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“Look at me.” He waited until she did. “In the last three hours I have seen things I never wanted to. I have been beaten and tortured, and the only reason nothing worse happened is because I was being saved for public spectacle. You knew what you risked coming here for me and you still came.”
“It’s not the same. You’ve barely scratched the surface of this place.”
“Clare…I once told you that you’d barely scratched the surface of what I am. You’ve seen most of it now. And you’ve never looked at me any differently. There is nothing you can show me that will make me see you differently. We are literally sitting in a mass of people you’ve hypnotized. I haven’t run away yet.”
He’s lying, the Song whispered. He doesn’t know he’s lying, but he is. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t here. I was. No one could understand this. No one could accept this. But if you want him, I can give him to you.
The Song plucked a single thread of power from the rest, offering it to her. It was a variation of what held the crowd in thrall around her, a thread that would twine around Numair, instilling trust and admiration and devotion. He would never look at her and be horrified. He would never want to leave her side again.
He wouldn’t be able to.
She took that shining thread, felt the weight and balance of it, how seductively it was spun—and snapped it. After all this time together, you still don’t understand me if you think I could ever do that to him.
Irritation laced the Song’s response. He would never know the difference.
Perhaps not. But she would. And she didn’t want a lie.
She realized she’d been quiet too long when Numair said, “Do you honestly want me to go? Do you truly want to be here, in all this, alone?”
“No.”
“Then don’t be. Let’s finish this and go home.”
Finish this. Yes, she needed to finish this. She needed to finally make the nightmares end. “All right.”
They stood, and Numair eyed the people around them. “Are they…coming with us?”
“Yes.” She sang and they shifted, forming a living, protective circle around her and Numair. “They’re going to help me keep a promise.”
Chapter Eighty-Three
Min Quellea
Clare’s swarm grew as they walked, the Song’s tendrils reaching out to ensnare any newcomer who dared walk out and touch the borders of her living barricade. Both she and Numair’s destinations lay on the other side of the county. As they walked through it, she forced the horrors they passed to slide off her like water off well-oiled leather. Numair, after a few cautious glances, kept his gaze straight ahead, his lips compressed into a bloodless line, and didn’t speak.
When the ground to the left of the dirt path they walked fell suddenly away, revealing a deep, yawning chasm half a mile wide and twice as deep, he broke his silence. “What is that?”
Clare spared a glance at the monstrous wound in the earth’s flesh. The entirety of it was covered in thick white dust, as were the people who scurried about in its depths. They descended into tunnels punched into the pit’s sides and climbed back up on cobbled rope ladders, laden down with bags of hard white stone, going about their duties with a mindless, broken focus.
“Those are the quellstone mines.”
Numair stopped walking, forcing Clare to stop with him. “I thought quellstone was a myth.”
“It is. Everywhere but here. I understand it’s why Alaric never took this place.” Simian had told her the story once. How Alaric had saved Renault County as the last conquest on his map. Because Simian had never been interested in extending his own borders, and Alaric had thought it safe to let it wait.
But by the time the Jackal King had come, the borders of Renault County had been walled over with quellstone. It amplified Simian’s power—and negated anyone else’s. Alaric’s magic couldn’t pass beyond the border. If his soldiers went in, they became lost to the madness that infected everyone here. Simian’s madness.
In a fit of rage, Alaric had Reaped the ground surrounding the county, turning it into a wasteland. Turning Renault County into an island that no one came to and no one left. Because no one crossed Reaped ground and survived.
“I thought the stone had to be claimed by a mage before it quelled another’s magic.”
Clare started walking again, Numair and the swarm falling in with her. “It does. All of that”—she pointed at the mines—“every chunk they carve out and bring up was claimed years ago.”
“By who?”
“The self-appointed king of Renault County.”
“You’re telling me there is a man behind the madness in this place?”
