For half a breath, Merik stared at the flame, burning brighter. At the smoke coiling off it from the moth. Then he forced his gaze to Vivia’s desk. It was a table, really. No drawers to hide important messages in, no lockboxes beneath. All the same, Merik shuffled quickly through the stacks of papers. Checked between, behind, below.
Six stacks he flicked through, but there was nothing of interest. Just endless inventories and accounts in a tiny, slanted scrawl that was so neat it almost looked printed.
His eyes caught on a different stack, on the scribbled calculations and tallies and notes. Legible but so sharply slanted the numbers were almost horizontal.
And all of them crossed through. Scratched through with an angry pencil. The number of incoming people (by day) versus the amount of incoming food (by day, and with the palace’s contribution subtracted), all underscored by the amount of coins being spent to pay for everything.
The numbers didn’t add up. Not even close. The hungry and the homeless far outweighed the food and the funds coming in. Noden’s breath, what a huge number it was. Sixteen new people came each day hoping for beds, and forty-four more people came looking for food.
If that was how many people made it to Pin’s Keep for shelter, for meals, for healing, then how many didn’t? Merik knew his homeland was in tatters—it had been for twenty years, and things had only sunk deeper into the hell-waters recently. But these numbers …
They suggested a Nubrevna far worse than Merik had realized.
With a steeling sigh, he moved onward to the final stack on the desk. A large paper with creases down the center rested on top of it.
A map of the Cisterns, the vast network of tunnels below the city that carried water and sewage throughout. Merik leaned in, excited, for there was a spot on the map with a fat X atop it—as well as six times of day scribbled in the corner, one of which was circled. A meeting location and time, perhaps?
Merik eased the map from the stack and folded it along the already-creased lines. He was just tucking it into his belt when a chill settled over him. Ice and power and a voice saying, “Put it back, please.”
Oh, Noden hang him. Merik knew that voice.
Stacia Sotar had arrived.
Merik swiveled his head ever so slightly, the hood blocking his face. All he needed was to get to the open window. A single jump, and he’d be free.
Or so he thought, until water surged up his leg. It snaked and coiled and constricted, freezing into a shackle of ice—because, of course, how could he forget? Stix was a full-blighted Waterwitch. It left Merik with only one choice: he gave in to the darkness.
He became the Fury.
His winds boomed out. The ice fractured. Merik yanked at his leg, ready to fly.
The ice melted. It steamed upward, scalding and searing into his ruined face.
Merik couldn’t help it. He roared his pain before diving over the desk and dropping to the other side.
Ice shot above in a spray that beat the wall, sliced open Merik’s scalp. His hood had fallen. Yet he was already moving. Crawling on all fours toward the window. He sensed Stix drawing in more magic. Easily, as if this fight had only just begun.
She slammed down her foot, and at once the water in the room turned to fog. Merik couldn’t see a thing.
With a gust of weak winds, he puffed a path to the window. Mist coiled away. Merik pushed upright and ran.
Yet as he feared might happen, Stix appeared in his path. He spun right, his winds punching up to cloud her in her own fog. Before he could twirl past, her hand lashed out and grabbed his wrist.
Ice ripped across his forearm, locking her to him.
Their eyes met, hers dark as Noden’s Hells—and widening. Thinning, just as her lips were parting.
She knows me. It was the worst possible outcome save for death. Being recognized would end everything Merik had planned.
Except that what left Stix’s throat was not Merik or Prince or Admiral.
“The Fury,” she breathed, and instantly the fog froze to snow. A flurry to drift harmlessly down around them. “You’re … real.”
A new cold—one from within—struck Merik in the chest. He was that broken. That unrecognizable. And though he tried to tell himself she was nearsighted, she couldn’t possibly recognize his face unless he was inches from her … He knew the truth. He was a horror to behold. He was the Fury.
But this pause was a gift. A moment he could use.
“I am the Fury.” At those words, at that acknowledgment, heat frizzed down Merik’s back. He tapped into the rage.
Power, power, power.
“Release me,” he commanded.
Stix obeyed. Her hand snapped back; the ice retreated—though not before tearing open his sleeve. His skin too.
Merik lunged for the window. Headfirst, past shutters and lemongrass. Past shingles and guttering. Headfirst toward the ancient, narrow alley below.
His winds caught him. Cradled him so he could spin upright before hitting the jagged cobbles.
As soon as his boots touched down, he ran. Twice he looked back, though. First, to see if Cam was anywhere near, but the girl wasn’t—and Merik couldn’t exactly go back to search for her.
Second, he looked back to see if Stix pursued.
But she didn’t. She simply watched him from the open window, haloed by candlelight and falling snow.