The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(35)

His arm went straight through Min’s chest.

She looked down in shock, a strangled noise emerging from her. When the man withdrew his hand, Min half expected something to happen . . . What, exactly, she wasn’t certain. Would there be a gushing wound where his arm had been? Would her body disappear in a puff of gray smoke?

Instead: nothing. The second guard lit his cigarette with a match produced from inside his jacket and eked out a low moan of satisfaction.

Min looked down at herself, heart pounding, half a hundred stupid children’s ghost stories flickering through her mind. She didn’t look any different than normal. She reached down and pinched herself cautiously, and felt the customary jolt of pain.

Only . . . she waved her hand in front of the second guard’s eyes, just to be certain. No response.

Behind her, a girl laughed, rough and throaty.

Min whirled around just in time to see a flash of white robes disappear behind the groundskeeping cottage that stood at the edge of her courtyard.

This time she didn’t hesitate, running after the glimpse of this unknown girl.

She was well ahead by the time Min managed to round the cottage, but for the first time Min could see her: a slight figure, running across the footbridge so lightly she seemed to float. Her long ink-black hair that was bound in a tight plait down her spine and her simple, gray-white robes were of an unfamiliar cut that struck Min as both foreign and old-fashioned. In her wake the girl left the scent of vetiver and wood smoke, and something that struck Min as the smell of stone—but no, that was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

“Wait!” Her voice tore from her, but the girl did not so much as turn; she just crossed the footbridge and then abruptly turned off the path.

Min caught the barest glimpse of a pale, narrow face, like the sliver of a new moon. The girl’s eyes were large and dark and unbearably sad, contradicting the low laugh she left hanging in the air as she disappeared into a building. It was only then that Min stopped and realized where she was.

The old shamaness temple loomed high over her.

Min felt an odd certainty then, that she could still turn around, could still wend her way back to her apartments, slip past the guards and down the hall, past where Butterfly and Dove and Snowdrop and Tea Rose were gossiping, could slip back into the soft silks of her bedding and close her eyes and pretend this was all a strange dream. But that would be a lie—she knew this in her heart.

She moved toward the vacant temple.

And felt a sudden flare of heat upon her chest, so fierce that it nearly took her breath away. She looked down at the crystal pendant from Yunis, Set’s gift, and saw it clearly for what it was: a sign.

The unknown girl had left the temple door ajar. Min looked at that black gap and swallowed hard, feeling a trill of fear in her chest. No, not quite fear—anticipation. Excitement. Was this what Lu felt when she broke the rules? Was that why she smiled so brightly when she did it?

Min stepped into the dark.

It was cool inside, which might have been a relief from the summer heat were it not so musty. She blinked, willing her eyes to adjust, seeing nothing.

As if in response flame flared to life in the next room and Min followed it, no wiser than a moth drawn to a candle. When she turned the corner, she found the unknown girl sitting there, just as she somehow knew she would. The girl knelt on a silk pillow, tending a brazier and humming contentedly, as though she had been waiting there all morning just for Min to arrive.

“What do you want from me?” Min asked, her voice somehow both timid and much too loud in the silence.

The girl looked up, and for the first time Min could see her properly. The wan face she had glimpsed earlier wasn’t exactly pretty up close but striking. A face like a fox, or some other feral thing.

The girl smiled.

“I have a gift for you,” she told Min. And yet her lips did not move in accordance with the words. Rather her voice seemed to at once seep from the walls of the dark room and emanate from within Min’s own head.

Who are you? Min wanted to ask. But something in the room—perhaps the musky odor of whatever herb the girl was burning in her brazier—was making Min sluggish, as if she were walking through water. Her head felt woolly and soft.

“You look tired,” the girl said, again without speaking. “Please, sit.” She gestured to where another silk cushion had appeared on the opposite side of the brazier.

Min stumbled forward and all but collapsed to her knees.

“Let me help you.” The girl was at her side, though Min could swear she had never seen her move. She held out one small hand and Min took it, grateful. When she clutched it, she felt a jolt move through her arm, straight to her heart. It felt at once like a burn, and yet cold, so cold.

“Who . . . ,” Min began, but her eyes were fluttering closed.

“When I was a boy, I sometimes wondered how I would die.”

Min blinked. It was her father’s voice. And there—there was her father, lying in his silken bower of pillows, far below her. Min gave a cry—she was in her father’s bedchamber, and she was floating. Hovering in the air just below the intricately painted ceiling, like a spider suspended in an invisible web.

The girl was beside her, still clutching her hand. When Min met her eyes—somehow so familiar, that deep, earthy brown flecked with spangles of gold and copper—the girl raised a finger to her lips to gesture for silence. Then she grinned, as though they were just two naughty children waiting for a joke they’d played to unfold before them. Min clamped her mouth shut, though she sensed somehow her father would not be able to hear her, even if she were to scream.