All I wanted was to find Ina, stop her from killing the king, and then maybe start over somewhere new.
“Well, if you’re a Nightswift, you might be able to help me. I’m looking for my friend. I thought I sensed her with you in that building when the guards attacked. Her name is Invasya. Dark brown hair, blue eyes . . .” Creamy skin. Soft lips. Hands that could melt me with the slightest touch.
Hal frowned. “I’m not actually a Nightswift, though I know a lot of them. Haven’t ever seen or heard of your friend, though.”
My heart sank. When I’d thought I sensed her in that building, maybe it was just the glow of his power all along. “What were the Nightswifts doing in Valenko, anyway? That’s awfully far from Corovja.”
Hal gave me an appraising look, as if deciding how much information he could safely share. “My sister is still looking for details about the Fatestone. She had reason to believe that its creator lived somewhere close to Valenko. We were trying to ferret out more information about him. Plus, there were those massacres south of here. The Nightswifts weren’t involved, but she wanted to get a look at what they were being blamed for before anyone cleaned it up. The scene was straight out of a nightmare.”
“That sounds like a terrible errand,” I murmured. Tension coiled more tightly in my chest. I felt bad that someone else was being blamed for something that had started with me, but how could I talk about it to a stranger when I still couldn’t think back on it without tremors racking my body? The horror of the bloody memories was stronger than my ability to speak of them.
He nodded, his eyes a little haunted.
“So why is your sister still looking for this artifact if she nearly got killed over it in the first place?” I asked.
“It’s priceless, for one thing. And there would be no sweeter revenge for her than keeping it from the king,” he said grimly.
“Hey! Hey, you!” someone shouted.
I looked over my shoulder. A city guardsman was jogging toward us, his short sword drawn.
Hal cursed, colorfully, and took off. If the guard had a swift manifest, we were doomed. I dashed after Hal, terrified of losing him. We raced through streets and alleys, my satchel slapping uncomfortably on my back.
Hal seemed to know where he was going as he wove through Valenko, always quickly shifting direction if he spotted a guard. We headed north, the sun drifting toward the horizon to our left, painting the buildings with yellow light fading into dusk. Lamplighters walked from block to block, igniting the gas lamps on each corner that would burn through the night.
“Slow down,” I said, panting, after we’d finally gone several minutes without seeing a guardsman. “Please.” After so many days of travel and so little food, keeping his brutal pace was impossible, and if he truly wanted to lose me in the city, I had no doubt he already would have done it.
He eased up to match my walk, bouncing on his toes as though the run had energized him. I eyed him balefully, and then looked at the sky. Stars had just begun to sparkle into life overhead, and never before had I been so grateful to see them. Until spending a day confined by the buildings of the city, I never knew how much I needed the vastness of the sky, the reassurance of empty space around me. Room to breathe. Room to live.
“We’ll be out of town soon,” he said. “Where are you going next?”
The truth was, I didn’t know. “I need to find Ina. I suppose I’ll spend the night outside town and then come back tomorrow to look for her.”
Hal laughed. “You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met.”
“Why?” I bristled.
“Today a corpse fell on you, you dosed two city guardsmen, and now you want to march right back into the city where it all happened.” He laughed again. “You might be more fearless than anyone I know, and that’s saying a lot since I spend most of my time with the Swifts.”
“I’m not fearless.” I sighed, wishing I could explain the importance of finding Ina, but I couldn’t trust someone I’d barely met with my darkest secret. “Honestly, I could use some company to keep me out of trouble for a change.”
“Well, I’d be flattered to keep you company for a day if you’ll have me,” he said. “Though I hope you won’t blame me if trouble finds us even outside the city.”
“I doubt I can easily find more trouble than I already have,” I grumbled. I was already in enough trouble to last a mortal lifetime. It seemed like a small risk to take to gain some temporary companionship—especially from another demigod. I wanted to know more about him. It didn’t sound like he’d grown up in isolation, like me. What else might he know that I didn’t?
“Never underestimate trouble,” he replied.
I shrugged, though I wasn’t sure he saw the gesture.
As we made our way closer to the edge of town, the taller buildings gave way to single-story thatched cottages surrounded by low fences of stone. Chickens clucked from within their coops, already settled for the night. A mixture of wispy pines and bare deciduous trees dotted the yards, clotheslines strung every which way. Children played under them, waiting for their working parents, then greeting them with squeals and laughter as they returned.
My eyes welled. Amalska had once been like this. A place of family and love, if not always prosperity. A place of lives lived.
A place that I had destroyed, in spite of only ever wanting to be part of it.
“Are you all right?” Hal asked.
“Yes,” I lied, hoping the falling darkness hid the agony that had to be clearly written on my face. “I miss home. I never thought I’d leave.”
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a home to miss,” he said, his carefree tone not matching the expression on his face. He took in our surroundings, his jaw tightening against some kind of emotion.
“But you have your sister. You have family,” I said. I wondered how he could feel homeless with people who loved him in his life. I had never been close to anyone except Ina and Miriel, and both of them were lost to me now.
“Yes . . . but it isn’t that simple.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but instead we walked on in silence. I didn’t want to drive him away by prying, so I pushed my questions down. He didn’t owe me any explanations—not when we had only just met. We avoided the north road where guards might be patrolling, instead sneaking through a few yards and out into a farmer’s orchard, grateful for the thin camouflage provided by the rows of naked trees. Word of our escape might not yet have reached the guards in this part of the city, but we’d already used up our luck for the day.
“Will that be a safe place to rest for the night?” I asked, pointing at a forest that appeared as little more than a jagged shadow on the east horizon beyond the orchard. I was eager to be back in a place that felt even half familiar. I wanted branches to shelter me.
Hal’s expression was inscrutable in the dark, but his voice sounded uncertain. “The Tamers’ territory begins where the farmland ends. They don’t like trespassers, but if we stay near the edge, it will probably be all right. At least there’s no way anyone from the city would take the risk of following us there.”
“We don’t have any better options, so let’s go,” I replied. There was no sense waiting until the middle of the night to find a place to settle. Exhaustion had caught up with me after our day on the run. I knew very little of the Tamers—only that they took Tamed animal companions instead of manifests and were dedicated to the preservation of nature. Their role in Zumorda was to protect the natural beauty and wildness of the kingdom, preventing cities from encroaching on their lands or upsetting the natural order.
We skirted the edge of the farm fields, heading toward the forest. The wind picked up and the night cooled, making the bare branches of the orchard trees click and the grass hiss. The time for my vespers had passed, but I began to hum a tune anyway, letting the melody drawn from everything around me help the place feel more familiar and safe.