Reign of the Fallen (Reign of the Fallen #1)(40)
I hold up my shaking, bloody hands and turn to find Valoria staring at me with a mixture of shock and disgust, her glasses reflecting the distant glimmering party lights.
“I came to find you because I thought you could help,” she stammers in a voice that’s slightly off-key. “My mother’s missing. Along with several other Dead who never turned up for the party. I’ve been looking all night, and Hadrien’s too busy to . . .”
I lose the thread of Valoria’s words as I sway again. This time there’s no Hadrien or Jax to catch me, and when I fall to my knees, something slices through my dress. And my skin. It seems I’ve found my knife.
“Oh, Sparrow.” Valoria wraps her arms around my waist, trying to haul me to my feet, but I shake my head in protest. “I’m taking you inside. You need rest. And quite possibly a healer.”
The image of the maimed peacock feels like a gut punch. How did I get here, where I can’t tell the difference between a defenseless creature and a monster? Me, the girl who once tried to put the wings back on a trampled butterfly. The girl who coaxed reluctant plants to blossom in the convent garden. The girl so in love with life, she couldn’t harm a living thing.
I should be helping Valoria find the missing Dead right now, but instead, I’m shoving my head into a bush so she won’t see me heave up the contents of my stomach. I should be protecting the country I love and the Dead I’ve always guarded. I should console the worried princess who’s holding back my hair while I vomit all over the violets and marigolds.
Through the bewildering haze of too much potion and wine, the question nags at me: How did I get here?
For the first time, I’m glad Evander’s gone. Glad he can’t see how far I’ve fallen.
XIII
I open my eyes to a room blazing with torchlight and wide windows showing a sky as black as pitch. Pain rips through my head when I try to sit up, and someone presses a hand to the center of my chest, shoving me back down against the pillows.
“Drink this.” Valoria touches a glass of water to my lips and gently tips it until I’ve sipped about half the contents. “It’s only been a few hours. I’m surprised you’re awake already.” As she pulls a chair up to the bed—her bed—she opens her mouth like there’s something more she wants to say.
“What is it?” I gingerly check my face for crusted bits of vomit and dirt from the garden, then touch my tender right knee where the dagger kissed it. Valoria’s bandaged the wound, but even the light pressure of my fingers makes it ache.
The princess scoots to the edge of her seat, frowning. She cleans her glasses on her mint-green gown and still says nothing.
“Come on.” I manage to prop myself up on my elbows. The room spins like a pinwheel, complete with mesmerizing colors. “Out with it.”
“Fine.” Valoria sighs, meeting my eyes. “Evander Crowther is dead and gone, and no amount of drinking anything—say, too much wine, or certain potions meant to dull the senses—can bring him back.” She bends down to toy with loose threads on the rug beneath her chair. “But there are others here who need you. Two necromancers have been killed in the Deadlands. That never happens. And Duke Bevan went missing from his own province and reappeared here as a Shade.” She raises her glistening eyes to mine. “And now my mother and several other Dead, the nobility that you and Evander and your friends raised, have vanished. Something in Karthia reeks, but I can’t figure it out on my own. I need your help.”
I shake my head. “Look, Valoria. I don’t have the answers either. All I have is a score to settle and one nasty Shade waiting for me in the Deadlands.”
“Then you’re not who I thought you were.”
“Seems that way.”
Valoria rises to her feet, turning her back on me, and for the first time I notice the many curved shelves lining her tower room. She fusses with something I can’t see from here, but around her, I take note of coils of copper wire, ropes, odd silver bits, and what look like wood-and-metal arms and legs, complete with moveable joints.
I climb off the bed and approach a shelf that holds several strange glass balls with tiny wires inside. I bump one with my hand, and it fills with an orange glow that steals my breath and freezes me on the spot.
“It’s just a light,” Valoria calls from across the room. “I made them for my little sister. Ever since she saw the Shade at the Festival of Cloud, she’s been scared of the dark.”
I nod, backing away from the glowing ball, and something brushes the top of my head. I glance up to find a long and heavy-looking sack of fabric dangling from the vaulted ceiling.
“That’s my air balloon.” There’s a hint of amusement in Valoria’s voice. “Rather, it will be. It’s not finished, for obvious reasons. It’s not like I can take it into the gardens and tinker with it where any of the Dead might see.”
“Air balloon,” I repeat.
A chill spreads up my arms the longer I gaze around the cluttered room. My feet suddenly seem to have a mind of their own, carrying me to the princess’s side.
She stands by a table pushed up against the wall, gazing down at a tiny, perfect model of Grenwyr City.
“There’s Noble Park!” I point to houses that are hardly bigger than my thumbnail. “And the apothecary. And the Ashes. And here’s where we are now!” I tap a tower on one corner of the little palace, realizing when it wobbles that I could’ve knocked it over. I tuck my hands in the folds of my dress. “Valoria, this is amazing!” Unlike the metal arms or lengths of wire on the other shelves, the model city doesn’t frighten me—it inspires me. “Did you make all this yourself?”