will were a wide lake in the sun, slowly evaporating at the edges until one day there’d be no will, no force, no drive, no anger left. She’d be empty.
And all because of Crier, because of the way she made her feel, the way the sensation of being looked at and thought about—thought about kindly, with a tenderness and curiosity that Ayla simply could not abide. It shook that thing that had made Ayla who she was for so long. That survivor instinct. That hunger for Crier’s blood on her hands, to make things equal. Justice. Revenge. It had been the only force keeping Ayla alive, and now this fluttery anxious sweetness that brewed in her was ruining that, was taking it away from her.
She didn’t know what to do.
They had to move forward with their plans soon, before Ayla crumbled entirely.
But now, that was all ruined, too, because today was the day she and Benjy had agreed to meet Rowan, and now Ayla was going to be gone for, what, another three days? And who knew the next time she’d be able to sneak away to meet Rowan?
She felt desperate, and alone, and had no one to ask for advice. She couldn’t—gods forbid—talk to Benjy about this. And even Rowan, who’d been almost a mother to her . . . it would be far too great a betrayal to even admit what was going on inside her head—inside her heart.
She wanted to punch something. She wanted to shatter one of the windows and fly out into the road, to run into the woods, to escape. To run forever. To be free of this—whatever it was. This closeness. Crier’s eyes. Her knees. Her thoughts. It was as if Ayla could feel Crier’s thoughts, like soft caresses in darkness, and . . .
Stop thinking about her. Ayla closed her eyes, trying to tune out this feeling, to focus instead on sorting through everything she’d discovered and learned over her weeks at Crier’s side. It felt like sifting sand through her fingers, looking for flakes of gold. She’d seen so much, and still there was so little she understood. Information like stars. She was trying to form a constellation.
She thought about the green feather from Storme. What did it mean? Was it sort of like a secret password, proof of her trustworthiness, something she could show to the queen’s guard if she ever needed an audience with her brother? She thought about the sun apple crates filled with vials of black dust: What did it do? Was it anything like heartstone? She knew only that it came from Kinok.
And now Crier herself was wearing his black armband—why?
Stop thinking about her.
Ayla thought about Storme.
And that was, somehow, even worse. The pain still fresh and raw as it had been one week ago when she stood in the corridor and silently begged him to love her again, to tell her the truth, to stay. But she hadn’t been able to say any of that aloud and it didn’t matter because he hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t been willing to.
In some ways, she’d spent the last week wishing he’d stayed dead, the way he’d been in her mind for so many years.
Storme. The boy she used to know, her twin, her bright-eyed brother, shining in her memories and then gone. Then: the man he had become, right hand to the leech queen, exploding back into Ayla’s life with all the force of a powder bomb and then, like a powder bomb, leaving nothing but wreckage behind.
How was it possible that she’d had him again but only for a day?
It was fitting that Crier had kidnapped her for a mourning tour. Ayla was in mourning. For Storme—and for her necklace, too. The last connection she had to her family, to her mother, and she’d lost it. But most of all, she mourned her former self, the girl who’d had the will of a never-ending fire. The girl who would burn and burn forever until she’d destroyed all the pain in the world.
Where had that girl gone?
She found herself touching the spot over her sternum where the locket usually rested, that old habit. Her neck felt lighter without the chain and pendant, but in a bad way, an aching way, as if someone had cut all her hair off. Lighter, but missing the weight.
Instead of touching the necklace, she reached into the pocket of her uniform and brushed her thumb over a different object: the key to the