20
The world comes back to me slowly. The first thing I’m aware of is a murmur of distant voices. One of them familiar. The second thing is a strange light, glowing through my closed eyelids.
I force my eyes open. It hurts. Something’s crusted them shut so that opening them tugs at my lashes, and more—my head aches, aches like the worst sinus headache I’ve ever had and then some. My body hurts, too, like I’ve been beaten up, and a sick feeling of fear pervades everything and for a moment I can’t remember why.
Then all at once I do.
I try to bring my hand up to clear the gunk out of my eyes, but pain stops me. My wrists are duct-taped together, connected to a chain that clanks against something else metal when I move. I force my eyes open anyway and the cellar beneath the antique shop swims into view. The bare bulb on the ceiling, still off. The cold, useless radiator I’m chained to. And the girl. The light is coming from her, or rather, something she’s holding.
A spoon?
That doesn’t make sense. But that’s what it is. She’s holding a silver spoon, round end up like a torch, and it’s throwing off a faint pale light—enough so that I can tell she’s crouching as close to me as her chain will allow, concern scrunching her little face.
Great. She can’t reach me, and I can’t speak.
“Neru galtiya?” she asks, tripping slightly over the words, a tentative whisper.
I shake my head, racking my brain for what language that could be. It doesn’t sound like Byrnisian or any of the Fiordenkill languages I know of. Something about her presence is unnerving. It might be that I’m not used to being around kids, that they remind me too much of myself and Nate, of things I want to forget.
“Sura,” the girl says, pointing to herself.
I try to respond with my name, but the gag makes it impossible.
We regard each other for a long moment. I make a questioning sound through the gag, but she just shakes her head and points up at the ceiling, warningly. Her hands are free, though it hasn’t seemed to help her much.
The voices, though. One, a woman’s, is so familiar. My mind is sluggish and fickle, curling up like a snail in its shell whenever I try to think about anything too hard. But that female voice. Aristocratic now, haughty, but I remember it being gentle, careful, even when it was telling me hard things.
The Heiress. I came here to help her, to save her, and now I’m captive and she’s in as much danger as ever. The old guilt stampedes through me all at once. No matter what I do, I can’t save anyone.
I try to yell. The gag vibrates between my teeth. And maybe it filters through, because it seems like the conversation upstairs falters for a second. But then something happens to the air in the room. All at once, it seems to vanish, as well as the air in my lungs.
I can’t breathe, and panic spills through me. I yank at my bindings, but only succeed in making the radiator clank. Then the air rushes in. I fall back, stunned and terrified, and I swear I hear a male voice above murmur something about old pipes.
Sura reaches out with the glowing spoon, apparently to catch my attention. She holds my gaze and then lifts her other hand in the air, making a swirling motion like she’s gathering cotton candy from a machine. Soft light seems to stream from her skin, and a slight wind ghosts over my face, a threatening echo of the breath-stealing Byrn magic from a moment ago.
A shiver races through me. What is this?
She tips her hand, seeming to pour the light over the spoon, and it glows brighter for a moment. Suddenly, I remember the note I found in the Solarian wing, the note and the bracelet given to my great-great-grandmother.
Keep this safe; a part of me is bound to it.
Cold sweeps down my spine, and I want to yell at her to stop, but the cloth in my mouth muffles my voice. Sura grips the spoon tight, her knuckles white in the dark. When the glow is gone, she tips back against the wall, her eyes fluttering shut like whatever magic she just performed has drained her. I get the eerie feeling that the light was a part of her, that she’s just given up something important. This magic feels cruel.
Then she opens her eyes and holds my gaze as she tosses the spoon gently in my direction.
Confused, I scoot toward it, because it’s clear that’s what she means me to do. In a weird way, I’m grateful for the puzzle; it keeps the sick terror at bay, letting me forget the fact that I’m tied up in a basement and no one in the world, except for this girl, knows where I am. But now a different, quieter, stranger fear is building, deep in my bones.
I reach out awkwardly with my bound hands and pick up the spoon. It’s hot, almost too hot to touch. It thrums under my fingers in the same way the bangle did—the bangle I’m still wearing—but this time it’s too strong for me to be imagining it. The faintest breeze stirs the fine hairs on my arms. There’s nowhere for it to be coming from, except—
Magic. This girl harnessed our captor’s Byrnisian wind-magic and bound it to this spoon.
Which means …
My body gets the message before my brain does. My head snaps up, and I scramble backward until my bruised shoulders hit the wall, sending pain radiating down my back. My breath comes fast, my heart hammering all over again. Sura watches me steadily, her face unreadable.
They’re shapeshifters. They can look human.
The girl—the Solarian—continues to watch me, and as the moments pass, her face falls and grows sad. Instinctive sympathy twists my insides. But no, she’s not human, maybe not even a child. My mind is spinning as I try to see past her eyes, see what lies beneath.
She doesn’t look like a monster.
Think.
The monster that killed Nate, what did it look like? I only caught glimpses from my hiding place. I try to wind my memory back to what happened before the moment when Mom shoved me in the cupboard and shut the door.
A memory of old terror creeps in. Another time when I had my back pressed against the wall. The front door to our old house, shuddering and bulging as something pounded on the other side. A bitter taste floods my mouth.
The Silver Prince said that Marcus invited the Solarian into our home. Why then would it have had to break in? Whether it looked human or had claws and fangs, I must have seen it. Heard it. Why are my memories so jumbled, so full of shadows?
Sura looks away from me, her jaw tight, and something in the gesture reminds me forcefully of Taya. My chest clamps, and words bubble up in my throat, some apology or explanation. The girl across from me is a Solarian. Yet she’s a captive, too, and a child. There’s something alien about her, but I can’t keep looking at her and remain afraid. She is so small. The feeling presses down on me that I’m missing something crucial, the key that will fit into all these mysteries and pull them together. A tear, then another, snakes down my cheek. I’m on the edge of something, understanding hovering just out of my grasp, but chances are I won’t live long enough to reach it.
Right on cue, the cellar door opens and heavy footsteps descend. My stomach drops. There are no more voices from upstairs; the Heiress must be gone.
I missed my chance, I think distantly as the Byrnisian wind-wielder comes into view, Whit at his heels. The blond man startles when he sees me.
I slip the spoon up my remaining sleeve as the Byrnisian man nods and tells Whit, “Kill her.”
It’s not those words that ignite my fear again, but the idea that I’ll die and then no one will know the Solarian girl, Sura, is here. That she’ll stay a captive in this dark, cold space forever and it’ll be my fault. My fault, my fault, my fault.