He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)

It took longer than it should have for Anwei to get Knox to The Rigors. By the time Anwei got Knox back to the lines of rickshaws, both moons had risen high. She couldn’t think of anything but Knox breathing, Knox being all right. Knox kissing her back. Anwei shut her eyes at that thought, which, of course, only made it worse.

When they rolled up to the inn, Anwei hopped out, flipping an extra coin to the runner to wait while she ran for help. Inside, the common room was crammed with people, the overwhelming smells of braised lamb, potatoes and cream, and sweat a welcome assault on her senses.

Noa was laughing from atop a table, a glass of malt in one hand and two men at her feet, teasing her into demonstrating some kind of fancy turn or jump. Incredulous, Anwei followed Altahn’s silver and acid black scent to the bar. The Trib was tucked into the far corner against the wall, a plate of lamb, potatoes, and something vaguely green that must have been alive at some point in front of him. “Didn’t Noa tell you—” She shook her head. They couldn’t leave now, not with Knox down. “I need your help getting Knox upstairs.”

Altahn stood, pushing his plate back. “What happened? You were supposed to be back hours ago.”

“We’ll talk once he’s upstairs.” She weaved back through the crowd and pushed out through the door. Knox hadn’t moved in the rickshaw, the runner doing his best not to snicker as Anwei pulled his dead weight off the bench, her knees buckling under his weight.

He was heavy, his body pressed up against her. And Anwei was suddenly back in front of the flower shop, Knox’s arms pressing her tight to him, and his lips… No. No lips. That was the danger of Knox. He fit her so well.

At least, he would have if the gods hadn’t forged a bond between them like some kind of cage.

Altahn ran the last few steps to grab hold of Knox, pulling Knox’s arm over his shoulder to take some of the weight from Anwei. Together they dragged him through the door, then up the stairwell to one of their rooms, where Altahn helped her deposit Knox on the closer bed.

The wound in Knox’s side had begun to smell again, this time with new hues of yellow that hadn’t been there before. Anwei pulled back his tunic to inspect the scar, gagging at the wave of sickly infected colors that came washing out. Steeling herself, Anwei untied the bandaging, her teeth clenched at the sight of the puckered skin somehow looking more fragile, as if a good bump would tear Knox open again.

Altahn dropped onto the other bed, watching quietly. “When are you going to tell me what is really wrong with him, Anwei?”

She glanced up at him, the pleasant tone a stark contrast to the words. “He just overexerted himself. You know he’s sick.”

“Sometimes.”

“Yes, that’s an accurate description.” She sighed. “You were right—Tual is the one who hurt him, and herbs aren’t doing everything they should. He’s healing, but… not all the way.” That much was true.

“Oh?” Altahn’s voice shivered through her. “Noa came running back here with news that she’d seen Tual with her own eyes. That we have to leave, and something about a boat? But that he didn’t even touch you.”

Anwei looked up, her heart beating madly against her ribs.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed your… extremely odd relationship with Knox.” Altahn cocked his head at her. “I found you at the bottom of a tomb somehow alive after crossing a shapeshifter, and Knox…” He gestured. “Like this. Everything you’ve done so far, it seems like your partner here takes the brunt of it.”

Anwei sat up straight, pulling her hands back from Knox. “You think I’m using Knox somehow? Like… an energy bank that I draw anytime I need it? Like a shapeshifter?”

Altahn didn’t blink, staring her down.

She sat forward, cocking her head. “And you thought directly confronting me was the best way to avoid getting your soul sucked out?”

Reaching under the bed, Altahn drew out something long and thin from the trunk shoved underneath, the shroud of blankets not enough to hide Knox’s pockmarked sword. Altahn pulled the blanket loose and let it fall, then set the naked blade across his knees. “Running with Lia Seystone has been educational. For one, now I know how to deal with a shapeshifter.”

“I’m not….” Anwei’s muscles clenched, bile rising in her throat, the sword weeping with the nothing smell.

Carefully considering her situation—Knox in a dead faint, her medicine bag twisted up behind her, and faced with a shapeshifter sword—Anwei did the only thing she could.

She laughed. Hard and loud until she bent over, Knox’s hand creeping over to take hold of her wrist as if somehow, even unconscious, he knew the sword was there. “Look at you,” Anwei said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Rifling through my things like a real thief. You have learned quite a bit in the last few weeks, haven’t you? Well.” She craned to get a look at her trunk underneath, but Knox’s grip on her wrist held her back. “Now that you’ve found my secret weapon, what are you going to do with it?”

“I want you to tell me the truth.” Altahn raised the sword an inch from his knee, and Anwei’s arms prickled when Knox’s body shifted toward it, his eyes moving under their lids.

Anwei reached for her trunk. “Absolutely. Would you pull the rest of my things out, though? Knox’s salve should be—”

“It’s not melted anymore, Anwei.” Altahn gripped the sword tighter, his knuckles turning white despite the measured calm of his voice. “I saw it on the ground completely destroyed. Who can manipulate metal… grow back a caprenum sword—something else Lia shared—other than a shapeshifter? You think you can just smile at me and I’ll stop remembering?”

Anwei shivered, because that was exactly what the snake-tooth man had done to her whole village. She slid a foot under the bed to hook her trunk, Knox’s grip on her wrist tightening. Turning a little, she slipped her free hand into her medicine bag where Altahn couldn’t see it.

Her fingers touched corta leaves, then the tincture that needed to be mixed before it could knock someone out, then the other packets that could have immobilized Altahn, but Anwei knew none of them would work quickly enough if Altahn decided to stab her. Her fingers found the new oilcloth packages of Sleeping Death that she’d stolen from Paran, then moved past them because she didn’t know how long it would last, how it would scatter, how much to give, or whether she could even safely touch it yet. Last of all, she found the calistet bag.

It was empty. After what had happened with the snake-tooth man and Knox down in the tomb, she’d left every grain of calistet behind in Chaol.

Calm. That was the most important thing.

Altahn still hadn’t lowered the sword. “Tell me. Are you a shapeshifter? Are you stealing energy from Knox to ward off Tual’s attacks somehow?” he asked. He didn’t blink when she looked incredulously at him. “It’s a simple question.”

“No.” Anwei pulled free of Knox and then dragged the trunk out the rest of the way. Altahn moved his legs to allow her room. “I’m not a shapeshifter, and you’re not in love with me, so the only outcome from using that thing on me would be lots of blood for you to clean up.” Her fingers closed around the little jar of salve, and she withdrew it, turning back toward Knox.

“I’m not in love with you? What is that supposed to mean?”

She chanced a look over her shoulder. “You’re not, are you? Noa would probably poison my tea. She fancies you, I think.”

“Noa doesn’t fancy anything but doing exactly as she pleases, so far as I can tell. If it’s not you doing it, then tell me what is wrong with him.”

Unclasping the jar’s lid, Anwei looked down at Knox. “You know how shapeshifters are made?”

“Something about these swords.” Altahn looked down at the pockmarked blade.

“Two gods-touched, a Devoted and a Basist, can form a special bond that mixes their magic. It makes both of them stronger than they could be otherwise. But if one of them takes a caprenum sword and kills the other, the victim’s soul and all their magic goes to the aggressor, turning them into a shapeshifter” Anwei dipped her fingers in the salve, the scent of the herbs dulling the awful smell of… whatever it was inside Knox. It felt oily and waxy at once as she carefully smeared the salve across Knox’s wound. “Tual used that sword to kill a little Devoted girl to change… Mateo into a shapeshifter. There was no bond between the two kids, though, so it only partially worked. Knox ended up with the blade that killed her, and the girl’s soul got stuck in there somehow. Now Knox and Mateo are joined with the dead girl’s soul and… sometimes she takes too much of Knox’s energy for him to stay conscious, I guess.”

Altahn nodded slowly, as if that were an entirely plausible explanation. “Is that why Noa calls him a shadow man? Because of… the ghost?”

“I didn’t know she called him that.”

“And Tual tried to kill him? I saw all the blood from the wound that day, Anwei. Too much for someone to survive.”

Anwei turned back to Knox, checking that the salve had covered everything before she replaced the bandage. “I… saved him.” The memory of that terrible power shivered through her. Knox’s eyes blinked open for a moment, his eyes unfocused as he stared up at her, his hand finding hers.

“Anwei?” Her name was honey on his lips.

Anwei’s cheeks heated.

“Because you’re… not just a healer; you’re a dirt witch. And the two of you—” Altahn used the sword to point between them. “You’ve got that bond thing between you? Interesting.”

“Thank you so much for saying so.” She smiled politely, closing the salve with a snap.

He smiled a little, finally setting the sword down. “And Tual just so happening to be in that apothecary the same time as you?”

Stuffing the salve back into her bag, Anwei’s hands stopped on a leather-bound ledger. Where had it come from? Pulling it out, she looked it over, vaguely remembering that Knox had picked it up in Paran’s workroom. In the panic to get out, she must have shoved it into her bag after he dropped it in the stairwell. “I don’t know what it means yet. Only that we can’t stay here.” Her eyes glossed across the smooth, loopy handwriting that seemed to be entries about shady activities taking place in Kingsol, notations about wardens and jurists. Paran keeping track of Kingsol like a crime lord’s accountant. It paid to know what was happening around you.

“Would you mind putting that sword away? It’s dangerous.” She started to set the ledger aside but paused when her eyes caught on an entry near the bottom: Kingsol harbor, dock thirty-three. And a green circle. Marked for fifth drum tomorrow.

Green like the mark on Ellis’s boat. A pirate-marked ship, Cylus had said. And Ellis, that morning: I told Noa to stick around a few days. You never know what might come up.

“What is that?” Altahn shifted forward to get a look, his firekey bursting out of his sleeve to hiss at Anwei before clawing her way up the Trib’s collar to curl on his shoulder. The sword seemed to smolder next to him.

The panicky need to hide hummed inside Anwei’s belly, the thought of Tual’s distinctive scent of expensive soap and foods, dirt, and herbs rushing back at her, so different from the nothing she’d been chasing so long that she now knew had come from his victims. A pirate-marked ship. “Down at the bottom, Altahn—”

She stuttered to a halt when the window behind Altahn wrenched open from outside, a dark shape spilling through. Galerey hissed, and Altahn jumped up from the bed, grabbing for the knives in his vest. Anwei groped for her herbs until she saw the man’s face.

She forced herself to relax, settling calmly onto the bed while Ellis finished climbing in before clearing her throat. Raising an eyebrow, she gave him an irritated wave of her hand. “Did you need something?”

“You took my salpowder tubes, you little wench.” Ellis smiled, seating himself comfortably on the bed across from her. He gave Altahn a careless smile. “I knew she had to be Yaru. The gall! Took them right out from under my nose.”

Altahn didn’t move, knife tight in his hand as if he didn’t know who to stab, Anwei or Ellis.

Ellis turned back to Anwei, head jerking toward the Trib. “Are you seeing this? It’s like his face is frozen like that.” Sighing, he drew a long knife from his coat and inspected the tip, polishing away some imagined blemish. “I’m not saying I’m disappointed to have found you so easily, but I guess I was expecting more?” He grinned, gesturing with the knife. “Don’t kill my heroes, Anwei. I had Yaru built halfway to the sky.”

Anwei smiled, fingers knuckle-deep in corta powder, but with Knox prone behind her and Altahn not sure if he was ready to defend or fight either one of them, making Ellis cough until his eyes turned red wasn’t going to help the situation much. “They’re called caroms, Ellis, and if you want them back, maybe you’ll answer some questions for me. First: Did you notify Paran I was coming into town?”

He laid his long knife on the table between them like some kind of peace offering. “No.”

“All right.” Anwei wanted to believe it—that her contacts weren’t all conspiring against her. And having Ellis’s help could change things a bit—the bare bones of a plan were coming together in her head. She thought of Noa seizing up at the very idea of being seen by her father’s sailors, the way she’d cried back in Chaol, begging to be taken in. “Second question.” She held out the ledger. “Tell me about this boat you marked.”

Ellis sat back, spreading his hands wide. “It’s got the Elantin governor’s copper bathtub on board. What can I say?”

“So, the crew, what? Hands over the bathtub, you all shake hands and go your merry way?”

“The crew rows outside the bay and abandons their ship instead of getting blown out of the water.” He ran a finger down the blade of his long knife. “I don’t want this to get ugly, Anwei. I could go through your rooms and just take the caroms. Dead people don’t fight back.” He shrugged, his voice going a little harder. “But I’m guessing you aren’t stupid enough to have them here in your rooms, which means you need me for something. Dead people also can’t tell me where my caroms are, I get it. I’m a busy man. Just tell me what you want.”

Funny that he thought taking the caroms had been part of a scheme. Anwei held the ledger up. “I need a boat.”

“You can’t have that boat.” He glanced at the ledger. “It’s mine. And it’s too big for four people to sail anyway.”

“I don’t want this boat.” Anwei set the ledger down next to the knife. “One of Russo’s little vessels is docked out there right now, small enough even for me to sail. You’re not a fan of Russo and his fleet, are you?”

Altahn flinched, the first movement he’d made.

Ellis was gracious enough not to comment, his eyes narrowing with interest. “He rammed one of my ships and blew a huge hole in it with salpowder. He can’t get his hands on caroms, so he rigged his holds with salpowder lines—willing to lose a whole ship if it keeps us off the rest of his fleet. He’s even got some special agreement with the sailors—bonuses if they get hurt and more, so I hear. Trying to take that boat wouldn’t go well for any of us.”

“You know how quickly an impossible situation can turn given the right information.” She leaned forward, ignoring the hiss of air coming out of Altahn. “For example: Did you know Russo has a daughter?”

Tual wasn’t on the island. Mateo raced out to the docks with Aria limp in his arms only to find the boat gone. Eyes seemed to watch him from the forest as he carried Aria away from the dock, her whispers about a beast in the woods prickling across his arms. Mateo ran to hide her in Tual’s office, his humors racing with energy and strength enough he could have carried the little girl’s dead weight all the way up to the top of the abbey caves. Inside, Mateo placed Aria on the long couch, praying to someone, something that it wasn’t dead weight because Aria couldn’t be dead.

Please. Wasn’t I supposed to be some kind of healer before. Why can’t obscure flower names force their way into my thoughts now when I need them? The elsparn made me remember something—could they help? Please, I’m listening now!

Willow cackled in response, as if she thought he was praying to her. You have everything you need, Mateo Montanne. You have me.

Mateo pressed his hands to his ears trying to shut out her voice, gasping when something rough and cold touched his face that was not skin. Wrenching his hands out in front of him, Mateo fell off the couch, his lungs suddenly tight.

Because they weren’t his hands anymore.

His wrists bulged out from his arms, his fingers swollen to twice their normal size like great sausages moldy with silver scales. His knuckles had turned knobbly, almost as if they could bend in too many directions, and long black nails jutted from his fingertips like claws. Mateo clenched his eyes shut, then opened them again, trying to dislodge whatever fear-induced hallucination had clogged his mind.

But the engorged wrists and knuckles, the scales, the claws were still there. He could feel them swelling larger, hot and stretched. Any moment his skin would split—

I made you better, Mateo! Willow sang. You were too busy freaking out about that little morsel to notice.

Little morsel. Heart racing, Mateo once again put an ear to Aria’s mouth, frantic for a breath to say she was still there. When it didn’t come, he went to her wrists for a pulse, tried sitting her up, laying her down, his hands dexterous and sinuous as they ran across her face, as if he’d had claws lurking inside him his whole life. Tears streamed down his cheeks because he had to find a way to save Aria, but he couldn’t stop looking at his hands, his beautiful artist fingers that had turned to monstrosities. He had to pull them away from Aria, hide them behind his back as he sank onto the floor, sweat dripping down his jaw.

It had to be a dream. Waking up that morning, Abendiza, the tower, the flicker of movement out in the woods, the glass tunnel… all just a dream.

Mateo couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t move. But still, his father’s voice crept into his mind in an awful whisper. Think of what you want, his voice said.

Willow flexed inside Mateo at the thought, his swollen hands clenching along with her.

Bile burning up his throat, Mateo’s whole body slick with sweat. But he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the little girl on the couch. I want to fix her, he thought. Please help me fix her. That’s all I want. I can feel all the energy you took, Willow. It raged inside him, making him feel larger than life, like Patenga in his reliefs. Put it back inside Aria!

Willow only laughed.

Cursing, Mateo forced himself up from the floor, crying out at the terrible pain in his hands, but running toward the shelves anyway. He pulled down jar after jar, opening them to smell the contents only to throw them aside for the next, hints tickling at the back of his mind that he should know what each one was good for, only he didn’t anymore. If Tual Montanne could swirl together plants and herbs and Calsta knew what else to bring people back to life with magic, why couldn’t Mateo? Were they not the same?

He tried giving Aria herbs, took out salves, unscrewed spice jars, scattered shavings and petals and shriveled bug pieces, held resin blocks over her like incense. He even went to the jars with little creepy crawling things that skittered with excitement when he put them near Aria, then had to pull them away fast before they escaped. The smells, the shapes, the feel of them were more familiar with each panicked moment.

None of it restarted the breath in Aria’s lungs.

Mateo threw the last jar down with a feral scream, the glass shattering across the marble floor, something with too many legs scurrying through the mess to hide under the desk. What good was being a shapeshifter if he couldn’t fix Aria? He sagged to the floor by the couch and took Aria’s hand in his two monstrous ones.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, whispering, “Please, Aria. Please come back. I didn’t mean to hurt you—I didn’t hurt you, I just want you to come back….” But it wasn’t until the light had gone bruised that footsteps sounded in Mateo’s ears.

Scrambling up from the floor, Mateo had no voice left to ask for help when Tual walked in, baskets strung over his arms. “Mateo, what are you…?”

But then he saw.

All the blood drained from Tual’s face, and he was running. “Calia, Mateo. And the rinoe. The white one on the top shelf! Mateo, move!”

“Are those… herbs?” But Mateo darted toward the shelves, his hands—somehow now shrunk back to normal—moving faster than he could, finding the white jar, then going to the floor to pick bits of plants or dried bugs or whatever it was out from the shards of glass as if they remembered what calia or rinoe or whatever he was supposed to be searching for looked like when he couldn’t.

Tual wrenched a pot free from under his desk and placed it over the little malt burner on its trivet before dumping everything Mateo brought to him into the pot’s belly. He clapped a lid on top, then slid to his knees next to Aria to take her hand.

After a few moments, Tual turned to study Mateo. And then, with a nod to himself, he picked Aria up and left the room.

Mateo was too afraid to move, too afraid to acknowledge what he already knew. That it was too late. She wasn’t breathing. People couldn’t survive not breathing.

But soon Tual had come racing back into the room. He deposited Aria back on the couch, then checked the fire under the pot. There was a dusting of powdery white down her chin that wasn’t any of the substances Mateo had gotten down for his father, but every question from Mateo, every entreaty, every demand for information Tual ignored until Mateo finally sank down into his father’s desk chair and let his head rest against the wood as his father stirred and paced and swore. Tual’s frenzied muttering and grinding of stone, bird, and beetle into a pot turned the room to steam that smelled of charcoal and lavender. As Tual stirred, Mateo tried to feel the change he knew had to happen as he felt energy drawing from somewhere into his father. But the medicine didn’t knit into some miracle shapeshifter cure. It stayed lumpy and poisonous, a deathly stew.

Mateo couldn’t move, and for once, it wasn’t because he was tired or dizzy or sick—floppy, as Aria had said. He was stronger than he ever had been, Willow humming something that almost sounded happy at the back of his mind.

He had done this. No, Willow had done this. And even after Tual dripped medicine into Aria’s mouth, she didn’t move, as if whatever sparked the life inside her was now somehow inside Mateo instead.

But after a few minutes, Aria coughed. Mateo sat up, the shadows around her making her look pale and chalky, her hair a shade askew. But then Aria drew in one wet, gasping breath, and Mateo didn’t care what she looked like.

Tual skidded to his knees by her side, spoon in hand, and Mateo willed himself to follow, but he couldn’t force himself to go any closer to the little girl on the couch.

Aria inhaled again, a faint pink coming to her cheeks.

“She’s all right?” Mateo gasped.

“Her state is very similar to your episodes. It mimics death, and it requires a specific antidote to come back. Which I think I’ve found.” Tual rubbed a hand across his face, leaving a streak of the purple concoction he’d been spooning into Aria’s mouth. There was no sign of the white powder he’d seen on her chin when Tual had first brought her in, but the hum of power was still in the air, making Mateo’s head ache. The shadows around Aria looked too sharp, the girl herself almost fuzzy, as if she weren’t real.

“You can’t do this, Mateo,” Tual whispered.

“I can’t do this?” Mateo rasped, taking a step toward him. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Don’t come too close.” Tual picked up the spoon once again. “You have to be in control. Remember what I said at the tomb about you taking energy?” He stirred the pot three times, then drew another spoonful, holding his hand under it to keep it from dribbling onto the floor. “There isn’t enough energy in the world to fill the hole inside you, Mateo. You had to take some down in the tomb because I can’t manipulate rock. I needed you to open the burial chamber. But if you continue to draw energy from people around you, you’ll be a drain—one I won’t be able to hide. People will begin to notice the way death follows us.”

Aria’s face was pale, her eyes flicking this way and that behind her closed eyelids. Mateo looked away, because it was like looking at himself as he’d barely clung to life during those weeks in Chaol.

“I didn’t do it. I was just standing there.” Aria had been dead. Or almost dead, anyway. He hadn’t been able to feel her heartbeat, the rush of her humors, no movement, no breath. She hadn’t gone cold or stiff or anything, but she’d been gone. Mateo paced toward his father’s shelves, the jars filled with mulch and pus and gods knew what. His father truly was a wonder. A god, even, bringing back life when there was none left. “I didn’t try to take her energy. It was the ghost.”

“You need to take responsibility for your own actions, son!” Tual gestured wearily toward the mess of glass glinting sharply amid the dried flora and fauna scattered across the floor. “You can’t get angry and expect it to fill in the damage you’ve done. Aria isn’t tethered to life the way you are—she isn’t a shapeshifter. The hole inside you isn’t going to go away until—”

“No, I mean the ghost is the one who did it. She tried to take Aria.” Mateo turned with a groan, pacing past the desk, the shelves, the little burning pot. “Did take Aria.”

Tual tipped the spoonful of steaming medicine into Aria’s mouth, then rubbed her throat to make her swallow. He replaced the lid on the pot, put the spoon on top, then turned to face Mateo. “Please tell me what you mean.”

“The girl who died—the one who made the hole. She’s… here.” Mateo flopped onto the couch next to Aria’s head. She was still so pale and limp. Drained. Halfway to whatever afterlife Calsta had promised her.

“What do you mean, ‘she’s here’?” Tual began picking up the scattered jars and canisters, returning them to where they belonged.

“Her voice is in my head. She knows things about me, about you. About Knox, that boy you killed in the tomb. And Anwei—”

Mateo frowned. Anwei. The shape of the name was so familiar in his mouth, but he wasn’t sure he’d heard it from Willow.

“The ghost should have died with the sword when it melted. With the boy it was attached to—he’s the reason all this went wrong. Her soul was attached to you and that boy both, but there wasn’t enough energy for three of you—”

Why does everyone keep saying I’m things I’m not? A thing. A hole. Now I’m dead? I’m right here.

“She’s talking to me right now.”

I was so hungry with Knox. Every day that girl was in front of us, ready to die so he’d feed me, but he wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t share anything but what Calsta gave him. I wish I’d found you earlier. You and me, we’re a pair. It’s hard without the sword, though. Knox has it. Or maybe that girl does.

We are not a pair. I did not feed you, Mateo thought back. You’re the reason I’m dying.

“Mateo, that isn’t possible.” Tual’s voice rose. “I don’t understand exactly how the sword latched onto that boy and kept from melting, but now things are right. He’s dead. The sword was destroyed. The ghost’s connection to you broke. You’re stronger than you ever were before now that she’s not sucking you dry.” Tual swore as he accidentally knocked a canister down from the shelf, the container shattering when it hit the floor. He crouched, gathering up the bits of glass. “We just have to do the final steps to mend the hole she caused inside you.”

Aria groaned, her head tipping to one side.

Mateo slid off the couch to kneel beside her, but Tual turned away, carefully gathering shards of glass up from the carpet and clearly gathering his thoughts just as delicately.

Tentatively, Mateo took Aria’s hand. It was warm. The skin was a healthy pink now, practically glowing against the light brown of his own fingers. She wasn’t dead.

“If caprenum was supposed to melt when it changed someone into a shapeshifter, then why was it scratched out of so many paintings and reliefs? Why was Patenga’s sword there in his tomb? All the shapeshifters kept their weapons close.” He groaned when Tual didn’t answer him, brow furrowed as he continued to hunt for glass bits. “I’m telling you, the ghost is in my head. I took Aria to see the tunnels, and suddenly Willow was saying how hungry she was—”

“Willow? It has a name?”

“She always did, I’d guess. People have names. She reached out and…” Mateo gestured at Aria.

Tual stood, arms full of broken glass. “That is not possible.”

“Well, it happened.” Anger blossomed inside Mateo. Tual wasn’t telling him everything, had never told him the whole story. If he could just goad his father into speaking—

Tual threw the bits of glass into a refuse bin, then dusted himself off before sitting in the desk chair. “Okay,” he finally said. “Then this is uncharted territory. The only things I know about people like us are what I’ve stumbled into. So much of our history was destroyed long before you were born.”

The swell of helplessness inside Mateo grew, and the rage grew with it, threatening to drown him. His unflappable father admitting that he didn’t know something? How could someone with enough arrogance to believe he could bring his son back from the brink of death so long as Mateo was willing to take another life not know?

Was Mateo just another experiment? One that had gone horribly wrong because Tual had found himself invested in a specific outcome? Mateo with him, alive.

“Is Aria going to be all right?” Mateo whispered, her palm hot against his hands. His normal, non-swollen, non-monstrous hands. He shuddered, the memory of what they’d looked like twisting in his head until he couldn’t recognize it. A hallucination. A stress nightmare.

“I think so.” Tual sighed. “You always were. The Devoted always were, until we took too much. When I took from those who aren’t gods-touched like Miss Aria here… well, they didn’t always fare well, even if I only took a tiny bit.” Tual didn’t quite look at Aria, going instead to his desk and sitting down. He extracted a sheet of vellum from the top drawer, then picked up his quill and dipped it in his inkpot. “I’ve missed something, a part of the process, the magic. Whatever is happening to you is an opportunity to study. To learn something, so we can change our approach accordingly. So…” Tual cocked his head, quill at the ready. “How long has this ghost been talking to you? What does it say?”

Mateo tried to ignore Willow’s breathing at the back of his head. “She says that she’s a person? She seems to know what’s going on around me, but it’s limited to what I can see, what I hear, I think, but she also responds to thoughts. She says Knox—the boy who was connected to the sword—is alive. That he’s with Lia and my sister.”

Knox and that girl are in Kingsol, Willow hissed. Lia isn’t with them right now. She’ll arrive soon, at least so long as she doesn’t get eaten in the forest on her way down.

Mateo choked on her words. Lia was in the forest? His sister was already in Kingsol? “She’s talking right now. I guess most of them are in town.” He bit his lip over Lia. There were things lurking in the forest, things even his father didn’t want to face.

Tual blinked, and his quill paused. “If her perception is limited to what you see, hear, and think, then how would she know that?”

I told you I was going to keep an eye on them if you fed me. So I woke up Knox, of course. But then Willow’s voice squeezed down small with rustlings and mutterings that were dark and wet, like decaying leaves on a forest floor. When she spoke again, her voice was too deep, wrong somehow. That night in the tomb isn’t the first time your father has tried to kill me. He still lacks the comprehension to understand what I am capable of.

Lacks the comprehension? Mateo’s brow furrowed. The little-girl mask Willow liked to wear was slipping. “It’s not just… her in there, I don’t think. Or maybe it isn’t her at all, but something older. It knows you.”

Not an it! the thing snarled.

“Mateo.” Tual was shaking his head. “This sounds very… worrisome. I was just in town, and I think I would have noticed your sister and a boy with a mortal stab wound wandering around. At least, I think I would.” He stopped, setting the quill down. “Though… I didn’t recognize her at first in the tomb. Her aura looks so normal now, like ours.”

“Normal like ours? You think she’s turned shapeshifter? Killed someone so she can live forever?”

“She’s killed before.” Mateo didn’t like the sad glint in his father’s eye as he said it, an echo of horror rising as if her past was there inside him, just waiting to reveal itself like the name of an herb. And Tual’s voice held a note of understanding Mateo didn’t want to believe.

His sister. A shapeshifter? Father had said not many from their town had survived her escape from Beilda.

She’s not like you, Mateo, Willow interrupted. If she were, maybe I never would have found you. It was Willow’s voice again, the cloying, sweet tone twined together with rot. Haven’t you been listening? she continued. Knox and that girl already have that bond thing, like the one your father wants you to do with Lia so that you can get rid of me. But you wouldn’t do that, would you, Mateo? I love you.

They’re bonded? Mateo asked.

She and Knox. Knox and her. She’s the only thing keeping him alive now. If he’d killed her like I told him to, he’d be just fine. That’s why you’re my family now. He doesn’t love me enough to feed me.

Tual leaned toward him. “She’s talking to you now. What else has she said? Are there other effects? She stole the life right out of Aria without you being able to stop her?”

“And she made me shift. My hands…” Mateo clenched his long fingers into fists, the memory of claws scratching at his skin.

Blinking, Tual sat back in his chair. Shifting. That was something they hadn’t talked about yet. That was what shapeshifter kings were famous for—like Patenga, with his reptilian head and parchwolf legs and feet. But Mateo, for once, didn’t want to know. So he kept talking. “She’s particularly interested in Abendiza, for some reason, but hasn’t said why. And she’s constantly saying that she’s hungry. That Knox couldn’t feed her because…” What was the difference between him and Knox? Mateo clutched himself around the middle, remembering the feeling of drawing in power, using it, and having that power do exactly as he asked. “I think she can take energy from other people because I can take energy from other people. Knox couldn’t do that because he was only a Devoted, not a shapeshifter, so she had to survive on what she could drain from his connection to Calsta.”

“And on what she drained from you, even if she didn’t realize she was doing it.”

“She doesn’t like my sister. Or maybe she just wanted to eat her. It’s hard to tell.”

Your sister took Knox away from me.

Mateo suddenly remembered the relief he had copied showing Calsta and the nameless god together. “I saw the reliefs in the tomb—that bond you want me to make with Lia, that’s where shapeshifters come from, right? Our auras are hidden. If that’s what happens when Devoted and Basist magic mixes, maybe a bonded pair would get the same benefit.” He paused. “But then I’ve never seen normal auras, only gods-touched.”

“I assume if we fix you, you’ll take on the rest of a Devoted’s core abilities, though there are some distortions. This is all very interesting.” Tual pointed at Mateo, his eyes flicking back and forth as he thought. “But it’s only one out of a thousand things we don’t understand. We have to approach this logically, like any other project we’ve done. How did the ghost latch on to you after so many years? What changed? And how are the environmental factors of your change different from when I turned?”

Aria began coughing again, curling sideways toward the edge of the couch. Mateo darted forward to stop her from falling off the edge. “Wake up, Aria,” he whispered. “I can’t let your sister find you sick like this. I don’t want you to be sick.” And the smaller voice inside him. I don’t want to kill anyone. Not you.

Not Lia, either.

The thoughts felt like an anvil’s weight pressing on his mind—if this was what it was to take a life by accident, then could he do it on purpose? If it was a choice between him and Lia …

Aria’s slack mouth twitched, turning to a frown. Without opening her eyes, she spoke. “Mateo?”

Tual let Mateo help her sit up, watching them carefully. “The lake monster gave you quite a fright, didn’t it, Miss Aria?”

“The snake?” Aria’s eyes flickered open, her words coming out too slow and confused. “I don’t remember a snake.”

Mateo couldn’t let go of her, Aria’s lukewarm response almost more frightening than the pallor to her cheeks. “No digs about sweets or stealing swords?” His voice cracked, the words choking him.

Tual twitched, almost as if he meant to pull Mateo away, but he didn’t, brow furrowing as Aria’s slack expression turned into a glare. Another round of coughs bent her forward. “I bet you put something in those sweet rolls you fed me for breakfast,” she gasped when she was done.

“I would never… And what do you mean, I fed you? You’re the one who took two—”

“And all this stuff about not wanting me to die, not wanting Lia to hurt you. Who cares what you want?” Aria scowled.

“You should. I’m the one who feeds you.” Mateo sat back, something in him unwinding. Aria wasn’t broken. Aria was alive. His father had fixed it, just like he fixed everything.

“You should probably rest now, Miss Aria.” Tual’s smile was both calming and confident, as if he knew everything was going to be all right. “I’ll call for a servant to help you to a special room to rest. Mateo and I have some business to attend to.”

Aria didn’t answer back the whole time Tual was gone fetching the maid, but Mateo figured she was probably too tired to harass him. A maid came and bundled her up into a rolling chair and took her out. Tual watched from the doorway, waiting until Aria had disappeared down the hallway before taking off in the other direction.

“Where are you going?” Mateo asked, following.

“You said Lia is coming, so we need to take care of some things before she gets here. The room Aria’s going to be staying in will be hidden from aurasight. But there’s more—”

Mateo’s heart jangled against his ribs as he followed. “She wasn’t supposed to come right now. Our whole plan—”

Tual slowed, eagerness flashing across his face. “I wish she were here already—with the Warlord only a day away, taking care of Lia first would have been much easier than her interrupting while Devoted are here.”

“I hate to be the one to provide the barest sheen of reality here, but Lia and I haven’t exactly been writing letters, Father.” Stomach twisting, Mateo tried not to think about what the eagerness on his father’s face was for. “What do you want me to do, send up smoke signals that say, ‘Run faster! The convenient window for your attack is about to close’?”

“She’s not going to attack us, Mateo.” Tual slid to a stop in front of the pile of luggage in the entryway still slowly being put away from their long time away and began poking through the boxes until he found the archeological equipment. He grabbed one of the tool bags and headed for the door. “The whole point is that when Lia comes, you and Aria are going to leave with her. She’s going to save both of you from me.”

“Right.” Mateo followed, his anger beginning to boil up inside him again. “She’ll listen to Aria’s story about getting sick in the tunnel and be twice as excited for me to run away with her. We’ll be bonded before our first campfire, and I’ll stab her over the egg tarts.” The image stuck in Mateo’s head as he followed his father outside and across the courtyard, and he immediately wished he hadn’t said it out loud. Willow, however, seemed to glom on to the thought, playing it over and over in his head with a fiendish kind of hope.

Why would you want me to bond with Lia and then kill her? he thought at her savagely. Didn’t you just beg me not to get rid of you?

Willow didn’t answer, dark hunger unfolding around her in his head that felt somehow even worse than what she’d done to Aria.

“First of all, if you think egg tarts are what people on the run make over their campfires, the first few weeks on the road are going to be rough.” Tual grinned over his shoulder. “Second, that’s exactly why we planned for you to run away together. The two of you need more time to actually become attached. At this point, stabbing Lia would just make the hole inside you bigger—we know that now. Murdering an innocent instead of murdering the one you love doesn’t work.” Tual pulled open the heavy watchtower door and darted inside, going straight to the secret passage. “You could have two ghosts feeding on you instead of one if we do this wrong.”

Mateo groaned, following his father into the darkness. “I guess you forgot to teach me the proper levels of devotion to achieve a shapeshifter sacrifice.”

“Well, we’ve already got a proper start.” Tual rounded the first switchback, past the rows and rows of monuments, names so small Mateo could hardly believe they belonged to people. So many, all blamed on a curse that didn’t exist. “You like her enough that you don’t want to kill her. Not even her little sister.”

“I don’t want to kill anyone.”

They’d reached the glass walkway where Aria had collapsed only this morning. Tual turned back to look at Mateo, Castor’s moonlight falling in slippery blue lines through the water that seemed to make the cliff tunnel at the end even darker. “That’s true until it isn’t anymore.”