Part of me insisted I leave Timur to sleep. The scent repelling the dogs could not last long, and they would eat him alive. The same grisly fate he reserved for me. With my magic warm inside my failing body, I forced the images of Sefa and Marek to replace the dogs. I ignored the evil roiling in this forest and surrounded myself with the meticulous jars of Rory’s shop and the warmth of Raya’s keep. These were the exceptions to my grief, rage, fear rule, but their effect on my magic was the same.
“I will grant you a kinder end than the one you planned for me.”
I snapped my fingers. A boulder cracked against the side of Timur’s head, and his wide eyes went blank. One of the dogs’ paws quivered. I would not be able to hold my magic for long.
Skirting the dogs, I groped for a pulse at Timur’s throat and groaned when one fluttered against my fingers. A dog’s forked tail swished.
I stripped Timur’s coat from his shoulders and put it on. There should have been enough of the scent left to keep the dogs from following me. I summoned the last traces of my receding magic and pushed my palm outward.
Timur’s unconscious form floated, drifting past the dogs and over the bush. My arm shook with the effort of holding my magic. He needed to be lowered at the correct angle, or this endeavor was a wasted mercy.
The heat left my cuffs, and Timur’s body dropped like a stone. He did not splash on impact. The water crept over him hungrily, inch by inch. The lake swallowed the Lukub Champion with a sigh. The rippling surface went smooth. Another life digested in the belly of Ayume.
Stumbling in the direction of the cliff, the world tilted and spun. I clenched my fists and whimpered at the resulting stab of pain from my right palm. A sticky wetness ran down my sleeve. I lifted my arm, narrowly avoiding another snaking branch.
Amber-colored sludge was stuck to the center of my palm, trickling over my cuff. The skin beneath bubbled with pink drops of blood.
Arin’s warning. In the future, avoid touching the trees while you run. Even the sap in Ayume can kill you.
“May you fester eternally in your tomb, Dania,” I spat.
Apprenticing under Rory did not come without its cursed knowledge. Though Rory created cures in areas where few solutions existed, even he rarely bothered with venom. From the pain radiating up my arm, I judged I had less than twenty minutes before the sap immobilized my entire body.
A rope dangled from the bluff, the frayed end brushing my shoulder. The sheer rock face sneered down at me. The cliff cut into the night sky like a blade of darkness. I pressed my forehead to the crumbling stone and closed my eyes. Already, the fingers of my right hand hurt to fold. If my arm quit halfway up the climb, I might be able to dangle from the rope long enough for the air to finish its task and send me to sleep. At least then I would not be conscious when I plummeted to my death.
I tossed off Timur’s coat and hoisted myself onto the rope. Bending my legs, I pushed off the cliff and used the swing’s momentum to begin the climb. I clutched the rope with one hand at the bottom, one on top. I wrapped the knuckles of my bottom hand in the rope for leverage while the top one pulled me upward—an old trick of Hanim’s to prevent sliding. The pattern held; I pushed off the side of the cliff and climbed a foot, swapping the bottom hand every few minutes. I tried to think of Fairel or Rory, Sefa or Marek. Anything to invigorate my magic. But my arms ached, and my eyes struggled to stay open. The sap pumped its poison through me, competing with the fatigue to see which could kill me first.
Instead of anyone dear to me, I thought of Soraya.
I had adored her so completely. Wept over her death long after the tears for my grandparents dried. She had loved me, too. But the hate… the hate that poisoned worse than any sap, that rotted Soraya and left behind the woman who stabbed me in Lukub.
A sudden wind batted me to the side. The rope catapulted me into the bluff. I hit the rocks and lost my grip, sliding down for a dizzying few seconds before I caught myself again. The friction from the rope tore my palms open, coating my forearms in blood.
Swaying gently, I tried to gauge how much left there was to climb.
“You’re not even halfway there,” a little girl said from my right. I jolted, the rope fibers digging into my raw hands. The little girl dangled from a second rope, peering at me with distaste.
It’s not real, Hanim said. It’s the forest’s magic.
“I am not the forest’s magic. I’m yours,” she griped. “Hurry. You have moments left.”
“Essiya,” I breathed.
“Essiya,” she returned. “Or Sylvia, I suppose, which is not the name I would have chosen. You named us after Soraya’s mother. Little odd, isn’t it?” The girl spun around on the rope. “Why are you keeping me trapped? We are going to die.”
“I’m not keeping you—” I coughed, clenching my knees around the rope to keep from sliding farther down. “There are cuffs blocking my magic.”
Essiya snorted. She twisted, hanging upside down. “Would you use me without the cuffs? You never do in your dreams. We just watch our mother and everyone burn.”
“Of course I would.”
“I think,” Essiya barreled on, and Rovial’s tainted tomb, had I really been such a nuisance as a child? “I think even if your magic was free, and you had every advantage to reclaim our kingdom, you still wouldn’t save Jasad. You are content to live on the outskirts of other people’s land, a vagrant in all but name. You blame Hanim for hardening your heart, but she is dead. Your heart belongs to you again, and you refuse to give it over to Jasad. That is why Soraya wants us dead.”
I noticed belatedly my cuffs were vises around my wrists. My magic spread over my skin, numbing the worst of the poison’s effects. I resumed my climb.
“You are bold for a hallucination,” I snapped. “There are others capable of leading Jasad better than I could. What do I have other than a royal name?”
Essiya kept pace, climbing as I did. My hands were little more than raw meat, but the tingle of my magic prevented the agony from stalling my ascent.
“What else do you need?” Essiya countered. “The Mufsids and Urabi combined do not have a tenth of the power you have. Yet they fight. The Jasadis hiding in Lukub, Orban, Omal, even Nizahl—they fight. Power is a choice, Sylvia. When you choose who you are willing to fight for, you choose who you are.”
“Even if I do not win? Even if I am an insignificant wave in an ocean of resistance? There is every chance I can live a peaceful, mundane life as Sylvia. Nothing is guaranteed for Essiya. Not a good life, not victory, nothing.” The jutting lip of the cliff’s peak came into view. I grunted, tightening my stomach as I swung toward the cliffside. I kicked the hard surface, sending rocks tumbling below. “I should give up certainty, give up Sylvia, for a legion of faceless Jasadis?”