Author: Leah Cypess

Kestin stood up. His crown shifted backward on his head. “Why do you care? You’re Rael ian. You think the ghosts shouldn’t exist. Your thinking that is the reason the Guardian brought you here!”

You can pretend along with the rest of them, Darri’s voice whispered in her mind. Cal ie stared at Kestin. He was right. She didn’t think the ghosts should exist.

But they did exist; she knew that with a bone-deep certainty that Darri could never understand. She thought of Jano, of his bit erness and pranks, of the sly jokes that had helped her survive her first year here. She thought of Lady Velochier with her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. She thought of Clarisse, heady with her newfound power, fighting to remain in this world. And then she looked at Kestin, dead and regal, glaring down at her with eyes like black fire.

This was why the Guardian had brought Darri here. Because he had known Cal ie could never destroy her friends and acquaintances, people she had known for four years. People who shouldn’t exist, but did.

“You can’t let her do this,” she said.

“Yes I can,” Kestin said. “If you were dead, you would understand.”

She didn’t even flinch at that. She said, “I would. But not al of them do. Nobody is asking them if they want to vanish and be nothing.”

Kestin’s lips thinned. “Nobody asked them if they wanted to be here in the first place.”

Cal ie stepped back. She was wasting her time. He wouldn’t accept what she was tel ing him. Not when he Cal ie stepped back. She was wasting her time. He wouldn’t accept what she was tel ing him. Not when he had just accepted hope, for the first time after weeks of hopelessness.

He would come around to it eventual y; he was too smart not to. Maybe in a few minutes. Maybe in a few days, or weeks, or months. It didn’t mat er. She didn’t have that time.

“Al right, then,” she said, angry despite herself. “I’l stop her myself.”

She half-expected Kestin to try and prevent her, but the dead prince didn’t move or ut er a sound. He stood and watched, his eyes bleak, as she whirled and ran across the marble floor.

Chapter Nineteen

Varis’s first move, once he and Clarisse were alone in the cavern, was to retrieve his tunic and slip it over his head; not out of modesty, but because the simple, practiced movement made his hands stop shaking. By the time he turned to face Clarisse, he was able to appear perfectly calm.

Until he saw the stone shard in her hand, and realized what should have been the obvious answer to the question of who Clarisse was going to betray.

Both of them.

Clarisse lifted the shard and threw it. He whirled to the side, and the pointed stone whizzed past his ear and ricocheted of a rock. Clarisse knelt, picked up another, and stepped closer.

Varis drew his silver knife, and she shifted her hold slightly, so that she could use the stone to block a throw.

When he just stood there, the knife smal and useless in his hand, her lips curved into a smile.

“A dilemma, isn’t it?” she said. “Throw it, and you lose your only defense. But I don’t intend to get close enough to let you use it any other way, before I kil you.”

“I don’t think,” Varis said, “that you’re going to kil me.”

“You don’t?” she said, pleased. “Spirits, I’m good.”

Varis’s stomach twisted. You have no idea what she real y wants from you, Cal ie had said. “What would you gain? You have what you want. The Defender is gone, and the way is clear for you to be the leader of the dead.”

Clarisse’s smile was sharp and hard-edged. “That did work out quite wel , didn’t it?”

“Then why kil me?” Varis said.

Her eyebrows arched. “The correct question is, why not?”

“It’s not that simple. You tried to kil me before, on the hunt, and I don’t believe it was just because the Defender ordered it.” He risked a step toward her. She didn’t move back. “I think it was because if I was kil ed in Ghostland, my father would direct al his ef ort toward vengeance. Between that and the succession dispute, it would be years before we recovered suf iciently to cross the Kierran Mountains.”

Clarisse moved then, her hand tight on the stone; and for a moment he thought she had thrown it. He stumbled to the side before he realized that she had only raised it defensively, as if it was he who had thrown a weapon.

“And why,” she said, her eyes like green fire, “would I care about that?”

“You’re trying so hard to care about nothing,” Varis said, “that there must be something you real y do care about. Someone, would be my guess.”

She lowered the stone shard, just low enough to give him a clear view of her face. She was so furious she couldn’t hide her anger, and al at once he was sure he was right.

“I used to care about nothing.” She stepped forward, sliding her feet over the rough stone ground, until she stood right before him. “It’s not as easy as you would think, but I did it. I broke of al connections with everything I ever had cared about. I died, which was rather extreme but did seem to work. And then you came.”

He lowered his knife, not too far, but far enough that it wasn’t directly in her line of view.

“I didn’t even realize, at first, why I was so fascinated by you.” Her face went flat. “You’re something I’ve spent my whole life guarding against. A threat to him.”

He nodded. “To your brother.”

She actual y flinched. “How do you—”

Varis met her fierce, dead green eyes. “The portrait in your room. His daughter looks just like you.”

Clarisse’s eyes widened. She was motionless for almost a ful minute. Then she said, “Why would any of this stop me from kil ing you?”

“Because eventual y—sooner rather than later—we wil cross the mountains, and we wil conquer his land.”

Varis took a deep breath. His father was not going to like this. “If I am alive, I wil see to it that your brother lives. I swear. He and his daughter both.” He waited a beat, then added, “I say nothing about his wife, you understand.”

She wasn’t even pretending to breathe; her chest didn’t move at al when she spoke again. “You also say nothing about why I should trust you.”

“You’ve traveled through the plains. You know my people’s honor.” He lowered his knife al the way, and knew she noticed the motion, though her eyes never moved from his. “Al you have to do is let me go. I’l be out of your kingdom as fast as I can. And I’l see to it that your brother is safe.”

Something flickered in her eyes when he said “your kingdom.” She stepped back and lowered the stone shard, and he forced himself to keep his breathing even. “Al right,” Clarisse said. “We have an agreement.”

“Shal we seal it with wine?”

Her lips formed a straight line; wel , it hadn’t been a particularly funny joke. “However, it applies only to you.”

you.”

“Only to—” And then he understood. “No. Leave my sisters alone.”

“Too late, Your Highness.” She tossed the stone to the ground, and it rol ed into a dark crevice. “It won’t benefit me much to be ruler of the dead if neither I nor they stil exist.”

“What are you talking about?”

She blew out a short breath. “The Guardian brought you and your sister to this country to end the spel that keeps the dead here. I’m not going to let that happen.”

“I won’t let it happen,” Varis said. “I’l take Darri with me, as soon as I leave—”

“Too late, I’m afraid. After her dramatics during the dance, I assume she found out from the Guardian where she has to go, and what she has to do.” Clarisse lifted an eyebrow at him. “Why so distressed? She was never anything but an inconvenience to you anyhow.”

“She’s my sister.” He had no doubt that Clarisse was tel ing the truth: that Darri was down here in the caves, that she was trying to end the spel . And that she was about to die. “If you kil her, I’l tear this country down.

I’l grind silver into the soil. I swear it.”

Clarisse blinked at him, completely unconcerned. “Why? You don’t love her.”

“I don’t like her,” Varis snarled. “I do love her.”

Clarisse drew her lips back, and behind them, her teeth were curved into fangs. For a moment she stood poised, staring at him. Then she turned and walked right into the wal to their left. The hem of her gown was the last thing to disappear, a trail of violet on the dark rocks.

Varis swore loudly. He sheathed his dagger, then reconsidered and drew it again.

The spel ’s defense, the Defender had cal ed the fal ing stalactites. Which meant Clarisse had been leading him in the right direction. Her walking through wal s might have been just a flair for the dramatic, or a shortcut through these labyrinthine caves. And obviously, Darri was headed to the spel by some other route.

But if he kept going the way they had been headed . . .

He knew immediately that it was a foolish thought. He could so easily get lost. He could wander down here forever, and die where there was not even the faintest breath of wind to carry his spirit away. Already he felt the terrible silence closing in around him. His heartbeat sounded like the march of an army, somewhere far above where the living belonged.

Besides, there were probably other defenses. And even if he did get to the spel , he would be far, far behind Clarisse; too far for Darri to stand a chance.

He swore again and strode forward, kicking broken stones out of his way as he walked through the darkness and toward his sister.

Being dead, Cal ie found, had one more advantage she had only just discovered. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could feel it pulsing through the dusty air of the tunnels: the source of the energy that was keeping her here, giving her strength and wil , al owing her to squeeze through crevices and scramble over rockfal s and drop down a dark precipice without knowing how far below her the ground lay. Now that she knew the spel was there, she could feel a part of herself struggling against it, wanting to go . . . wherever it was the dead went. But the other part of her was pushing between rock columns and wal s as fast as she could, desperate to keep that energy from stopping. To keep herself from ceasing to be.

We could be what we were. Kestin’s voice sounded in her mind, over and over, impossible and impossibly seductive. Maybe it could be true. Maybe she should let Darri try.

But every time she thought it, every time she tried to believe that the irreversible could be reversed, she remembered her body in the water, a bloated, inanimate thing. And she knew, deeper than hope or fear or even despair, that it couldn’t be true. The dead were dead.

And maybe they should be dead. Real y dead. Freed from the painful pretense of living, from the fear of nonexistence that kept them here. Maybe Darri would be doing them a favor by ending their torment. Maybe Cal ie would be the one hurting them, if she tried to stop her sister.

Or maybe she would be saving them, to make their own decisions, one by one. Even if they would mostly make the wrong decision.

The source of the spel was a beacon, a tide in her blood. The passages Clarisse had led them through last time had curved and twisted; Cal ie was going in a straight line toward her goal, with a speed that would have been impossible had she been alive. Darri would probably be going aboveground, because the way from the lake was much simpler than the way from the castle. Despite Darri’s head start, Cal ie might beat her there.

She wasn’t yet certain what she would do if she did.

Chapter Twenty

The night air whipped through Darri’s hair as her horse emerged from the forest trail and broke into a gal op.