffly towards the door, stomach churning.
Blacksmith’s boy. Treasonous. Knew Comte Guillaume. He felt like he’d tasted laudanum for the first time and shivers were already beginning to wrack his body. She’d given him sweet, but hardly substantial hints to his past, and he craved more.
But it was worth it, he told himself as he stepped out into the hall with a heart that felt like lead. Carter had meant more than his memories, and so did Shiloh and Gideon. He just had to be patient.
Ten years later, and patience had not become any easier.
Chapter 36Spoiler
“Gideon.”
His back ached and Gideon stirred, sure he’d heard a noise- and he’d been asleep. He shifted, hard beams digging into his back.
“Gideon, Shiloh. Wake up.”
He opened his eyes and Gideon realised he’d fallen asleep, propped up in the corner of his cell between the bars. His muscles ached, taut and sore from being stationary against the bars for so long. He rubbed at his eyes and twisted. Finn was standing between where Shiloh and Gideon were. He in the corridor, outside the cells.
That woke Gideon up and he scrambled to his feet. Before he could open his mouth, he realised that Comtesse Aelina was standing beside him. She had what looked like some kind of dressing robe on, and that dumb smile he’d seen on her when she’d knocked them out with her magic. To her right, a guard. His helmet covered more of his face and a visor prevented Gideon from observing whether his eyes were red or not.
He glanced back at Finn and found that his mouth was pinched. Shiloh was just getting to her feet off of her cot and was blinking blearily at everyone standing outside the cells.
The guard stepped forward when Aelina nodded and pulled out a ring of keys. Gideon narrowed his eyes at Finn. “What’s going on?” he asked. Well, it came out as more of a demand, but could Gideon be blamed when such a scene lay before him?
Finn gave him a dry look. “We going to learn how to sew dresses,” he remarked, and then rolled his eyes. “You two are being released- what does it look like?”
Gideon watched, perplexed, as the guard unlocked his cell door and then pushed it open. It swung inwards, standing wide open for Gideon to pass through. Then he moved to Shiloh’s cell, where she stood by the door and watched half curious and half sleepy.
He lingered in the cell for a few moments and Finn crossed his arms over his chest. There were shackles on his wrists. “I mean, stay in there if you want, I suppose, but I thought this would be incentive to leave your cell.”
The guard opened Shiloh’s cell and she took a step out. Aelina, however, took a step forward, and Gideon tensed as she raised her hand towards Shiloh. Then, as if she hadn’t been the one to lock them up, she brushed a hand over Shiloh’s hair. Shiloh was still while this all happened.
“Hate the let such a lovely lady go,” Aelina said, and retracted her hand. Gideon noted that Finn’s eyes were narrowed, and in turn, Gideon felt his do the same. He stepped out of his own cell, ready to protect Shiloh should he need to. Aelina glanced towards him, but thankfully made no movements to approach him and stroke his hair. “We’ll escort the both of you out, but then you will take your leave of us,” Aelina said, glancing between Gideon and Shiloh.
Something bubbled in Gideon’s stomach and he glanced at Finn. “The both of us?” he asked, brow furrowing. “Finn,” he added warningly, “what did you do?”
“It’s not of importance,” Finn said. He shrugged evasively, but there was a downturn to his mouth and something unhappy resting in his eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
That made it sound significantly less fine, but Gideon eyed Aelina, who was watching them with a strange interest. Gideon decided it would be best, for now, to drop it.
Once nobody seemed to have any other complaints, Aelina motioned the guard to lead them onwards. She stayed a step behind and glanced over her shoulder towards them every so often.
They were led all the way out of the prison and onto the desolate streets. It was inky, stars glittering in the sky overhead but the moon out of sight. Gideon’s chest grew taut. He hoped Carter and Isha were okay.
Finn followed them down the stairs while the Comtesse and her guard stayed at the top of them. The prison house was small, but even above ground, the windows were barred. Guards had been patrolling the corridors like mice, all armed and all ready as if there would be some massive breakout.
Suddenly, Finn bumped his shoulder and Gideon heard the gentle clack of his shackles. “Give my best to your lover and your lovely golden sister for me, won’t you?” he said, loudly, and then pulled away. He had already turned towards Shiloh before Gideon could question what on earth he’d meant by that. “I’d offer the lady a hug, but-” Finn held up his shackles. Shiloh blinked at him but offered him a sympathetic shrug.
Gideon glanced back up at the Comtesse, watching them. Her hair shone in the pale light, backlit by the two lanterns mounted on either side of the heavy double doors into the prison house. She looked like a cat that had caught a canary.
And then, Finn had turned away, and he made his way back up the stairs to join the Comtesse and the guard still standing stoically beside her.
The Comtesse considered them for a moment. “I do hope I do not see you under such circumstances again.” She cocked her head. “And don’t attempt spreading misinformation about anything strange you might have seen, or anything that might have happened to you. I’d hate to see you back behind guards.”
He spotted her fingers, dancing as if playing with something she held between them. But if she was, he couldn’t see what it was.
“Come on,” Shiloh murmured to Gideon, grabbing the end of his jacket sleeve and tugging. At the motion, Gideon felt something bump against his chest from inside his coat. He kept his hands away, however, because he was absolutely certain there had been nothing inside his jacket before.
He cast one last glance back at Finn and Comtesse Aelina, before allowing Shiloh to lead him onwards into the empty streets of Grand Verterre.
Crickets sung in the distance, but otherwise, there was an ill-fitting silence all throughout the city. Even before when it was quiet for what he’d imagined the city to be like normally, even if over half its residents were sick, it was still now. It crept up his spine like ice and he wrapped his arms around himself. Something clinked in his jacket.
They were far enough away now that Gideon reached up to find whatever the small weight was. Shiloh caught the gesture and frowned at him. “What-?”
He found a hidden pocket – which seemed like an odd thing for prisoner attire to have – and pulled out two small vials. He did not take them out of his coat, just in case there were any silent prying eyes, but did turn enough to show Shiloh. Her frown deepened.
“They weren’t there before,” he murmured. And then- when Finn bumped into his shoulder. “I think Finn put them there.”
“What’s in them?” Shiloh wondered.
He shrugged and put them back. “I’ll check once we get back to the inn,” he said. “I have a feeling there was a reason he didn’t just hand them over,” he added, keeping his voice down.
Shiloh nodded along and chewed the inside of her mouth. “That was weird, right? I mean, suddenly the Comtesse is just releasing us, and Finn has to stay with her?” She glanced down at the dark cobblestone and kicked a pebble that had come loose. It clattered as it rolled across the ground. “How much do you trust him?”
Gideon opened his mouth- and then shut it again. He didn’t adore Finn, barely even liked him in truth, but at this point… why shouldn’t he trust him? Finn had been remarkably patient with their suspicions of him. Maybe it was time to trust that he knew what he was doing, even if Gideon didn’t like it. Finn was bothersome but hadn’t truly given them reason for suspicion. Aside from simply deciding to join them.
Plus, Carter trusted him. He said as much to Shiloh, whose expression softened. “And he went out of his way to save Isha,” Gideon said, quietly. “He first met us by saving me when we were attacked at the Crossroads by the Fire Forgers.” He let out a long breath. “Maybe it’s time to follow Carter’s example.”
She considered this for several moments as they trudged on. Then, she sighed, and nodded. “Okay. I trust you.”
Something warm blossomed in Gideon’s chest, and he offered her a small smile. She returned it, and the air seemed to lighten around them. Even if she had been placated at the mention of Carter, it still meant something to him.
The lights were off when they got to the inn, and Gideon didn’t see Abraham prowling about. He could only hope that meant everyone was sleeping peacefully. Not that he wanted them to ignore the fact he, Shiloh, and Finn had been gone for- well, however long they were gone for. But he also imagined Carter’s panicked expression and would rather avoid seeing that.
When he got closer, however, he spotted a slight flicker behind the curtains. A candle. Someone was awake.
He knocked quietly on the door, and then stepped aside, standing beside Shiloh. For a moment, he didn’t think anyone was going to come, but then her heard a click! and the door opened. Elizabeth peered out at them, and her brow knitted together.
“You have been gone a while,” she stated, but opened the door further and stepped aside to let them in. Gideon nodded to her gratefully and came inside with Shiloh on his heels.
“Is everyone else asleep?” Gideon asked. He kept his voice down, just in case, and began to make his way over to the kitchen table where a plate sat only with crumbs and a candle flickered, half-burned down.
He took the vials from his pocket and held them towards the candle. He heard the quiet patter of Elizabeth’s footsteps as she approached him.
“Malika and Abraham are,” she said. Gideon frowned and glanced away from the vials to meet Elizabeth’s neutral gaze. “The others are not here.”
Gideon turned around to share a look with Shiloh. Her expression was quickly morphing into panic, so he turned back to Elizabeth and narrowed his eyes. “Not here? Where are they? It has to be past midnight.”
Elizabeth’s face softened with sympathy, which did nothing to settle the sudden swirling in Gideon’s stomach. “Carter had grown restless. He wanted to go investigate the crypts, and Isha and Whisper insisted on accompanying him. They left a few hours after you three left to see the Comtesse. Speaking of, where is Finn?”
“The crypts?” Shiloh asked, her voice high and airy, ignoring Elizabeth’s question about Finn. “Carter wanted to go to the crypts? Did he, by chance, find wine, or something?” She laughed and it was a little hysterical. “He went to the crypts.”
“He thought it was strange,” Elizabeth offered. Gideon could feel his heart pick up pace in his chest and it made his ribs ache. “They’ve been closed for about a decade, the same time Whisper and Finn both left here. The same time that Comte Guillaume died. He wanted to know why, I suppose.”
That… was strange. Gideon frowned, not having considered all the things that happened at the same time in Grand Verterre. He also hadn’t known the crypts were closed and wondered how Carter had even found out.
“He thought it was strange,” Shiloh muttered, “so he decided to trespass into the largest crypts of the island.” She met Gideon’s gaze. “You’ve turned him into something, Gideon. He’s getting drunk on this adventure business.” Her voice was not accusatory, so Gideon decided not to take offence to the implication. He also did not comment that it was really her that had gotten him into this adventure business.
Instead, he bit his lower lip and held the vials up to the candlelight. He could see through them, a thin red liquid jiggling inside. He pulled the cork off one and sniffed it. The sharp tang of wine hit his nose, and he frowned. Finn had given him two vials of wine?
“Glad your concerned by this,” Shiloh muttered in Gideon’s direction. He put the cork back in the one vial and set them on the table. Then, he shucked off the prisoner’s jacket and went to rifle around for his own. When he returned, he tucked the vials into a proper pocket that he could actually close and turned back to Shiloh.
“I am. That’s why we’re going after them,” he said, and made for the door. He snatched up his bow and quiver on the way.
Shiloh stared at him for a moment. Then, “You’re serious.” She laughed, and it was tight. “I love crypts. They’re so much fun. I’m so glad my baby brother decided that, instead of being a normal restless person and going for a walk, he’d go down into a creepy cave system where dead people are buried. I adore everything about Carter that brought him to this decision.”
Gideon rolled his eyes. “It’s just some old crypts, Shiloh. What do you think we’re going to find down there? The dead aren’t going to report us for trespassing.”
She muttered something under her breath, but dutifully followed after him as he left again and snatched up a lantern that sat on the stand next to the loveseat. Elizabeth made no attempts to stop them, only waved when Gideon glanced back at her and offered them both a tired smile.
He hadn’t been ready to sleep anyway, not after taking an uncomfortable nap against his cell bars. Plus, they had to find the others and figure out what their next move was going to be, especially now that Finn had gone and done something to get himself- what, locked up? Trapped by the Comtesse?
At least it was dark enough that breaking into the crypts would, hopefully, prove to be little challenge as opposed to doing so in bright daylight. -
Chapter 37
Spoiler
“We can’t stay here forever,” Isha pointed out. And it was true- they’d been sitting in the burial chamber for ages. “It’s been quiet for a while. We can’t be so far from the entrance.”
She glanced over at Carter and Whisper, who were both sitting cross-legged on the floor. They’d moved only a few times and were now sitting back to back in an endearing sort of way. Carter glanced up at her, where she stood a few paces away. Whisper still looked deep in consideration.
To be honest, Isha wanted nothing more than to find a bed, any bed or surface gentler than stone even, and sleep forever. She was exhausted, freezing, and damp with sweat. Carter looked no better. Head lolling every few moments, eyelids drooping, and arms squeezed tight around himself as if to preserve his own heat.
“What if-” Carter frowned uncertainly. “What if there are, um, more of those… whatever they are?”
Isha had been resolutely not thinking about that since it had grown silent outside their door. She’d been resolutely not wondering if they were intelligent- what if that creature was waiting outside the door for them to come out? She couldn’t fight off something that couldn’t die. Could they even die?
“Then I hope you have energy to run,” Isha remarked. “But we still can’t stay here forever.” Carter looked down at the floor with a mournful expression, and her heart wilted a little at the sight. He deserved a good rest. Didn’t they all? “Sorry if this doesn’t compare to being stuck with Gideon underground.”
Interestingly enough, Carter’s mouth twitched and even in the dim light and for all of Carter’s dark skin, she could see the dark spread of a blush over his face. Oh Gideon, she thought, her own mouth twitching. Get your boy.
“I hope they’re all right,” Carter said after a moment. Isha sobered. They had been gone a while. Maybe it had been a mistake sending Gideon, Finn, and Shiloh. On a scale of everyone in their party, Isha would seem them most likely to get into trouble collectively.
Whisper stood then, abruptly, and Carter almost toppled backwards. They walked towards the door, throwing a gentle “Sorry,” over their shoulder to Carter. Then they closed their eyes, stepping carefully onto the rubble, and pressed their hands to the door. Isha watched, tilting her head slightly. With the motion, the room spun around her a little, and she began to blink rapidly and stagger backwards.
“There’s no magic traces outside,” Winnie said. They removed their hands from the door and turned back to face Isha and Carter. “No fresh ones, anyway.”
Isha glanced down at the debris blocking the door. When she glanced at Carter, he met her gaze and his brows suddenly curled upwards. He exhaled and it made a small “oh” noise.
“I’m sorry, Kitten. It was a good idea,” Isha offered. He shot her a pained look, and she walked over with only a little light-headedness. She held out her hand and he took it. The resulting actions nearly sent them both to the floor when Carter gently tugged and Isha almost tipped right over. Miraculously, they both stayed on their feet. Carter sneezed, thankfully not on Isha. Whisper watched them both with concern.
“Don’t,” they said as Carter shuffled over towards the debris. “You need your strength more than I do.”
And then they began to move the rocks without even touching them, and Carter shot them a dry look. “You couldn’t have done that earlier?” he muttered. There was no malice in his tone, though he did sound more than a little grumpy. Whisper, concentrating, ignored him.
Once all the rocks were moved, Isha was the first to shift open one of the doors and peer outside. She trusted Whisper to be able to detect the magic, but sometimes she needed to just see things with her own two eyes. When she found empty, black corridors, she let out a long breath.
She pulled open both doors and the other two followed a moment later, Whisper clutching the lantern that was surprisingly still lit and flickering enough to cast light unto the shadows of the walkways. Isha pulled her jacket around her tighter as they stepped into the icy hall, and her stomach pitched this time at the sight of the bandaged corpses in the walls. Could they rise, at any moment, or was Aelina only magicking some of them back alive?
Alive? Awake? What were they even?
“Come on,” Winnie said, turning left to lead them forward. “The two of you must get back to a bed so when you keel over, it is onto something soft.”
“Did you forget the part where dead men are patrolling the hall? Or- Divines, whatever those things are.” Isha sneered and tucked her hands underneath her arms. Her fingers were stiff with cold, and yet, her cheeks still felt flushed.
“Undying men, more like,” Carter mumbled beside her. Isha shifted right until their shoulders were pressed together, hoping that even through the illness, they could share what warmth they had left. Carter, the angel, wrapped over of his arms around her, and she let out a heavy sigh. He was warm.
She hummed, hair pooling over his shoulder now. “Clever. Let’s call them the Undying. Makes them sound like something out of a story book instead of a wretched nightmare.”
It made Carter huff out a little bit of laughter anyway. That, at least, made her feel better.
* * *
At some point, they’d taken a wrong turn. Carter mumbled something about it being just like with Gideon, and Isha wondered if the fool boy hadn’t gotten himself and Carter lost while trying to escape the coteries.
The coteries. That seemed like so long ago now. Everything did. And yet, they were in the Capital because of them.
“Wait,” Whisper said suddenly. Isha froze and it made Carter stop too. They stood still and silent for a moment. Then she heard it.
Footsteps. At least two pairs, getting closer. Isha reached out to bump Whisper’s heel with her toe, and then shoved Carter around the last corner they’d rounded. Whisper was close behind them, and they all pressed into the wall as if they could meld with it if they tried hard enough.
Isha glanced down nervously at the lantern. Could the Undying see light? Could they understand it? Could they even see in the dark? This was awful. An enemy she knew nothing about. At least, when she’d been with the coterie, it’d always been the same.
Then Whisper touched Isha’s wrist lightly, and Isha glanced back at them. They were frowning. “Isha, I can only feel one magic signature, and it-”
“I can’t believe him,” a voice muttered from nearby. Isha saw the flicker of another lantern. “He gets restless, and his first thought is ‘oh, let’s go into the off-limits crypt’. He never would have done this before, you know. Divines, how’d Whisper let him go off like that?”
The fear clasped around Isha’s ribs loosened and she let her head fall back against the wall, a grin spreading across her face.
“He fell off Reese once because a wasp came too close to him. How is an ancient crypt less scary than a wasp?” That was Gideon, and Isha knew now that the first voice had been Shiloh.
“Crypts can’t sting or chase me,” Carter called back. The footsteps stopped abruptly, and she glanced up to see him smiling too. “And for, um, for integrity, I did to convince them to let me just wander out of the house.”
The lantern light grew closer, the footsteps resuming, until Gideon and Shiloh had rounded the corner. Shiloh held the lantern up towards them and let out an audible sigh. Carter stepped forward and Shiloh held out her arms until Carter had stepped into them and she hugged him tightly, mindful of the lantern.
Turning to Gideon, Isha raised an eyebrow. “Don’t I get a hug?” she asked. Gideon rolled his eyes, but his lips twitched, and he held out his arms. She stepped into them and only crumpled against him a little, mindful of the bow over his shoulder. He was even warmer than Carter, and she nuzzled into his shoulder.
It took her a moment to realise that he was holding her up and also that both of his hands were on her back, and then she shoved him off. Gideon stumbled backwards and she stared at him. She could see Carter pull away from Shiloh to watch them. “Where’s your cane?” she demanded. “You fool, you’ve been walking around for how long without it down here, looking for us? You’ll be the death of me one day.”
“Would you relax?” Gideon asked. He sent a longing glance at Carter, but only shifted on his feet. Isha blinked when he leaned on his bad leg. “It’s okay now. Aelina… well, she did something.” He frowned at where Shiloh had moved past Carter to hug Whisper. “Why were you hiding?”
Isha sobered abruptly. She exchanged an uneasy glance with Carter and saw Gideon’s frown deepen. Then she glanced back at Shiloh and- “Hang on,” she said, glancing around them, “where’s Finn?”
Now it was Gideon and Shiloh’s turn to exchange a glance. Shiloh stepped away from Whisper, head bowed, and Gideon sighed. “With the Comtesse, I suppose.” At Isha’s raised eyebrow, he shrugged. “We went to see her. She put Finn and I to sleep, we woke up in a prison cell and-” Gideon bit his lips and shut his eyes. “There’s something weird going on. I- there was-” He raised a hand to rub at his face and Isha’s stomach knotted. He looked ill. It was the kind of look he used to get whenever he saw blood.
“Finn talked to the Comtesse while we were asleep. He did something to get us let out, I guess, but he didn’t say what,” Shiloh finished. She glanced up at Isha, and then to Whisper, then towards Gideon. “We saw something down there. Gideon-”
“It didn’t happen to have, um, red glowy eyes, and smell like death?” Carter asked. Gideon’s chin jerked up to stare at him, and Shiloh’s brow twisted in concern. Carter shrugged and winced. “That’s why- um, that’s why we were hiding. We got attacked by one of them earlier.”
Shiloh’s brows twisted further. “Are you okay?” she asked him, then glanced between Isha and Whisper with the same kind of worry.
“We’re fine. It shouldn’t have been,” Isha said. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I put my knife in its spine. It stood up, pulled the knife out, and chased us. We had to hole up in a burial chamber.”
A silence fell over them and it felt like a harrowing. Everyone shifted, disquieted by the information. Isha shivered and glanced back towards Gideon. He looked nauseated.
Then Whisper’s head lifted, and they scanned the corridors with widened, alert eyes. Isha cleared her throat, a chill running down her spine. Whisper narrowed their eyes, and then glanced at Shiloh. They frowned. “Shiloh,” they murmured. And Isha saw it too- a small thread of copperish light wrapping around a few locks of Shiloh’s hair. “There’s a lot of them, the Undying. They’re coming.”
“Here?” Carter squawked. He glanced wildly around the hallways, as if he might be able to see them. But they couldn’t, not yet. But Isha could hear them now too, the din of footsteps. Of running footsteps.
“If they don’t die, what are we supposed to do?” Gideon hissed. He pulled his bow off his shoulder and reached back for arrow. He didn’t nock it, but he did hold it down and close, ready.
Shiloh was reaching up to touch her hair where the faint copper glow was coming from, even though Isha was almost entirely certain there was no way Shiloh could possibly see it. “Aelina- she put something on me. When she let us out of the cell, she touched my hair,” she spoke as if they weren’t about to be surrounded by a bunch of creatures that wouldn’t die. “She tracked me, why? Why not both of us?”
“You wield all the island’s magic,” Whisper said. The footsteps were growing louder. “How about we talk later?”
But as soon as they said it, the Undying came into view. And they’d been right, there was a lot of them. Isha pulled out the knife on her left thigh, even if the world was tilting sideways a little. The one she hadn’t used for the other man. Gideon nocked his arrow and pointed it- but they were surrounded.
The Undying stopped in a circle around them, and Isha’s stomach dropped to her toes. Not all of them wore helmets, but many of them did. The ones without stared at them with eyes that were the worst kind of bloodshot, pupils rolling around like they were trying to look everywhere at once. Oddly enough, the ones wearing helmets were the ones a visible red glow came from the eyes. It was so faint on the rest, it was barely visible.
Whisper held up the lantern and a few of them hissed, stepping backwards and shielding their eyes from the light. Shiloh did the same, but as soon as she stepped towards them with her lantern, the chaos broke out.
Several of the Undying rushed at her, howling at the lantern like it burned to look at. Gideon turned immediately and he got three arrows off before any of them reached Shiloh. Isha saw, for a fact, that he put one arrow in one of their throats, another in one’s eye, and the last in one’s shoulder. The same Undying took the arrow to its throat and to its shoulder and was the other one that faltered even a little.
Isha staggered forward and slashed at one that had reached out the grab Shiloh’s arm. It released its grip and spat at her. It hit Isha’s nose and she winced. The thing shoved her aside and she tripped. Instead of falling, however, she suddenly felt meaty hands locking around her wrists. Squishy hands, hands that gripped like iron but felt like dough.
She had opened her eyes again already to see three of the Undying grabbing at her. Her hand was immobilised, she couldn’t even lift it to try swinging at them. So, she kicked instead, at their knees and their shins. They gurgled and snarled and hissed but none of them let her go.
“Shiloh!” Carter screeched behind her. “Shiloh!”
The smell of rot filled her nose. Isha had smelled death before but it was overpowering now. Her eyes water and her stomach lurched violently.
Something hot and sticky ran down her arm and Isha hoped it was blood but didn’t dare look down to see. The other one had bled when she stuck it, but the liquid had been gooey and almost stringy, and she didn’t have any desire to see it up close, all over her.
She pinpointed one of the Undying and twisted in its grip. Then she pulled back and brought her head forward right into its nose. Or, tried to. It turned its head at the last moment, and her forehead went right into its jaw.
A sickening crack filled her ears and Isha shuddered. When she pulled away, she found the thing’s jaw hanging half-off its face. Tendrils of skin were still attached to its jaw, and it made the bone swing grotesquely from its face. Isha went still, her mouth wrenched open in her horror and her breath coming out in short, uneven gasps.
The thing growled from its throat and shook its head. Isha shouted as its jaw flung back and forth, and some of the skin snapped like frayed rope. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said. Isha tried to yank herself away but it was no use. They were all boxed around her, pressing into every inch of her and effectively trapping her.
She felt something wet drip onto her neck and then the graze of something hard against her skin. One of them was trying to bite her- sweet heavens, it was going to bite her.
Another suddenly shrieked, unceremoniously shoving away the one with the swinging jaw away and shrieked again right in her ear. This time, it almost formed a no sound, but Isha couldn’t have been sure.
The pressure left her neck and she heard an angry squeal from behind her. She had squeezed her eyes shut, not quite sure when she’d done that, and clamped her mouth closed. She’d have plugged her nose too, if she had hands.
She realised she’d dropped her dagger too, and again, didn’t know when she’d done that.
They were shoving her along, she realised, and her feet were barely touching the ground. They couldn’t die and they were ridiculously strong- perfect. That was fine. Perfect.
But they’re not trying to hurt you.
She opened her eyes again and caught a glimpse of dark curls to her left, wriggling and getting swarmed by the Undying. “Carter!” Isha screamed. She saw his gaze darting around, searching for her. “Carter!”
He opened his mouth when he spotted her but then a hand covered his mouth before he could respond, and he looked about ready to be sick all over the blackened, deformed hand. A moment later, the stench around her got worse and Isha only realised a second too late what was happening.
The hand that covered her mouth was cool and felt the same as getting raw meat pressed to your skin. Isha’s eyes watered. The third finger digging into her skin felt hard and pointed and- she didn’t think that was rotting flesh clawing at her cheek.
She was acting on instinct, and if she’d given a thought to what she was doing, Isha definitely wouldn’t have parted her jaw. She would not have tilted her chin, and clamped her teeth shut around the hand covering her mouth.
Her mouth was immediately filled with a bitter, thick ooze, and Isha immediately regretted he impulse. She slackened her jaw and the hand pulled away, and someone might have screeched behind her, but it didn’t matter. She spat out the rush of liquid, but Isha wasn’t sure she’d ever get that taste out of her mouth. Even worse was the underlying metallic of blood.
When she couldn’t swallow back the bile in her throat – and frankly, didn’t try because it meant swallowing whatever fluids had gotten in her mouth – and doubled over to hack it out, the Undying only kept shoving her along. She thought the vomit might have run over the knee of her trousers, but it was already covered in a dampness that Isha had no way to tell.
She was still hunched over when she was suddenly shoved forward. Isha almost fell but the groping, meaty hands kept her from doing so until-
Until she was shoved forward and fell onto the floor, hitting her knee and letting out a sharp cry. But there were no more hands, and the stench of decay had receded just slightly.
Isha blinked back the stars in her eyes and managed to turn just in time to see Whisper shoved towards her by the Undying. Then, they pulled on a giant metal ring, and a stone door she hadn’t seen began to swing shut.
She realised what was happening only in time to get halfway to her feet, just in time for the door to swing shut and plunge them into a haunting darkness.
Aside from the thunder of feet retreating and fading into the distance, the chamber or room or whatever it was went completely silent. And then it was broken, by the sound of someone retching.
After a moment of panting and panic that physically hurt in her chest and her stomach, Isha collapsed back onto the freezing dirt floor. It was dirt here, not gravel, and at least it wasn’t stone, because she didn’t bother bracing her head for the impact.
“Who all is here?” Gideon’s voice broke the silent after a moment. He sounded shaky, but he had his tough voice on- in which he pretended to sound steadier than he felt.
Isha twisted on the ground and spat, trying to get more of the awful-whatever out of her mouth. She tasted mostly bile now, but the memory of the other stuff still burned into her tongue and she wanted to make sure. There was a silence for a moment as she did so, before she said, hoarsely, “I am.”
Carter whimpered a second later, followed by Whisper. The tremble in Whisper’s voice shook Isha to her core, and she laid back against the floor, gripping her arms tightly. Tears stung her eyes and her cheeks were already wet. She didn’t understand why she was gripped with the sudden need to cry but wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t already begun some time ago.
It took her a moment to realise that nobody else spoke, and she sucked in a sharp breath. “Shiloh?” she asked.
The air shifted, and with it, Isha shivered violently.
She heard another quiet whimper. “I, um…” Carter sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “I think they- that they- um, I, um. Oh God.” The last two words were muffled and Isha tilted her head. Her eyes were only partially adjusted, but she could see his figure a few feet away. His knees were tucked to his chest and his head buried in his hands.
Gideon, or who she supposed was Gideon, shifted closer and allowed Carter to bury into his shoulder. “They took her,” Gideon whispered. Her put an arm around Carter and Carter shifted to burrow deeper into him. Gideon suddenly made a soft “oh” noise. Carter glanced up, and while Gideon kept him close, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a vial. He cursed under his breath. “One of them broke.”
“One of what?” Whisper asked. They were somewhere above Isha, she was sure, and sounded at least a little steadier now. A blessing in itself, Isha wasn’t sure she wanted to ever hear Whisper trembling like that again.
“Vials. Wine, I think. Finn slipped them to me when we were released.” Isha couldn’t see Gideon’s face well enough but was sure he was frowning right now. “I think. I don’t know- they weren’t there before. And he like, bumped my shoulder when we got out of the prison house. I think he slipped them in then.”
Isha swallowed, hard, and forced herself not to conjure any images of what horrible things could be filling her mouth. “Well- he didn’t say anything?”
“I, uh. He said, ‘give my regards to your lover and your golden sister for me’. Or something like that, I don’t know what he was talking about.” Gideon grew quiet, but at least Carter had too. If Isha squinted, she thought she might be able to make out Gideon running his fingers through Carter’s curls.
She sat up quickly. Too quickly, because her mind began to spin so fast it hurt. She dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. “You said there were two of them, and one broke.” Gideon make a noise of confirmation. “After he met with the Comtesse?” Another noise. Isha made her own, but it was one of frustration. “Gideon! What kind of magic is Aelina supposed to have? Which are the two of us that are sick?”
“Oh,” Gideon said, softly. “But- but Carter and me- but you’re not- there’s only one vial.”
“Is there only one drop of wine?” Whisper asked dryly. Gideon began with “No, but-” and Whisper snorted. “They each drink half then. It should still work.” Then, Isha heard a rustling and turned to see Whisper standing behind her. “I’m going to check the situation out.”
“Carter gets it first,” Isha said. She crossed her legs in front of her and took several deep breaths.
She was never going to un-see any of that. Isha had seen so much with her parents and the coteries. She’d seen Gideon trying to claw his own skin off, she’d seen an apprentice trip into a brazier once and burn alive screaming in front of everyone in the room. She’d seen every wound she’d thought imaginable. But this?
“I hate magic,” she grumbled. “You think Aelina doesn’t know you’re here, Winnie?” Carter made a noise, and she saw him rolling over in the darkness to hold out the vial towards her. She took it and stared at it. Her stomach churned. It looked like blood. You’ll feel better. But Divines, she didn’t want to drink it.
“I suspect I’d have been killed back there if she did,” Whisper replied. “Until the assassins back in the woods, I didn’t think she even knew I existed. My father’s the one who ordered it the first time.” Isha could see well enough to spot Whisper moving around the room – and yes, it was a room, and there didn’t appear to be another door anywhere. “I was with the guard captain the first time. They protected me,” Whisper’s voice softened, “but I heard that he was trying to rope citizens into it so I wouldn’t suspect an assassination. I think he was trying to convince one of the blacksmith’s in town, but I didn’t stay long enough to find out.”
Isha took a deep breath while Whisper was speaking, and then threw her head back to down the vial. It tasted like wine and Isha had never had a taste for alcohols, but right now it tasted like the fabled ambrosia.
Something washed through her. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but maybe it wasn’t- exactly this. Some of the fatigue washed away, and she grew a bit warmer. Her throat hurt a little less. But otherwise, she felt renewed and better but not… not sick.
“You just- left?” Gideon wondered.
Whisper turned back towards them, but their expression was unreadable at such a distance and in such a darkness. “Sort of. The guard captain helped me and my mother escape. We were supposed to wait for someone else, a boy, but that was all I know. He never showed up and we had to leave. That was it.”
“I remember your mother,” Caspar rasped softly. Isha scooted across the floor and handed the vial back to Gideon, who pocketed it. “Didn’t see her much, but she always made the best pastries.” He reached up to pat Gideon’s chest lazily. Despite the horror of their situation, Isha felt some of the fear melt away and give way to a warmth. They truly were good for each other. “We’ll introduce you soon enough,” Carter mumbled.
“How do you two feel?” Winnie asked. They came back over to them and when Isha glanced up towards them, they shrugged. “No entrances or exits I can find.”
Isha rolled her neck and rubbed her eyes again. “Okay, I guess. If you’re asking whether I still feel sick or not, I do. But it’s a little better.”
Carter hummed in agreement. Gideon glanced up at Isha and Whisper sighed loudly into the otherwise empty room. “I don’t think you are sick. If Finn really did get wine laced with Aelina’s healing magic, it should have done something more. Healed you. I think it’s a curse, not an illness.”
A groan tore from Isha’s throat before she could help it. She was still trembling and at this point, she wasn’t sure if it was even from the cold or not. “So, what? Now we die? I think my soul died back there when we got ambushed by dead men.”
Winnie considered that for a moment, then another sigh. “No. More complicated than that. I think this is an old curse. Whoever enacted it, even Etienne couldn’t heal it.” They sat back down near the rest of them, and wrapped their arms around themself. “I think we have to take Shiloh back to the Spire, and we have to remove the island’s magic again. I also think that’s why the Comtesse took Shiloh. Shiloh didn’t release magic so much as she absorbed it- I think the Comtesse wants to actually release it. She needs Shiloh.”
“Why not just keep her then, when she already had her in a cell?” Gideon asked. Isha was just glad that he hadn’t asked what releasing the magic entailed- because Isha was pretty sure she had idea what Whisper was suggesting. Carter didn’t need to hear that, not now. And frankly, neither did Isha.
The only sound in the air without someone speaking was the quiet puffs of their collective breathing. Otherwise- silence. Not even a rat, or distant noises. Silent as a grave, Isha thought bitterly.
“I don’t know,” Whisper finally said. They spoke quiet, but it sunk deep into Isha’s bones. She shivered, and this time, she knew it wasn’t from the cold.
Chapter 38Spoiler
Gideon was the one who found the loose rocks.
It was a close thing too, because Carter hadn’t wanted him to get up. It’d torn at Gideon’s heart to leave him like that, especially when it felt nice just to hold Carter despite his height – he could really curl up and compact himself when he tried – but they needed to find a way to get out. And the door they’d come in wasn’t look like a hot option, not when there was no handle on their side of the stone.
In the centre of the back wall, however, there was a bunch of rubble. Like a cave in, Gideon had thought the longer he looked at it. And then he’d began clearing it away despite the fact that it was probably a dangerous idea.
But then Whisper had begun helping him, with their magic, and even Isha and Carter had sworn they felt okay enough. As far as Gideon could tell, they looked better than they had before, but both were still worn down and covered in filth that made it hard to tell.
They’d move about half of it when Gideon realised it hadn’t been a cave in, but what looked like a purposeful barricade. There was a staircase he could see through the cracks in the pile of stones. He told the others as much.
He was hot and sweaty – and also covered in mysterious fluids that were making him want to retch again – and smelled like decay, but he tried his best to push that from his mind. They just had to get out of the crypt, and then… Well. Find Shiloh, he supposed.
They cleared only enough for everyone to fit through a hole in the debris. Gideon helped Isha and Carter up first, and then Whisper, and then followed them into the stairwell. It was old, crumbling and smelled oddly like the new-fangled mothballs. At least, Gideon mused, it did not smell like the dead. He wished he smelled more like mothballs.
Gideon led them up the staircase, though they all stayed in a tight clump so none of them were never not touching someone else. At the top of the staircase, he found there was a cellar door. He pushed on it and heard a chain jiggle.
The wood felt a little soft, however, and Gideon wondered how bad it could possibly hurt if he tried to punch through it. He hadn’t brought his short swords and even if he still had his bow, it wouldn’t help now. His stomach twisted- that had been a good bow. A gift from Isha too.
“There’s a chunk of the stairs that’s loose next to your foot,” Isha suggested. Gideon bent down and sure enough, he found it. He lifted it, not as big as he’d wanted but better than nothing.
“Stand back.” Everyone abruptly backed away, and Gideon lifted the rock. Then he smashed it into the doors. Nothing happened, but he heard a sharp crack. He tried again, and this time, some of the wood crumbled.
He continued to bash the piece of stairs into the door until he’d made a sizeable hole. He set aside the stone and grabbed a splintering plank, before pulling on it until it bent and crack off the door.
Then, he reached out of the door, and minded the splinters as best he could as he pulled himself through the door. The wood scraped against his skin, digging through his clothes. He already knew that it’d sting later but couldn’t bring himself to care then. Once he was out of the doors, he turned, breathing a little harder, and kicked at the door to make a bigger hole.
Once they’d finally all climbed from the stairwell, Isha turned to him. “I meant to use the rock on the hinges,” she said. Gideon looked down at the door and still visible rusted hinges. His face grew hot.
“Shut up,” he growled.
Isha laughed. Her hair was knotted and looked more brown than blonde. Her forehead was splattered with gore and he hoped it wasn’t her own. There were stains covering her- covering all of them, and Gideon bit the inside of his cheek and tried to think of watching Carter stroke Achille’s neck soothingly when the horse freaked out.
“So, Shiloh,” Isha said. “Where do we think the Comtesse took her? Back to the prison house?”
Gideon turned, more on instinct than anything else, and searching their surroundings. They’d climbed out of an old cellar, and he could see the White Cathedral rising in the distance. He turned again and spotted The Spiral Tower. “There,” he said, pointing. At the curious looks he got, he shrugged. “Something Finn said. Nobody’s allowed up there, and he said… something about her keeping her skeletons up there. He didn’t know why he knew about it.”
“Best shot we have, I guess,” Isha said. “Let’s not get spotted, yeah? Don’t want to get arrested for a second time.”
And then she set off. All the discomfort he’d seen back after the – what had the others called them? The Undying? Sounded like a fairy tale villain. He wondered if that’d been Carter or Isha – had evaporated and she looked as steady as she always did.
It settled wrong in Gideon. It worried him.
Carter, on the other hand, dragged his feet as they began to follow her. Whisper leaned close to him and took his hand. “She’ll be okay, Carter. We’re going to fix this.”
“Yeah,” Carter mumbled, and kicked a stray rock. “I’m just tired of fixing things. I, um. I’m just tired.”
Whisper nodded and Gideon saw a flash of gold in their eyes. Carter’s shoulder relaxed, and Gideon let out a breath. Thank goodness for Whisper and their ability to calm Carter down.
The tower was a lot taller when they got closer to it. Gideon had to crane his neck back, and slowed his pace slightly, but Isha ploughed right ahead. She didn’t look daunted by the height at all, walked right up the few steps to get to the one, ebony door. The tower itself was made of a slate-grey stone, and Gideon had to wonder if it was supposed to be some poor representation of the Spire.
They followed her up the steps and Isha crouched at the door when the handle only jiggled a little. Gideon peered down at her, and she cast a look over her shoulder at him as if sensing it.
“How do you think we got into the crypt?” she asked at his dubious look as the padlock clicked, and she popped it open.
“It was locked when we got there,” Gideon grumbled.
Whisper shrugged, watching Isha. “We went to the private entrance.”
Of course you did, Gideon thought grumpily. Isha’s mouth twitched as she turned the handle and stood up to push the door open.
They all shuffled quickly into the tower for fear of being seen, and then shut the door quietly behind them. Gideon suddenly felt naked. He had no weapons, and nobody was supposed to be in this tower. If Aelina was really hiding anything in here, she’d have guards.
“Shouldn’t there be, um, guards?” Carter echoed. Gideon glanced around- it wasn’t an overly large tower. There was a spiral staircase to their right, a few wooden chairs in front of them, and a large wooden storage unit that had cabinets and, below that, drawers.
Above them the spiral staircase led to another level, but it was anyone’s guess what was up there.
Isha moved over to the shelving unit and opened the cabinets. Gideon watched and, over her shoulder, spotted shelves of food products and mugs. Isha made a confused noise from the back of her throat and shut the cabinets. Gideon glanced at the table, and his stomach somersaulted at the sight of a fresh apple. There was a bite taken out of it, and it hadn’t browned.
He walked forward. “Isha, someone’s been here recently,” he said as she opened the top drawer. He watched as she pulled a long strip of leather and inspected it. Well, he thought a little bitterly. At least she was armed now- she could do wonders with a little string like that.
The sound of bootsteps made him glance over to where Carter had begun wandering up the stairs. Gideon thought about telling him not to go up there, but even if he wanted to, his mouth didn’t seem to want to work anyway. Whisper had shifted to follow him.
Then the doors of the tower opened.
Isha was beside him in a heartbeat, wielding the strip of leather on her hand and in a readied stance. Whisper quickly joined Carter on the stairs, out of reach. The person stepped in was guard armour- but it was oversized, as if it didn’t fit the wearer properly.
Gideon held himself still and wondered how easily he could break one of the chairs apart to use as a stick.
Then the guard began to unbuckle his armour. Gideon exchanged a glance with Isha but turned back when the man’s breastplate hit the ground with a clatter. Underneath, the man was wearing the same black leather armour as the assassins that had come after Whisper. Gideon’s heart wriggled into his throat.
After all his armour had been shed, the man reached up to pull the helmet off. Gideon saw a flash of teeth under a grin, and then the helmet was thrown to the side.
“Finn,” Isha said through a breath. She relaxed, dropping her head and letting the leather fall back to her side. “Were you trying to give us a heart attack?”
Finn’s grin didn’t waver, and Gideon’s chest tightened. It took him a moment too long to open his mouth, to say, “Isha, his eyes-”
Without anymore hesitation, Finn had whipped out a wavy dagger, and lunged forward. Gideon shoved Isha out of the way just in time, and Finn missed her as she tumbled to the ground. ///
He hardly faltered at the missed assault, only pivoting on his heel and raising his dagger. All in one motion, he stabbed downwards at Gideon. Gideon leapt backwards and crashed into the wooden table and chairs behind him. He caught himself on the edge of the table as Finn spun again, and advanced towards him.
Gideon backed away and grabbed one of the chairs by its back. Finn’s grin was calm, replaced by complete focus that looked terrifyingly blank on his expression.
“Finn!” Carter shouted above them. Finn’s eyes never left Gideon’s but narrowed slightly. They glowed, faint and almost unnoticeable but there. A soft, red glow. “Finn!”
Once again, Finn launched forward. Gideon lifted the chair and propelled himself forward, using the chairs and its legs as his shield. He knocked Finn backwards, but to his slight disappointment, Finn remained on his feet.
He almost didn’t spot Isha right away, but then she suddenly had the strip of leather around his throat. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, and it was another miracle that Finn didn’t topple at her sudden weight as she leapt onto his back. She propped her elbows against his shoulders, pulling back and upwards and cutting off Finn’s air. “Yield,” she spat in his ear. Or, above his ear. “Finn, yield.”
Later, Gideon would curse himself for watching in that moment. He let the chair slack in his arms, watching as Finn gasped for air as Isha pulled tight against his throat. Gideon allowed himself a sharp breath.
And then Finn sneered, raised his dagger, and drove it back straight into Isha’s hip.
Isha cried out and he could see her grip loosen on Finn’s chokehold. Finn staggered backwards then, quickly, and slammed her into the wall behind them. She hit her elbow and the leader strip fluttered away harmlessly. Isha, no longer with an anchor point, slid from Finn’s back onto the floor, dagger still partially in her hip.
The second Finn whirled to face her, Gideon launched forward and brought the chair down over Finn’s head. He crumpled to the floor. Gideon blinked down at him, trying to steady his breathing. He looked so small, so innocent like that.
Then he turned towards Isha and crouched beside her. He heard the rush of bootsteps and soon Carter was on her other side. Isha had her head resting against the wall and her expression was contorted. She reached up, offering on hand to each other of them. The hand she offered to Gideon was coated in a glistening mess of blood, but he still took it. Couldn’t be worse than what he was already covered in. Isha smiled; her eyes closed as her breathing evened out.
“I don’t think he hit anything important,” Isha said airily. Then, she laughed, and her eyes opened. “Except, you know. Me.”
Gideon squeezed her hand. “It’s not funny, Isha,” he said, but his tone was quiet and urgent. She met his gaze, and the corners of her eyes crinkled.
“Nothing is funny to you,” she chastised. Then her gaze drifted towards Finn and she sat up straighter against the stone. “What happened?”
“The Comtesse,” Whisper said. Gideon turned to find them beside Finn, eyes closed as their hand hovered over his forehead. “I can’t get in, I can’t- his mind is locked from me. I can’t get him back.” They opened their eyes.
Carter was looking down at the dagger sticking out from Isha’s hip and was beginning to grow rather pale. “Shouldn’t we do something about, um. About the knife? Sticking out of her?”
“Best not to right now, Kitten,” Isha said. Her fingers curled around Carter’s hand and he glanced up to meet her gaze. Her smile returned, and she gazed at him fondly. “I can’t say this is the first time this has happened.” Her eyes darted sideways towards Gideon. “Even Gideon was a culprit once.”
“That was an accident,” Gideon groaned. “And it was hardly a stab wound.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell that to the sutures they had to give me.” Isha winked at Carter, who looked torn between feeling unsettled and smiling. Isha squeezed Gideon’s hand again, and by the looks of, Carter’s too. “I’m okay- go find Shiloh. I’ll just rest here and wait for you to return.”
Gideon glanced back to find Whisper looking at him with a raised eyebrow. They were waiting for him to decide what came next. “You and Carter go up,” Gideon decided. “I want to stay here with her-”
“I’ve been through worse,” Isha grouched and Gideon shot her a look.
“-and make sure that Finn doesn’t wake up and get any more notions about stabbing people,” Gideon finished pointedly. Isha’s mouth twisted with displeasure, but she shrugged nonchalantly.
“As you say,” she snarked.
From the corner of his gaze, Gideon caught Carter sending him an amused glance. Gideon offered his free hand not covered in blood – well, not covered in Isha’s blood anyway – and Carter took it with a quick, grateful squeeze. Then he stood and followed Whisper as they led him up the staircase.
He settled on the wall beside Isha, still holding her hand, and watched Finn where he lay prone, breathing silent and evenly. His stomach clenched tight enough to hurt.
What did you do?
formatting? non-existent. typos? rampant.
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