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I left Falada on Stiria’s shale shore, bathed in the orange glow of the ship burning, burning, burning on a plane of water black and still as obsidian glass. Zan was halfway to the safety of land, but his strength was flagging. He coughed and bobbed, clawing futilely at the surface until, at last, he disappeared under it.
It was dark under the water, the kind of d
arkness that can never be satiated, no matter how much it takes and takes. But I would not let it have this. I would not let the darkness take him. His body floated toward the empty depths, face obscured by his cloud of drifting hair and his swirling black coat.
Zan.
I strained toward him as my lungs began to burn and my limbs went numb. I wrapped my leaden arms around his chest and kicked toward the glimmering orange lights of the burning ship above.
I pulled him to the surface, coughing and spluttering frigid water, my hair streaming into my eyes, making it impossible to see, but I swam and swam, feeling my energy drained from the exertion, the water, and the touch of Zan’s skin against mine.
When we reached the shore, I dragged his body up onto the black and rocky beach and pushed him to his back so I could pound his chest. “You already lived through this,” I said angrily through numb lips. “So wake up already. Si vivis, tu pugnas. Fight, you fool.”
Then he coughed water and phlegm, struggling to his side to spit it out. I hurried to Falada and climbed onto her back, wishing I could stay with him at this point and not go back.
But I couldn’t.
I urged Falada forward as Zan wiped the water out of his bleary eyes. One step, then two. And then, with a triumphant scream, she reared back on her hind legs, kicking at the sky.
Zan watched as we rode away, our image burned into his mind, and I began to feel like maybe . . . just maybe . . . this might actually work.
I’d delivered the message to him so that he could deliver it to me.
While you live, you fight.
* * *
Conrad Costin Altenar, eight years old and the ascendant king of Renalt, was humming to himself in time to the creaks and jolts of his carriage. It was an old Renaltan folk song, meant to be sung in a melancholic minor key: Don’t go, my child, to the Ebonwilde, / For there a witch resides . . .
I could see the moment ahead of us, and I steered Falada toward it, willing time to stillness so that we could reach it. The Ilithiya’s Bell was warm around my neck, a force of radiant power of a scope I had yet to fully fathom.
Conrad could sense that something had changed. He climbed out of his carriage.
“Hello? Anyone there?” He gulped. “Lord Greythorne? Fredrick?” He pulled his knife from his belt, squinting. “Hello?” he asked again to the silence.
Falada broke through into the moment with triumph, her hooves scraping the air as she reared up in front of my brother, who froze, eyes bugging.
“Bleeding stars!” he yelped, swiveling on the toes of his pointed shoes and diving into the shelter of the hawthorns lining the road.
“Conrad!” I called. “Wait!”
He darted through the branches, nimble as a rabbit, but we followed closely behind. The thick-woven thatch was nearly impenetrable even for his slight shape; it should have been impossible for anything larger, but this was the Gray, and I had the Ilithiya’s Bell around my neck, and it allowed us to slip through the brambles like smoke through a sieve.
I tried to change the landscape to something he’d recognize, and the next thing I knew, we were herding him toward the center of the maze. He dashed forward, screeching an incomprehensible combination of invocations, cries, and curses. “Conrad!” I yelled again.
We reached the center together. Falada neighed and reared, and I reached for my brother as I dismounted, pulling him tightly into the flying folds of my colorless cloak. He twisted and tried to pull from my grasp, but I clasped him under my chin. “It’s all right. It’s all right. It’s me, little brother. It’s just me.”
His shaking and crying subsided. “Aurelia?” He looked at my bloodstained tunic. “Are you hurt?”
“In your time, I’m fine. This won’t happen until much later.”
“You’re . . . not from my time?”
I shook my head and knelt in front of him. “I know this is strange, and I know you’re scared. But I need your help, dear one. There’s no one to whom I can entrust this task but you.”
He nodded and slid his knife back into its sheath.
On our way back to the carriage, I told him as much as I could: the coronation, Arceneaux, the Gray. He listened solemnly, absorbing every detail without flinching. When we arrived back at the carriage, I asked, “The puzzle box I gave you, do you still have it?”
