Chapter Eighteen

Lefeli all but screamed when she spotted us, and after knocking me to the ground in an overdramatic embrace, she wiped her eyes daintily and stood, dusting off her dress as if she hadn't just covered Jaren’s blanket—which was wrapped around me—in mud. She then proceeded to tell me that Evyne and Atlas had gone down to the river to search for me and the moment I finished introducing Jaren and his offer to Lefeli, we were off down the ravine to find them.

I pulled Jaren along by the hand as if his long legs couldn't already keep up with mine, which were still awkward and numb and tangled between two layers of skirts leaden with water. More than once I tripped over myself and Jaren had to catch me, which rekindled memories of when Atlas had done the same thing back in Tremie’s dress shop. I thanked him meekly and kept sprinting down the decline until I heard the rushing water of the river fill my ears like bubbly foam. I soon after sighted two figures crouched on the riverbank handling something between them.

“Evyne! Atlas!” I shouted over the distance and the splashing of the river.

Before I reached them, though, the memory of my night spent on the riverbank flashed across my mind. I still didn't know whether or not Atlas—or Evyne, for that matter—had stolen my mother’s necklace, which thumped now against my collarbone like a reminder of the words she’d warned me with about whom to trust, and whom not to. Were they friends or enemies? How could I tell? All of this flew by me so fast, hitting me like an arrow to the chest, and then the moment was gone, the thought nothing but just that—a fleeting image haunting the recesses of my mind.

We reached the bank where the two of them sat, eyes wide in surprise, Atlas’ mouth hanging open, Evyne’s clamped tightly shut. Atlas’ eyes flicked confusedly between Jaren and myself, our hands still intertwined, but Evyne was the first to act by launching to her feet and thrusting a fist in the air, swearing loud enough I was sure Lefeli could hear it. “Where the bloody death did you traipse off to in the middle of the night?”

I realized just as soon that she had dropped the thing they were handling, which was Atlas’ sling, and though Evyne continued to furiously reprimand me, Atlas still struggled with the loose fabric, his attention switching between that and us for several seconds before he twisted his face and dropped the cloth.

“Who is he?” Atlas interrupted Evyne’s rant with a jut of his chin in Jaren’s direction.

I released his hand and let Jaren step forward; he was surprisingly unaffected by the run down half the mountain, a healthy tint to his cheeks the only noticeable result of it. “Allow me to introduce myself.”

Atlas audibly huffed and I knew he would have folded his arms had one of them not been injured.

Jaren continued. “My name is Jaren Leimattes and I travel under Madame Mylda Meeker, mistress of the Meeker House in Azareba, where we have offered to take Miss Ilyavei and her companions, if they would have us.” He smiled charmingly as if he held the very warmth of the sun and I glanced away, dazzled.

Atlas had narrowed his eyes during Jaren’s speech, but Evyne looked as if he had offered her a diamond-embedded coach ride to a gilded mansion in the city. “Yes,” she barked a laugh, slapping his shoulder with a sturdy hand. “We would absolutely love to hitch a ride with you to Azareba.”

“Lovely!” Jaren’s smile brightened even more.

“Atlas,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral as I stepped beside him, “do you need some help with your sling?”

He glared at me. “No, I don't. I have it perfectly under control.” He plucked one end of the sling and tossed it over his shoulder, then attempted to do so with the second end and knocked the first one down into his lap again. He cursed under his breath.

Jaren gave me a glance to signal his trip back up the mountain and I volunteered to tag along. As I passed Evyne she put her hand to her mouth secretively and whispered, “What a ruddy knockout! I underestimated you, Domina Capiendas.”

She smirked and whirled around before her words could sink in, then she was already helping a grudging Atlas tie his sling as it dawned on me. Domina Capiendas, the Lady Temptress, was a popular Latin lovers’ tale of the woman who stole the handsomest man’s heart and sewed it to her own using the red twine of fate. When she sewed the heart of a second man to her own and the twine snapped, the woman dissolved into the earth to become one with the land on which her lovers still trod. Risu fatum est scriptor, they called it. Fate’s laugh.

I shuddered and followed Jaren through a patch of trees, unwilling to let it get to me. But when we made it back to Lefeli and our now packed luggage (and Birdy, whom Lefeli had fetched from her spot in a clearing), we had to wait nearly twenty minutes for Evyne and Atlas to catch up to us. Both of them had an entirely different air about them, too, that lifted the hairs in the back of my neck and put an end to whatever conversation I’d been trying to keep with Jaren and Lefeli.

We all traversed the rest of the incline in a tense chorus of crunching leaves and Lefeli’s nonstop chatter, the rest of us not so much as uttering a word until we reached the path to the road and Jaren’s face lit up. I saw him visibly let out a breath of relief.

“Allow me to lead the way,” he hummed, and practically ran up the rest of the way to the road.

I had to nearly sprint to keep pace and Lefeli, not much shorter than myself, was trying desperately not to stumble. I noticed she still managed to sport a petite smile, but even that dissipated like vapor when she saw the ostentatious carriage awaiting us. Her peachy skin paled dramatically and she looked as if she’d seen a wolf.

Evyne, on the other hand, had happily dropped her veil of silence and laughed in approval. Beside her, Jaren stood grinning like a proud mother.

Atlas, however, had not dropped his dark atmosphere. He seemed irritated at the sight of such glamor, from what I collected of his expression. Or maybe it was something else that bothered him.

“Come along now, little forest children!” Miss Mylda’s ancient voice rattled from inside the carriage, and her pickled hands soon pressed up against the glass, her eyes brimming with a smug pride almost like Jaren’s but haughty. “'Tis still three days yet to Azareba!”

“Yes,” Jaren stepped forward and opened the door for us rather expressively. He had already packed our bags in the storage compartment without my noticing. “Let’s be off, shall we?”

Evyne hopped in first—a little too eagerly, I thought—and I went in next. My wet boot slipped on the metal footstep and Jaren braced me, elegantly, politely, until I got in the coach. The interior was a cushioned blue matching the exterior decorations and a window on the other end of the compartment let me see the side of the mountain like a large rocky wall obstructing the view of the rest of nature.

Lefeli, for whatever reason, had become even more ghostly pale by the time she climbed into the carriage. Her gaze was locked downward and she had wrapped a blanket around herself protectively, her eyes wide and overwhelmed. She sat and looked as if she would cry.

Since the carriage was full with us three girls and Miss Mylda, Atlas opted to ride alongside us with Birdy—”I can, in fact, guide a horse one-handed, thank you very much!”—and Jaren took the driver’s bench on the carriage, urging the two of their horses forward. The vehicle started with a jerk on the trail and a surprised grunt from Evyne, then we were off on our three day carriage ride, leaving the wreckage of our cart still lying at the bottom of the ravine.

The day was long and strenuous, the constant lurch of the carriage no condolence to the fact that I was one of four people who were trapped in what I soon found out was a two person vehicle. And how was I supposed to know? I’d never been in a carriage before.

That night, we finally made it out of the mountain range and I let out a long sigh, staring out at the flat forests that still stretched out across the vibrant, rocky horizon. Soon after, we stopped to give the horses a break and I got out to stretch my legs and free myself from Evyne’s impatient sighs and Lefeli’s contagious discomfort. Miss Mylda had fallen fast asleep the second the carriage had started moving, but listening to her wet snores wasn't my preferred means of keeping occupied. I slipped behind a patch of trees away from the road.

Looking upward, the sky was a chasm that seemed to ripple like an inkwell dappled with soft, twinkling stars and my welled-up unease melted away as I sat on a log, swimming in the vastness of its shadows. The trees outlining the sky reminded me with a pang of my cottage back in Esterwilde, of my living room, warm even in the dead of winter; the desk in my bedroom, always covered in layers of unfinished writing; the wooden table and the early mornings, surrounded by nothing but my porcelain mug and the rays of sunshine streaming through the windows. I could hear the birds whistling, the gentle rustle of the trees, the distant bubbling of a stream somewhere in the wood.

But I wasn't at home. I was a hundred miles away from Esterwilde, stuck with a cursed book. Of course. It occurred to me as suddenly as if I had been dunked underwater.

The book.

I jumped to my feet and strode back to the carriage where Jaren was tending to one of the horses and Evyne sat nearby, plucking absently at a small lute.

“The book,” I demanded, harsher than I was intending, and both of their gazes snapped to me, startled. “The cursed book,” I said again. “Where is it?”

“Are you seriously going to search for it when you've been wanting nothing but its riddance for this whole merry time we've been on this trip?” Evyne almost laughed, but with a bitter undertone. “Let it come to you.”

I stayed put for a moment, unsure of what to think, then I sighed and started toward the carriage again as Jaren began asking Evyne questions about the book—I’d forgotten the fact that he’d never seen it.

When I hopped into the compartment, as sure as day, the cursed book sat on the bench where I’d been earlier, its ink black letters seeming to leap from the leather. Perhaps they were; I didn't know. All I knew for sure was that the new passage I was positive had appeared in the book in my absence would bring no better a cure to the curses than the five people dead with arsenic in Fairlay. At this point all I could hope for was mercy from its scripted writing.

Mercy or, perhaps—I read the Latin phrase with no way of knowing its meaning—a magician from Azareba.