Page 192 of Grim and Oro
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Enya says tentatively. We’re having tea in my mother’s garden. It’s our mothers’ shared birthday. Enya’s mother didn’t know her parents, didn’t know the date she was born, so our mothers picked one to celebrate together, just as they shared almost everything else.
“Who?” I ask, as if I don’t already know.
“The Wildling.”
I frown. “What about her?”
“She’s the reason you’re ... feeling again?”
I laugh without humor. “Yes, if that feeling is irritation.”
Lie. I bite my teeth against the flash of bitterness. It’s potent, as if my body is reprimanding itself. Enya looks like she can sense it too. Like she has my power. Though after hundreds of years of friendship, she doesn’t need it.
“You are working with her, but these are desperate times. You suspect she is planning against you. She is your enemy,” she tells me, as if I don’t already know. As if she’s reminding me.
“I am aware,” I say through my teeth. My eyes are on my tea.
“I’m worried about you.”
“You should be,” I say. “I’m dying.”
She sighs from across the way. “I’m serious.”
I lift up my arm, where the blue is showing. “So am I.” I take another sip of my tea. “And you ... are you?”
“Dying soon? No. Not yet.”
The truth of that is sweeter than the honey in my tea. That, at least, is a relief.
“So,” I say, eager to change the subject. “Do you want to help me track down a specter?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Why?”
“The ancient creatures might know where the heart of Lightlark is.”
“Haven’t you tried that before?”
I have. I’ve asked several. “They all said they know of it, but haven’t seen it recently ... The specter on Star Isle will know whether it’s there or not.” There are too many places with the plants Isla indicated to search in the remaining days of the Centennial. If we can get lucky and choose the right isle—or even eliminate one from consideration—it would help our search.
Enya winces. “I hate that specter.”
“I know,” I say, remembering an ill-fated meeting with her, centuries before. “She’s even harder to find now, if you can believe it.” I take another sip of my tea. “So? Are you in? Or should I ask Zed?”
Enya puts down her cup and grins. “Of course, I’m in.”
I watch the Wildling through a window, from far away, careful to avoid the slivers of sunlight peeking through the clouds.
She’s throwing blades at the wall. She’s angry at something.
I’m angry too.
Hours before, I learned about an attempt on her life ... by Moonling nobles. Calder was watching them, but their faction has many groups. By the time he learned of the attack in the broken harbor, all that was left were dead bodies, with a message scrawled in blood.
Try harder.
I might laugh at the Wildling’s wit, if I didn’t feel a stab of fear.
The nobles supposedly acted alone. But if Cleo was behind the attempt, she will be tried. This was against the rules. This was exactly the outcome I was trying to avoid by speaking to her.
