I have to be.
I whisper the mantra again and again, until my heart slows and the shivers stop. Only then do I open my eyes and confirm that the world still exists, that nothing has changed.
But I have, irrevocably.
Numb—feeling exposed—I climb out of the river and quickly dress, eager for the returning weight of my clothing. My mother’s book is knocked aside in the process, and I stare at it with a touch of resignation. Like a rash that never heals, this book keeps finding its way back to me, as inescapable as my scar.
Exhaling softly, I sink cross-legged on the grassy bank and pull the book closer. As I thumb through the worn pages, I almost expect to find some hidden note from Alistair tucked inside and his true intentions laid bare.
Instead, a folded map of Avinea falls into my lap. I slowly smooth it open, biting the inside of my cheek. Thaelan and I spent hours memorizing this map, planning the route we’d take on our way through Avinea, toward the world beyond. We’d lie out on the roofs beneath the stars and imagine how each dot would look, how it would taste and feel and sound.
Like freedom, every single one.
But it’s my mother’s book, my mother’s map, and it’s my mother I picture as I trace familiar patterns between the cities, wondering which ones she might have craved. What route would she have taken through Avinea? How far could a vial of clean magic get her?
Why do I even care?
A branch snaps behind me and I twist with a flash of alarm. Darjin bounds out of the growing shadows, tail twitching high, and I exhale with relief. “Hello,” I greet as he bumps into my hip and twines around my arm. Throwing himself at my feet, he rocks onto his back and exposes his stomach, paws curling and unfurling, kneading the air with shameless invitation.
I laugh and dangle a leaf for him to bat. We never had any pets of our own—it was hard enough to feed ourselves—but Cadence once came home with someone else’s chicken, insisting she could domesticate it and teach it to lay eggs on her command. Only it wasn’t eggs it left in our beds and trailed across the floor, and within a week, I sold it for half a kronet. Cadence cried and Thaelan lectured me on the immorality of selling other people’s chickens until I cried too, and Thaelan had to bribe us with sugared pastries to get us to stop.
My scar aches with warning at the bittersweet memory. Don’t, I tell myself.
“He used to be a tiger, once upon a time.”
I startle forward, crumpling the map in the process. North appears, barely more than a shadow himself, save the dusky olive of his face above the collar of his coat.
“Were you spying on me?” I demand.
“No,” he says, but blushes. “It’s dark,” he adds with a forced smile. “You weren’t back. I promised to keep you safe and I honor my word.”
Water drips down my neck and I rub it away. Now that I know there’s no threat of attack, my body slowly unfurls. Darjin waits at my feet, purring like a summer thunderstorm. He paws at a leaf, reminding me of the game I abandoned.
“Small tiger,” I say, twitching the leaf for him before I stand, grabbing my shoes and cramming the map back into the book.
“Small confession,” says North, hands sliding in his pockets as I fall in step with him and we head for camp. “He used to be life size. In truth, Darjin’s just a very complicated spell my mother cast almost thirty years ago.”
I glance at Darjin as he trots between us, amazed that magic could produce something so real, when all Perrote uses magic for is moving mountains and making shadows. “Was she a transferent too?”
“Only a spellcaster, but a good one.” He smiles at the memory, before his face darkens. “King Merlock used to give pretty courtiers a few threads of magic to weave as they pleased if they ever did as he pleased.” He holds back a branch while I duck underneath. “After the city of Prevast fell, the court disbanded. My mother wasn’t the only one to land on her back. When I was born, she didn’t have the means to care for both a tiger and a son.”
“So she made him smaller?”
“No,” says North, “she sent me to Saint Ergoet’s Monastery in the interest of my education.”
I look over, nonplussed. “Oh.”
We reach the edge of the perimeter ward but pause. North crouches, scratching Darjin’s chin. “This cat was her greatest accomplishment and I was the second. In fact, she almost named me Darjin the Second.” Dark hair falls forward, framing his forehead. It makes him look younger, more boyish. “Luckily she was persuaded otherwise,” he says, eyes flicking up to meet mine.
“North suits you,” I say. “Steady as a star.”
He smiles in acknowledgment. “She died before I began searching for Merlock,” he says, standing, dusting off his hands. Clots of cat fur drift lazily on the soft breeze, clinging to the dark fabric of his pants. “And at the time, I promised to keep him, no matter what. But with Merlock still missing and Avinea dying, I’ve had to . . . borrow some of her spell for other purposes.” Snorting, he drops his chin. “I know it’s selfish to keep a cat when the magic could be used for more important things, but the truth is, a magic tiger is all I’ve ever had of her. Sometimes it doesn’t seem enough. Sometimes it seems too much.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, eyes dropping to the book clutched in my hands. I don’t want to be beholden to North any more than I am to Bryn, and yet, I feel as if he’s offered me something too valuable to ignore. “This belonged to my mother,” I say, lifting the book. The map falls out, open at our feet, and North bends for it.
“I suspected it was worth more than it looked,” he says. “It was the first thing you noticed after you woke up in a cage.”
In truth, the book was worthless even to her; she used it for scrap paper, writing client names and measurements along the inside cover. It had no value to me as a child, but my mother’s betrayal still felt too raw to be real when I smuggled it from our burning house, in case she might return and needed to work again. In the years that followed, it became its own kind of touchstone, a reminder of my mother’s sins and a warning to me on those cold nights with no food and no father and no stories to soothe Cadence’s cries. I would never betray my sister, or break her heart the way our mother broke mine, not for all the gold—or magic—in the world.
But I’m my mother’s daughter despite it all.
I shiver, fingers brushing the soft bruises along my throat, where Fanagin choked me.
“Going sightseeing?” North quips of the map. “Because you’re about thirty years outdated. Here.” Gesturing me forward, he spreads the map across the side of the wagon. Pulling a stubby pencil from his trousers pocket, he asks, “May I?”