Baedan notices the way North falters and she lifts an eyebrow. “So stone-hearted North still bleeds,” she says, mocking him. “Good.” Standing, she reaches for me, and Kellig dutifully releases me into her arms. Holding me by the hair, she pulls my face back so I’m forced to look up at her. Blood leaks from her eye and begins dripping down her cheek, splashing onto my shoulder.
“Do you know how long it takes your body to turn hellborne in the Burn?” she asks. “Five days. And you will feel every second of it. What do you think, North?” She twists me toward him. “I could put a leash on her and give her to Kellig. He’s always asking for new pets and I think he’s earned this one, don’t you?”
Don’t, I want to say. Don’t single me out, North. Don’t make me special. Don’t give me power over you.
“Or maybe I’ll just take one of her eyes as payment for mine.” Baedan pulls a dagger from her belt and dips the blade against my cheek.
“And maybe one of her teeth,” Kellig growls.
“Wait,” says North.
My heart sinks, but Baedan smiles. Shifting her weight, she tightens her hold on my hair as the blade slides a fraction higher. “Formalities first,” she says. “I need your blood to be clean. Or as clean as you can make it.”
North cocks his head, confused, and she rolls her eyes. “Come on, North,” she says. “We’ve talked enough history between us that you can guess where this is going.”
Horror creeps across his face. “You’re not going to kill me.”
“And I never intended to kill the princess,” she says. “Your blood is useless without a heartbeat behind it.” I wince a moment before her icy blade presses against my eyelids. “Your choice, your majesty,” she says.
A beat of silence, a moment to consider.
“I need room,” says North.
Baedan drags me back, out of the way, lowering her knife in the process. I watch, heart in my throat as North sags to his knees, flattening his palms to the ground. He braces for pain, stifling his cries into his shoulder as he leaches poison into the ground, excising enough of the infection that his protection spells can keep the rest back.
He rises to his feet when he’s finished, staggering away from the Burn he’s created. He only makes it a few feet before crumpling, too weak to bear his own weight. I struggle against Baedan’s hold, but she’s stronger than Kellig, and I can’t break free.
“Give him a knife,” she barks.
North pushes himself to his knees, wavering. His crooked hands rest against his knees as he tips his head back, swallowing hard, watching Kellig approach with half-lidded eyes. “You’ll have to do it yourself,” says North.
Baedan snorts. “You of all people should appreciate the value of tradition.”
“You just need a little help,” Kellig says. “I know these fingers don’t bend so well on their own.” Slamming the knife in North’s palm, he begins forcing the fingers into position. North swears profusely as the color drains from his face.
Baedan grins, savoring North’s pain as Kellig steps back, leaving North to fumble one-handed with the buttons of his shirt. My heart aches for him, for his frustration, the palpable sense of self-loathing.
Flushed, North finally tears his shirt open before he wipes his mouth against his shoulder, his gaze sliding to Baedan with a spark of defiance. He’s bony beneath the black he always wears, gaunt and stretched thin. Faded scars cross his body, and a bold but simple compass rose sits above his heart. A spell. The one I helped weaken by kissing him and allowing his desires to bleed out and the poison to sneak in.
“A bottle,” Baedan calls.
Someone tosses a vial toward North. It hits his chest and bounces away, and he has to crawl after it.
Baedan leans forward, eager as North cuts through the soft flesh of his chest, through the heart of his spell—to the cleanest blood in his body. Dropping the blade, he uncorks the glass vial with his teeth and fills it to overflowing.
“Don’t spill any,” she says in a maddening singsong. “I need every last drop.”
North spits the cork out in his palm before thumbing it back into the vial. Eyes locked on Baedan, he tamps it firmly in place with a hard knock on the ground. A woman plucks the vial from North’s hands, brandishing it aloft to a round of cheers.
“Like father, like son,” Baedan says, catching the vial as it’s tossed her way. She slides it in her pocket and releases me. “Bring her,” she orders, turning for her horse, and rough hands grab my arm.
“No.” North’s eyes widen in protest.
I resist, breaking loose, lunging for him. He reaches for me but misses my hand as I’m swept up again, thrown over a woman’s broad shoulder.
“Baedan!” North struggles to his feet but falls again almost immediately. Kellig laughs, pressing him down with his foot, and North flattens beneath his weight, his bent hands twining through the soft moss. “Baedan,” he croaks. “Please.”
She scoffs, watching him from over her shoulder. “Long live the withered king.”
I’m thrown onto the back of a horse and steered toward the Burn. My captor walks beside me, holding me in place as we cross the golden boundary, into soft dunes of ash that rise high as the horses’ calves. A blanket of heat enfolds me, dry and hard to breathe, smelling of smoke and thunderstorms and the faraway hint of the sea. I struggle to inhale, only to choke, and the woman laughs.
“Breathe it in,” she says. “Let your lungs burn.”
I fumble in my pocket, grabbing the scalpel I stole from Solch, still dulled with Kellig’s blood. Gathering every inch of my strength, I slam the blade into the hollow of the woman’s throat and drag it down until it catches on her collarbone. She howls and stops moving, and I roll off the horse, hitting the ground in a plume of ash.
Gasping, I scramble to my feet and start running for North as another man makes a grab for me. I twist out of reach and keep going, but they’re on horses and easily outflank me. I fall back, panting, armed with my only my hands but more than willing to use them.
Baedan stares down at me, incredulous, and for a moment I think I’ve surprised her with my fight. But nobody dismounts to come after me and I realize it isn’t me that they’re watching. It’s what’s happening around me—inside me.
My mother’s spell.
I notice the faint pressure on the underside of my skin, shy as a kiss, before heat spreads across my chest. But it isn’t like the Burn; it’s far more pleasant, like sunlight on a summer afternoon.
This isn’t right. I should be dying.
Instead, the world around me comes alive: The ash dissolves, softening into a patch of moss only wide enough to accommodate my feet. It thickens, dotted now with tiny white wildflowers. As my weight shifts and I stagger to hold balance, more moss appears to cradle my foot. A thin line of magic stretches ahead of me, narrow as a thread. Baedan draws away from it uneasily before it tugs on my heart, urging me forward, demanding I follow.
But where will it go?
Beneath the pull of the magic is the warning of the poison inside me inching closer, greedy and slick. The thread ahead of me wavers, pulls taut.