“What do you want?” I ask.
“You do like running,” he says wryly. When I don’t respond, he takes another step closer. “I have to ask you to stay within the stone ring for your own safety,” he says. “I can’t extend a ward beyond its borders and the hellborne are far more active in the night. Especially tonight.”
Turning, I see North with his head rocked back to the sky as if to guess what I was looking at. He worries his lower lip beneath his teeth, eyes hooded with shadow when they fall back to me. “You wanted me to win that bid this afternoon,” he says.
“You were the only one who looked like he wouldn’t peel my skin off,” I say.
“You were right. You’re safe.”
I snort, casting a derisive look at my wrist. “Maybe. For now.”
North edges closer. “Do you need help?”
I need my sister. Answers. Why did my mother steal the king’s magic and then waste it on saying good-bye? Why didn’t she run, like I would have done? Like I should have done, when I had the chance?
Why did I listen to Alistair Pembrough after four months of planning to kill him?
“How much would it cost to remove this?” I ask, brandishing my arm toward North. The spell shifts beneath my skin, dark as the smoke that rises ahead of us.
Remorse clouds his face. “I can’t do that.”
“You’re a transferent, name your price!”
“No, I mean”—he crouches to see me eye to eye—“the spell originates in Miss Dossel. I can’t remove it through you.”
Frustration floods my veins, edged with despair. I can’t run, I can’t escape. She’ll kill me if I try.
She’ll kill Cadence.
Lowering my head, I close my eyes. “So then what did you want from me?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t have any money,” I say, looking at him. “I don’t have any gold rings, but you came looking for me, not Bryn, back there in the woods.”
His expression goes blank. “Happenstance,” he says, hands dangling between his knees. “Tobek was just as likely to find you.”
“You just said this spell has nothing to do with me. If that’s all you really wanted from us, you would’ve gone after the source.”
North ducks his head with a tight, humorless smile as he examines his hands and avoids my accusation. He must know I’m hiding more than just a spell beneath my skin, that there’s magic enough for him to steal if he wanted it. He’s as mercenary as all the rest of them.
“I just wanted to help,” he says.
“I know that trick,” I say. “A handsome man offers to help me and the next thing I know, I’m standing in a foreign country chained to a princess.”
The edge of his mouth twitches. “A handsome man?”
“You’re not a stupid man, either,” I mutter with an unwanted rise of heat.
His eyes meet mine. “Would you believe me if I said—”
“No,” I interrupt. “I wouldn’t.”
He tilts his head, eyebrows raised. “You’re not even going to give me a chance to lie to you?”
I stare at him.
“Or maybe I might have told you the truth,” he says wryly. Brandishing Thaelan’s ring, he asks, “Is this yours?”
I look away. Blood echoes in my ears. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“It never belonged to me,” I say, teeth clenched. And now it never will. It’s like losing Thaelan all over again, and I hate Bryn and Alistair for doing that—for tainting his memory with their own greed.
Standing, I waver on my feet and North rises, offering me a hand. “Don’t touch me,” I say, stepping out of reach.
“You too, huh?” His lips flatten as he slides his hands in his pockets, rocking back onto his heels. “What’s your name?”
“What difference does it make?”
“You asked me what I wanted.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“Names are power,” he says. “You underestimate the value of yours.”
“I’m a servant,” I say. “My only value is in my skin.”
North doesn’t argue. He doesn’t speak at all, he simply watches. Waiting.
I hold back a sigh. I haven’t given my name to anyone in months and it feels rusty on my tongue. “Faris Locke.”
“Faris Locke,” he repeats softly, like it’s something special, worth remembering. He offers me his hand for an introduction before remembering himself. No touching. The hand slides through his hair instead, spiking it in dark, unruly peaks that slowly settle back into place on either side of his forehead. “There was an old pistol on the ground back there in the woods,” he says.
I flinch, feeling its weight, its power, its finality all over again. Shame warms my skin and yet I hug myself, suddenly cold.
“Where did that come from?”
“It was a gift from the king,” I say, staring at the ground.
“Miss Dossel’s father the king?”
I nod, and he lifts his chin in acknowledgment, eyebrows drawn in consideration.
“It’s probably still out there if you want it,” I say, turning for camp.
“It wouldn’t do me much good,” he says. “Avinea hasn’t produced ammunition for almost fifteen years, and our trade routes to the Northern Continents have been closed for more than twenty. Is that where it came from? The Northern Continents?”
I shrug, frustrated: What difference does it make where the gun came from? I used it to kill a man. Why isn’t he asking me about that? “I don’t know. Yes? Ask Bryn.”
“I suspect I’ll have to pay for any answers from her in silver and blood,” he says, glancing toward the wagon.
“Then maybe I’m offering my answers too freely.”
His eyebrows shoot up. Interested. “Name your price.”
My price is fifty gold kronets and signed papers releasing my sister from the nightmare of the workhouse. But North can’t give me that.
“Just get us to New Prevast,” I say, hugging myself even tighter. “As fast as you can.” Because if Perrote’s councilman was able to find us after only one day, who—what—might find us next?
“Seven days,” North says, resting his weight on the outsides of his boots. “We’ll leave in the morning.”
I nod tightly, turning away. “Thank you.”
“Miss Locke?”
I pause.
“You’re safe now,” he says. “I promise.”
I glance toward the stars, so many I could drown in them. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I still don’t believe you.”
Twelve
I RETURN TO THE FIRE, to a plate of food thrust in my hands and a seat beside Bryn on a rock. The pheasant Tobek roasted sits in a pool of buttery oil dotted green with herbs I don’t recognize. It reminds me of the blisters lanced across the hellborne as they ravaged Loomis’s corpse.
I can’t eat.
“You and Miss Locke can share the bottom bunk,” says North, his own dinner neatly dissected on his plate, fork and knife crossed at the center. “Tobek will sleep on the floor.”
The formality in addressing us by titled name seems ridiculous: He’s barely older than us and in desperate need of a shave and yet he treats us like we’re generations separated.