“You don’t have to apologize,” I say. “You weren’t you. That creature, whatever she was—she was manipulating your mind.”
Kiran swallows, his molten eyes doused with sorrow.
We’ve moved caves since the incident with the shadow creature, for obvious reasons. Part of me wonders if we should have stayed in the old one. At least we knew we had killed the monster in that one.
“Does anyone have any idea what that creature was?” asks Evander, his copper hair still disheveled from the altercation.
Kiran pinches his brow. “She called herself Marthala.”
I frown. “Marthala? Like one of the three shadow sirens from the legends?”
Kiran nods.
Evander whistles. “Well, that explains why she wanted your heart, Blaise. Guess she didn’t eat a nutritious enough breakfast and needed a snack.”
Kiran gives Evander a strange look, like he’s not quite ready to joke about the creature that almost bent him to murder.
“The legends we’re told in Naenden say the shadow sirens tempt passersby with their darkest desire.” Kiran watches the flames he created for us with an intentness that causes me to wrap my blanket further around me.
“Yeah, they feed off murder or wickedness, or something like that,” says Evander, but then he frowns. “But I don’t think it’s true about the darkest desire part.”
Kiran raises a brow.
“Well,” Evander explains, “I don’t see how it’s a dark desire for you to want Asha to live forever with you. That seems pretty natural. And me…well, I don’t know that it’s so awful for me to wish I had my brother back.”
Kiran examines him. “Perhaps not. But perhaps it targets the desires we would flirt with the darkness to obtain.”
Evander blows out a puff of air, and he doesn’t seem to have anything to counter to that.
“How did you know?” I ask Evander. “How did you know Marthala was trying to trick you?”
Evander becomes focused on a loose button wobbling off the sleeve of his coat. “She just stretched the illusion a bit too far to be believable, that’s all.” He lets out a laugh that doesn’t sound a bit amused, but then he frowns and looks at me. “I wonder why she targeted both of us and not you.”
The muscles in my throat freeze as Marthala’s voice rings in my ear. I could bring him back, you know.
Kiran answers for me. “She seemed like she wanted Blaise’s heart. Something about you being a night stalker. I guess she valued you dead more than any wickedness you could commit.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it,” I lie.
Kiran goes back to staring into the fire, but Evander fixes his gaze on me. He looks like he’s about to say something, but then his eyes flick behind me, toward the mouth of the cave. A smile, bright and relieved, grazes his lips.
“What?” I ask, turning to find that outside, the snow has ceased.
“I think we’re going home, Blaise.”
A firm hand comes down on my shoulder as I perch my leg onto the wagon bed, about to step in.
I flinch.
Because it’s not Evander.
Kiran clears his throat and jerks his hand back to his side. “I just wanted to apologize again for harming you earlier. That Marthala creature was in my head, but Evander saw past her, so clearly that’s no excuse.”
I turn to face Kiran and examine the set nature of his jaw, the molten fire in his eyes. Only hours ago, I was pondering whether to ask him for help. Wondering if perhaps he’d see in me the same love he has for Asha, and have enough sympathy for me to help.
Thanks to Marthala, I now know the answer.
“No hard feelings,” I say, because it’s true.
Kiran and I are the same, but that doesn’t matter. Because when it comes down to which of us gets our happy ending, I know whose I’ll choose.
PART II
LIAR
CHAPTER 9
PIPER
I’ve always prided myself on being the most paranoid person in the room.
It comes with the territory—kidnapping children for a living from the ripe age of twelve tends to do that to a person.
It seems, however, that I’ve been displaced.
Lydia, Princess of Naenden, also known as the Umbra—though that’s supposed to be a secret—has usurped me.
The female wouldn’t drink a drop of nectar from a honeysuckle without first offering it to a stranger.
