“They were found in ruins of Catlyn, in a store deep underground. There are only twenty-nine in existence, so every one of them is precious.”
Catlyn wasn’t a place I’d ever heard mentioned before. Certainly it had never featured in the little history we’d been taught about Versona. “And they’re a communications device?”
“Yes.” Her smile twisted. “And no.”
She drew back her arm and pitched the bracelet out into the air. The wind caught it, toyed with it, and then swept it beyond sight. She picked up the second, but didn’t immediately toss it into the hands of the darkness and the wind.
“At least by ridding the world of these two,” she said. “It gives them two less options for controlling either us or our children.”
The wind stirred, begging me to be gentle, to not go there. But I had to, if only for the sake of those children. How could we help them if we didn’t know anything about their plight? “So your children wear these things?”
Her gaze came to mine. Once again it was haunted, anguished. “They take them, you know. Take those who are gifted and kill those who are not.”
Kill? Dear god, who were these people? At least here in Winterborne, those of us who were unlit were given a chance at life, even if it wasn’t always under the best circumstances.
“How many of your children have met this fate?” I asked gently.
“Three.” A tear slowly tracked down her cheek. “Three perfect little girls, who were not even stained.”
I touched her arm lightly, though in truth I wanted to grab her, hold her, to try and protect her against such memories. Maybe in the face of such evil, it would be too little, too late, but I had a feeling Saska was in sore need of it. And yet the wind whispered she would not—could not—appreciate such comfort. Not when she felt so undeserving of it.
“You cannot allow history to repeat itself, Saska. You have to keep strong for the child you now carry.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But it is hard. So very hard.”
“Resistance is never an easy path to take against evil, especially when your strength is at such a low level. You need to eat—not just for the health of your child, but also in defiance of the voices.”
Her gaze came to mine, but again, she didn’t appear to be really seeing me. “It’s for the sake of my child that I should step over this barrier and throw myself to the rocks beneath this cliff. It’s a far better fate than what awaits under the queen’s rule.”
I wrapped my fingers around her arm. “You cannot do that—”
“You don’t understand. You can never understand.”
She placed her fingers over mine and, just for a moment, a connection formed. A connection that was air, mind, and something deeper, something that went to the very heart of our DNA. In it, I saw earth, darkness, and pain. The air was putrid, thick with despair and the screaming of babies. Light flashed; its source wasn’t the sun but rather the gleam of a rudimentary flare off a silver blade. I saw the hand that gripped that knife, and it was the color of my staining, but the fingers were thinner and longer than mine, with razor-sharp nails a good inch long.
I’d seen hands like that before, but only in pictures. They were the hands of an Irkallan. And yet those creatures couldn’t be at the heart of all this. They’d been in hibernation for centuries and there’d been no indication at all that they’d come out of it.
No, there had to be some other reason. Had to be.
“They want you dead, you know,” she continued.
Her words shattered the fragile connection, leaving me shaking and more afraid than I’d ever been in my life. I licked my lips and said, “Who? The queen?”
“Yes. She fears the strength I draw from you, sister.”
“I rather think it’s your strength she fears, not mine.”
“I have no strength.” Her gaze drifted back to the storm and the cliff’s edge. “That has been proven to me time and time again.”
In that darkness filled with despair, I knew. “You say that, and yet escaped them.”
“I didn’t escape. Not really.”
The words were almost inaudible, and yet they might have been shouted, so sharp did they seem on the wind. Never before had five words so filled me with fear. While I genuinely believed she was desperate to escape the grip of the queen, I couldn’t ignore the possibility that her presence out in the desert had been nothing more than a deliberate ploy to further infiltrate Winterborne.
I gently placed my hands either side of her cheeks and made her look at me. Her skin was like ice under my fingertips, and she was trembling, though I wasn’t entirely sure whether from the cold or fear of what might yet be coming.
“Did you, or did you not, escape them?”
“I did. And she was furious. But now, she uses me, and it makes me wonder if that was her plan all along.”
“Doubt makes the voices stronger,” I said. “Do not give them that edge.”
“You do not understand their persistence. You do not understand their power.”
No, I didn’t. But I didn’t have to understand to sympathize, didn’t have to understand to see what the relentless stream of noise was doing to her mind. A mind that seemed to be unraveling even as I watched.
But if that happened, if she lost this battle, we were all in trouble. Both intuition and the wind were telling me that.
“Saska, you can do this. You are stronger than you know—your presence here is evidence enough of that.” I paused. Pressing her for information was probably the worst thing I could do, but we had to know what was going on—especially if Trey’s intuition was right and events would come to a head in the next couple of days. “What can you tell me about the queen’s plans? What does she want of you?”
She gently pulled free from my grip, her mouth twisting. “She tells me nothing. She only gives me orders.”
“What is she ordering you to do, Saska?”
Moisture tracked down her cheeks, and I wasn’t sure if it was rain or tears. She didn’t answer. She simply stared out over the storm-held darkness. I let my fingers rest on the hilt of the knife. The voices jumped into focus, and they were fierce and angry. But all they were chanting was, do it, do it, do it.
“Saska, please—”
She opened her mouth, as if to reply. The voices sharpened, lengthened, becoming a long, high-pitched squeal that stabbed through my brain like a fiery lance. I jerked my fingers away from the knife hilt and the sound disintegrated. But its echo remained, beating through my head like a drum.
Saska’s body was still shuddering, shaking, under the force of the mental assault. The wind stirred around me, and my gaze jerked down to Saska’s hands. She was still gripping the remaining bracelet, and it was glowing with a fire as fierce and as cold as a blue moon. I wrenched it from her grip and tossed it into the air. The wind caught it and carried it far, far out into the ocean.
Saska practically collapsed, her breath little more than thick wheezing that shook her entire body. “I cannot stand this. I will not.”
I hesitated and then said, “Perhaps the healers can give you a potion that will ease the turmoil and take you into a deep sleep. The voices cannot force you to do something if you’re in a chemically induced slumber.”
She lifted her head and stared at me for so long uneasiness stirred. “You’re right. Abee?”
The maid came hurrying out; she was soaked in an instant. “Yes, ma’am?”
“Ask a healer to come here immediately.”
The maid curtseyed and disappeared again. Saska’s gaze came to mine. “Be wary of the Adlin. They will attack.”
“What?” I said, alarmed. “When?”
“Soon.” She hesitated, her mouth twisting in bitterness. “I would tell you more if I could, but I know it not. They erase; they are always erasing.”