The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1)(65)

The bugs shifted beneath me when I sat up and pulled off my mask. Small, hard bodies dropped out of the silk.

As far as I could see, there was nothing but long-legged bugs covering the ground. They half buried the houses and stores, all the remnants of this town. The lake, too, was spotted with patches of bugs floating on the surface, obscuring the reflection of morning sunlight.

Morning sunlight. It had been afternoon when the swarm descended, but now it was morning. How long had I been unconscious? Where was my horse?

My breath grew short as I scrambled to my feet, shaking grasshoppers from my clothes and hair. Something scraped my throat when I inhaled—and my stomach flipped. I gagged and spat grasshopper legs until there was nothing left and my mouth was raw.

“What did I do?” The words tasted sour. This was wrong. All wrong.

Adrenaline buzzed through my limbs as I dropped back to my knees, bugs crunching beneath me. Ferguson was missing, and at least one night had gone by.

I’d done this. I’d shouted for the air to save me, and it had, but now there was nothing to touch, nothing to put back to sleep. The wind had done as I’d bidden, and now it was gone, leaving behind thousands of dead locusts.

And me. Alone.

“Oh, saints.” I’d never prayed much before, but this seemed like a good time to start, with the mountains standing in the distance, so far away now that I’d lost my horse.

Strange, though. The mountains were sharply defined with sunrise and shadows in the contours; yesterday they’d been obscured by the wraith. The sky, too, was bright and empty, and a lovely shade of blue. The haze was gone.

The wraith was gone.

The whole village was like the reflection of Mirror Lake: as normal as the Indigo Kingdom.

Frantically, I dug through the grasshoppers at my feet, finding my notebook and other things I’d been carrying. With everything tucked into pockets or my belt, I waded through the drifts until I found the house where the people had been trapped. The door was blocked, but the windows were still uncovered. I peered inside.

Everyone lay dead on the floor.

Released from their prison, they’d dropped into broken heaps; if they hadn’t truly been dead before, they were now. Even the woman who’d blinked at me—maybe—had that stillness of lifelessness.

I wanted to be sick again, but there was nothing left in me.

It was time to go. The information I’d already gathered would have to be enough. With a horse, the trek had taken six days. Without, it would take much longer, especially considering I had no food or water—which I’d left hooked into a ring on the saddle—or even a change of clothes. If I didn’t reach West Pass Watch and meet up with the caravan again, I’d never make it back to Skyvale in time to keep Melanie from following me out here.

Clutching my few belongings, I stumbled through the dead insects and aimed myself at the mountains.

The wraithland was different now, at least this part, and it was certainly because of what I’d done, though my brain was too sluggish to sift through the facts.

I just had to stick to what I knew: if I didn’t get back to the Indigo Kingdom, Melanie would come after me, the Ospreys would erupt in chaos, and Aecor would have no queen.

If I didn’t make it out of the wraithland—even this seemingly tamed wraithland—everything I cared about would be lost.


I pushed myself to walk through the near-freezing night, stopping to rest only when the quarter moon set and I had to wait for daybreak or risk losing track of the road. I shivered inside my jacket, which was suddenly too thin for this journey. I’d never be warm again.

My feet throbbed and my hips stiffened. My stomach felt hollow and my mouth was so dry that my lips cracked. When I finally stumbled over a stream, I didn’t even worry about whether it was wraith polluted; I just stuck my head in the fast-moving water, gasped at the cold, and sucked up as much liquid as I could.

A few minutes later, I vomited up all the water I’d just drunk.

I tried again, this time slower, and my head began to clear.

Everything hurt, and any time I closed my eyes, the prickling sensation of locusts returned. I scratched at my arms and neck, rubbed my face red, but the memory never abated. There was no way I’d sleep, maybe ever again, so I drank my fill of water and returned to the road. I had to keep moving to stay warm.

The mountains grew in the distance, but not quickly enough. Though I walked through the night, using a small branch to help me keep my balance, I never seemed to get closer to my destination.

With luck, mostly, I caught a squirrel my second day out of the locusts. Its fur was of a normal color and it seemed to be a normal size.

I gathered up a small pile of twigs and peeling bark, then speared the squirrel with another stick.

I had matches in my pocket. There were only two, but I needed to eat now. Carefully, to keep from spoiling it, I struck the match and lit a curl of paper on fire, then laid it across the twigs to let them catch. I cupped my freezing hands around the fire, pulling in its warmth until it was big enough to cook with.

The squirrel was the best thing I’d ever eaten. It was gone by the time I realized I should have saved some for later, but I felt stronger, so I fed the fire more wood and went hunting.

Any real hunter would have laughed at my methods, but I managed to catch two trout and snare a few rabbits—a miracle, as far as I was concerned. After checking to make sure they weren’t visibly contaminated with wraith, I cooked them all and hovered by the heat of the fire before pulling myself up and throwing dirt over the embers. Sitting in the meager heat and marveling over the thought of food wouldn’t get me back to West Pass Watch.