Then I hear an ear-blistering, eldritch scream. It goes on and on. The stained glass above cracks, the throne splinters. I clap my hands over my ears. Where is it coming from?

Me, I realize. I am screaming. Only it is not me, is it? It is something inside me. The moment I comprehend that fact, it feels as if my chest has split open. The dark light pouring from my body roars, as if freed after a long imprisonment. I try to stop it, to keep it leashed within.

But it is too powerful. I hear a rush of footsteps, see a flash of kohl-lined eyes. Coins tinkle—a sound I remember now. The headdresses of the Jaduna.

I have to run—I have to escape them.

Instead I collapse to my knees, and all the world goes white.

V: The Soul Catcher

 

The emotion that explodes in me at the sight of the Augur’s face feels unnatural. Like an animal, claws out, shredding my insides.

“I do not need your anger, Soul Catcher.” The Augur grabs my shoulder and yanks me toward him. I nearly slip in the driving rain. “I need you to listen.”

The ghosts sense Cain’s presence and shriek so loudly it sounds as if there are hundreds of them instead of just a few dozen. Mauth’s magic washes over me, dulling the screams and the cold, muting my anger. I force Cain’s hand away.

“You disturb the spirits, Augur,” I say. “The living are anathema to them.”

“Living! Is that what you call this?” His laugh rattles around his rib cage like a loose stone. “If only the Nightbringer had killed me when he obliterated the rest of my kin. But I escaped his prison and he did not see that coming, did he—”

“Escaped?” The jinn and I have avoided each other for five months. I have no wish to tangle with them now. “What do you mean escaped?”

“They will be here any moment. Listen well, for I have little time.”

“And I’ve none. You cannot be here.” My ire surges, almost incandescent, and I wait for it to fade, for Mauth to take it away.

But a few seconds tick past and I feel no rush of peace. Mauth? I call in my mind.

“Your master is otherwise occupied,” Cain says. “Battling a monster of his own creation.” The Augur’s mouth twists, and he glances over his shoulder, through the trees toward the mist-shrouded City of the Jinn. “The ghosts of our misdeeds seek vengeance. So I said to you long ago. And so it is. Our wrongs return to haunt us, Elias. Even Mauth cannot escape them.”

“Mauth is not good, nor evil,” I say. “There is no right or wrong with Death. Death is death.”

“And death has chained you. Do you not see?” Cain’s skeletal fingers crook toward me, and the jinn grove fills with a strange light, gold but with a shadow at its heart.

At first, it’s too bright to see the source. But when it fades, I blink and catch the impression of thousands of ropes snaking around my body, binding me to the earth.

“You must escape this place. Tell me, Soul Catcher, what do you see when you dream?”

The warrior, the cold woman, and the gold-eyed girl flash through my mind. My hands curl into fists.

“I see . . . I . . .”

An eerie howl rises from the City of the Jinn. A wolf, I’d have thought, if not for the undercurrent of primeval rage. Others join it to create a hair-raising chorus and Cain stumbles toward me.

“The jinn have my scent,” he whispers. “They’ll be here soon. Listen well. You see a war, yes? An army breaking against a wave of flame. Beyond, fair blossoms blanket the ground. Above it all, a hungering maw. A maelstrom that can never be sated.”

“You’ve been tampering with my mind.”

“You think Mauth would let me into your mind, boy? He has you caged and chained, locked away. I did not give you the dreams. You see them because they are truth. Because some small part of your old self lives within you yet. It screams to be free.”

“The Soul Catcher does not care for freedom—”

“But Elias Veturius does,” Cain insists, and I find I cannot move, hypnotized by his use of that name. My name. My old name. “Elias Veturius yet lives. And it is imperative that he live, for the Great War approaches, and it is not the Soul Catcher who will win it, it is Elias Veturius. It is not the Soul Catcher who is an ember in the ashes, it is Elias Veturius. It is not the Soul Catcher who will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. It is Elias Veturius.”

“Elias Veturius is dead,” I say. “And you are trespassing. The walls of the Waiting Place exist for a reason—”

“Forget the walls.” Cain’s face is feral. “For the ghosts, there is a greater threat. There are forces more powerful than death—”

The howls sound again, clear even through the downpour. Mauth’s magic will protect me—already it rises around my body, a shield against the jinn.

But the jinn do not concern me. My duty is to the ghosts, and if something threatens them, I must know what it is. Questions flood my mind. Questions I need answers to.

“What do you mean ‘forget the walls’?” I yank the old man toward me. “What threat do you speak of?”

But he looks over my shoulder to the figures emerging from the dark, their eyes burning like small suns through the curtain of rain.

“He belongs to us, Soul Catcher.” The voice that speaks is sibilant and heavy with rancor. One of the jinn steps forward, a glaive in her hand. “Return him,” she says. “Or suffer our wrath.”

VI: The Blood Shrike

 

Princess Nikla has not fled to her quarters. No alarm bells sound.

Instead, she strides down a long hallway toward where I lurk. The massive, carved doors of the state dining room—where she is not supposed to be—are across the hall from me and the ebony staircase I’m waxing.

There are a dozen Martials working in the palace, the Beekeeper told me. You won’t be an anomaly, but keep your head down. I’ll send the wights when Laia has done her part and Nikla’s in her quarters. They’ll take you to her.

When Laia says she’ll do something, she does it. I hope to the skies she’s not dead. The Delphinium Scholars will have my head if anything happens to her.

Besides which, she’s grown on me.

My pocket rustles—the wights bringing me a scroll. I crouch, as if I’ve seen a scratch on the banister, and read the hastily scrawled message.

Keris Veturia in palace.

 

I hardly have time to comprehend how the Commandant got here—and how Musa’s wights missed it—when the Princess approaches. She halts before the dining room, not ten feet away. Chatter leaks from the closed doors. Once she’s inside with all those courtiers, she won’t emerge for hours.