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The Archive—the oldest building on the street, black and ancient—looked like the Women’s Tower, like Morovara’s ziggurat and the subterranean abandoned temple where Helia had been kept. It affected magic. The final thing they all had in common was tunnels.
Visiting Morovara, I had gone only up, but everyone knew they prepared the dead below ground. Under the Women’s Tower, I had gone from the treasury to the crypt and seen many branching paths.
I spun to Dimitri, his face inches from mine. “This is how they do it! How the food—tunnels—”
Invisible hands crushed my windpipe. Pressed the air from my lungs.
The scream I could not push out roared inside me as I fell to my hands and knees. Black closed in.
Air.
I opened and closed my mouth in vain, like a fish continuing what always worked before.
Dimitri pressed his hands to my cheeks, mouth moving. I could not hear his words through my panic.
She had said I would choke if I told secrets. And I had. Or believed I had.
I won’t say anything more. Please. I didn’t mean it. Please.
I won’t I won’t I won’t I won’t—
Desperate tears streamed down my cheeks as I collapsed on my side. I did not want to die. This could not be it—I reached for Lumi, needing my other half, findingnothing.
Someone shook my struggling body.
Someone shouted for help.
Someone held me as if I mattered as the world slipped away.
Chapter ten
Dimitri
The pristine curved white walls framed the blue sky outside, making the red coats stand out like the life blood they represented.
“She’s not hurt,” Mariska said again. “Not physically.”
I paced the narrow space outside my cousin’s tiny room. I had not slept for more than a day. Each time I closed my eyes, the panic returned.
“She is hurt every time I turn around.” I knew Tempest—Vanya—was strong. But still… “How can I protect her?”
“It’s up to her to protect herself.” Mariska stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “I lied about her name on the records, but if someone recognizes her. Protect her by not drawing your father’s attention.”
I knew she was right, but when Vanya fell unconscious in my arms, her lips turning blue and eyes empty, I had rushed her to the hospital, ignoring the consequences. The realization that she might die, destroying our chance to really know each other, to see where this might lead no matter how irrational, had burrowed into my mind and now the panic refused to leave. I had ignored how my heartlightened every night I arrived at the Drunken Dead and knew she was safe.
With her seemingly dead in my arms this night, it could no longer be ignored. Goddess help me, I could not let her go.
“Did you know who she was?” I asked my cousin, the last person I trusted.
Her hesitation was enough for me to resume my angry pacing.
“You did. And so did Eki. Only I was too blind to see it.”
“Eki?” Mariska’s surprise sounded genuine enough.
Anger and grief and old tenderness awoke as I thought of my previous friend and lover. Once, I trusted her as well. “She pushed ‘the princess’ from the balcony during worship. And she still insists we must marry. What happened while I was away?”
“She did what?” Mariska rubbed her face in exasperation.
