cold against my skin. “You are a Mask, yes,” he whispers. “But you are not finished. You are my masterpiece, Helene Aquilla, but I have just begun. If you survive, you shall be a force to be reckoned with in this world. But first you will be unmade. First, you will be broken.”
“I’ll have to kill him, then?” What else could this mean? The best way to break me is Elias. He has always been the best way to break me. “The Trials, the vow I made to you. It was all for nothing.”
“There is more to this life than love, Helene Aquilla. There is duty. Empire. Family. Gens. The men you lead. The promises you make. Your father knows this. So will you, before the end.”
His eyes are unfathomably sad as he lifts my chin. “Most people,” Cain says, “are nothing but glimmers in the great darkness of time. But you, Helene Aquilla, are no swift-burning spark. You are a torch against the night—if you dare to let yourself burn.”
“Just tell me—”
“You seek assurances,” the Augur says. “I can offer you none. Breaking your fealty will have its cost, as will keeping it. Only you can weigh those costs.”
“What will happen?” I don’t know why I ask. It’s futile. “You see the future, Cain. Tell me. Better that I know.”
“You think knowing will make it easier, Blood Shrike,” he says. “But knowing makes it worse.” A millennia-old sadness weighs upon him, so consuming that I have to look away. His whisper is faint, and his body fades. “Knowing is a curse.”
I watch him until he’s gone. My heart is a vast chasm, empty of everything but Cain’s warning and a staggering fear.
But first you will be unmade.
Killing Elias will destroy me. I sense that truth in my bones. Killing Elias is my unmaking.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Laia
Afya gave me no time to say goodbye, to mourn. I slipped Izzi’s eye patch off, threw a cloak over her face, and fled. At least I escaped with my pack and Darin’s scim. Everyone else has only their clothes and the goods stowed in the horses’ saddlebags.
The horses themselves are long gone, stripped of any sigils and sent galloping west the moment we reached the River Taius. Afya’s only words of farewell to the beasts were wrathful mutters about their expense.
The boat she stole off a fisherman’s pier will soon be gone too. Through the sagging door of a mold-fuzzed barn in which we have taken refuge, I can see Keenan standing at the riverside, sinking the boat.
Thunder rumbles. A drop of sleet shoots through the hole in the barn’s roof and lands on my nose. Hours remain until dawn.
I look to Afya, who holds a dim lamp to the ground as she draws a map in the dirt while speaking to Vana in a low voice.
“—and tell him I’m calling in this favor.” The Zaldara hands Vana a favor coin. “He’s to get you to Aish and get these Scholars to the Free Lands.”
One of the Scholars—Miladh—approaches Afya, standing firm against her blazing anger.
“I am sorry,” he says. “If one day I can repay you for what you’ve done, I will, a hundredfold.”
“Stay alive.” Afya’s eyes soften—just a touch—and she nods to the children. “Protect them. Help any others you can. That’s the only payment I expect I’ll get.”
When she’s out of earshot, I approach Miladh, who is now attempting to fashion a sling from a length of cloth. As I show him how to drape the cloth, he eyes me with nervous curiosity. He must be wondering about what he saw in Afya’s wagon.
“I don’t know how I disappeared,” I finally say. “That was the first time I even realized I had done it.”
“A good trick for a Scholar girl to have,” Miladh says. He looks at Afya and Gibran, speaking quietly on the other side of the barn. “In the boat, the boy said something about saving a Scholar who knows the secrets of Serric steel.”
I scuff my foot against the ground. “My brother,” I say.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard about him.” Miladh tucks his son into the sling. “But it is the first time I’ve had cause to hope. Save him, Laia of Serra. Our people need him. And you.”
I look to the little boy in his arms. Ayan. Tiny dark crescents curve beneath his lower lashes. His eyes meet mine, and I touch his cheek, soft and round. He should be innocent. But he’s seen things no child