get to Jules. She must find her queen.
She swivels and sees her, already on her feet if indeed she was ever off them. The poor gelding and Rho’s massive battle charger lie motionless, their bodies forming a boundary like an arena as the two warriors circle each other in the center. Waves of darkness seep from Rho like fog. The flesh of her forearms are rotting and green. Though Emilia has never been particularly pious, the white priestess hood on something like that seems pure blasphemy. No warrior in Bastian City could stand against such a monster. Not Emilia. Not even her mother. Only Jules.
THE VOLROY
Arsinoe holds her breath as she and Pietyr plunge into the mist. She closes her eyes, and Pietyr’s arms squeeze tighter around her middle. But after a few steps, it seems they will not be torn in two.
“How will you know which direction to go?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she replies. It is a stupid question, anyway. Everyone on Fennbirn knows that the mist brings you where it wants. Or where you are meant to be.
“Is it always so cold?”
“Yes,” she says, though this mist does not feel at all familiar. Not like it was when she was a child in the boat with Jules and Joseph. Not like passing through it on the way to the mainland. This mist feels like a fist waiting to close, so thick she can hardly see the brown coat of her horse beneath her.
“Where is everyone? We must not be alone,” Pietyr says just as the horse stumbles. He goes down on his front knees, pitching Arsinoe and Pietyr off over his head.
Arsinoe scrambles to hold on to the reins as Pietyr grasps on to her waist.
“Don’t! I can’t lose the horse! I can’t lose him!” She drags herself up and touches his nose. The poor frightened gelding is breathing hard. She pats his neck, and it is wet with sweat. But he does not bolt. “Good boy, smart boy,” she whispers.
“Dear Goddess,” Pietyr says from behind her. He stares at the ground, at the thing the gelding stumbled over. It is a body. Or at least it was. Twisted and torn and bent, it is hard to tell whether it used to be woman or beast.
Arsinoe steps back and trips. When she tries to get up, her hands shove inside something wet and warm.
“Another body.”
Pietyr helps her to her feet. “Or the rest of the same one.”
She pulls the horse close. Her fingers are slick, painted with red and gore to the wrists.
Everywhere they look, on all the ground they can see, are bodies or pieces of bodies. Beside them, several queensguard lie on top of each other coated with blood, like they were piled onto a platter. And to her right, a skinned arm, the muscle and sinew exposed all the way to the disconnected shoulder.
“We have to get out of here,” Pietyr says.
“Don’t panic,” she snaps. She knows better than anyone how long the mist can wrap you in its grasp. They could wander forever. Until they starve or lose their minds. By the end, they could be begging the mist to twist them apart. But there is no point in saying so to Pietyr. “Take my hand.”
He takes it without hesitation despite the gore, and they begin to move forward. She counts a hundred paces in the same direction before she begins to suspect they should have reached the Volroy’s outer gates. Then she counts a hundred more, passing scattered corpses of horses and soldiers. Pietyr’s breath is fast in her ear.
“I do not remember the Volroy gates being so far.”
“They aren’t. Something’s wrong.”
“Why must you say that?” he hisses.
“Would you rather we ignore it?” she growls back.
She breathes in and the mist coats her throat and sinks into her lungs. It swirls around them in curious bands.
“Oi! Is anybody there?” someone calls out.
She and Pietyr turn. The voice could have come from anywhere.
“Yes! We’re here!” Arsinoe cries. “Over here!”
The young queensguard soldier stumbles into view. Her eyes are bewildered, and she still carries her sword, the tip dragging along the ground.
“Are you real?” she asks. “I couldn’t find—I cannot find—anyone. . . .”
“You found us,” Pietyr says. “It is all right now.”
The girl does not look convinced. But she drops her sword. And when she does, the mist swirls in and tears her apart.
Arsinoe screams. The horse pulls the reins from her hand and gallops off, his hoofbeats gone in an instant.
One half