Again, Roa remembered Asha’s letter, still lying under that bed in Amina’s house. If the Skyweaver’s knife arrived, then Torwin failed to intercept it.
Worry gnawed at Roa. Perhaps Torwin and Asha were in trouble.
Or perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t the Skyweaver’s knife he was tracking at all.
She would investigate tomorrow.
“Did Selina happen to say where it’s kept?” she asked Theo.
He followed her to the door. “I’ll ask. If she knows, I’ll send a message to the palace first thing tomorrow. Roa?”
She turned to face him, already thinking of the task that lay ahead of her. He planted his hands on the lintel, leaning over her.
“Maybe I should walk you back. These streets are unfriendly.”
“Thank you,” Roa said, pulling her sandskarf up over her head, careful not to damage the rose Theo tucked behind her ear. “But I led a revolt without you there to protect me. I think I’ll manage.”
Essie’s Story
Once there was a girl who loved the sky almost as much as she loved her sister.
She climbed rooftops and cliff faces and acacia trees, just to be nearer to it. She knew the name of every type of cloud and the story behind every star. She envied the birds their wings, wanting to know what it felt like to soar through that vast expanse of blue.
One night, she lay on the highest roof of the House of Song, spread out beneath the diamond-studded sky with her friends. They’d spent the morning climbing the highland cliffs and throwing themselves into the blue-green waters of the quarry. The girl threw herself harder and farther and higher than the rest. But no matter how hard or high or far she flung herself, she always fell.
Her sister watched with worried eyes. Her sister hated being up high. She much preferred her feet on the ground.
Now the girl lifted her eyes to the stars and said, “Do you think anyone we know is up there?”
“Don’t be morbid,” said her sister, fingers deftly plaiting her hair.
Unlike her sister, whose hair was cropped short to her head, Essie kept her hair long enough to braid. It was the easiest way to tell the two apart.
The hum of their bond glowed warmly between them, brighter than any star. And at the edge of her vision, the girl saw their friend—the shy son of the king who spent his summers in their house—wander to the edge of the roof.
“It’s not morbid,” she whispered, thinking of the Skyweaver spinning the souls of the dead into stars. Thinking of her own soul, bound so tightly to her sister’s. “It’s beautiful.” She turned her gaze on the two brightest stars in the south sky. The twin stars. “That’s going to be us one day—you and me.”
Suddenly, a sharpsnapbroke the silence. She shot up at the sound, her braid coming undone, her curls spiraling free. As one, they looked to the son of the king: arms out, body frozen, struggling to regain his balance as more and more cracks spread through the clay shingles at his feet.
He was at the edge of the roof, where no reeds or beams lay beneath the shingles. Where there was nothing to support him.
His eyes met hers and in that moment, she felt his fear. It spread through her like the cracks at his feet.
She didn’t think. Just flew to the edge of the roof, grabbing his shirt and flinging him hard away from her, back to where the others sat.
The moment she did, the shingles gave out.
She fell from the highest roof of the house.
The last thing she thought was,I wish I were a bird. A bird would take flight.
The last thing she felt wasn’t pain, it was the hum. She heard her sister scream her name. Felt the bond flare up inside her.
Bright and alive as a star.
Fourteen
Roa’s thoughts spun as she walked through the night-drenched city. She still wasn’t used to Firgaard’s labyrinthine streets. This, combined with her whirling thoughts, meant she didn’t notice when Sirin started taking her the wrong way.
