Vesper raised his brows. He’d been wrong, assuming the boy didn’t have a family. “Your . . . mother,” he spoke aloud, forgetting to use his hands.
The lad positioned his thumbs at his temples, like horns. “The witch?” Vesper asked. “Is she the one who taught you the ancient language?” It made sense. As an immortal, she’d been alive from the time of the drasilisks.
The boy moved his hands and fingers so fast, Vesper had to concentrate to read the words: No answers . . . no bargain . . . no trade until you bring my family back. Safely. Then I will give you your treasures and let you leave. I want your word, Prince.
“So, you know I’m royalty,” Vesper answered, hoping the lad wouldn’t notice him inching closer.
Which means nothing. You’re no better than the ilk that tossed me out of the castle like rubbish.
Vesper stopped in his tracks. “Which castle would this be?”
The boy’s mouth gaped slightly, those unique eyes widening. He’d disclosed more than he’d intended.
“Eldoria’s palace,” Vesper reasoned aloud. Hedging forward again, he kept his gaze locked to the stripling’s. “I know you didn’t come from mine. I would never forget someone with your pluck and talents—nor would I forget such a face. But you’re a contradiction, aren’t you? Your eyes . . . they’re born of stars and moonlight.” Vesper tried to suppress the appeal those epicene features held for him. “Why were you tossed out of the castle? Were you spying on the princess?”
The boy’s long lashes quivered—like the downy barbs of feathers on the wind. Vesper’s fingers itched to touch them, to see if they were as soft as they appeared. He had closed enough space that he wasn’t more than an arm’s length away. All he needed to do was reach out. He bit back an oath, resolved not to lose himself to the oddly tender compulsion.
The thief stepped backward until his heel scraped against the rock pile. I . . . don’t know.
“You don’t know,” Vesper repeated, picking up the hanging threads of their conversation. “For which question is that the answer?”
The boy gulped a breath and his fingers clenched the pouch at his shoulder. He dropped his hand to respond. Both. I remember nothing before waking in this ravine. Nothing of my life, or what I was doing. Only that Crony took me in.
Vesper wrestled a wave of sympathy. “So, in the time you’ve known the witch, has she shared her plans for the ‘princess revolution’? Do you know of her conspirings against the castle? Tell the truth, and perhaps I can help her.”
The boy’s face changed, the grit and resolve softening to a sincere frown. She’s not just a witch. She has a name. Crony. She’s my family. And she’s never once mentioned your precious princess in the five years I’ve known her.
“Five years.” Vesper mouthed the words. That was around the time he swallowed the sunlight . . . around the time he lost some crucial part of himself. This couldn’t be by chance.
The marshy bog gurgled again and a shimmer from the movement reflected on the thief ’s face, reminding Vesper of their dangerous surroundings. Determined to resolve this discussion at camp, the prince leapt forward. His captive lurched backward and stumbled across the pile of rocks. Vesper lunged to catch him before he busted his head. The stripling reached back for Vesper’s left arm and found balance atop the rock pile, making them the same height. His pouch slipped off and the jars crackled as they broke upon the rocks.
Neither the prince nor his captive reacted, too intent on what was taking place at their point of contact. As the boy gripped Vesper’s metallic forearm, the shell of infected flesh began to soften. Vesper’s coppery skin showed through—an imprint of the boy’s warm grasp.
Warm. Vesper couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d had any feeling in that part of his arm.
Their gazes met, and in those lilac eyes, Vesper saw moments he’d never lived, yet somehow knew existed, for they had altered him profoundly: the flash of dusk igniting that gaze to amber . . . eating apples from the palm of that small, grimy hand . . . an unconventional dance beneath a leafy sky.
Then, he saw a shock of fire, thorns, and pain.
The boy winced, stretching his mouth in a soundless scream. His fingertips lit up with golden light—an effulgence that matched Vesper’s sunlit blood. It spread along the thief ’s arm and flashed through his entire body—a surge so dazzling it rendered Vesper blind for an instant. His breath hitched and he pulled back.
When the prince’s vision returned, the boy appeared ill. He stepped off the rocks and sat. The glow in his body withdrew, converging in his hands. His drab complexion paled to an even sicklier hue as he dug his fingers into the slimy ground.
Flowers sprung up from the mud—blooms of crimson, bright pink, blue, and orange appearing around the boy’s torn fingers. Like a beautiful contagion, more blossoms followed, spanning the sodden distance between him and Vesper. Varicolored petals opened around the prince’s boots before continuing through the thicket, climbing the twigs that formed the domed roof, and overpowering the stench of the bog with a heady perfume. Vesper’s mind spun. He stood beneath a vivid, ambrosial rainbow, in a softly glowing world that had once been colorless and stagnant. It was as if he’d fallen through the earth and landed within Neverdark, back in his childhood when the arboretum still brought him wonder and awe.
Speechless, Vesper studied his metallic arm where it retained the imprint of that small hand. It was as if the boy had cured a part of him by absorbing his sunlight and sending it into the ground. Their eyes met once more, but before Vesper could say a word, a huge crash broke through the bramble wall closest to him.
The Pegasus barreled in and looked from Vesper to the boy—now slumped over bent knees, panting. Armed with nothing but his knife, Vesper spun to face the beast. The Pegasus reared up, eyes, mane, and tail ablaze, hooves aimed for Vesper’s head.
Vesper ducked left. He slipped in the mud, squashing flowers as he fell, and landed inches from the bog. The hum of his blood became a voltaic buzz, pulling toward the beast as if magnetized. Vesper fought it, trying to put distance between them. Still clutching the knife, he bent one knee and pushed up, but the snap of a bracken caught his arm. With a jerk, the vicious fern dragged him off the banks and into the deep. His liquid surroundings undulated between luminous and murky. He kicked out his good leg so he could surface. He choked on the taste of decay then capsized as the Pegasus plunged in beside him, fully submerging them both.
Vesper opened his eyes in the silver-blue depths. Smoldering feathers, hooves, and flame surrounded him. His legs tangled with the stallion’s, his hair enmeshed with the barbs of the opened wing. Vesper took his knife and aimed for the beast’s heart. The instant the blade found its home with a meaty thrust, a lancing agony ruptured within Vesper’s own chest. Air escaped in a gush of bubbles. A brilliant light detonated with a loud blast in his head, as piercing and agonizing as cannon fire. His skull seemed to shatter on the implosion. He surfaced for an instant, sipping another breath, but was dragged under again.
Vesper fought the Pegasus’s sinking body, its tail having wrapped around his neck. Everything around them blurred. Amidst that suffocating myopia, the past collided with the present. In his mind, Vesper returned to the ice cavern under the sorceress’s spell, his body broiling with sunlight. In that moment of destruction and creation, when Madame Dyadia rent him in half and trapped his pain, rebellion, and pride inside a new vessel, he’d struggled to put a name to it. Now he could see it clearly: four legs, hooves, and a body of shadow with wings of flame. A Pegasus.
Vesper tugged at the snare constricting his windpipe, trying to stay focused. Those sweat-drenched dreams over the past five years had been his only ties to his missing piece: the taste of steam, the scent of burned wood, the running, running, running alongside a trusted friend—a girl who masqueraded as a boy—here in the Ashen Ravine.
The epiphany slammed into him. With wildness born anew in his heart, he stared, unflinching, at the truth. There was no dying Pegasus dragging him down. There was only Vesper himself, whole again, alone in the depths with a bracken around his neck—holding him captive beneath the sludge. His lungs begged for breath. He wrestled the binds, wanting only to get back to her . . . to Stain. His playmate, his confidante, his tiny trifling thing.
20
A Waltz among the Embers
Slumped on the rocks, Stain watched orange and red bubbles rise from the moon-bog and burst in midair. In the wake of Scorch’s plunge, a churning, chaotic and violent as a monster’s heartbeat, rendered everything beneath the surface imperceptible.