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“Jeddak, calm down,” Kah said.
“Whose side are you on?” I shot back.
“I’m on the side of getting a snack. But I can’t do that until we figure this out.”
Raven glanced back and forth between us, her eyebrows raised at my one-sided conversation.
“All right,” I said to Raven, forcing myself to take a deep breath. “Why did the Wolf say there’s no magic in you?”
She stared at me for a time before answering. “In the mine … the malarite, it …”
“What about it?”
She swallowed as if she was trying to steady her voice. “I think when the malarite got into my blood, it severed my connection to the magic …” She closed her eyes before saying the next word. “Permanently.”
“Permanently?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” I could hear the tremor in her voice.
Skies, how were we going to get into the marketplace now?
21
Raven
Jeddak’s face fell like the winds had whispered a bad omen in his ear. His eyes became distant. He didn’t even bother to put his hood up when drops of rain started spitting from the clouds that had gathered overhead. “Why didn’t you tell me about your magic?” he asked.
“When should I have told you? When we were fleeing for our lives? Or when you ordered me to stay silent for the entire day?” I said, using sarcasm to cover up the hurt in my voice. I could feel my eyes welling with tears, and I refused to cry in front of him.
“I don’t know! It just would have been nice to know something like that.” He ran his fingers through his wet hair in frustration.
“It’s not my fault! How was I to know they wouldn’t let me enter the marketplace?” I said, pointing back toward the Wolves. I didn’t ask to be enslaved in Malengard or stripped of my magic. Nor to be barred from the marketplace. Moreover, I didn’t see why Jeddak was so upset by it. He wasn’t the one who’d had his tribe, his life, and his powers torn away. He could walk right into the market without me if he wanted to.
Which made me wonder why he hadn’t.
He shook his head and turned his attention to Kah, mumbling something to him that I couldn’t hear. I wasn’t sure how the bond between Kovaks and their bears worked, but it was obvious they understood each other.
I strained to listen. The knot in the pit of my stomach told me Jeddak was hiding something. Why was he even in Malengard? And what was he doing in the mines? No sensible tribesperson would disguise himself to getinsidethe enemy’s city—those of us trapped inside were desperate to get out. What was Jeddak not telling me?
I was determined to find out. But not here. We needed to get into the marketplace first. If we stayed out here, I had a feeling Bloodbain would find us before the night was out. And if he caught me, he’d have to kill me because there was no way I was going back to that place.
I jolted when a hand gripped my arm. “Someone’s coming,” Jeddak whispered in my ear, pulling me so close I could feel his warm breath on my skin.
“Rathalans?” I breathed, peering into the murky darkness as my heart began to pound. Faint voices in the distance carried through the skeleton trees.
“Maybe. I don’t know. There are bands of tribeless and hunters in these woods, too. Let’s not stay here to find out.”
The drizzling rain began falling harder as he led us along the path that wrapped around the exterior of the marketplace. I pulled my hood up, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
“There has to be another way in,” he muttered under his breath, studying the high stone wall that looked like a fortress. We moved slowly, using the faint light that spilled over the wall to navigate, now that the moon was lost behind the clouds.
After what seemed like an eternity, I saw something ahead of us in the dark. “What’s that?”
When we got closer, Jeddak said, “Looks like it’s our way in.”
A fallen pine tree had crashed into the top of the wall. It wasn’t quite the magical ladder I’d been hoping for, but close enough.
“It must have fallen during the storm two nights ago, and the Wolves haven’t noticed it yet,” Jeddak said.
