Shock fades into determination. Falling back a step, Bryn balls her skirt in both hands and hurries to help Tobek with the horses. Only then does Tobek run back to the wagon, recklessly batting at the fire with his arms and hands.
Ahead of me, North abandons his crossbow and crouches, flattening a hand to the cobblestones, leaching magic from his ward. His skin turns a bright and deadly white, and cracks of poison appear almost instantly, still hungry from Sava’s transference. I buy him time by fighting off the crows who angle too close, but there’s too many, with even more arriving.
North staggers to his feet and casts his spell. Overhead, silver light cuts down the center of the crows; beady black eyes turn dull and polluted. Several begin to fly erratic, favoring one wing over the other, before a series of muted pops fills the night. Their spelled hearts shatter midair and stone fragments clatter to the ground around us, followed by the birds themselves as their bodies hit the cobblestones and implode into half-moons of embers and feathers.
Silence. Jarring and surreal, broken by the hitch of my breath and a soft grunt as North sags to his knees, shaking. Pain tightens his face, and his hands curl across his chest, crammed under his arms. Darjin approaches, sniffing his smoldering coat with caution.
I stare at him as Tobek pushes past me, stamping out smaller fires around us. Bryn stands by the horses with her chin raised to the sky in search of any more sign of her father. Feathers cling to her red hair and spill down her back; thin scratches lace her arms and her face before fading. She looks small in that instant. Fragile.
Adrenaline ebbs and I bend forward with a grimace as Bryn’s and my injuries combine. Sticky heat spreads down my back: another dress ruined.
“We should check the stones,” North says numbly. “See if there’s any left—”
“Forget the goddamn stones!” Bryn spins to face him. “My father just tried to kill me! Once he finds out he failed, he’ll try again! If you can’t defend me, then get me to the palace like you promised so someone else can!”
“Every intuit and hellborne in the area will start swarming,” Tobek cuts in, bloodied and raw. “Sir, we have to move to better ground. You—” He stops and reconsiders, choosing his words with the same delicate care I’ve learned to speak with Bryn. “The ward is broken,” he says. “We can’t stay. You don’t have enough magic left to recast it and still risk the pass tomorrow.”
“There’s enough magic,” North growls, stumbling to his feet and advancing on Bryn. She backs away from him but he’s faster. “A binding spell that strong, and a father with a flock of golems to spare?”
He lunges for her and she throws a wild punch that North easily ducks. “Don’t touch me!”
He squints at her, breathless and ragged, his hands splayed across his knees. “New agreement,” he says. “Payment upfront or I leave you out here for your father to find.”
Her features are wild, framed by tangles of feathers and hair. “If my father finds me, he’ll find you too. All of you. We adhere to our original agreement—”
North lunges again, catching her off guard. She resists but he pins her to the side of the wagon, angling his tattered sleeve against her throat, careful to keep his bare hand from grazing her skin. “Three to one,” he says savagely. “I could just rip that spell out of you and leave your carcass to rot.”
Bryn snorts before tipping her head back. “But you won’t. You need me.”
I stare across the courtyard, into the muddy shadows of the empty buildings that pen us in. “No you don’t,” I say. My heel grinds through a layer of grit and ash as I turn to face them. “This wasn’t a first line of attack, it was a final defense. He’s getting desperate.” My eyes meet North’s, begging him to believe me. “He’s not a king, North. There’s no magic to inherit.”
Bryn stares at me. “What are you talking about?”
North’s jaw clenches, his need for an alliance warring with the doubt that I planted. “Tobek,” he says at last. “Find out where this binding spell originated.”
Tobek hunches forward nervously, tugging on the rumpled waves of his hair. “Sir—”
“Do as I say!”
Tobek flinches and Bryn laughs, eyes narrowed. “So sainted North is too much of a gentleman to touch a lady with his crippled hands. Though I suppose your apprentice comes more in handy on those cold mornings when you can’t even dress yourself.” She bares her teeth. “All those little buttons.”
North looks at Tobek in accusation, and he ducks his head with a flush of guilt. “I already looked,” he says. “Earlier today, when I read her blood, I also tried to read the spell, but it—it was scraped clean, North. It’s old magic, recycled from somewhere, but I couldn’t tell where. Whoever cast that spell did so anonymously. They didn’t want credit.”
North’s nostrils flare; he shifts his weight, arm still pressed tight against Bryn’s throat. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried to talk to you, but you wouldn’t listen to me! You—” His eyes fall to me in recrimination. He’s not the only one who’s been distracted lately.
“No king casts a spell anonymously,” North says. “Only cowards and thieves do that when they don’t want anyone tracing it back to them.”
Bryn smiles, but I can see the cracks in it, the second-guesses: She’s not as invincible as she thinks she is. “Do you know that for an absolute fact?” she asks. “Are you willing to risk Avinea on the opinion of an unpaid apprentice and the treason of a servant? And you”—her eyes slide to me—“are you willing to risk your sister’s life for this? Without my alliance, Prince Corbin has no reason to save anything or anyone in Brindaigel.”
“You can’t kill your father, Bryn,” I say softly, lifting my hand so she can see the spell she stole from him. “No one can.”
Her expression stiffens as my words sink in. Her father didn’t spare her his attack; going home an innocent is no longer an option. Despite everything, I feel half a heartbeat of sympathy for her, but beneath that is relief: She doesn’t own me anymore. I have control again.
Bryn twists, grabbing North’s hand and pressing it against her wrist. I gasp, dropping to my knees, and North looks back, anger dissolving into immediate fear as he realizes what’s happened.
He jerks away from Bryn, but it’s too late. Tiny ribbons of poison fan across her arm from where it bled out of his skin, drawn by the magic in hers. The ribbons sink out of sight but reappear moments later, twining up my arm like jasmine shooting up the kingdom walls.
At first, euphoric pleasure threads through my veins, unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Better than a thousand kisses, a bottle of barleywine, a stolen night beneath the stars with Thaelan’s body pressed to mine. Tears of wanting flood my eyes and I hear my heartbeat, erratic and impossible, a whisper-crash that hangs in silence before repeating again, harder, like a pounding fist beneath my skin. The world unravels around me, fallen stitches and hanging threads as the sky melts into a river of silver and smoke.