Page 128 of Witchshadow
Girl.Vivia had not been a girl in so long. Not since Jana had died. Not since she’d been left with a parent who bragged and boasted and convinced the world with his charm that he was one way… while none of his actions spoke the same. He’d fooled all the admirals of the Royal Navy, all the generals of the Royal Soil-Bound. He’d fooled Lovats. He’d fooled Vivia.
She’d always believed his self-flattery worth emulating. That such confidence was something to aspire toward. But tucked within the constant crowing were pointed insults.Jokes,he would call them, though Vivia never laughed.Advice,he would proclaim, though Vivia never learned.Concern,he would insist, though Vivia never felt loved.
She glanced at Vaness, held the Empress’s dark, earthen gaze. Vaness wasn’t perfect, but at least she was her own person. Her own well-honed blade of steel tempered by herself and those she ruled.
“I am not turning myself in,” Vivia said at last. “I am queen, and a queen must be free to help her people.”
A beat passed. The faintest curve hit Vaness’s lips.
Then Serafin replied: “If only Merik had not been the one to die.”
The Voicewitch’s magic ended. The man’s eyes shuddered, his breath loosed, and the ship’s boy gripped him steadily. But already the man’s lips were parting in horror as he realized what he’d just said.
Shanna’s neck muscles tensed and bulged. The ship’s boy stared at anywhere but Vivia. And Vaness…
The glint in her eyes had changed from amusement and pride, from approval and admiration, to something made of daggers. She, like the others, clearly expected Vivia to erupt. Or perhaps to cry.Somethingafter words as hateful as the King Regent’s. But for once, Vivia felt no anger or grief. Gone was the churn in her gut and the sense that she was falling. It was as if some final mooring had been released. Now her ship was free. No anchors, no barricades, no shoals to block her way. Now the little foxknew.
Vivia smoothed at her salt-stiffened shirt. Then adjusted her collar. Then finally patted at the edges of her face. No mask now, for she was not a bear and didn’t need to be. Foxes had all the cleverness and wiles she could ever wish for.
“Contact the Dalmotti ships,” she told the Voicewitch. And then to Vaness, her mouth twisting sideways, “I think it’s time we turned ourselves in. But on our terms and as the Well Chosen you think we’re meant to be.”
Stix held Ryber’s hand and ran toward the center of the Ring. She didn’t know what else to do. The stall was in flames, the scaffolding and towers were in flames, and high-pitched squeaking filled Stix’s ears, lungs, bones.
Safety,she thought with each footfall.Safety, safety.She summoned ice to crack up around her and Ryber, but the heat was too strong. Each crackling shard melted almost as soon as it appeared, then puffed into steam and vanished.
So Stix tried freezing the rats instead, but Hagfishes take her, there were too many. For every ten she got, another hundred came rushing over, close enough that she could feel their footsteps vibrating into her teeth.
She and Ryber reached the center of the Ring, where the mud dipped to its lowest. A floor waited there—one Stix hadn’t noticed the day before with the lake atop it. Now, there was no missing the ancient flagstones, northe orange tabby sitting at the heart. Red-furred and ragged, she licked her paw, grooming as if nothing of interest happened around her.
Stix had never minded the six-fingered tabby, but in that moment, she hated her. “Help us!” she shrieked. “Isn’t this what you were made for? Here are all the rodents you could ever want to destroy—”
A rat leaped onto Ryber’s leg. She yelped and whirled around, leg flinging out. But it wasn’t the only rat. Three more had reached her and were climbing up with fangs out.
Stix blasted ice onto the beasts, but they thawed almost as quickly as they froze. Kahina’s heat would not be denied. Ryber fell. Stix fell too. Their hands came apart, and Stix thumped back first onto the muddied flagstones. She punched and kicked and wriggled at rats, and she banged against the stone.
Once. Twice. Thrice. On what would have been the fourth bump against the wall—as two more rats leaped toward her face—Stix hit the stones… And then sank through.
Darkness swallowed her. Ryber screamed, and the world of the Ring vanished around them. They plummeted for what felt an eternity, her stomach stretching long and her brain crushing inward.
Then Stix hit more stone, and Ryber crashed down beside her. Rats landed atop them, so Stix kept kicking and punching and wriggling. One landed beneath her fist; she felt its skull crunch. Another went flying off her when she finally grabbed its scruff and threw. And the last, still attached, suddenly screamed and fled when a light flared.
Stix screamed too, more burst of sound than actual scream. She expected guards or Kahina and flames and more rats, but in the several moments it took for her vision to adjust, she found neither. It was simply a Firewitched lantern, ancient in style and strangely familiar, revealing a small stone space around them.
Stix and Ryber lay at one end, and at the other was the orange tabby, looking very pleased by the rat now dangling from her mouth. The other rats were nowhere to be seen, save the two Stix had crushed. They rested, bloodied and dead, several paces away.
Ryber groaned, and Stix rolled to her friend’s side. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” Ryber waved her off, eyes shuttering as she took in the room around them. “Whatisthis place?” Without waiting for an answer, she crawled unsteadily to her feet.
“I don’t know.” Stix rubbed at her eyes. Without her spectacles, Ryber was a vague blur circling the room. “The voices refuse to speak to me anymore.”
A sharp huff from Ryber, though Stix couldn’t gauge if the frustration was aimed at her or at the voices.
“Listen,” she began, “about what just happened. I should never have made that deal with Kahina. You were right, and now the prisoners…” Stix trailed off. Ryber wasn’t listening, and not because she was angry—though she had every right to be—but because she was absorbed in exploring the room. As if none of the chaos from the Ring had just happened. As if she didn’t have a charred shirt or several braids singed at the edges. This was a new realm, new knowledge, and she was a scholar to her core.
“I’ve heard of these places,” Ryber murmured, awe rounding her words. “The Six made them. Secret spots where the Exalted Ones wouldn’t find them… And oh.” She clapped her hands to her mouth. “Come look at this.”
Though Stix really didn’t want to stand—her breaths were sharp and fast, her heart the dominant sound within her ears—she straggled to Ryber’s side, to where a stone relief filled one wall. It looked identical to a relief in the capital of Lovats, in the under-city that had first triggered the wretched voices to rise.
