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Risk opening my heart to Dimitri.
I focused on my sister’s face. Asked the magic to show it to everyone. To beg to know where she was.
Risk—
I froze. My magic hummed in greeting, a tune that had been part of my life for so long it barely registered as it increased.
A person in pants and shirt stood outlined against the sun, like an absence rather than an individual. Like with Morovara, the magic slipped over them.
I pressed back until the thorns caught in my clothes, shock overriding the song as they stepped out of the blinding sun. Her hair was shorn, scar displayed without care, and gait confident, but there was no mistaking my sister.
“What are you doing here?” Lumi demanded as the shadows enveloped us both. Clearly, she was not as surprised to see me as I was her. “Everywhere I go, I’m told you’ve asked for me. Then they tell me guards follow, asking even more questions. Do you know what it has cost the rebels to keep them silent?”
“I’m here to help.” Same words I offered the prince. From my sister’s eyes, I knew she did not believe them any more than he had. Anger mixed with the dreadinside me. “What did you want me to do when you disappeared?”
“Did you consider anyone could have followed your trail—even those who placed you in the palace to start with?”
I flushed, knowing I had been inconspicuous. I almost called out to everyone around us in the most conspicuous way of all. If von Lemerch did not know we were mages, I could have given away our only advantage.My usual idiocy, my sister used to call it.
“Lumi, I—”
“First you help the royals, stand up for them even in Lowtown, and now you come here for me? What if Popova decides I’m too much of a liability?”
“We don’t have to fight, Lumi. Alexei and Dimitri are—were—good. Do you even know who von Lemerch is?”
She raised an eyebrow and I wanted to shake her.
“I met our great-grandmother, the one you kept from me,” I snapped, “and I think von Lemerch is Ealhswip, back from the dead.”
“The dead divine ruler who sold Tal out to the Vsadnikfor love?” Lumi laughed. “You always loved stories, V. She isn’t normal, you’ve got that right, and she works with the temple, but I’ll bring her down. She’s just another noble with powers she hid from the world, one who wants to take Tal for herself and made an alliance with disgruntled priestesses. With her powers, how could they reject her?”
I snapped open the satchel and threw the letter at her. “And this? It’s not a story.”
Lumi caught it against her chest. Her face transformed as she read—from dismissive toconfused to angry.
“Where did you get this?”
“Von Lemerch ordered me to steal it from the king’s own chambers. It’sreal. There is no such thing as the plague. Our mother was murdered. All the people burned that year were murdered. Von Lemerch did it.”
I tasted my sister’s anger and confusion. Until now, she had hid her emotions.
Lumi shook her head. “The plague has come every few decades.”
I thought back and realized something. “Always before the Day of the Dead. She needs the recently dead. She’s using them for something.”Like powering her undead body.
Lumi paced in the narrow tunnel, only three small steps each way. “New Spirits are easier to control. The old ones you must negotiate with, and most have been placated by the Temple.” She paused, plans and possibilities running behind eyes matching the dark foliage around us. “Have you seen her at the palace? Can she pass the sigils?”
I thought back. She ordered me to steal the letter outside the gate, and I had assumed she was leaving the palace. During my welcome banquet, I had searched for her to no avail. And during three-day worship. Despite the effort she put into passing me off as the princess, she had stayed away even before Flora arrived, ordering Lana to report back instead. Was it strange for a Council member to not attend these events? But one time she had undeniably been there.
“Once. Under the Women’s Tower. There’s a crypt with the Goddess’s face.”
Lumi relaxed. “Then she cannot be undead. Those are the strongest sigils in Tal. No Spirits, in a body or not, would be able topass. She’s a necromancer, who has found a way to heal herself and control death itself.”
“How do you know?” If von Lemerch was that old, she might well have ways we could not imagine. Until last three-day, I had been sure Spirits were interchangeable, only the energy we left behind, and no one could defy death.
“Popova’s been studying them to stop the dead from entering homes in Lowtown.”
The rumors I’d heard reshaped. “She’s a sigil crafter?”
