He felt a pang of sympathy now, but that was only because the two of them were so isolated here, and because soon she would be gone forever. Far too soon to patch up everything that had gone wrong between them, even if he’d had the time or inclination to try.
So he turned to go, and found himself staring at the dead prince of Ghostland.
Prince Kestin inclined his head. He was wearing a ridiculously elaborate outfit, purple and gold with an excessive amount of ruf les. “Your Highness,” he said, with a polite half-bow. “I was wondering if your sister was available for a walk.”
“She isn’t here,” Varis said. He had promised Darri that he would put a stop to this macabre pretense of a courtship; he could, at least, do that much for her. “In any case, I wished to speak to you about her.”
“To make sure I didn’t think I could stil marry her? She made that clear to me on her own.”
Varis flushed. “I apologize for any rudeness—”
Kestin smiled, with a bit of an edge. “What makes you think she was rude about it?”
Varis did not enjoy being toyed with. On the other hand, he had no interest in quarreling with the dead prince. Yet. So he merely smiled politely and fel into step beside Kestin as they started down the hal toward the central staircase.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Prince Kestin said, glancing at him sideways, “how the two of you ended up on the ghost hunt.”
Varis shrugged; now that the Guardian knew about them, there was probably no point in keeping the at acks secret anymore. “I was invited by a dead woman named Clarisse.”
The prince’s reaction caught him by surprise. Kestin stopped short, his face stark white. For a moment he stared at Varis, his eyes dark holes in his face; then he turned away, his shoulders knot ed.
“Your Highness?” Varis said cautiously.
“You’re sure it was her?” Kestin’s voice was clear and steady, though he wouldn’t turn to show Varis his face.
“No, never mind—don’t bother to answer that.”
Varis stood, not sure what to do, until Kestin swung back to him. The dead prince’s face was perfectly composed, no trace of redness or wetness around his eyes . . . could ghosts make those signs vanish?
“Forgive me, Prince Varis,” Kestin said. “Before she died, Clarisse and I were . . . very close.”
Varis had fal en in love only once—a long time ago, and with a girl so obviously inappropriate it made him blush to remember it. The girl had al owed him to court her, and had made the correct responses, but had never loved him back. He stil remembered the moment he had final y realized that, the abrupt transformation of fond memories into humiliating ones. He looked at the stricken expression on Kestin’s face and said nothing.
The dead prince turned away. “There are things I must at end to. We can finish this later.”
Varis watched him go, then turned and continued down the hal . Spirits, but things were tangled in this castle. He wanted the space and quiet of his room so he could work it al out. It was time for him to make his next move, and that would have to be careful y planned.
But when he final y opened his door, wanting nothing more than to drop onto the bed and let the world go away for a while, he found Darri waiting for him.
She was sit ing cross-legged on his bed, wearing a dark green dress and an expression that suggested she was no happier to be in his room than he was to find her there. Varis considered ordering her to leave and imagined her reaction. He sighed heavily and closed the door behind him.
“I need your help,” Darri said.
It had taken every ounce of wil power Darri possessed to walk into Varis’s room; when he wasn’t there, she It had taken every ounce of wil power Darri possessed to walk into Varis’s room; when he wasn’t there, she took a breath of relief and turned back toward the hal way. Then she stopped, one hand on the door, staring out at the long, dim hal .
It felt so familiar, as if she was looking at a cloudy night sky instead of dusty tapestries, as if she was thirteen years old and her sister ten. The only real dif erence was the empty ache inside her. She’d had hope, the night before Cal ie was taken away from the plains; even after al her plots and histrionics had failed, she had believed her sister could be saved. If only Varis would help.
And she had truly thought he would.
So she had gone to him and she had begged. It had taken half the night for her to realize that he wasn’t even considering helping her. He was humoring her request while he tried to talk her into accepting what had to be done.
She had sworn then that she would die before she ever asked her brother for help again. But then again, it wasn’t her that had died.
Her heart felt frozen solid, while her mind was a whirlwind: it kept returning to Cal ie, to what Cal ie was, to the translucent figure that had fled from her down the long dark hal . She had barely been able to take a complete breath since that terrible moment when she had thrown those coins at her sister. Al those years of planning and hoping and longing . . . and after al that, she had arrived too late. Her sister was dead.
Her sister was worse than dead.
They would never be together again, never ride across the plains; never laugh together infectiously, or lie together under the stars and trade whispers until sleep overcame them. Even her memories of her sister would be tainted now, forever overlain by the translucent horror in that stone hal . And it was her fault. She should have fought harder, bet er, to keep Cal ie at her side. She should have found a way to come here sooner, before . . .She bit the inside of her mouth, hard, until she was no longer in danger of crying.
It made her hate Varis even more, for his part in al owing this to happen to their sister. It was that hatred that made her shut the door and go sit on his bed. She knew that if she left, she could never force herself to come back.
Her plans were shat ered; there was no escape for Cal ie. But at the very least, Darri could save Cal ie from what she was now. If I avenge myself, Kestin had said, I wil cease to be. She would help Cal ie gain her vengeance, help her spirit tear free of its unnatural chains and become one with the wind.
The door swung open, and Darri straightened, the breath freezing in her throat. Varis stopped in the doorway, surprise wiping his face blank. That reprieve lasted for only a second; then he sighed loudly and leaned against the doorpost.
She had been prepared for his expression of resigned irritation. It pricked her pride al the same, and she had to force out the words she had come to say. They left a bit er aftertaste on her tongue.
Varis folded his arms over his chest. “You need my help? For what?”
“To find out why we’re being at acked.”
He dropped his hand to his side. “Ah.”
The dismissiveness contained in that syl able could have irritated a far more patient person than Darri.
“Don’t you want to learn what the Defender wants from us?” she snapped. “We don’t know where the next at ack wil come from. We don’t know how to defend ourselves.” We don’t know if he’s already succeeded in kil ing one of us.
Cal ie couldn’t have died much before Kestin, not if nobody in the castle knew about it yet; which meant that she, like Kestin, had died just about the same time that King Ais invited a new pair of foreigners into the kingdom. Cal ie’s death, Kestin’s death, the at acks on the Rael ians—those three things had to be connected.
Al Darri had to do was unravel the motives behind one of them, and she would have her answer to al three.
She hoped.
Varis didn’t move from the doorway. “I have my own ways of looking into it.”
Darri grit ed her teeth. “Believe it or not, I can help you. I know things that you do not.”
He tilted his head back, looking amused. “Such as?”
Darri hesitated. With just a few words, she could knock that skeptical expression right of his face.
But she couldn’t betray Cal ie to Varis. Not even after al that had happened—and no mat er what happened. The bat le lines between them had been drawn far too long ago. She bit her lip.
Varis unfastened his cloak and tossed it into the room. It landed over the back of a chair. “I’m a warrior, Darri. People have tried to kil me before. I’ve learned not to overreact to it.”
“They tried to kil your sisters—” Darri broke of . The sense of futility was so familiar she could barely breathe. “You would have cared once.”
Something flickered on his face—or, more likely, in her imagination. For a moment he looked like the brother she’d once had, who had wanted to protect her, who had cared what she thought of him.
Then he stepped toward her, his mouth grim, and the il usion vanished. But something was stil wrong.
Darri remained on the bed, even when Varis made an irritated gesture toward the door.
He was lying. Much as she hated her brother, wanted to think nothing good of him, she knew him too wel to believe it. He was a perfect Rael ian, and her people didn’t forget. Rael ians were taught that it was worth years of ef ort to avenge the slightest wrong. Varis would never let an at ack—on himself and his family—go years of ef ort to avenge the slightest wrong. Varis would never let an at ack—on himself and his family—go unpunished.
Darri pushed of the bed and stalked across the room. She shoved the door closed, then walked around Varis to face him.
“We’re going to take vengeance on al of them,” she said. “Aren’t we?”
Varis’s eyes narrowed faintly. Darri raked a hand through her hair, yanking through its tangles so hard it hurt.
“That’s the reason we’re stil here, even though Prince Kestin is dead,” she said. “If we can’t form an al iance, we’l find a way to conquer al of Ghostland. That’s why it doesn’t mat er to you which specific Ghostlander was behind the at ack.”
Varis smiled at her blandly. “You’re very imaginative, sister.”
But Darri, fol owing her own train of thought, felt herself go pale. “It’s not instead of an al iance, is it? Conquest was always Father’s plan. You would have had me marry Kestin if he was alive, to lul them into thinking we wanted peace. And then at acked anyhow.”
Varis looked uncomfortable, and Darri knew she was right. Her brother wouldn’t have liked that plan, but he would have gone along with it if their father commanded it. She took a quick stride forward, so that there were only inches between herself and her brother. “That’s why we’re being at acked; because some of the dead know why we’re here. They’re defending themselves.” His pale blue eyes looked down into hers. “You could have warned me.”
“I wanted to,” Varis said. And then, just as something fragile within her leaped into hope: “I would have, if I thought you could be trusted.”
“You’re the one who broke the trust between us,” Darri said, so viciously that she almost expected him to step back. Instead he shook his head, a sad, disappointed movement that made her want to hit him.
“Darri—” Varis began, but it ended in a choke. He pitched forward and slammed into her.
A sharp sizzle of pain ran across Darri’s neck. Her skin recognized knifepoint a moment before her eyes took in everything else: the ghostly shape that had exploded from inside the door onto her brother’s back, pushing him forward onto her. And the long dagger jut ing through Varis’s right shoulder, the tip of which had grazed the side of her neck.
Darri ducked under Varis and rol ed to the side, just in time to avoid the thrust of the second blade. She kicked up as she rol ed, connecting with the weapon in the now-solid hand. The dagger flew across the room and hit the wal , and Jano’s ghost tackled her.
She was ready. This time she wasn’t alone and unprepared in a dark forest. Darri thrust her legs upward with every bit of strength in her. Jano’s body turned to mist, but not fast enough; not before she had kicked him, sending him flying over her head. His hazy form went right through the bed board and halfway into the mat ress.