Kae wanted to avoid drawing the north’s attention.
When it was safe, they would press onward. Torin paid close attention to where Kae led, following her up a hill and then down into a wide strath. The valley was cold with mist and felt resoundingly empty. Gradually, the grass and moss and bracken ceased to grow beneath his boots, and even the rocks were diminished. When they came to a plot of ground covered only with dirt and pebbles, Torin knew they were close.
They climbed up a steep incline. He could hear the waves crashing against rock. He could smell the salt in the air. They were almost to the northern coast.
Torin finally saw the headstones. At first, he didn’t know what he was looking at, because Orenna’s flowers grew over the markers and across the graves, hardly leaving a place to step that wasn’t covered with thick, crimson petals. The sight brought Torin up short. He gazed down at the flowers, brighter than blood on the dry, cracked ground.
Slowly, he knelt. He didn’t know where the spirit was, but he felt her presence, as if she hid beneath the blooms.
“May I take some of your flowers, Orenna?” Torin asked.
It was quiet for a long moment. The loneliness was tangible on the cliff overlooking a foam-churned sea. He didn’t know how long he could tolerate being in this place, and he felt as if he could be swept off his feet by the harsh wind at any moment.
“You are the first who has ever asked,” Orenna answered. Torin couldn’t see her, but she sounded close, her voice pitched deep. “Take what you can carry.”
Torin reached out and began to harvest the flowers. They soon filled his hands, soft and gleaming with veins of gold. He was tucking them safely in his pockets when out of the corner of his eye he suddenly saw Kae, darting to conceal herself behind an outcropping of rock.
Torin glanced at the spot where she had vanished, his heart beginning to pound. “What is it, Kae?”
The spirit, hidden from his sight, didn’t answer. But over the howl of the wind and the roar of the tide below, Torin heard footsteps on the shale behind him. Someone else also had Orenna in mind and was coming to the desolate place where she flourished.
Slowly, Torin turned.
To his immense shock, he came face-to-face with the last person he expected.
Moray Breccan.
Chapter 28
Of course, Moray couldn’t see him.
For once, Torin was glad for his invisibility as he stood, astonished. He watched Moray kneel and begin to uproot fistfuls of flowers. His hands were grimy from the dungeons, his wheat-blond hair matted. There were freckles of blood on his hands and beard, but perhaps worst of all, he was wearing the raiment of an East Guard.
“What are you doing?” Torin cried to him, and then thought better of it and growled, “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be locked away!”
His voice went unheard. All Torin could do was watch, icy with dread, as Moray shoved three Orenna blossoms into his mouth, swallowing them whole.
The western heir sighed. The tension in his shoulders melted as he closed his eyes, still on his knees. He waited for the magic to crackle through him.
Torin’s heart faltered. What had happened in the east while he was away? Why was Moray free? Something horrible must have occurred, and here he was, trapped on the other side of the realm, in the west, lost in a convoluted riddle.
The nape of his neck prickled in warning, and he moved aside just as Moray opened his eyes, pupils blown wide and dilated. Torin had never ingested an Orenna flower, but he knew it gave a mortal speed and strength. It enabled them to glimpse the spirits’ world, to know things that they shouldn’t.
Torin crouched down, his fingers digging into the dirt to hold himself steady, muscles coiling in preparation for a fight. At first he thought Moray had seen him, but then Moray hastily shoved the remaining flowers he picked into his tunic pockets, leapt to his feet, and took off running along the rocky edge of the cliff. Torin straightened, perplexed.
A sob drew his attention back to the flower patch.
Orenna had appeared. She was bowed over the place where Moray had just been, her gnarled fingers pressed to the ground, her dark red hair cascading across her face. A sob racked her body, as if she were in agony, and Torin hesitated, uncertain what to do. He was about to kneel before her, to reach out and gently touch her hand, when her head snapped up.
Her hair parted like a curtain, revealing a thin, angular face, with tears shining like dew. Her cheeks were flushed the color of sunset, and her violet eyes were large and luminous as they fixed on Torin. Her lips parted to reveal a cache of thorny teeth.
“He has stolen from me,” she said. “Again and again, he has taken without asking, without thanking. He has used my knowledge for malice, and if I wasn’t cursed—if I could leave this graveyard—I would hunt him down and tear out his throat.”
Torin didn’t know what to say. But he thought about all the times he himself had taken the isle’s magic and resources for granted. Not until now, when his eyes were open to the spirits, had he learned to slow down and to ask. To thank the spirits for their gifts.
With a shock, he saw what could have been: he realized how easily he could have become a man like Moray Breccan.
“Then he has wronged us both,” Torin said, rising to his feet. “And I will be your vengeance.”
He turned and began to chase after Moray. The western heir was already a mere shadow in the distance, running along the edge of the northern coast with startling speed. But Torin could draw strength from the folk, and he quickly gained on Moray.
The northern coast was one long, steep cliff face. There was no gentle coast below, only the tide crashing against the rock wall. A fall from this high up would kill a person, and Torin was confused by Moray’s decision to run along its jagged edge, heading back to the east. It only made sense if he planned to return to the Tamerlaines and cause serious damage.
Torin’s blood began to pound, hot and fast.
He thought of Sidra. Maisie.
He was just about to eclipse Moray. He was just about to reach out his hand to see if he could take hold of him, and if he could, Torin was going to kill him. He was going to rip out his throat. He was going to bash his head on the nearest rock—
Moray came to a sliding halt.
Torin melted through him like mist.
As he slowed, coming to a halt on the grass with a huff, he knew he should have been neither surprised nor disappointed, because he knew better by now. He couldn’t touch mortal beings. Torin gritted his teeth as he turned to see what had caused Moray to stop so abruptly.
Moray was crouched low, in the stance of an animal who felt cornered. His eyes searched the rocks through the descending fog, and he listened to the howl of the wind.
“Who’s there?” he asked tersely.
Torin took a step to the side. Moray, sensing Torin’s movements, turned his face.