She shook her head, signing again about the army.
Luce lifted the saddlebag at her feet. “Yes, yes. Storming the castle requires reinforcements. They’ll meet us at the ravine’s entrance. Where’d you get this bag? Is there any food inside?” He dug through the contents, sending shadows and crickets deeper inside. He looked up, gaping. “You got them back.”
Stole them back . . . along with a few other items. She wondered how the prince would react once he realized; if he would despise her for stealing from him again. Or, if through Scorch’s sentience, he would somehow understand her desperation—for the Pegasus knew her, within and without.
As for Luce, he seemed unconcerned that she’d stolen from Nerezethite royalty. He placed the saddlebag on the ground and withdrew that odd fabric wrapped around the princess’s gifts. The brush, hairpin, and ring tumbled free into the bag, inhabiting pockets of darkness alongside the night creatures. Curiosity sharpened the sylph’s features upon noting the treasures, but he was otherwise occupied—riveted to what unfolded in his hands: a hooded cape lined with rainbow-colored fish scales and embellished with violet-black feathers, silvery fur, and glistening cobwebby lace. It surged in his grasp, reaching toward Stain. Eyes wide, he released it.
Stain caught a breath as it floated toward her. The feathers, fur, and lace draped her form, arranging itself into a regal cape. Once settled, an ethereal darkness seeped across her like a cloud invading the sun—a cooling, velvet obscurity. Soon she was eclipsed by the hovering haze; it was somehow sentient, anticipating and following her every move. From her scalp to her fingertips and all the way to her half-booted feet, not a glimpse of skin or clothing showed through.
She viewed Luce from behind the screen, mesmerized by how it muted his luminous skin and bright hair while still allowing her to see with clarity. A bitter tang stamped her tongue, as if she’d tasted a similar compromise in the past—relinquishing vivid colors for the freedom to stand in the light.
Luce circled her, observing from head to toe, his expression somewhere between fascination and pride. “Well, well, well. You could not have bagged more suitable plunder. It appears you won’t be stuck within a box after all. Today, you take your first step into the sun.”
Not far off, in the moon-bog’s bramble thicket, there was another who faced the sun, although the prince didn’t step within willingly. Agonizing thrashes of fever and gold threatened to sweep him under. The scent of smoke, singed clothing, and blistering skin turned his stomach. He lay there, unmoving, convinced that embers embroidered his bones—and if he dared jostle, his very skeleton would disintegrate to ash.
Each inhalation of air tasted of soot and scalded his lungs. To withstand the torment, he kept his eyes pressed shut and teeth clenched, limiting exchanges to one or two words per smoky breath. He lost his ability to mentally connect again, for it took all his concentration to hold still.
He wanted his sister to know of his miraculous discovery. I found my equal, he wished to say. Her voice lives within that part of my mind I thought I’d lost. The prophecy’s wrong. She’s not a princess. She’s the antithesis of all that’s pampered and frail—mighty and scarred as a battle-worn blade; feral and cunning as a wolf; a foundling, a thief, my most loyal friend. She’s the only one who can cure me. I need her. Find Stain! But he was left alone in his mind with the empty, unanswerable echoes, powerless to spend the effort.
His troop knelt beside him, though not too close. The heat emanating from his feverish body singed the brambles beneath him. Only Dyadia’s wretched white crow could touch his smoldering flesh with its beak.
“Stain.” Vesper sloughed the word off a tongue and lips as dry and cracked as winter bark.
“Why does he keep saying that?” Cyprian asked, weariness weighing down his voice.
Leaning over her brother’s right side, Selena gasped. “Oh, moonlit skies . . . no. The plague is infecting his eyelids! If we can see it, he can’t look past it. All he sees are glittering stains of gold—” A sob silenced her.
Vesper growled at her misconception. “Thief.” It expended such effort to push any sound beyond his stiffening vocal cords, he could merely whisper.
Selena stroked his hair with a gloved hand. “Your welfare is more important than stolen gifts. We’ll find the boy and bring him to justice, once you’re cured.”
“Her,” he mumbled. “Find . . . her!”
Cyprian clasped his shoulder with a glove. “We are, Your Majesty. The princess is only a two-day journey from here. We’ll get you there. Please, just hold on.”
“Her voice.” Vesper sipped a breath tainted with smoke and embers. “Inside.” Another scalding breath. “My head.”
The crow poked and prodded, an uncomfortable intrusion against the chaos roiling beneath Vesper’s skin. The bird was checking for any remnants of flesh still malleable. Dread chased that thought as the ping of metal greeted his ears from taps gently applied to his chest, his neck, his chin.
“Dyadia, we need you here!” Selena demanded. “Not this callous sack of dusty feathers. Come to us now!”
A flutter gusted beside Vesper’s ear, then a woman’s croak of pain. Following an icy burst, the sorceress possessed the bird’s body. Vesper peered long enough to see Dyadia’s cat’s eye scouring him, having taken the place of the bird’s pink iris. He let his lashes seal again as blinding vines of gilt crept across his vision. The shocked murmurings of his companions, noting the flaxen hairs overtaking his eyebrows, dragged him deeper into despair.
“You found him like this?” Dyadia’s question broke through in place of Thana’s blood-curdling caw.
Selena tried to answer but a sob caught in her throat.
“Yes.” Cyprian took over. “He’s been trying to speak, but we have to piecemeal what he says. It makes little sense. Something about the thief and the Pegasus and the bog. Luna tracked signs of a struggle imprinted in the mud. Horse hooves and Vesper’s boot prints leading to the edge, then drag marks leading out, made by a man’s hands and knees. He’s singed from head to foot, yet wet. We think they both fell into the bog, but only Vesper came out. It appears he killed the beast, and the boy attacked him out of anger. There are signs of them rolling on the ground then tracks signifying the thief escaped that way.”
The crow tapped Vesper’s hardening chest. “There’s been a surge of magic here. It thrums through his body. The bird’s beak never lies. Our prince, our king, is whole again.”
“What?” Selena asked, sniffling. “I don’t understand.”
“Years ago, I cast out part of him to slow the sun’s infestation. He defeated it here today . . . reabsorbed it. But too soon. This was meant to happen in the princess’s presence, so her moonlight could cleanse his blood. Now the plague is twofold. We’ve little time before it claims his heart and lungs.”
“Stain!” Vesper forced out the wail on a gust of fire-tinged air. The taste of smoke choked him. His windpipe tightened against a cough and locked the pressure within. The muscles in his body began to spasm involuntarily.
“Tybalt, Dolyn!” Cyprian’s desperate shouts launched everyone into action. “Help me get the prince onto Lanthe. We ride to Princess Lyra immediately! If we hurry, we’ll arrive only a half day behind our companions.”
“No,” Dyadia said. “His betrothed will have to come to us. Give him the draught I sent. The valerian and passionflower will control his pain. I must convince his mind and body that he’s dead. A quietus thrall is the only means to hold off the sun’s invasion, but the spell is ancient and temperamental, and must be conjured in a sacred place of life and death. Somewhere familiar to the recipient, in which their spirit can take sanctuary. I’ll perform it here at Nerezeth, inside the shrine. Bring him at once. I’ll return to my body and await you. Send Thana with a sealed missive for the princess and her regent. Tell them Lady Lyra is required at his side . . . the nuptials must take place the moment they arrive in the night realm.”
“We can’t go the shorter route . . . the avalanche sealed the Rigamort’s entrance,” Selena said, her voice heavy with frustration.
“We’ve no choice but to head for the iron gate,” Cyprian agreed. “If we hurry, we can make the five-day trip in three. We move now!”
There was a rustle of feathers and footsteps, then a glass vial touched Vesper’s mouth—cool and smooth. A soothing liquid, flavored of fruit and sour wood, trickled down his narrowing throat. Darkness blotted his pain; drowsiness suspended his senses. Relieved, he tried to say thank you, but his lips wouldn’t comply. They were petrified.
Vesper realized with horror that it was too late. There would be no marriage, no reconciliation of sun and moon, no saving his people from their illness. His worst nightmare had come true: he was a man of metal and stone.
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