Corinne Duyvis - Otherbound

The oldest message was Dad’s. Nolan read it in between unwanted blinks to Amara’s world. Pat saw you run. She cried onstage. Come back, Nolan.

Then another one, sent ten minutes later. Tell us you’re all right.

Five minutes after that, Mom had sent one, too. Nolan, where are you?? We’re not angry. We’re worried. Please come back. We’ll call Dr. Campbell, Ok?

He texted them that he was safe, then texted Pat, I’m sorry about the play. And everything. Are you Ok? He wanted to explain what was happening, but his fingers hovered uselessly over the phone. Nadi might take over again and know exactly what he told Pat—

—so he went back. He clung to Amara’s world with all his might, from the books in her hands to the storm cover over the window. The pool would close soon, and he couldn’t afford to be woken up.

He’d never thought he’d try to get sucked in again.

Hours after his arrival at the palace, Nolan heard two short, sharp wails in the distance. The sign Amara and Ilanne had agreed on. The mages were ready to attack.

Nolan knocked on the door, then creaked it open. In the hallway outside his room, an unfamiliar guard looked up from her solitary card game. One hand went to her baton.

“May I talk to Ruudde?” Nolan signed.

“I’ll pass on a message. Anything else?”

Nolan shut the door. He counted on Nadi considering him a top priority. He was right: within minutes, Nadi stood in the doorway. “If you or Amara have another brilliant escape plan, don’t bother. I’ve placed a ward around the palace. No one crosses without my knowing about it.”

Nolan masked his reaction. Wards would make the mages’ job harder. Distracting Nadi just became even more important.

“So, what is it?” She straightened her topscarf. “I do have a job aside from babysitting you, kid.”

“Can you explain what we’re waiting for? I thought you wanted us gone as soon as possible.”

“We’re arranging a boat. Storms over the Gray Sea are slowing us down.”

Backlash. Or Ilanne buying time to gather the other mages. Judging by the signal from before, she’d been successful. Now Nolan just needed to keep Nadi busy while the mages infiltrated the palace. He needed to give Ilanne as much time as possible with Cilla.

“Is Cilla all right?” He didn’t have to feign his concern.

“Of course she is,” Nadi said irritably. “We’d need you if she weren’t.”

Nolan nodded, and he wondered how those movements came across now. Were they his or Amara’s? He’d never controlled her body this long. He didn’t know if he was becoming more like himself or more like her. Then—

—then Amara’s body sagged. Just for a moment. Just long enough for her breath to be delayed by a half second. Just long enough for Nolan to know he was running out of time.

Their roles were shifting.

When he regained control, his head felt light and the world alien. He grasped at straying thoughts and bundled them together. He had to keep going and keep up his part of the distraction. “Is Cilla eating?” he asked in a burst of signs.

“We’re not giving her much choice,” Nadi said. “Your pills are fading, aren’t they?”

What did “not much choice” mean? A third spell on top of the curse and anchor, massive spells to begin with, was unthinkable. Nadi had to be threatening her. Her favorite weapon.

“May I see her? It’ll help her to know Amara’s here.”

Nadi sighed. “You’ll see her when you leave together. But it might help, and it’s better to do it while you’re still in control.”

Nolan followed her to the cells, where Gacco stood guard. How long had it been? Did Gacco know anything beyond “keep the cursed girl alive at all costs”? If Nolan told the guards about Cilla, that could be another way to distract Nadi.

Those thoughts faded once Nolan saw Cilla in her cell. She sat on her mattress, reading a thin book. Her face looked slimmer, her normally round cheeks sunken closer to the bone. Her eyes looked deeper and darker. Her arms had thinned, too, traces of knobs visible around her wrist and elbows.

Nadi had said Cilla was eating. It couldn’t be much.

Nolan lost control for another second. It wouldn’t be long now.

“You brought her back,” Cilla said. The book slid from her hands. Next to Amara, Nadi shot forward, but the book landed safely next to Cilla’s feet. “You made a promise.” Cilla’s voice was weaker than before, but no less accusatory. “You said you wouldn’t—”

“Things change.” The words nauseated him, but he needed to stall. Jorn always took too long to notice his wards when he was in the inns, drinking his beer and cheering at long-legged dancers, so maybe if Nolan kept Nadi busy enough, she wouldn’t notice the mages intruding, either.

“Happy?” Nadi said.

Nolan spun. “You threatened my sister,” he said, flat and quick. He didn’t say it just for the sake of a distraction. He needed Cilla to see he’d had no choice. He shouldn’t care what she thought of him, but he couldn’t spend a lifetime in Amara’s body and not share her love and hate and more. “Of course I’m not happy. But I’ll do what I need to.”

“Wonderful.” Nadi seemed ready to leave.

“After I saw you that night, I kept reading my journals. I discovered something.” He took a deep breath, filling Amara’s lungs. “Your family is running out of money. They can’t keep up with the medical bills to keep you on life support.”

Nadi took a moment to let that sink in. “Nicely played. So you think I’ll go back to Earth to try to keep myself alive longer, and then you can—”

“No, no, no.” Nolan’s hands flapped at the air. “I talked to your family.”

“And how did you do that?”

“Nadia Trudeau.” It took a long time to spell the name, but Nolan finished it, down to the closest Dit version of the e-a-u letters that’d trip up every last person in this palace. He kept his eyes on Nadi.

“There’s no way for you to—”

“I talked to your son,” Nolan lied. “Jermaine misses you. It’s been over a decade since you left.”

Expressions flitted over Nadi’s face, too faint for Nolan to pin down. Nadi had said this world was worth leaving her family for, but that didn’t mean she didn’t miss them—or her life. She’d renamed her palace for a reason.

“He lives in Cape Town.” A guess. The article never mentioned it. But it meant more to talk about, more names to spell, and every second counted. “He has a daughter. Simona.”

“My sister.” Nadi still couldn’t settle on an expression. She stared at the ground, jaw set, eyes blank. “They were always close. He named her after my sister.”

“Simona’s two now. She likes”—what did two-year-olds like? The website gave him only so much to work with. Nolan thought back to seeing Pat grow up—“playing with plastic planes.” There was no word for planes in servant signs or Dit. P-L-EE-N-S, he tried, using the phonetic spelling, and said it out loud as best he could.