Uncrossed spirits couldn’t linger among the living forever.
“I’m losing her,” she whispered.
Speaking her deepest fear aloud undid something inside Roa. She remembered what it was like after the accident. The unbearable ache of loneliness. The chilling absence where her sister had always been warm and bright andalive.
She couldn’t bear that again.
Wouldn’tbear it.
Roa didn’t know how to live in a world where Essie didn’t exist.
After everyone else had gone to bed, Roa and Theo stayed up to snuff the lights.
It was a household routine in the scrublands, usually performed at sunset in the month leading up to the Relinquishing. Uncrossed spirits were attracted to warmth and light. So the darker you kept your house at night, the less likely an uncrossed spirit was to visit you on the longest night of the year, when they resumed their true forms and walked among the living.
Roa made an exception for Essie though.
No one knew Roa kept a candle lit for her sister on the longest night of the year.
No one knew she cherished those visits more than anything.
But if she’s fading,thought Roa,what will happen this year?
As Roa and Theo walked the house, squeezing out candle flames and turning down lamps, Roa whispered, “I think I’ve made a mistake.”
Theo went still in the darkness beside her. “A mistake?”
His gaze traced the silhouette of her as she walked the circular path around the garden, toward the window emitting an orange glow.
“I thought he was a fool.”
The air was cool and dry out here. Roa trailed her hand along the wall—still warm from the day’s heat.
“And now?” Theo prompted.
She remembered Lirabel crying on the floor, cast aside by Dax. “Now I think he’s worse than that.”
Theo’s footsteps trailed her as she stepped up to the door of the next room. It was the study, where she’d found Asha’s letter. A letter still lying beneath Dax’s bed.
“What are you saying?”
“What if you’re right?” Her fingers curled into her palms. She looked back over her shoulder. “What if he’s no different from his father? What if he’s the kind of man who takes what he wants and doesn’t care who he hurts?” She looked to the twin stars in the northern sky. Essie’s favorites.
She tried the latch on the door, which opened easily. Roa entered the room, scanning it to ensure it was empty, before turning down the lamps. When she stepped back outside, she found Theo waiting where she’d left him.
“So you agree with me.” He took her hand in his, and she could feel the excited thrum of his pulse as they walked deeper into the garden, away from the walls of the house. Roa felt him look around, but the garden was empty and dark. “Dax must give up the throne.”
Roa pulled her hand free, staring up at him. She hadn’t said that. “No. I didn’t mean...”
“I have fifty men from the House of Sky. They’re ready for my command.”
Roa’s mouth dropped open. “You won’t be able to get fifty men from Sky into Firgaard.”
Theo looped his arms around her waist, drawing her against him. “I was hoping you could help with that.”
A shiver coursed through Roa. With the sun gone, the temperature was dropping, but she wasn’t shivering from the cold.
“I have contacts inside the city—enemies of Dax’s—who are on our side.” He reached for her hand again, running his thumb over her knuckles. “They want to help us.”
