Reign of the Fallen (Reign of the Fallen #1)(14)
“I could say the same of you.” Evander leans close, breathing fast. “Even if you won’t admit it, you’re just like everyone else. Scared of what’s out there.” He sweeps his arm toward the sea. “Scared of change.”
“If that’s what you think, then you don’t know me at all.”
I leap to my feet.
“Odessa—”
Dodging his outstretched hand, I slide down the roof, taking care to not make a sound in case Lyda or Elibeth are sleeping restlessly. The patter of Evander’s hurried steps pursues me as I dash toward the guest room where I stay—seven years, and I’ll always be a guest. I change course at the last minute, ducking into Meredy’s room two doors away instead.
I sink onto the edge of her bed as I struggle to get control of my breathing, coming in ragged gasps. The faint scent of the clean, sparse room always calms my nerves, though I can’t explain why. It’s a mixture of cedar chips, vanilla, and something I can’t name. All I know is, it helps me clear my mind. I don’t want to think right now, about Evander, Nicanor, or sailing ships or anything else.
I haven’t seen Evander’s younger sister Meredy since she was ten, starting her mage training a year after Evander and I began ours. She’d be sixteen now, training to be a beast master like her sister.
Burying my damp face in Meredy’s quilt, I wonder if she’s freezing to death in one of the northernmost provinces, Lorness or Oslea, learning to understand and control the seals and winter-white foxes. Or maybe she’s down in Dargany Province, riding on a camel’s back. I’ve only ever seen camels in paintings, but I wouldn’t mind going somewhere like Dargany to experience new things. No matter what Evander thinks, I’m not scared of change—even if I don’t always like it. I’m scared of going someplace where I might not be the Sparrow, of not knowing who or what I’d be then.
Yet I wonder if some small part of me is afraid, too, that Evander is right about leaving. We only get one chance at life—what if staying isn’t keeping us safe, but holding us back? I wonder if I’d ever be brave enough to admit that aloud, much less to him.
After a while, I fall asleep and images blur together in my dreams: a bloodied Master Nicanor staggering through the icy tundra.
V
The last person I want to see this morning is Kasmira. But after waking with my face buried in Meredy’s quilt to find two of the Crowther maids gawking at me from the doorway, I remember I gave the last of my coffee beans to Princess Valoria yesterday. So I don’t have much of a choice.
I throw on a clean shirt, breeze down the stairs without looking to see if Evander is watching me from the parlor, and manage to dash outside before Elibeth’s hounds cover me in drool.
There’s not a cloud in the blazing blue sky this morning, yet there’s a bite to the wind that says it will soon be time for the Festival of the Face of Cloud, signaling the start of autumn.
My stomach growls as I hurry through the wide, cobbled lanes of Noble Park. Servants airing out their masters’ linens on sun-drenched balconies wave, bow, or curtsy as I pass. I wave back halfheartedly, unable to fully appreciate their enthusiastic greetings with Evander’s heated words from last night still echoing in my mind. The stricken look on his face when I fled the rooftop makes me wonder if I should apologize. But an apology won’t change the fact that we’re at an impasse when it comes to our future.
I pass a market on a lower hill where most of the royal family’s errand boys and girls do the shopping for the palace kitchens. The smells of saffron and sage make my stomach groan again, and I quicken my pace. Hopefully Kasmira has something edible on board the Paradise besides stale bread.
The way to the harbor takes me past warm yellow and pink stone buildings, their fronts wrapped with flowering vines, where shopkeepers live and work. Farther on, I pass a boarded-up temple for the Face of Change, its once-proud columns cracked and sagging. Someone has drawn Change’s likeness in black ink on one of the building’s vine-choked sides. It must be freshly done, as vandalism of this sort is promptly painted over or scrubbed away at the king’s behest. The image reminds me of Valoria’s necklace, and I wonder how she’s holding up since her trip to the Deadlands.
Next I pass the convent for the blue-eyed Face of Death, a cheerful white building with a sapphire-hued domed roof flanked on either side by an ancient, hunched cypress tree. Within its generous courtyard is a sprawling garden, larger than the convent itself, where a few of the sapphire-robed Sisters pick rosemary and prune their potted shrubs. It’s also where I grew up. If I wasn’t in a hurry to get my coffee before I have to meet Master Cymbre, I’d stop in for one of the Sisters’ famed fig-and-raspberry tarts.
I pull up the hood of my cloak to take a shortcut through the Ashes. The cramped, tumbledown houses are where the city’s poor reside, those too sick or weak to go work on one of the farms outside Grenwyr City, and those too addicted to their favorite potions to do anything but sit on the filthy street and beg for coins.
No matter how many charities King Wylding organizes for the poor, this place never seems to get any richer.
“Blessed day to you!” a little girl’s voice says as I step into the shadows of the battered homes. I push back my hood enough to see her and try not to cringe as my lungs fill with air that reeks of spilled ale, sweat, and rotten meat.