Page 3

Nothing.

My shoulder itched—a familiar warning of danger I always ignored.

The books beside the door shuffled, one of them pushing a little further out than the others. The library was suggesting. If the Elite Tracker Flock were called in because the King’s Guards thought that Frickel’s death was no accident, they would pick up her scent, so she needed an excuse. I grabbed a small, empty bag from the back of my desk—the one I used to collect damaged books from the archive—and handed her the copy of Wild Witch Traditions. I had restored it with her in mind anyway. With a nod of understanding, she took it.

My mouth opened with the urge to ask her where Clea was, but Ember had already read my mind, and her eyes were filled with regret. Something had happened to her.

Everything was in motion now. There was nothing I could do other than try to stick to our plan and get out of the Barren Lands. So, instead, I jabbed a finger at the window again, trying to get Ember to leave. But she wasn’t looking at me; her gaze had hardened on Frickel’s body.

Tapping her on the shoulder, I signed, “Do not grieve for the monsters.” It was what Aster always said when we were on a mission. I hadn’t seen Aster in over three years. He just sent the notes.

Instead of hurrying to the archives, I crushed Ember to me. “Em?” I mouthed, pulling away and placing my palms on her damp, pale cheeks and tilting her chin to look at me, making sure that my eyes told her what I needed to say. “Run, Em, leave,” I signed and then pointed to the window where a knotted rope should rest on the wall outside—the rope we would use to escape. But Ember shook her head, and I realised that her fear of heights meant she might have come in through the door.

I cursed the ten gods of the Otherworld and gritted my teeth, my mind racing through the escape routes available to us, but there was only one. Ember was going to have to face her fear of heights just this once. If she didn’t move, then I would have to use my words. It was a decision I didn’t take lightly, but I would do whatever it took to make her get out of there. “You…” I mouthed as she tugged at her ear and glared at me… the sign for the mantra: The walls have ears. We do not speak.

King Malar of the Barren and his runes had stolen our ability to use our voices safely, so we adapted—signing, writing, surviving without speech. The best spies learned that silence could be a weapon.

I signed,“Seamstress,” to Ember and pointed at her bag with the book inside. One she would get in trouble for if she were found with it—flogged for being an Annatalian seeking to read—but it would be better than having no reason at all for being in the library.

I hauled Ember into another hug, for my sake just as much as hers, and she froze as her eyes locked on the dead body over my shoulder, and I pulled her back.

“He was a monster.” One of many in the crumbling city, and I’d done what I had to do to stop him. No matter the consequences, I would do the same again. Aster had gotten away with it many times… maybe luck would be with me this time too.

Ember gripped my hand as I led her to the door. I opened it a crack to check that the guards were still asleep at their posts in the main hall. Drugged beer would keep them quiet for a few more hours—enough time for Ember to get to the seamstress and lock in her alibi.

She tugged at my fingers. “I came to warn you. Clea’s been arrested. Someone suspects us or knows our plans. We have to go. Now!”

If that were true, then I needed the book more than ever. “I’ll be right behind you.”

I was about to step out into the corridor when a phoenix scroll rolled over the other scrolls and then rolled back again. The books were telling me that someone was moving toward us. There was no choice now. I pulled Ember to the window and unlatched it. The ice gust whipped stray strands of hair around my face as I pushed her up to the windowsill.

She was shaking her head, and her eyes were wild.

“Go.” I glared at her. I hated treating her that way after what she had gone through, but kindness wouldn’t get her out that window. She needed anger if she was going to flee the Barren Lands like I had bargained for.

“Climb.”

She took a long breath, and I worried she was about to refuse.

Her hand had just gripped the window ledge when the panelled door’s handle twisted and the door shuddered. I hadn’t locked it. The library was giving Ember time to run, but someone was about to break it down.

3

I leaned out of the window and reached for the rope hanging beside it, and yanked it toward me. “Now!” I signed to Ember, pulling her onto the ledge. Her hands trembled as she reached for the rope, and I caged my hand over hers, catching her eye, trying to instill in her the courage to go.

“Not leaving you,” she replied.

I squeezed her hand and then nodded. “Yes. You. Can. You must!”

It wasn’t an option. All three of us had to do what we could if Annatalia was ever to rise again. And that would only happen if we first got out of Craven City.

Her lips pursed in defiance, but instead of fighting me, she stepped around the ledge. With a last glance at me, she swung herself onto the rope and hauled herself upward. Her movements were careful but steady. I froze, just for a second, realising that if she fell, I wouldn’t know. But as she swung her leg over the top parapet, I relaxed… until the door flew open with a bang.

Jumping away from the window, I swept around as a hooded and veiled figure stood in the doorway, legs widened and hand outstretched. He was ready for a fight. His towering height, broad shoulders, and large biceps told me he’d be hard to take down. Maybe he was a warrior.

Frickel’s dead body was on the floor between us, and the hooded man blocked my exit. I tugged my hair stick out. There wouldn’t be enough poison in the pin to kill him, but it would slow him down. And I readied myself for the attempt.

The man tilted his head as if he were studying Frickel, but I couldn’t tell because I couldn’t see his eyes. I had never come face to face with a Nomad until now. But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t aware that I was standing before another enemy. The sandstone-coloured traditional Nomad clothing was highly distinctive, and Nomad soldiers dressed in the same uniform ransacked Annatalian lands before my homeland fell. They lived west of the Barren Lands. A kingdom divided into oases, rocks, shrubs, and underground rivers filled with flesh-eating snakes. Now, they profited from my homeland’s fertile lands.