“Shadows,” I said, my breath catching. “They’re back.”
Soldiers screamed for Ruby behind me. I sprinted away, his red face blurring with the other images of the damned I fled past. A stitch in my side ate at my ribs and stole my breath. I chanced a look back.
Ruby raced back toward Three, toward the shadows, toward death.
“Twenty-Three!” Emerald, mask a bright spot at the edge of the woods, drew her bow.
It would do no good.
I slowed enough to shout, “Shadows.”
She grabbed me. “What?”
“No, no.” I tugged her back toward the palace with me, heels failing to find hold in the dust. “Shadows. There are shadows. They got Three. They—”
I gagged, the weight of my running and her staring eyes bubbling up the back of my throat. Emerald’s fingers tightened around my wrist.
“There are no shadows,” she said. “And there never will be again.”
“No, no, no.” I stumbled and collapsed. I stared at each of them in turn. They had to believe me. “Three’s gone, and a shadow got Four. I saw it.”
Ruby, panting behind his mask and dragging Two by the arm, appeared behind Emerald. “Three’s flayed.”
“See!” I tried to stand, and my knees betrayed me.
“Hush.” Emerald knelt next to me and grabbed my face in her hands. “You saw Three flayed and your mind did the rest. You saw them in Nacea, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “It was morning. I climbed up to get a better look at The Lady’s constellation.”
I’d climbed up. My siblings had played below, too young to do much but stumble. Shadows had ripped through them like thorns through flesh.
“Who am I?” Emerald asked as she gripped me so tight I couldn’t look around.
“Emerald.” I shook my head. “You’re Lady Emerald.”
“The first of the Left Hand and the only one known throughout Igna,” she said softly. “You know I survived them.”
“You tore it in half with runes, but magic’s gone.”
“I tore apart the runes holding it together. Without magic, they cannot exist. Trust me, I am one of only four left living who knows how to create and destroy the shadows.” She let me go and leaned aside. “Look.”
Four stood with Two, eyes rimmed with red and hands dripping blood. He clutched Three’s mask with shaking hands.
“What?” I glanced around. “How?”
“Like I said, you saw Three and your mind did the rest. Three was an auditioner kill. A cruel one but one nonetheless.” Emerald stood. “Lady dal Abreu is a royal physician. Let her look at you, and be polite while she does.”
I nodded, heart still hammering away at what was left of my ribs.
“I do love being right though,” Emerald said as she patted my shoulder. “You are quite the runner.”
I’d thought death was at my heels. “I don’t like being chased.”
“No one does.”
She moved away, and Four took her spot. He gestured to me.
“Two grabbed me.” He shook his head like a mourner trying to keep tears at bay. “Not a shadow.”
“Whoever killed Three was a butcher.” Lady dal Abreu kneeled next to me, her evergreen dress stitched with thick, black thread like a turtle’s shell fanning out around her. She pointed to the strands of hair clinging to Three’s mask. “Not a shadow.”
I took the flask of water from her. Of course everyone here had seen them, been to war against them. She was Rodolfo da Abreu’s twin and knew the shadows just as well as he had. All the stories said she’d offered a fortune to anyone willing to return his corpse for funeral rites—illegal since his vengeance had meant killing folks who’d surrendered. She knew the shadows as well as Emerald—knew how to create and destroy them.
Knew better than me how to tell fears from reality.
Face drawn and gray eyes narrowed, Lady dal Abreu peeled back my soaked shirt and hasty bandage with rune-scrawled hands. The turtle designs inked into her skin—the ones that had granted her healing powers and would’ve severed her arms at the wrists had she misused them—were the only runes I’d ever liked. Now, in the filtered forest light, they were white and dead and useless, drained of everything that had given them life. Just like Three.
Elise’s face, dimpled cheeks smeared with charcoal and blood, flashed through my mind.
I winced.
“Stop it.” She pressed a rag soaked with witch hazel against my side. “Any one of us would’ve been afraid.” She dropped her voice to whispered Alonian. “Most of us can’t even sleep in the dark anymore. Ruby’s hopeless without a lamp.”
I let out my breath in a low, long hiss and scratched at a cut on my hand. “I can’t either. Not back up here.”
How could she stand to stitch me up when I stood for everything she swore an oath to stop—injuries and death?
“Scratch it again and I’ll stitch your fingers to your dress.” The threat of violence assuredly not to come was southern enough. “Scratching will make it worse.”
I nodded. She smiled, thin lips twisting up into a crooked grin so wide it crinkled the corners of her eyes and stretched the runes lining her lids.
Only Our Queen’s most trusted peers—Emerald, Nicolas del Contes, Isidora dal Abreu, and Rodolfo da Abreu—had those runes, the ones that let them see the shadows’ magic.
Rodolfo had been Isidora’s twin, the same hair and eyes, same freckles, all the rumors said, and I’d enough pain simply remembering my dead siblings. Looking in a mirror for her must’ve been torture.
I’d grown up listening to the stories of Rodolfo da Abreu as fondly as most kids listened to bedtime tales. He’d killed the Erlend mages responsible for the shadows to prevent the knowledge of their creation from ever being spread, but I’d never considered the pain his life might’ve left behind. The shadows left nothing but pain in their wake.
Four plopped onto the ground next to me.
“I never saw the shadows,” Four said as he tucked Three’s mask into his pocket. His eyes were glazed, and he was out of it, completely in his own world. He didn’t even notice Two’s worried stare. “I never knew.”
He trailed off. I handed him the flask I’d stolen. If it wasn’t shadows, we’d nothing to worry about. Monstrous people were old news.
Still, seeing your friends like that never got easier.
“I’m sorry you know now.”
Nineteen
Isidora dal Abreu fixed me up with evenly spaced stitches that puckered my skin around the edges. She covered the rest of my hurts in sweetly scented salves, and she slipped me a jar of it with a pat on the hand. I sat with Four and Two in silence, trying to erase the memory of that drip from my mind, and watched the other auditioners race through the gate. Five showed up while I was still getting bandaged, his shoulder already taken care of and his face sporting a black eye I hadn’t given him. Six and Ten stumbled over the line together, their shackles unhooked from each other but still dangling from their wrists. Eleven and Fifteen raced for second-to-last place.