Yes, Elias, the jinn purr. Pour your love into her. Pour your heart into her.
I wish they would shut the hells up. “Come back to the world. Wherever they have taken you, whatever memory they have locked you in doesn’t matter as much as you coming back. Your people need you. Your brother needs you. I need you.”
As I speak, it’s as if I can see into her thoughts. I can see the jinn clawing at her mind. They are strange, warped beings of smokeless flame that are nothing like the beautiful, graceful creatures I saw in the city. Laia tries to fight them, but she weakens.
“You are strong, Laia. And you are needed here.” Her cheek feels like ice. “You have much yet to do.”
Laia’s eyes are glazed over, and I shudder. I hold her now. I call to her. But she will grow old and die, while I will live on. She is the blink of an eye. And I am an age.
But I can accept that. I can survive long years without her if I know that at least she had a chance at life. I’d give up my time with her—I would—if only she would wake.
Please. Please come back.
Her body jerks once, and for one heart-stopping moment, I think she is dead.
Then she opens her eyes, staring at me with bewilderment. Thank the bleeding skies. “They’re gone, Laia,” I say. “But we have to get you out of here.” Her mind will be fragile after what the jinn just put her through. Any more pushing from the ghosts or the jinn would feel torturous.
“I can’t—can’t walk. Could you—”
“Put your arms around my neck,” I say, and I windwalk out of the grove with Laia held close. Mauth yanks at me futilely, and the earth of the Waiting Place shakes and cracks. I reach out to the borders; the pressure is immense. The strain on them makes me break into a sweat. I need to get Laia out of here so I can corral the ghosts—get them away from the edges of the Waiting Place, lest they break free.
“Elias,” Laia whispers. “Are . . . are you real? Are you a trick too?”
“No.” I touch my forehead to hers. “No, love. I’m real. You’re real.”
“What’s wrong with this place?” She shivers. “It’s so full, as if it’s about to burst. I can feel it.”
“Just the ghosts,” I say. “Nothing I can’t handle.” I hope. Flat patches of rolling grassland appear through the trees ahead: the Empire.
The border feels even weaker now than it did when I first passed through it. Many of the ghosts have followed me, and they press against the glowing barrier, their cries rising eagerly as if they sense its weakness.
I go well beyond the tree line and set Laia down. The trees sway back and forth behind me, a frantic dance. I must return. But for just this one moment, I let myself look at her. The messy cloud of her hair, her worn boots, the tiny cuts on her face from the Forest, the way her hands grip the dagger I gave her.
“The jinn,” she whispers. “They—they told me the truth. But the truth is . . .” She shakes her head.
“The truth is ugly,” I say. “The truth of our parents uglier still. But we are not them, Laia.”
“She’s out there, Elias,” Laia says, and I know she speaks of her mother. Of Cook. “Somewhere. I can’t—I—” She slips back into the memory again, and though the Forest seethes behind me, it will have done me no good to get Laia out of there if she ends up in the grasp of the jinn again. I take her shoulders, stroke her face. I make her look at me.
“Forgive her, if you can,” I say. “Remember that fate is never what we think it will be. Your mother—my mother—we can never understand their torments. Their hurts. We may suffer the consequences of their mistakes and their sins, but we should not carry them on our hearts. We don’t deserve that.”
“Will it always be chaos for us, Elias? Will things never be normal?”
Her eyes clear as she looks at me, and she is released, for a moment, from what she saw in the Forest. “Will we ever take a walk by the moonlight, or spend an afternoon making jam or making . . .”
Love. My body turns to fire just thinking about it.
“I had dreams about you,” she whispers. “We were together—”
“It wasn’t a dream.” I pull her close. It kills me that she doesn’t remember. I wish she could. I wish she could hold on to that day the way I do. “I was there, and you were there. And it was a perfect slice of time. It won’t always be like this.” I say it like I believe it. But within my own heart, something has shifted. I feel different. Colder. The change is great enough that I speak even more adamantly, hoping that by saying what I want to feel, I will bring it to life. “We will find a way, Laia. Somehow. But if . . . if I change . . . if I seem different, remember that I love you. No matter what happens to me. Say you’ll remember, please—”
“Your eyes . . .” She looks up at me, and my breath catches at the intensity in her gaze. “They—they’re darker. Like Shaeva’s.”
“I can’t stay. I’m sorry. I have to go back. I have to attend to the ghosts. But I will see you again. I vow it. Hurry—get to Antium.”
“Wait.” She stands, still unsteady on her feet. “Don’t go. Please. Don’t leave me here.”
“You’re strong,” I say. “You are Laia of Serra. You are not the Lioness. Her legacy—her sins—they don’t belong to you any more than Keris’s legacy belongs to me.”
“What did you say to me?” Laia asks. “That night before you left months ago, when we were headed to Kauf. I was sleeping in the wagon with Izzi. What did you say?”
“I said, You are—”
But Mauth has lost patience. I am wrested back to the Waiting Place, back to Mauth’s side, with a force that rattles my bones.
I will find you, Laia. I will find a way. This is not our end. I scream it in my mind. But as soon as I get into the Waiting Place, the thought is dashed from my consciousness. The borders are bending—breaking. I go to reinforce them, but I am a cork in the face of a dam breaking.
All things have a price, Elias Veturius. The jinn speak again, an inexorable truth in their voice. We warned you.
A roar cleaves the Waiting Place, a ripping that seems to come from the bowels of the earth. The ghosts scream, their high keen rising as they throw themselves against the border. I have to stop them. They’re too close. They’ll break free.
Too late, usurper. Too late.
A collective howl goes up, and the ghosts of the Waiting Place, the tortured souls who are my sworn duty, break free of the border and pour into the world of the living, their shrieks like living death carried on the wind.
XLI: The Blood Shrike
“I’m not going to the Augurs,” I say to Marcus. I remember well what Cain told me just weeks ago. I will see you once more, before your end. “You don’t understand, they—”
“Grow a bleeding spine, Shrike.” Marcus grabs my arm and begins to drag me from the throne room. “Those eerie bastards scare everyone. We have an invasion to worry about, and they can see the future. You’re coming with me to their foul little cave. Unless you want to find out if you really can heal your sister’s shattered kneecaps.”
“Damn you—”
He backhands me and grimaces, grabbing his head. I wipe the blood from my mouth and look around as he mutters to himself. The throne room is empty, but there are still guards nearby.
“Pull yourself together,” I hiss. “We don’t need Keris hearing about this.”
Marcus takes a steadying breath and glowers at me.
“Shut it.” The softness of his growl does nothing to lessen its menace. “And move.”