I close my eyes on a sigh, feeling like a damned fool. Of course he has. Of course a prince who can command a flock of crows would use them as spies. There is, after all, an all-seeing eye on his flag.
“But it is more than that,” she adds. “He has been watching me.” She pats her chest.
I frown, not liking the path this story is taking. “Through the birds?”
“Yes. And he comes to me when I sleep.”
My blood goes cold. “Why did you not tell me? And what do you mean he comes to you?”
She shrugs and taps two fingers against her temple. “He appears. In my mind. It happened just now. He asked what my marks mean and thanked me for the show, and for…”
I narrow my eyes when she pauses. “For…what?”
She glances toward her leg—toward that knife—and after a moment of hesitation, unfastens the leather strap of her dagger belt with a trembling hand.
“This blade belonged to my father. He found it on the Malorian seashore. He was a guard witch. He called it a…” Her hands go still again, and she bites her lip, the look on her face one of internal strife.
“You can trust me, Raina.” I push a lock of hair behind her ear. “I swear it.”
She unsheathes the blade and holds it before me in one hand. With the other she signs, “A God Knife.”
My mind stumbles around her words, maybe because I’m still torn between desire and utter confusion, but…
I look at the blade. Really look at it. There’s no blood covering it now. No lovely hand wrapped around its hilt. No stunning woman hiding it from my sight.
My magick, buried and held to task, wails like an animal in a trap.
Shaking, I stare, breaking out in a chilled sweat. It’s been so long since I last held the knife, so long that I didn’t recognize it at first glance. I don’t sense it anymore. The blade is still black as midnight, and the Stone of Ghent still shines, but any bond I ever had with this creation feels broken—at least for me.
“This is impossible.” Instinctively, I push away from her. My heart trips over itself, and I can hardly breathe. “There was only ever one God Knife, and it vanished many, many years ago.”
I press my hand to my chest, feeling for power that I cannot reach.
She blinks once, watching my reaction so closely. “But it is real,” she says. “You know what a God Knife is.”
I have to fight not to scoff at that.
“Yes, I know what the God Knife is.” I scrub my hand down my face, certain I’m frozen in a dream. “But you shouldn’t, and you certainly shouldn’t have it.”
On impulse, I reach for the knife, but Raina is too fast. She’s up and two strides away—knife sheathed in her thigh belt—before my hand can get so close as an inch from the hilt.
My mind still feels like I’ve fallen into a broken reality, even more broken than the one I’m in, trying to move all the pieces back to their correct places so I can make sense of what this means.
One of the pieces slides into place.
“Was that the knife you put to my throat? Have you had it all this time?”
She nods but then shakes her head like she’s confused as to how to answer. There’s no denial on her face, and why would there be? She owes me nothing, and she certainly owed me nothing before.
“Helena had it. I thought I lost it in the fire. I took it from near her cage.”
I never saw it. Never took the time to notice. The shadow wraith used my dagger when it came after me on the ice, but when it attacked in the wood? So much was happening, and so fast, that I can’t remember what knife the girl held. All I know is that the wraith had permission from its prince to end my life, and it called me ‘sorcerer,’ tasted the shade within me. That thing—and very possibly the Prince of the East—knows more about me than most anyone.
Heart pounding, I stand, hands raised in placation as another piece of our situation sinks and settles in my mind, followed by another and another until I’m imagining all sorts of fall out. Raina has no idea the power she’s holding, how this weapon could turn the tide of our entire world if it falls into the wrong hands.
And the wrong hands are working very, very hard to acquire it.
“So you have the God Knife.” I keep my voice steady as I sort through my chaotic thoughts. “And the Prince of the East knows it exists.”
She nods, brows pinched.
“And he sent his crow here to retrieve it. Because he can see us?”
Again, she nods.
I cover my mouth with my hand, drag my fingertips through my beard.
“Perhaps it does not matter,” she signs, “or perhaps the knife is not as real as I have believed.”
I stare at her, dumbfounded, though I realize that her lack of understanding is not her fault.
“I cut the prince with this knife,” she adds. “After he stabbed you.” She draws a line on her face, from temple to chin. “And he is still alive.”
Of course he is, though I can’t understand why he didn’t take it from her when he had the chance.
Before I can inquire further, she says, “He said that he sensed it all over me, that it kept drawing him back to me. He wants the knife back where it belongs.”
I don’t know what that means. The last place the prince should want the knife is back where it belongs. It is of no use to him that way.
“He also said that this is goodbye, for now. That we are trapped until he is ready for me. He called me Keeper. He called me that before, on the green. What does it mean?”
Keeper. I rummage around in the recesses of my mind for anything that could give that word meaning in this instance. There were Keepers in the Summerlands—in the Hall of Holies—magi who protected the ancient scrolls and wisdom housed there. Raina is no mage, no Summerlander. Neither were her parents.
“I truly don’t know what it means. Maybe tell me how your father came to have the knife. In detail.”
She tries, but her father withheld so much, and much of what he knew of the knife was polluted by centuries of twisted lore. However, one thing stands out.
Yes, daughter. I keep it. Because I must.
I study the blade once more, clearing away my shock so I can focus. At first glance, there’s nothing. Everyday eyes would see no magickal working at all—the spell on the blade was designed that way, I imagine. It requires single-minded concentration, but I can see the magick emanating from the weapon when I look hard enough. The enchantment is weak and old in normal years for most any kind of incantation, but I can read it all the same. There are so many binding spells in the world of magick, and this is yet another.
Keeper. Now it’s beginning to make sense. Her father had no choice when it came to the God Knife. Someone cursed him with the task of keeping care of the blade, a curse that—though weak—has latched onto Raina. The prince didn’t take it because he couldn’t. Even now, when I peer into the ether around the knife, faint tendrils of magick cling to Raina’s lovely hand and wrist like claws.
Which is why the prince sent the crow. Raina was distracted. She let her guard down. Put the knife aside.
And he saw.
I glance around the camp, another very critical piece of the puzzle sliding into place.