: Chapter 48

The scraver’s eyes catch a gleam of light from the dwindling fire. It feels like he’s got one knee on my chest, the other pinning my right arm. His claws are like five daggers against the skin of my throat. I have no magic, so he could kill me with a twist of his wrist. My throat is parched, my lips chapped from hours of riding in the wind.

I wonder if he’s been waiting for an opportunity to kill the king.

I wonder if the king is already dead.

“Nakiis,” I breathe, and my voice is rough and worn. My throat stings. His claws have broken the skin.

“I trust you’ve been well?” he says mockingly.

“I’ve been better.” I slide my left hand through the dirt carefully, seeking my dagger.

Nakiis hisses, his claws tightening. More blood flows, and I freeze.

“I can see in the dark, you foolish magesmith,” he says.

“I’m not a magesmith.” I grit my teeth and try to strain away from him, but his grip is strong. My mouth feels like I swallowed fire. “Perhaps—perhaps you could let me go if you want to talk.”

“I should kill you both right now,” he growls. His claws tighten, and I close my eyes. I try to swallow but his grip is too tight. I can’t fight. I can’t breathe. In a moment, that’ll be permanent.

We’re in the middle of nowhere. Whoever Rhen sends might never find our bodies. All my loyalty and duty and honor would be nothing. The only memory anyone would have would be my failure to protect the king when his family was in danger.

But the pressure on my neck eases. Wings flutter, and the weight disappears from my chest. I cough, choking on air, rubbing at my blood-slick neck. It takes me half a minute to sit up. Nakiis is a short distance away, his eyes glittering at me from twenty feet up in a tree.

I ignore him and crawl quickly to Grey. He’s still breathing, but it’s shallow, and a bit ragged like my own. He doesn’t appear to have moved from where I laid him when we stopped here. His lips are as chapped as mine feel. The sweat has dried in his hair, and he seems more pale, though it’s hard to tell in the dark.

“I filled your water skins,” the scraver says.

The words hit me slowly, as if my brain can’t process what he’s saying—and then all at once. My eyes search the ground and locate the water skins near the dwindling fire, and I all but dive onto them, tugging the laces free as quickly as I can. I pour the liquid straight into my mouth without pausing to wonder about whether it’s safe. I want to ask why or how he did this, but I don’t even care. The water is cold and sharp and nothing has ever tasted better.

Once I’ve drunk so much that I’m worried I’m going to spit it all right back up, I pour some into my hand and touch it to Grey’s lips, as if a taste of water might bring him around.

It doesn’t. The water trails over his lips to disappear into the shadows.

I’d give anything for my magic-bearing rings. For Noah, who’d surely know what to do. I try to remember everything he’s ever taught me, but my lessons in the infirmary were always few and far between. I press my fingers to the king’s neck, finding his pulse, which beats steady against my fingers.

Still, he doesn’t wake.

Mercy must smell the water, because she nickers low in her throat, pawing at the ground where she’s tethered. I don’t have a bucket, but I cup my hands and offer it to her sip by sip.

Throughout all of this, Nakiis stays high overhead, clinging to the branch where he’s taken roost. While Mercy slurps water from my hands, I look up at him. The scraver’s skin is so dark that he’s almost invisible amid the leaves.

“Thank you,” I say. It feels odd to thank him when he was seconds away from tearing out my throat, but I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want to provoke him when I don’t know why he’s here.

He peers down at me, and an icy wind whips through the trees. “The creek isn’t far. A mile on foot perhaps.”

“I thought it was farther.” I try to realign my sense of where we are, then look back up at him. It’s interesting that he just had his claws around my neck, but now he’s way up in a tree. I try to puzzle that out, and I can’t quite comprehend what I come up with: he’s wary. Maybe even afraid.

I should kill you both right now.

But he didn’t.

While I’m thinking this through, Nakiis disappears from the branch with a flutter of wings and a rush of cold air.

I frown, then sigh. I don’t understand—and it probably doesn’t matter. I rekindle the fire, building it until the flames reach for the sky, then try pouring another handful of water over Grey’s lips.

Nothing.

I offer more water to Mercy, then crouch to look at her leg. The tendon is hot and swollen, the hoof partially lifted off the ground. She noses at my neck gently, blowing warm breaths into my hair as if to say fix it, please.

“I’m sorry, sweet girl,” I murmur to her, and she presses her face to my chest.

Everything is terrible.

I return to sit beside Grey, dropping next to the fire. I pull a whetstone from my pack, then draw my dagger. It doesn’t need sharpening, but I need something to do or I’m going to bash my head into a rock. I’ll have to hunt soon, but I don’t want to leave him, especially with Nakiis lurking somewhere in the darkness.

“Anytime you’d like to wake up,” I say, “I wouldn’t mind the company.”

Nothing.

“I can’t carry you to Syhl Shallow,” I say, passing the blade over the stone. “Though I must say I’m grateful for all the drills that allowed me to get you this far.”

Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I’m used to talking to Mercy. I can outline our next movements to an unconscious king.

The blade scrapes over the stone in rhythmic fashion. “I suppose I can carry you to the nearest major road. Rhen will send a team through as quickly as possible. I estimate it will take them at least three days to get this far—and we’ve already used up one. I don’t have a map, but I believe we’re about twenty miles west of the King’s Highway. If I start walking at daybreak, I should be able to beat them there.”

Twenty miles, carrying a man on my shoulders. A daunting task on my best day. I’m so exhausted right now that it feels impossible.

A screech splits the night, and then a dead wild goose lands in the dirt right in front of me. I jump and nearly put the blade right through my hand.

I look up as Nakiis settles back onto the branch. He stares down at me wordlessly, and for a moment, I don’t move.

“Again,” I say finally, “thank you.”

He says nothing. I suppose I’m the only one making conversation, then. I start plucking feathers, then quickly and efficiently slice the meat from the bone before laying it on rocks in the fire to cook.

He brought me water and food—but he also lured Sinna away from the palace. I’m not sure how to proceed.

I slice the heart free and hold it out to him. Those gleaming eyes look back at me, but he doesn’t leave the branch.

“Iisak always asked for the heart,” I say. “It’s yours if you want it.”

He still doesn’t move.

I think of what he’s said before, how he doesn’t want to be bound. I’ve never lived my life as someone who keeps track of implied debts for things that should be considered a simple kindness. But maybe Nakiis does. Maybe he’s had to.

“Offered without expectation,” I say. “As thanks for your generosity.” After the longest moment, I add, “Otherwise, I’m going to throw it into the fire.”

His wings beat at the air as he leaps off the branch. He barely lands before swiping the flesh from my palm, then darts to the opposite side of the fire.

It’s so hard not to think of his father, of the similarities and differences between them. There’s a part of me that pulses with longing, with loss, because it’s been so long, and so much about this moment reminds me of before.

But Iisak wouldn’t have kidnapped a child. Iisak wouldn’t have had his claws wrapped around my throat.

I swipe my bloody hands in the dirt to dry them, then brush them off on my trousers. “What are you doing here?” I say.

I don’t expect him to answer, but he does. “You were pouring magic into the air for hours,” he says. “I could feel it from miles away.”

“I wasn’t.” I cast a glance at the king. “He was.”

“You allowed him to burn through his power, then.”

“He burned through his magic?” I stare across the flickering fire. “Is that why he can’t wake up?”

Nakiis tears a bit of flesh from the heart with his fangs, and I’m both glad that it’s dark and glad that I do remember his father, because I don’t flinch from the sight. The look he gives me is shrewd. “I tasted your blood in Gaulter,” he says. “You cannot hide your magic from me, boy.”

I hold up my naked hand. “That was his magic, too. I had rings of Iishellasan steel. They’re gone.”

His eyes widen, but he tears another piece of the heart and studies me. I turn the meat on the rocks. I’m so hungry that I’m tempted to eat the poultry as raw as he does.

“You wore magic-bound steel against your skin?” he says.

The way he says that is interesting, and I frown. “Yes.”

“For how long?”

“For … years.”

He mutters something that sounds like a swear, then flicks disdainful eyes at Grey. An ice-cold wind swirls through the clearing to make me shiver. “As I said,” he growls. “Foolish magesmith.”

“Why? Why does it matter how long I wore them?”

He studies me again. “Why should I help you?”

“I don’t know. Why are you?”

He says nothing.

“You could have killed us both and had two hearts,” I add.

He curls his lip, baring his fangs. He licks a drop of blood off a claw. “As if I have any taste for a magesmith’s heart.”

I think of little Sinna being at his mercy, and I have to suppress a shudder. But she wasn’t afraid. She seemed eager to see him again. I can’t seem to make that match up in my head either. Then again, I was barely more than a boy and I was never afraid of Iisak, no matter what terrible things I saw him do.

One of the tiniest pieces of meat is beginning to brown on the rocks, so I pull it free, shoving it into my mouth, heedless of the pain when it burns my tongue. I’m too hungry to care. I wash it down with another pull from the water skin, then grab another that’s still a bit raw.

Nakiis watches this, his eyes glittering in the firelight. Eventually, he finishes the heart, but he doesn’t return to his spot in the tree. He doesn’t attack me either.

By the time I move to shove a third piece of meat in my mouth, I have the patience to let it cool first. He stares at me across the flames, and I can’t read anything from his expression.

I hold his gaze. “Why did you kidnap the princess?”

“Kidnap!” he growls. His wings flare, and the bare edge of his fangs flash in the light. “The king surrounds his child with humans who mean her harm, and you accuse me of kidnapping?”

“You lured her away from the palace.”

“I lured her away from potential captors.”

I turn that thought around in my head. “Who?”

“I keep my distance from the palace. I do not know the names of everyone at court.”

“How did you know she was in danger, then?”

“I can hear much, from the air. So many whispers. So many secrets.”

That’s right. I forgot about that. The scravers have magic of their own, but it comes from the wind and sky. Iisak used to be able to hear at a good distance—and he could keep himself from being heard as well.

Nakiis adds, “There are many who conspire against your king.”

“In the palace?”

He nods, and a chill wraps itself around my spine. One of the only reasons Grey felt safe leaving Lia Mara and Sinna was because they’d be surrounded by guards.

“Many in the palace conspire against him,” he says. “Are you among them?”

“No!”

His fangs glisten in the light again. “Because you have magic in your blood, yet you spare none to save him.”

“I am not a magesmith!” I snap.

He tackles me into the dirt with enough force to drive me back a few feet. Rocks and underbrush dig into my neck. I grunt and swear and try to get my hand on a weapon, but he’s quick. Those talons sink right into my forearms, only an instant before his fangs find the space between my throat and my armor. The pain is so quick and sudden that I can’t think of anything else—except for the fact that Iisak once did exactly this to Grey, to prove to him that he could use magic.

Only Grey truly is a magesmith.

I am not.

I can’t catch my breath. I might be whimpering. I might be crying. I’m straining against him, but my arms are on fire. My throat is on fire. My vision begins to darken.

His teeth let go of my skin, and I realize the last sight before I die is going to be my blood on his jaw.

“It’s in your blood,” he growls at me.

“If I were a magesmith, you’d be dead by now,” I growl back.

His fingers tighten on my arms. I swear I feel his talons touch bone. “Prove it,” he says.

“I can’t—I don’t—” There’s too much pain. I can’t think. “I don’t have my—”

“Stop talking and use your magic!”

“I don’t have magic!”

He leans down close, until his black eyes fill my vision, and his forehead nearly brushes mine. “If you are unwilling to try,” he says softly, “then you deserve to die.”

I taste blood on my tongue, and it reminds me of the night Alek stabbed me in the side. I think of Jax leaning over me in the flickering shadows of his workshop, his hair unbound and panic in his eyes.

I think of his hands on a bow, the day I taught him to shoot.

What are you afraid of?

I think of my rings, taken. Gone. But I remember the feel of them. I remember reaching for the magic.

Like a pair of boots that don’t fit quite right, I remember saying. Because it’s not my magic. It’s Grey’s. It was in the rings.

It’s in your blood.

Is it? I imagine the rings on my hands, the magic at my fingertips. I try to remember what it felt like. Where it came from.

But my thoughts begin to drift and loosen, and I realize I’ve lost a lot of blood. Something soft brushes against my cheek, then my jaw, and then my hair. A warm burst of air fills my ear, and then a low nicker.

Mercy.

And then, I feel a spark. A tug. The tiniest flare of magic in my veins.

And then another. And another. The magic, slow at first, causing more pain as it tries to find the injuries. Then stronger, more sure. I can flex my fingers.

A moment later, I can sit up.

I stare down at my forearms. Blood is everywhere, but they’re unmarred. Whole. I slap a hand to my neck and feel no pain.

Silver hell.

Mercy is nosing at me again, her tether broken and dragging in the dirt. I lift a hand to stroke her muzzle, then stare across the fire at Nakiis, who’s keeping his distance again.

“Your horse was very worried,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. I hold up my hand again, as if I have to convince myself that it really happened. “Me too.”