Corinne Duyvis - Otherbound

“Why would—” Nolan cut himself short when Jorn’s head snapped back. His eyes unfocused. The purple started to seep away from the bruise on his temple, the skin knitting up. Within seconds, the healing stopped, and Jorn was himself again.

“We don’t have long.” Nolan marveled at the taste of Dit in his mouth. It wasn’t like reciting sentences at home. Gacco’s body knew the words as well as it knew air. “Who cast the anchor spell?”

In his peripheral vision, a marshal stumbled toward them. She extended her arms, fingers straining wide as if to summon magic. The marshal wasn’t a mage, though. The air around her hands didn’t shift; the magic didn’t crackle. It told Nolan who controlled that body, though—Nadi, or the traveler who had possessed Jorn for so long.

And they were trying to attack Nolan . In all this chaos, that, not protecting Cilla, was their goal.

Nolan knew enough. He whirled back to face Jorn. “You?” he whispered.

Jorn had cast the anchor spell. They must’ve wanted him close to Cilla in case she fled. He could track her better than anyone.

Jorn nodded. His eyes looked different. Softer. He swallowed and hesitated in a way the Jorn that Nolan knew hadn’t done in years. “I—I know you have to—”

To—what?

Behind Nolan, more stones crashed to the floor. He recoiled, then checked over his shoulder. The possessed guard who’d been coming their way now leaned against the wall. Instead, Amara stalked toward Nolan and Jorn. She picked up Ilanne’s hooked blade and moved determinedly around debris and injured bodies, then dove sideways, avoiding another swing of a cell beam.

It wasn’t her.

A crack in the cell’s ceiling loosened more stones. One crashed onto Nolan’s hand and rolled onto the floor. He hissed, but even as his hand healed, he wrapped it around the stone to feel its weight. Heavy. And Nolan’s arm—Gacco’s—was strong. Nothing but lean muscle.

“Oh,” he whispered.

“Do it. Fix it.” Jorn’s voice was steady. His eyes weren’t.

“This isn’t what I meant. This isn’t …” But Nolan’s fingers tightened around the stone, rough and cold against his skin. He felt himself pried loose from Gacco’s body again, but he latched on, begging for a few more seconds. He needed to stay by Jorn’s side just a little longer. Jorn needed to stay himself for just another moment.

He looked at Amara, footlengths away now. She shouted something.

Nadi , Nolan thought with odd impassiveness. Something about the way she walked just screamed Nadi at him. He smiled anyway. It was still Amara’s face, her eyes. She still watched him from somewhere in there. He hoped she saw his smile. He hoped she knew what it meant, because he would never have the chance to explain.

Jorn’s tears welled up again, gathering in his eyelashes.

Nolan imagined him burning Amara’s hands. Hitting Maart’s grave with the back of his shovel. That made it easier.

Not fair, but easier.

Jorn trembled as he spoke. “I don’t want to—I’m—I’m s—”

Nolan brought the stone down, right on that purple, fragile bruise.

Jorn seized and spasmed and then, from one moment to the next, the room’s chaos died down and Amara’s body was her own again. The cell bars froze in place. Amara stumbled. So did a marshal down the hall; so did Gacco, who stared at the stone in his hand, then at the body he was hunched over. He dropped the stone and scrambled back.

Ruudde—really, truly Ruudde this time—pushed himself to a sitting position. His hands clutched his injured thigh. He looked around the room, blinking, dazed.

Three spells had been too much to handle. Killing Jorn took out two of them—the anchor spell and, by extension, the travelers’ presence. The room stopped trembling; the stones became stones again. Amara turned. Ilanne’s blade dropped from her hand.

Cilla stood in the center of the room. She had stopped healing.

“They’re gone.” Amara was the first to say it, signing carefully.

She didn’t move again. Neither did anyone else. Ruudde’s eyes shone.

Cilla’s clothes were drenched in blood, her skin still beaten. Every part of Amara screamed for her to run over and fix it, take the blood before the curse found Cilla, but she didn’t need to.

The world was silent.

And as they collided and their arms wrapped around each other and Cilla’s face buried itself in the crook of Amara’s neck, and Amara pressed her cheek against Cilla’s hair, the world stayed that way.

Ruudde ordered their tattoos removed. Cilla’s ought never to have been there. Amara’s … Amara’s was supposed to stay for years to come. Looking at her reflection to see her neck bare felt like cheating, and every palace servant she passed made her cheeks burn in shame.

She’d never dared fantasize about this the way Maart had. Now he was gone and she was left, and she almost wanted to say his name so he’d know she remembered him.

They stayed at the palace for two days to let Cilla recover from her wounds. Ruudde offered to heal her, but Cilla refused. Even with the last traces of her curse removed by the mage who’d cast it in the first place—he’d been on the palace grounds as part of Ilanne’s distraction—she didn’t want any more magic touching her. She requested a Jélisse doctor. Ruudde obliged.

Amara sat by the side of Cilla’s bed. All the beds in the guest rooms were open, not the alcoves she was used to. Those seemed safer. These seemed freer.

She remembered waiting in a room just like this, Nolan hovering in the back of her mind. She hoped he was all right. She hoped his family was safe.

“Are you disappointed?” Amara gestured at Cilla’s sternum, hidden by her topscarf.

Cilla sat cross-legged on the bed, bruised-black arms propped on her knees, and mused, “Those few days when I got to be the princess in public … part of me enjoyed it. Edo, Olym. People liked me. They finally looked at me like … It was finally real.”

“I thought as much.”

“But, no. I’m not disappointed. I was scared to death of having to rule, anyway.”

“You never showed it.” Absently, Amara ran a finger over the side of her wrist. It’d gotten scratched by accident. Cilla was right: scabs itched.

“I never wanted you to know. I couldn’t even get Jorn to do what I wanted; I would’ve made a terrible queen. Besides, I would’ve had to find some guy to have children with, and …” Cilla shrugged one shoulder and winced. “It wasn’t not being the princess that made me hurt myself. Yes, it was hard, thinking all my life I’m meant for something so big, so important, then having that snatched away, but it was the rest that screwed me up.”

She seemed better now. She seemed almost OK. Amara stayed silent, letting Cilla answer the question Amara hadn’t wanted to ask.

“When I cut myself, I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t know what else to do.” It looked as if Cilla wanted to keep talking, but she shut her mouth and took a few seconds to work up to her next words. They rushed out all at once. “What do you want to do now?”

Amara remembered what they’d talked about on Captain Olym’s ship. Diggers. Books. Silver. Eligon. Her parents.

Amara touched her neck, finding only smooth skin. She had gone from having no choices to having too many. What did you do when life wasn’t just choosing the lesser evil? What did you do when you were the only one to decide where to walk, what to say? She didn’t know where to start.