“It ain’t like that,” Cam began, but Vivia shook her head.
“Don’t bother fighting him, Cam. His mind is made up, and we can’t change it.”
Yoris sneered. First at Vivia, then at Cam. His scars scrunched into wicked lines. “Seems to me an innocent person would want to defend her name.”
“Seems to me you’ve spent too long in this dead world to know much about people.” Vivia matched his sneer. “Or much about what happens in the capital. Where’s my crew?”
His face briefly smoothed with surprise. Then somehow he scowled even more deeply, even more disdainfully. “You’ll see them soon enough, Highness. The ones that’re still alive.”
Oh, she would make him pay. If he’d truly hurt anyone, he would lose more than just his fingers. “How soon?” she ground out.
“When we reach the Gift.”
“The Gift?”
“Noden’s Gift,” Cam said before Yoris could open his mouth. “The place I told you about with the ship—”
Yoris grabbed him by the collar. Shockingly fast, shockingly deft. “You told people about the Gift? You told the traitor about the Gift?”
Vivia charged the old man. She had no water at her disposal, but she had muscles and she had rage. Yet no sooner had she gotten her bound arms around his neck and prepared herself for a choke hold, than four blades swished free. And four crossbows took aim.
Vivia froze, her arm still pressed into Yoris’s windpipe—and his hands fastened on Cam’s collar. Cam—whose skin had paled, leaving the dappled spots as white as the moon above—had closed his eyes.
“Release me,” Yoris growled.
“Not until you release him.”
“You can’t win this fight, Princess.”
“I can if my only aim is to take you down.”
A pause. The four hooded hunters kept their weapons drawn and ready. Yoris meanwhile seemed to chew over Vivia’s words. She could practically hear him thinking. Then he laughed. A rowdy sound that clashed through the forest and bounced off dead trees.
“Lower your weapons,” he ordered, loosing Cam. The boy rocked back two steps. His own four-fingered hand moved to his throat, to his collar.
And Vivia finally eased her arm from Yoris’s neck—though not before murmuring, “If you hurt him, I will break you, Yoris, and then you will understand why my father is so afraid of me.”
Yoris said nothing as he pulled away from Vivia, and he made no objection when she moved to Cam or examined the boy all over. “Are you all right?”
Cam nodded, a spark in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “My loyalty ain’t fickle,” he whispered.
And Vivia forced a tiny smile. “I know, Cam.” She squeezed his shoulder. “I know.”
Then she turned back to Yoris and motioned for him to once more lead the way.
They walked on. Until blisters had formed on Vivia’s toes and her throat was so dry, she couldn’t swallow without pain. They walked on until the sun began to rise and the Origin Well of Nubrevna finally came into view. It looked exactly as Vivia remembered, silhouetted against a pink sky: a high hill in the land with two pointed peaks on either side. A fox, she’d always thought. Like me.
Her heart creaked open ever so slightly at that thought. At her mother’s voice murmuring, Little Fox, this water knows us. This water chose us. She’d come to the Well with her mother only once, not long before Jana’s death. Not long before everything had changed, and Merik had been sent south while Vivia had been kept in the capital with a thousand reminders of her mother.
Oh, her father might have stowed away everything that Jana had loved—art and threadbare rugs and all the books she’d held most dear. But he hadn’t been able to erase the hallways where she’d walked with Vivia. The garden where she’d read aloud tales of little foxes and their foes. The windows against which she’d placed her head and cried in shattered silence when she’d thought no one was watching.
And Serafin hadn’t been able to erase the memories. Jana’s soft voice, Jana’s soft smile, Jana’s soft hand on Vivia’s brow. Every night, she had come into Vivia’s room and whispered I love you, I love you, Little Fox, more than life itself.
Vivia suddenly found it hard to breathe. Her chest was swelling and heat was sweeping up from her toes. Soon the bludgeoning would begin. Soon her heart would be too crushed to breathe.
“No slowing,” Yoris barked at her, and Vivia battled the urge to scream at him. Her fingers flexed straight against her thighs. She focused on her lungs, begging them to billow. Begging her heart to move. Become a bear, Vivia. Become a bear. She wished Stix were there. She wished everything had gone as she’d hoped in Dalmotti and that the Doge hadn’t chased her across a sea.
She wished her mother were there. I love you, Little Fox, more than life itself.
Vivia had hurt her crew, she’d hurt Cam, she’d hurt the Empress of Marstok—and for what? So she could be marched across her father’s lands and reminded of how much he hadn’t wanted her in the end. How the only person who had wanted her was dead and gone and lost beneath Noden’s waves.
Vivia was going to explode. This weight punching her chest was going to crush her, and then Yoris would win. Dalmotti would win. Because of course she could fix nothing. When had she ever fixed anything? She’d fled Lovats a traitor. She’d fled Dalmotti a criminal. No regrets, keep moving. No regrets, keep moving.
“Come on,” Yoris barked, and Vivia realized that she had stopped walking. That her gaze had become so fixed on the Well, on the fox’s ears, that her knees had locked and she might pass out. She felt Cam’s eyes burning into her, but she dared not look at the boy. Dared not look at anyone or anything. This would pass. The attacks always passed. Her heart always eventually regained its shape, and her lungs always eventually resumed their work.
She forced her feet to move after Yoris, faster. Faster. Until she was practically on his heels and pushing him into a half jog down a switchbacking trail to the green valley below, a place filled with life that should have thrilled her. That would thrill her once this attack finally slowed.
And it did slow eventually. The buzz of cicadas, the pink light on thick trees, the humidity building in the air … Each step deeper into the valley cleared away more of Vivia’s storm clouds. Lightened the load on her chest. Released the vise around her heart. And at some point—she could not say when—the tears began. Not sobs nor weeping, but a moisture in her eyes that she didn’t feel until it was sliding down her cheeks.
Life in Nihar. Life in Nubrevna. All because of the Origin Well.
Yoris glanced back only once at Vivia, but if he noticed her tears, he said nothing. And if he cared that her pace had pushed him into a wild clip, he didn’t show it. He just motioned to his hunters and grumbled, “Don’t lower your weapons until we’ve got her contained.” Then his gaze sharpened onto Vivia. “And don’t try to use your magic, or the boy will learn what pain means. Understand?”
Vivia nodded. Because she did understand and because right now, she was no threat. The insects and the dawn birds were too loud. The pull of an approaching river was too strong. The life and health and power of the nearby Well overwhelmed her.