“May you what?”
“May I continue to prove that you’re safe here,” he says, “by demonstrating the places that are no longer safe out there.” His chin tips over his shoulder, and though we’re far from any sign of the Burn, smoke clogs the lower horizon, thick and yellowed like old mucus against the inky sky.
I shrug and North hunches forward, rubbing the graphite across entire sections of the kingdom, darkening the paper in shades of gray. “The Burn took Nevik six months ago,” he says, eyes on his work as he scratches out entire cities, angling curves around others. Darjin winds between his feet and North edges him away with the side of his shoe. “Corsant has about a year before they fall. The southeast is entirely impassable except by sea. New Prevast used to be called Gorstelt; they changed the name twenty years ago when they moved the capital.”
Wordlessly, I watch North reduce Avinea to less than half its size. While the majority of the Burn is focused around the original capital of Prevast in the northwest, there are pockets of it spread in both directions. “How did it get so far away?”
North steps back, pinning the map in place with one hand. “Magic became a commodity after the war. A black market formed. It’s how most of the nobles paid their way out of Avinea, selling off spells and talismans they’d earned from the king. And with money to be made, people went into the Burn looking for anything that might have gotten left behind. They went home infected, and when they died, their families buried them, not realizing that the poison would spread through the earth. From the ground to the water supply, the farmland, one city, another.” He studies the map and all its dark places with a kind of helplessness. “It spread. And once people figured out that dead magic was still power”—he sighs, lowering his head—“it became an addiction and spread even further.”
“Why does it kill some people but not others?”
He considers his reply. “Magic came from the gods,” he says, “and the gods gave man a choice: virtue or vice. We”—he gestures between us—“try to live balanced lives between both, but the hellborne surrender their hearts to poison and their souls to sin. They choose vice. It’s the difference between turning hellborne or accepting death, Miss Locke.”
Of course. Even the damned get a choice, or at least the illusion of one. I’m proof enough of that.
“If it’s still magic, can you remove it?” I ask. “Could you survive the plague?”
North makes a face. “Dead magic is a lot like a curse. It’s frayed at the edges, which makes it harder to hold. In theory, if you catch it quick enough, you can stop the infection from spreading. In reality, it’s a difficult and often painful process. Success is never guaranteed. Anytime you put magic in your blood, it’s only a matter of time before it hits your heart.” He forces a tight smile. “And the only cure for a hellborne soul is a carved out heart. Prince Corbin’s orders. No exceptions.”
Rubbing the top of his head, he smiles again, easier than before. “What were you looking for?” he asks.
“Nothing, really,” I say. Then, “Why hasn’t Prince Corbin ever tried sending a convoy to Brindaigel for magic? I mean, I know we were enemies, but—”
“We’re enemies?”
“Our king supported Corthen during the war,” I say. “We gave him men and supplies and he gave us a touchstone.” And it still stands in the castle courtyard today, a ten-ton granite obelisk that’s nothing more than a landmark now, all its magic drained and hidden away so people like my mother can’t grab it. “But if you needed magic, why wouldn’t you look for it where you knew it would be?”
North makes a face, nonplussed. “Where’s Brindaigel?”
I stare at him, skin prickling. “You don’t know?”
“Is that one of the new territories in the Northern Continents? I confess my geography has lapsed since I left the monastery, but I thought they traded magic for a republic after they executed their empress.”
Is he joking? Anyone who’s spent four years searching for magic should know the name of the kingdom that still has it. Anyone who serves the prince should know the history of his enemies—especially when those enemies share his border.
North gives me a sideways look before his eyes fall to the spell around my wrist. “Maybe I know it by another name,” he says. “A lot of things changed after the war. Like I said, New Prevast used to be called Gorstelt.”
“Maybe,” I say with a forced smile to hide my unease.
“I have more maps in the wagon,” North says as Darjin stands on his hind quarters, paws on North’s thigh, begging for attention. North begins to rub his back. “Maybe after dinner, we could look them over together.”
His arm knocks into mine and I jerk back, alarmed. How did I let him get so close? We’re mere inches apart, less than the span of the map North still holds pinned to the wall. He can’t remove the spell around my wrist, but if his fingers brushed mine, there’s nothing to stop him from taking the stolen magic meant for Prince Corbin.
This is wrong. If I have any chance of saving my sister, it’s by keeping North at a distance.
Trust no one.
“Excuse me,” I mumble, quickly folding the map and cramming it back in my book. I hurry around the side of the wagon, chased by Darjin and the itchy feel of North’s eyes on my back.
Bryn scowls from the doorway of the wagon, her knife laid across her knees. “Where have you been?”
I shake my head in reply, approaching Tobek hunched over the campfire, morosely poking at vegetables with a stick. “Can I help with something?” I ask, eager for movement, some sense of control.
Tobek bumps his shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Can you cook?”
“I can poke things with sticks,” I say, and he glances over, cracking a smile.
As I supervise potato cakes turning golden over the fire, my mind retraces my conversation with North like Thaelan mapping his tunnels, searching for a path that leads to a logical conclusion. If Thaelan found a way out of Brindaigel, Corbin could have found a way in. Unless he believes us to be dead, the way we were told Avinea was. Is that why Avinea never invaded us before, not because Perrote has kept us safe, but because he’s kept us secret?
Can one man be that powerful?
But more than that, if Prince Corbin has no idea that we exist, he has no idea who Bryn or her father is. Will he agree to an alliance based on the strength of a binding spell, a story, and a vial of stolen magic? My life—my sister’s life—depends on it.
But who would risk their own kingdom by agreeing to fight for one that no one’s ever heard of?
Fourteen