“I’m exhausted from healing you. I don’t think I have any magic left.”
“We need a weapon.”
She sank to her knees and scrabbled through the snow until she found the tip of the arrowhead she’d dug out of Quin’s chest. The shard was still plenty sharp; when she pinched it between thumb and forefinger, it pricked the skin and drew blood. But it was too small. She threw it onto the snow, where it arched crimson like a wren’s wing.
Something about the color caught her eye.
She picked up the stone again, more carefully this time, and wiped it across her trousers. The blood swabbed off, but the stone was still red. Vitreous, brittle tenacity, imperfect cleavage. A luster like glass. She recognized it instantly.
Fojuen.
A stone that did not exist in Glas Ddir.
A stone manufactured by the volqanoes of Fojo Kara??o.
The same stone her mother used to lock her little book of secrets.
If Wynna’s killer hailed from Fojo, was it mere coincidence that Quin’s assassin was Fojuen, too?
She dropped the arrowhead into her pocket. The “safe haven” they were careening toward looked more and more like a den of murderers.
“The dogs, Mia.” Quin was very pale. “They’re here.”
Chapter 30
Monster
MIA SPRINTED UP THE mountain with Quin beside her, batting away the overgrown foliage. She ran until her heart was bursting, until her calf muscles were raging flames and her breath rasped through her lungs. They charged up the mountain as if their very lives depended on it.
She heard Quin panting. How much longer could they run? She didn’t know if minutes or hours had passed, but suddenly they weren’t climbing the peak anymore; they were coming down it. The rocks were uneven as they sloped and spilled onto a footpath. To Mia’s surprise, the stones were worn, scuffed by centuries of feet and hooves—proof that even after Ronan sealed the borders, there were still ways to escape.
The trail zigzagged down the mountain, hugging the side of a dramatic white cliff. Beyond it, Mia saw a trembling gray body of water.
They’d made it to the Salted Sea.
Mia’s blood tilted forward in her veins. She didn’t need her mother’s map—something called to her, some unseen force tugging on the iron in her blood. Was this how the Natha snaked up the mountain? Was there a giant lodestone, calling it forth? It shattered every theory, every scientific principle she had ever learned, to think an invisible force could summon blood and water. But then her hard-won theories were being shattered left and right.
A shower of pebbles clattered down from overhead. The dogs were kicking rocks from the path above. They were close.
Quin’s pulse intertwined with hers, an echo of his heartbeat resonating in her own, as they skidded to the edge of the cliff. One minute the path was chugging along; the next, it vanished.
She heard a monstrous, thundering roar.
At their feet was a waterfall.
Water poured off the cliff like a wedding veil, white and terrifying. She had never heard water hit with so much force. The mist made it impossible to see down into the chasm, obfuscating everything below. Surely they couldn’t survive the fall; at this height, the water would fracture their bones like glass.
Again she saw the unnatural bend of Tristan’s fingers, the crushed phalanges, fractured from the metacarpal bones. A body was weak, an assemblage of breakable parts. What broke more easily? A person’s bones or a person’s heart?
Mia’s brain was silent. But her heart was screaming.
“We have to jump,” she said.
“What?”
In seconds they would feel the hot breath of the hounds against their necks, teeth tearing into skin.
But it wasn’t just that. The little voice inside her that had beckoned ever since she’d left the castle, coaxing her forth, asking her to trust it; she could no longer ignore the call. She didn’t know what would happen the moment they hit the water—after that, her future was a blank page. But she knew she had to fill it.
“We have to jump.”
Mia had never put much stock in fate. But now she felt it, the siren song of destiny. She was exactly where she was supposed to be. She was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing—for maybe the first time in her life.
The dogs were a few short bounds away. Mia held out her hand. Quin took it.
All the air whipped out of her throat.
Stone and earth, then emptiness.
Free fall.
Ice air.
Skin scourge.
A froth of white and spun gold. The prince’s golden curls. He pitched through the air like a bolt of lightning.
Mia closed her eyes.
The water reached hungrily for their soft bodies, a monster draped in white, as death rose up to greet them.
Part Three
Breath
Chapter 31
Fire and Air
QUIN’S BODY STRUCK FIRST. Hers a moment after.
The surface was a thin plate of glass, and they punched through it, the water rupturing beneath them. The world went white, then black, then blue. Mia waited for a million shards to slice into her skin.
But the water was warm.
She felt herself being shoved down, her head held underwater by the falls. Despite the tremendous force, she kicked violently, propelling herself up. Her face broke the surface, and she gasped for air. She swam out of the roaring mist, paddling hard until she found herself beneath a lighter trickle, the water anointing her head and gluing her curls to her face. A lick of softness and warmth, not the cold bludgeon she’d expected.
In the distance, she saw looming rock formations, a cinnamon brick red. A few feet away, Quin’s golden curls bobbed in the water. She couldn’t tell if he was coughing or laughing. Maybe both.
Are you—?
Did we just—?
The falls were pounding too loud for them to hear each other, but they didn’t need words. They were alive. They had survived.
In the east, the sun was rising, a thin pink wafer on the horizon. They craned their necks to stare up at the cliff. Two tiny spots squirmed on the ridge, their howls drowned out by the waterfall. The dogs were nothing more than specks of white pepper on the scarp.
How had she and Quin survived that jump?
The pool at the base of the waterfalls was a deep bluish green, but a little farther out, the water grew hazy. Mia cupped a handful of water and brought it to her mouth. The salt stung her lips.
She paddled away from the falls, water lapping over her skin. She squinted at the strange red rocks. She wanted to swim out to them, but she hesitated. Could the prince swim? When would he have learned, cloistered in a castle?
But he was swimming beautifully, his strokes long and smooth. He clasped his hands behind his head and floated serenely on his back, as if he were born for the ocean.
They swam out to the red rocks. More sunlight spilled across the ocean, casting long tendrils of rust and peach. The pink wafer on the horizon was now a gold crown rising from the sea.
Mia was tired when she reached the rocks, in a good way, her muscles soft as paste. She followed the cliff’s natural curve, running her hands along the porous surface as the water slurped at her shoulders. The rock wall led her to a shallow cove, where she crawled out on her knees, feeling the crumble of red sand beneath her hands, the muddled sunshine warm against her back.
Quin climbed out and stood facing her, shaking the salt water out of his curls. His hair was a more muted gold when wet, the color of fire-roasted wheat. He was trembling.
Mia felt not a modicum of cold. In her body, the seasons had changed from winter to summer. The salt water trickled off her hair, pooling in the nooks of her clavicle. Her skin was soft and glowing, dewy to the touch, and she felt soft inside, too. Luscious.
Quin reached out to touch her. He pressed a fingertip to the scoop of her collarbone, then brought his finger to his mouth.