My breath was too short; I could feel it, but I couldn’t fix it. Men leaned forward, studying me. Someone said something about me not being fit for this type of work, but his voice came from far away.
The prince pushed himself up and started around the table. “James, call for a physician.”
“No. It’s all right. I’m fine.” I wasn’t fine, but my ailment wasn’t anything a physician could cure. I forced my expression into something resembling calmness, struggling to recapture the mask of Lady Julianna before I ruined everything.
Tobiah rounded the table toward me and crouched at my side, pressing one hand flat against my spine, an incredible breech in manners. “Are you certain?” He touched two fingers to my throat. Our eyes met for a heartbeat before his gaze shifted to somewhere over my shoulder. “Your pulse is racing.”
“I’m fine.” I reached for an explanation. Anything. “I’m afraid I haven’t fully recovered from my journey through the wraithland. I suppose I was thinking too much about the necessity for this committee.” I needed to control myself better. Even now, the men exchanged unimpressed glances.
James hesitated by the doorway. “Your Highness?”
The moments lengthened, but at last the prince stood and waved James back to his position. “Let’s continue. If the lady says she’s fine, we won’t disrespect her by calling the physician against her wishes.” His polite words didn’t quite disguise the withering look he gave me.
James returned to the corner where he’d been standing, but his eyes, filled with concern, stayed on me. As though I needed his protection.
Tobiah took his seat and slid a pile of papers across the table to me. “I thought you might like to study these. In addition to statistics and reports from West Pass Watch, they detail the different ways members of the Wraith Alliance have attempted to mitigate or halt the wraith, as well as the varying levels of success reached.”
None of the attempts had been truly successful, though. Like Liadia, some countries held off the wraith for a few months or a year, but eventually, it broke through. “I appreciate this, Your Highness.”
“What can you tell us of your time in the wraithland?” Fredrick’s tone turned patronizing. “If discussing it won’t be too difficult.”
Clint cleared his throat. “We do realize you’ve only just escaped. The horrors you must have endured would mark anyone. But we learn so much every time we speak to a survivor. If it weren’t so dangerous, we’d send more teams to study it. That you survived something that many trained men haven’t—that speaks very highly of you.”
It was nice of him to try to stick up for me, but I’d already made myself look weak. I’d have to rectify that.
Everyone listened, taking notes as I described the same events I had for King Terrell and Prince Tobiah my first day here. I kept my voice strong, letting it slip only when I spoke of the harrowing escape from my home—Julianna’s home—and nights in the wilderness with beasts prowling all around us. I needed my performance to be realistic and inspiring.
“We’ve heard reports of violent storms,” Tobiah said. “Did you notice an increase in activity after the wraith came through?”
I nodded. It was better to confirm these things. Everyone knew the wraith was terrible, and that it was coming. I didn’t want to give them a reason to underestimate it. “Before it arrived, summers steadily grew hotter, and winters colder. I’m sure you’ve noticed the same changes here. When the wraith hit the barrier and halted, we didn’t notice a drastic change, but when the barrier collapsed, the night immediately grew hotter.” I laced my fingers together and allowed my expression to harden, like armor against memories. “I couldn’t sleep much during the journey here. The howling. And it was so, so hot. But it snowed sometimes, too. Flakes as big as your hands. They melted as they hit the ground.”
That was one of the more uncommon rumors about the wraithland, but I’d heard it from a few different groups of refugees. It was legitimate enough for me.
They asked about other phenomena in the wraithland, questioning the same details multiple times from different angles. Each time I gave the same answers, biting back frustration over the repetition. They were only trying to be thorough, to coax out details I might not be aware I’d overlooked. Their questioning would have been more useful if I’d actually been to the wraithland.
At last, they were satisfied I knew nothing more.
I sipped the wine someone had set in front of me, then leafed through the papers from Tobiah. “The wraith began after centuries of industrialized magic, correct?” That was what my parents had taught me, and what I’d taught the younger Ospreys when it came time for them to learn.
“That’s the theory,” Clint said. “The overuse of magic triggered a cataclysmic reaction we haven’t been able to reverse.”
“But it has slowed,” Tobiah added. “If you put out the fire, it stops producing smoke. Maybe not immediately, but given time . . .”
“Hasn’t magic use ceased, though? The Wraith Alliance has been in effect for a hundred years, after all.” I pushed away the memory of my hand pressed against an old crate, magic on my lips as I bade it awaken. Any wraith created would have been minuscule.
Tobiah shook his head and gazed out the window for a moment. “When I was younger, I met a girl who told me that it was safe to use magic for emergencies.”
Me. He meant me.
“She’d grown up in Aecor, where people used to believe it was only great amounts of magic that contributed to the wraith problem. I was young, about eight, and curious. I became obsessed with learning all I could about wraith. I spent hours in the library, studying. Over the next few years, I met with every expert on magic and wraith in the kingdom, but they all said the same thing: all magic contributes to the wraith problem, even a little bit. And they all agree that magic is still being used. Today. Now.” He glanced at the men around the table, who nodded. Then, to me: “Ten years ago, Aecor was an independent kingdom in the east, not just a territory of the Indigo Kingdom.”
I held my breath.
“It wasn’t part of the Wraith Alliance. Then, though people were cautioned to use only small amounts, most didn’t listen. There were no consequences, so they used what they wanted.”
No, that wasn’t what I’d been taught. That wasn’t what I’d done.
“With Aecorians using magic as they wished, the wraith approached quickly. But since we conquered Aecor, the laws there have changed. Magic is forbidden, just as it is everywhere else.” Tobiah glanced at his uncle, the shadow of a frown flashing across his face. “And the wraith has slowed its approach. It has measurably slowed.”
My voice was hoarse. “This fact is confirmed?”
Everyone at the table nodded.
“That’s why the Indigo Kingdom is doing better than it has in almost a century,” said Colin. “There’s hope that the wraith will stop. The economy is stabilizing. There’s less violence.”
If there was hope, I hadn’t seen it. The Skyvale I’d always known was dirty, hungry, and flooded with refugees. And that didn’t seem to be changing.
“How are you measuring its movement?” I asked.
Clint rose and revealed a large wall map of unfamiliar landscape, with hashes of colored ink in bands across the plains. “Here. Once a month, we send a rider to place a marker at the edge of the wraithland. We track its progress on maps like this.”
Ah, now I recognized the land. There was the Indigo Kingdom’s western reaches—West Pass Watch—and Liadia and other fallen kingdoms covering most of the paper. The bands of hashes were twelve different colors, one for every month of the year, presumably. “The bands get narrower.”
The captain tapped the map. “Because the wraith’s progress has slowed. It doesn’t cover as much new ground every month as it did previously.”
I dragged my gaze over the colored ink. There were small scribbles on the northwestern end of Liadia, hard to read from this distance. “What’s that in Liadia?”
“Unfounded rumors.” Clint returned to his seat. “Nothing you need to worry about, Your Grace.”
The crown prince glared at the map a moment longer before he continued his earlier lecture, as though I’d never interrupted. “There are pockets of magic use in Skyvale and the rest of the Indigo Kingdom. They’re why the wraith magic still creeps toward us. They’re why it hasn’t halted its approach. But if those pockets were stopped—well, smoke eventually dissipates.”
“Dissipates, yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s vanished. Like magic, it cannot be destroyed.”
He regarded me with a carefully neutral expression. “That is true. However, we have no reason to believe the wraith won’t settle or ease, and the world will be safe to live in again. The fact remains that magic use will only draw the wraith closer until the Indigo Kingdom is the wraithland.”
Could that be true? It seemed unlikely wraith would ever just go away, but could halting all magic really allow the wraith to settle enough so the world became livable? It was hard to believe there was anything but darkness in our future.