“You have a steady hand. Useful.” Circling around Arin, Hamon’s mother examined her. “Yes, yes, I think you will do nicely. I am in need of an assistant. My Hamon has delivered to me an intriguing puzzle, and the work would go faster with a set of young, steady hands.”
She felt as if a warning bell were chiming in the back of her mind. She knew she wasn’t supposed to stay and spend time with Hamon’s mother. He might be angry as it was, but she’d wanted to deliver the cake while it was still fresh. Stale cake made no friends. “I am sorry, ma’am, but I already have a position at the palace.” She was supposed to be watching her sister, even though Daleina kept sending her away.
“Not one more important than this.” All trace of the flighty, overblown personality had vanished, wiped clean as if with a washcloth. “Make no mistake: my son wouldn’t have called me here for anything less than the gravest of emergencies. He’s a fool if he thinks I haven’t guessed whose blood he wants me to test, or to think that I can’t read the fear in his eyes. You will help me, because it is necessary.”
All excellent points, but she should check with—
Without waiting for Arin to speak any objections out loud, Hamon’s mother beamed at her and clapped her on the shoulder. “Be a good girl and borrow something sharp from one of those guards. Let’s cut the cake, and then dive into work, shall we?”
She hesitated again. Bringing a weapon anywhere near Hamon’s mother did not sound like the best idea.
“Do you think I am going to slit your throat and make a run for it?” The woman smiled. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d wanted to run. I’m here to see how this turns out. But if you won’t ask a guard, then I’ll simply do it myself.”
Arin tensed, but Hamon’s mother picked up a plate and used it to slice a wedge out of the cake. “See? Messy but effective. Don’t be so untrusting.” Hamon’s mother handed Arin the first slice and took a second piece for herself.
Biting into the cake, Arin watched Hamon’s mother. She dived into the cake with gusto, inhaling chunks of it as if she hadn’t eaten in days. Arin nibbled at her slice. It was, Arin admitted, excellent cake. The hint of nutmeg was what turned it from merely good to great, and the frosting . . . Odd that it should have a tang to it. She hadn’t remembered adding that flavor. She had an excellent memory for tastes.
Arin blinked as the cake blurred in front of her for a moment.
“Are you all right, child?” Hamon’s mother asked.
Shaking her head, she cleared the blurriness. Everything snapped back into focus. Looking at Hamon’s mother, she realized how kind a smile she had. Anyone who smiled like that couldn’t mean any harm, and of course it was important to help her. Arin felt silly for resisting. She wanted to help this woman. “I’m happy to help you any way I can.”
“Of course you are, my child. And you won’t leave me when I need you, will you?”
She’s beautiful, Arin thought. And brilliant and kind. “Never.”
Hamon’s mother smiled at her, and Arin took another bite of cake.
Chapter 15
The academy twisted, as if unscrewed by a giant hand, and cracks shot up the walls, splitting into a dozen more cracks. Naelin scrambled to keep her feet beneath her as the ground writhed and rolled. She caught Ven’s arm, and he yanked her out of the loose, sandlike soil that filled her shoes and pulled on her ankles, and toward the stairs. They fell onto the steps as he herded the headmistress in front of them. The other masters swarmed around their headmistress, helping her to higher stairs.
“Focus,” the headmistress ordered them. “Act, don’t react.”
Above, the students were screaming. Pressed against the windows, they clung to the sills as the tower shifted and shook. Naelin tried to see her children—Which window? She couldn’t see them, but they must have woken, must be scared, and she wasn’t there.
“Send it back, Naelin,” Ven told her, gripping her arm. “You can do it.”
“Erian and Llor—” She had to reach them! She had to—
“You have to do this for them!”
Yes. Yes, she did.
He was right.
She’d called this monster; she had to stop it. Turning, she stumbled down the steps toward the roiling earth. Acting on instinct, she knelt on the last step and thrust her hands into the shifting sand. You will not hurt them. You will STOP.
She felt the earth kraken shudder and recoil—its presence was overwhelming, like falling into a bottomless lake, murky water all around you, clingy mud beneath your bare feet. She felt its hostility crawling over her skin, and then she felt its curiosity.
“Fill it with yourself,” Ven said behind her. “Your strength.”
“Your thoughts,” the headmistress added. “Your emotions. Your fear. Your love.”
Go, she told it. Into the command, she shoved all her fear and love for her children, every shred of hope she had for them and their future, every wish for their happiness, every memory of late-night worrying while one of them lay sick beside her, every time she’d patched a scrape, every tear she’d kissed away, every tear she’d caused, saying stop, don’t do that, no!
It withdrew. Curling its tentacles with it, it sank into the soil. The ground heaved as it departed, and Naelin kept her mind in the sand and stone beneath until the feel of the kraken vanished like a storm cloud dispersing in the wind.
Shaking, she sank against the stairs, and then she heaved herself up and pushed past the masters and the students—up to where she’d left her children. She burst into the room.
“Mama!” Launching himself across the room, Llor threw his small, quivering body at her. Erian followed. Her face was streaked with tears, and her hair was matted on her cheek. Naelin gathered them both in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” she said into their hair. “I’m so sorry.”
“You saved them,” a voice said behind her—Ven. “You sent it away. You, alone and untrained.”
Muffled, she said without looking at him, “I also called it. It was my fault.” You told me to, she wanted to say. It was his fault too, pushing her to do what she didn’t want to do, what her instincts told her was too dangerous. But she could pin her anger on him only for a moment before it turned back to herself. She was the one who had summoned more than a single, weak spirit. She’d endangered everyone.
“Think what you could accomplish with training!”
She held Erian and Llor tighter, breathed them in, felt their own breath in their warm bodies as they shook against her, silently crying, still scared. “You can’t train me. I’m a danger. To them. To everyone.”
“Next time, it might come on its own. Or another like it. Don’t you want to know how to keep your children safe always? Don’t you want to keep all the children safe? As a trained heir, you could do that. As queen, you could do more.” The hope in his voice, the belief in her, was heady.
“You’re trying to manipulate me.”
“Yes. Is it working?”
She stroked her children’s hair and felt as if her heart were shattering into a thousand shards. She couldn’t risk them living through what she’d lived through, watching their mother draw too-powerful spirits, listening to her die. But was it already too late?