The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(48)

Without meaning to, she took a step forward so they were eye to eye. The boy glared back with steely resolve. Lu was pleased to find she was slightly taller than him. “What is your contention with me? What did I ever do to you?”

The boy laughed in her face. It sounded like a bark, spare and hard and devoid of mirth. “What did you ever do to me? What did . . . I’ll tell you—”

Omair banged his cane on the floor. “Enough, enough! Nok, I am sorry, I know you must see this as a betrayal of sorts, but I will be going north with Princess Lu. Please try to understand. She is correct—our lives will not be better seeing Lord Set on the throne.”

Then he sighed and cast his eyes out the window. The sun had set since they had arrived, Lu saw, the sky a middling cobalt blue, wavering uncertainly between twilight and darkness. Omair turned to her. “Princess,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to my apprentice alone. We can go out into the garden.”

Lu shook her head, glaring at the Ashina boy as she turned on her heel toward the back door. “No,” she said. “I’ll go. Far be it from me to displace anyone from their home. Again.”





CHAPTER 16


Known

Nok clenched his fists, watching the princess storm outside. If only she were leaving for good.

“I’m sorry.”

He turned and saw Omair regarding him sadly.

Nok swallowed. “For what?”

“For keeping the truth from you.”

“You never lied to me,” Nok said flatly. “I didn’t want to know anything I didn’t ask for.” Perhaps, he thought belatedly, Omair had taken advantage of that. Well, if so, he’d been a willing collaborator.

Omair was studying his face. “I saw . . . I saw your caul,” he said finally. “Magnificent. Have you ever done it before?”

“No!” Nok said immediately. “No, never. That was the whole . . . it was shameful that I couldn’t. I was the son of a Kith father and I couldn’t caul.”

“And yet, today, you did. How?”

“I don’t know,” Nok sighed, running a hand through his hair in agitation. “First I had this strange experience in the woods—”

“The Gifting Dream?”

“I suppose that’s what it must have been. But after that . . . I couldn’t control it. It came and went of its own accord, really fast.”

“Can you try now? Just to see if you can will it.”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Nok repeated doubtfully. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine the feel of the caul descending upon him, soft as snow, warm as sun. Tried to imagine pacing the earth with massive paws, black-blue hair sprouting over his shoulders and all down his back . . .

He opened his eyes, shaking his head. “Just now, back in the forest, I think I sort of was able to force it, but maybe that was only because my life was in danger.”

Omair considered the logic of this. “And you were in danger the first time as well?”

The memory of the Wangs’ dogs snapping at his legs flooded Nok’s vision. “Yes,” he said, nodding. “But it kept hold of me even after the danger was gone. I only came out of it after I found—after I saw the princess.”

The wolf had been looking for her, he remembered with an unpleasant jolt. Seeking her out.

He didn’t share the thought with Omair, but the old man seemed to hear it anyway. “And how did you find her?”

“The princess?”

“Yes.”

Nok didn’t have an answer for that; he didn’t want one. He didn’t want to think about her at all. Omair raised his eyebrows at Nok’s silence but didn’t press the question.

“Your Kith must have passed down ways to control the caul, from generation to generation,” he said instead.

“They did. But children learned it from the elders upon receiving the Gifting Dream. No Gifting, no initiation.” Nok barked out a laugh. “And now, there’re no elders.”

“Do you remember anything about the labor camp?” The question was gentled by the softness of Omair’s voice.

Nok hesitated. It was nothing he wanted to think on, but he couldn’t refuse Omair. He closed his eyes, trying in earnest to recall that time. See it fully, for the first time in four years.

They killed his sister first.

That small, soft-spoken man had entered their barracks. If he had a name, he didn’t share it, only introduced himself as the camp’s healer. He was accompanied by two soldiers armed to the teeth and carrying lanterns. Nok and Nasan had shared a bunk—the room was overcrowded, piled high with crying, unwashed children. Half of them didn’t speak any common languages, but they were all united under the imperial slur: slip-skins. Most were ill, coughing and shivering with fever in their bunks.

The healer ignored them, though, only stopping when he reached Nok and Nasan. A soldier had held a lantern up to their faces. “That’s the one,” the healer had said. “The girl.”

Nok’s hands shook, recalling how tightly he’d clung to her, how she’d dug her fingernails into his arms and bared her teeth—her blunt, all-too-human teeth—and fought. She’d always been the fiercest child in their Kith. But how could the fists of a child compare to batons the soldiers brought down upon their hands and faces, separating them blow by blow?