“I hope so.” Muscles tightened around James’s jaw, and he never looked away from Tobiah. He hardly blinked. “Because right now it sounds like I’m a piece of a bridge. Something you can make appear and disappear.”
“No, that isn’t it at all.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, all the way to the back of his neck, which he massaged for a moment. “This isn’t the way I meant to tell you.”
“It sounds like you meant to never tell,” James said. “Saints, Tobiah. The wraith boy knew. He told me months ago that I wasn’t human, that I wasn’t what I claimed to be. The wraith boy told me the truth, but you’ve been hiding it for a decade.”
Silence.
“What am I?” James whispered.
“You’re my cousin. My best friend.” Tobiah sat on the edge of the desk and kept his voice soft. “That will never change.”
“Maybe you should start from the beginning.” I pulled out the desk chair and offered it to James. He stared at it for a heartbeat, like he might refuse, but then he collapsed into it. I rested a hand on his shoulder.
“I need to preface it by saying this was the worst point in my life. Even with everything that’s happened recently, this is the worst.” Tobiah slumped and stared at the ceiling. “The night I was abducted, James, you and I were spying on my father’s meeting with Aecorian diplomats, and a man in a red uniform caught us. General Lien.” He glanced at me, but there was nothing to say. I already knew General Lien had kidnapped Tobiah and brought him to Aecor to use as leverage.
“What then?” James asked.
“You knew something was wrong when we saw General Lien in the hall. You didn’t trust him, so you stayed in my room that night. To protect me.” Tobiah’s voice caught. “When the general came for me, you were there, armed with one of our wooden practice swords. It didn’t stop the general. He crashed into my room and threw you aside. You were unconscious. I fought, but I was so worried about you I couldn’t defend myself.”
James sat straight and tall, eyes never leaving Tobiah.
“Other men came into the room, just two or three. The general said to take both of us so it would look like we’d run away or were playing a game. Our parents wouldn’t know we were missing until morning. I think there was some kind of explosion in Greenstone that night, something that distracted the Indigo Order and police. We were put in a wagon and taken from the city. I don’t remember much of that. Just that there weren’t many people with us. General Lien wanted to move quickly.”
A knock sounded on the door. We all paused and looked over, but no one moved until Oscar’s voice came, sending the person away.
“Once we were out of the city, General Lien bound us to a horse. We were gagged, but I could hear you breathing in my ear. You were still unconscious. We rode for hours like that, mostly at a gallop. The general wanted to be as far from Skyvale as possible before dawn.”
I barely breathed myself as I looked between the boys. James was ashen, his eyes wide and afraid.
Tobiah blinked away tears. “It wasn’t quite light out when I felt your body go slack. You’d stopped breathing.”
My skin prickled with a surge of horror. “No.”
James looked as though he was struggling to stay upright, and I squeezed his shoulder in a pale measure of support.
There was a pause, like we were all thinking about small James, hurt and kidnapped. And small Tobiah, unable to help his best friend.
“I started screaming around the gag.” Tobiah raked his fingers through his hair until it stood on end. “No one heard me over the horse hooves. There were birds chirping and everything was waking up—except for you. After an hour, maybe, they noticed us. We stopped and they took you off the horse. You were pale, bruised. But still limp. They said you were cold, except for the front where you’d been leaning against me. You didn’t have a pulse.”
Horror crawled over my skin.
“The general had his men throw your body over a cliff.”
I pressed my fists to my mouth, but I couldn’t look away from the boys, couldn’t stop listening as the story grew worse.
“What happened?” James spoke in a whisper, as though anything more would shatter the spell of memory. “Because I’m not dead.”
“A lot of that is a blur now. I know we changed horses. We stopped for a few hours so the soldiers could rest. I was in and out for most of that. The next thing I really remember is waking up in an office, and a girl freeing me from where I’d been tied to a chair.”
Tobiah’s eyes locked on mine, haunted and dark. “You showed me your magic,” he said. “And after my father’s people came to rescue me, I remembered it.”
“But I can’t”—I glanced at James—“bring things back to life. I tried once. There was a stillborn kitten when I was a girl. Nothing happened.”
“I know.” Tobiah swallowed hard and looked down. “Saints. I wish I could stop there.”
“I deserve to know,” said James.