Pemba’s face blanches, but I nod my head. “Anything for Pemba’s life. Take it,” I say. “It's in his pack. Just take it!”
The goblin’s eyes narrow at me distrustfully. “You’re happy to give up your magic just like that? I’m not an idiot. I won’t be tricked, girl.”
I shake my head quickly, my eyes burning with tears that I don't have to fake. All I have to think about is the knife pressing against Pemba’s throat and the lack of supplies I have to heal him, if the goblin decides to kill him, to trigger a full-blown meltdown.
“Nothing is more important to me than my brother, and I don't like the scepter anyway. Just take it, and leave him be! You won't hear another peep out of either of us.”
Pemba grits his teeth, sensing the truth in my words, and he snaps at me. “Rooke!”
But I shake my head, pleading with Url and hoping he can hear my sincerity. “Nothing is more important to me than my brother's life.”
He uses his free hand to open up Pemba’s satchel. He pulls out my mother's scepter as his eyes once again light up at the sight of the large emerald, the sunlight hitting it and casting a green glow over everything around it.
The goblin sees a large gemstone that can be traded away.
All I see is something that does not belong to me, something that always feels foreign in my hands. Something that should not have been mine, not yet, not for hundreds more years until my mother became the Crone and I was ready to become the Mother. But the world doesn't work that way.
The scepter does not like the goblin.
The scepter does not want to be touched by anything that isn't a Ravenswyrd witch.
The scepter wantsme.
I swallow roughly as this knowledge filters into my brain. The scepter is speaking to me, reaching out to me, wanting me, and as though a switch has been flipped in my mind, I know that the shift has happened. It’s mine now, and I cannot let the goblin have it.
My fingers flick, and the scepter wrenches out of the goblin’s hand, more powerful and forceful than he can contain. As easy as breathing, it's back in my hand, glowing as I raise it in his direction.
A delighted grin spreads across Pemba’s face, pride lighting up his eyes as he takes me in even as the knife bites into the vulnerable flesh of his throat, and I'm not sure what I've done to deserve him looking at me like that, but I already know that I’ll doanythingto keep him alive.
My voice is calm and sure as I speak to the goblin. “If you like your head where it is, you're going to let my brother go.”
The goblin pulls Pemba farther in front of himself like a shield of pure witch, but he obviously knows nothing of our kind, of the power we wield. The scepter isn't like an arrow, moving from one point straight across to another.
I raise it above my head and let it funnel my power straight into the goblin, confident that I gave him a warning, and it was more than enough to keep my conscience clean.
The Rooke of a few days ago, the one who was terrified to walk across the barroom at the inn, is gone. I might not know who this new Rooke is, but she'sdifferent,and the scepter belongs to her. The only power we have left in this world is our magic and, until we’re home safe, I’ll embrace it. Whatever new life we build, some things will be different.
Wehave to be different.
Pemba jerks forward, and Url’s hand drops away from his throat as his body tumbles to the ground. Thankfully, this death is a lot less blood-soaked than the last. It just looks as though the goblin decided to stop breathing, though his once soft-green skin turns an ashy-gray faster than I would have thought possible.
“I knew he was too good to be true,” Pemba says as he stumbles to me and wraps his arms around my shoulders.
I shrug and look down at Url’s body, feeling oddly hollow as I stare at it. “Killing shouldn't be this easy, Pemba.”
My brother shrugs. “This one should be. You keep warning them, and they keep doubting you. The world we grew up in, the one we were safe in? It never really existed, Rooke. It was a fantasy that Mama and Papa wove around us. In the real world, we need to be stronger than they were.”
CHAPTER SIX
Halfway up the long set of stone stairs carved into the mountainside, my legs begin to scream in pain. Apparently, two days sitting in the back of the cart did not help much with resting my aching limbs, and already I want to lie down and give up.
Pemba scoffs at me, still in a good mood after his near-death experience at the hands of the goblin, and I restrain myself from the urge to shove him down the side of the mountain. Clearly, I’m an amazing sister. Instead, I focus on the footprints on the steps in front of me, hundreds and thousands of people having already made this pilgrimage and walked up these stairs to find out their own fates. Their steps slowly chipped away at the stone until their mark was left here forever.
It's humbling.
Plain old Rooke, walking in the footsteps of those far more prestigious than I will ever be.
I'm silly enough to say this out loud, and Pemba shrugs at me with a chuckle. “You're selling yourself short again, little one. I didn't have enough magic in me to do a thing when that dirty goblin grabbed me without him slitting my throat. There's also nothingplainabout you.”
