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  “I know you’re there.”

  There was a high pitch to the voice this time, indicating fear. But then the steps sounded again, and Mae’s heart sank. She was coming closer, and Mae couldn’t avoid her any longer.

  Instead of cringing in the corner like a coward as the shadows only half concealed her, Mae stepped forward into the center of the hallway and moved her hands so that the person with the worst eyesight in their family could more clearly see her.

  “Who are you?” Mae’s odious sister said as she strode down the hallway a little more confidently.

  She couldn’t see it was Mae thanks to the mixture of shadows over her face and brightness in her eyes from the lantern, but clearly, she didn’t sense danger. Mae saw her stride past the tome on the floor without so much of a backward step.

  “If you don’t answer me, I’ll bring the guard down this hallway straight away!”

  Not wanting a confrontation with anyone else, Mae sighed and said, “It’s me, Mae.”

  Her older sister sucked air through her teeth. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  “Maybe because I wasn’t interested in company,” Mae said.

  Emberlyn Darnes stopped in front of her with irritated taps of her foot, and Mae had to resist the urge to roll her eyes.

  “Could you lower the lantern, please? The light is going straight into my eyes.”

  “You shouldn’t be standing in the dark,” Emberlyn said in a bossy tone, but she did as Mae asked.

  Mae could see how this was going to before they had even formally greeted each other. It was the Darnes way—fight each other like rats within the holding and tear up anyone who sent any of them an errant look outside of it. It wasn’t just because of the combustive nature of the family itself that Mae thought that. It was because she and Ember got along like oil and water—or, rather, like oil thrown onto a cooking fire. If one of them was mad, the other was guaranteed to push the other into a rage far higher just by being themselves.

  It was a gift.

  And in many ways, it was just what Mae needed.

  Even though Ember didn’t seem to notice the rapidly drying tears on her face, Mae could feel the sorrow she had been experiencing just before it rapidly turned into frustration and anger.

  Anger was good. It took away the softness and left only the hard exterior, capable of taking attacks and turning them into change.

  So, Mae swallowed harshly and greeted her sister, even though it almost choked her to do it—at the very least, she owed her sibling that.

  “Fair morning to you, Ember,” Mae said.

  Ember grimaced. “It’s certainly an early one. I don’t know about fair; did you hear those screams?”

  Mae shifted, at once feeling awkward and angry, but this was family she was talking to. It was all right to discuss the wasting sickness with Ember, even if it felt distasteful.

  “Yes,” Mae said in a clipped tone.

  Ember didn’t let the perfunctory answer dissuade her. “They were screaming for seventeen minutes straight last night. And I counted the time I heard one pause until the other started back up again, and it was twice. I…I couldn’t sleep after that even though I was bone tired.”

  “We all were,” muttered Mae.

  “I wish they’d shut up then,” Ember said flatly.

  Ember was just rambling, but Mae’s fist was balling up in fury as she heard her sister prattle on about their illness. On one hand, Mae didn’t think Ember meant to be callous, but it was just the way she voiced things. Every interaction was analysis and observation with her. To the point that their parents sometimes had to instruct her to enjoy the moment before it passed her by.

  Half the time that went over Ember’s head, but this time, Mae wasn’t sure she could just stand by.

  “You know why they were so loud last night?”

  “Loud?” Mae asked, almost choking on the word in rage. “They were screaming because of the pain, Ember, because of all of that dark energy descending on their tiny frames like a lightning cloud, and they had nowhere to run.”

  Ember seemed to snap out of her analytical state at that moment. “I-I just meant…”

  “What?” Mae snapped.

  Ember gave a deep sigh. “I’m sorry…it’s my way of coping sometimes. To parse everything down to information so it doesn’t feel so…personal.”

  That Mae could accept. Her way of coping was by working herself into a state of tiredness, and Ember’s was by dehumanizing the problems. Mae didn’t like it, but it wasn’t her brain trying to stay sane in this madhouse at the moment.

  In an effort to change the subject, Mae asked, “What do you want, Ember?”

  In her head, she was thinking how this was the worst person who could have come down that hallway, other than the grandmother Maeryn stole the tome from. Ember was not only unusually observant, of actions, not emotions, but she would almost assuredly tell their father’s mother of Mae’s misdeeds when she got the chance. That was part of the reason Mae didn’t like her.

  The other reason?

  Well, they didn’t get along. Her and Ember. If Ember loved riding, Mae loved walking. If Ember hated her family nickname—it was a diminutive form of their names assigned by their elders on their first naming day—Mae loved hers. They’d been like this since childhood, and almost every conversation ended in confrontation. It was well known that if you heard a shouting match in the Darnes household, there was a good chance it was the two eldest siblings going at it.

  Mae flicked her thick braid over her shoulder and assumed a confident expression. If there was one thing Ember always sensed like a predator in the water, it was fear. And Mae did fear something—discovery. Knowing she had something to hide if she was going to have any hope of pulling off her plan, she eased herself forward—careful to ignore her hidden goods in the shadows—and plastered a smile on her face. Maybe if she set Ember off balance, this would go the way she wanted…for once.

  So, Mae tried to project acceptance, if not outright happiness, as she looked her sister over.

  “What do I want?” Ember said. “Well, I want a prosperous holding, but at the moment, that doesn’t seem to be happening.”

  Mae rolled her eyes. “How about we start with a simpler question, then—why you here in this hallway?”

  To her surprise, Ember didn’t answer. She fell uncharacteristically silent. Mae wondered if it was trick to make her nervous, or maybe it was another coping technique of her sister’s. A way to put together an acceptable answer without seeming too weird. But Mae had the feeling that it was more than that. Instinct told her that, and she always went with what her gut was telling her. In addition, there was the fact that goosebumps were rising along the back of Mae’s neck. Which left Maeryn Darnes wondering if it was something even more daunting.

  What if it was the worst thing she could imagine?

  What if it had already happened while she stood foolishly in a hallway like a limpet?

  Confidence cracking, Mae said, “Tell me quick—it’s not the girls, is it?”

  Ember sucked in a breath. “No, of course not.” She didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause, because she knew what it meant when a relative asked something like that…and Mae hadn’t heard the screams ever since she’d first become aware of Ember’s approach. It might have only been minutes before, but that was long enough for someone to pass from this world to the next, and the healers would have immediately sent runners off in all directions to gather the family to pay their respects before death rites were passed.

  “Do you know anything else?” Mae asked gruffly, trying to will back the depressing emotions that were spiking now that she wasn’t arguing with Ember anymore. She knew that anger had been good for something. Apparently, keeping sorrow at bay was one of its many talents.

  “No,” Ember said. “They’re the same as far as I know. I just left them an hour ago.”

  Mae nodded. Ember might have been callous at times, but she did her duty—f
or family. Including bedside stays. Knowing she had seen them recently gave Mae some relief. She may have despised her sister but she trusted her on this matter, because neither was willing to play around with the other’s emotions when it came to the possibility of death in the family.

  There were some things you didn’t joke about or hold back information on. And that was one of them. They all were on tenterhooks about the girls’ fate anyway. Any more drama would be like setting a tinderbox on fire with no water nearby.

  And Maeryn Darnes wouldn’t put her family through even more pain. Even though she and Ember were like oil and water, Mae knew that their blood bound them in ways only individuals from the holding could understand.

  So, she reached out a hand to press flesh in the traditional greeting.

  It was up to Ember if she wanted to take it.

  Mae waited a moment and was about to drop her hand, but then she felt the responding pressure of her arm being gripped and released by Ember as her sister met her halfway.

  Mae licked suddenly dry lips, but she made a concerted effort to try doing this differently.

  “So you’re not here for me?” Mae said hopefully.

  “Nope,” said Ember.

  Swallowing anything she wanted to say about Ember appearing where she wasn’t wanted, Mae asked suspiciously, “If the girls are good and you’re not here for me, then what brings you all the way back here?”

  Mae was hoping Ember didn’t notice her slick way of rephrasing her original query about the task at hand. Ember was smart, but Mae had her own ways of getting information. She wouldn’t be in a back hallway reading a stolen tome if she didn’t. So, she waited for Ember’s reply and wondered if it would be another evasion.

  Ember didn’t disappoint her—she was just as a sneaky as the last time. “Just passing by.” Perhaps even sneakier as she studied Mae’s face with a sharp look that belied her tone’s casualness.

  Mae knew that look well. It told her that Ember had found whatever she saw particularly interesting and had zero desire to move on. Not without getting whatever it was she came for.

  Which was just Mae’s luck. Ember’s favorite game was hassling her, and asking her to just leave wouldn’t work. It’d just egg Ember on. So Mae had to hope that being as dull and uninteresting as possible could trick her cat-like sister into getting bored enough to pass on by of her own volition.

  It had to be a day that the stars aligned to make that work, though.

  As the silence stretched on too long, Mae asked, “A bit out of your way, though, no?”

  Ember gave a soft snort. “Not really. I like to study the architecture of our holding when I get the chance, and as you know, our home is the oldest on site, which makes it a particularly beautiful subject to wander around in.”

  Mae’s mouth twitched, but she couldn’t really say Ember was wrong.

  That was the other disturbing reason they didn’t get along: Ember spoke like honey dripped from her mouth. She’d be lying straight to your face, but she did so matter-of-factly and with such truths woven in that it was hard to see the lie…unless you knew her.

  And Mae her knew Ember so well. They were only two years apart, but it might as well as been a decade. Different personalities and approaches to living, even though they’d been raised by the same set of parents.

  Mae wanted to give her sister the benefit of the doubt at times, but she had learned over the years that sometimes even that was too much. Still—people in glass houses really shouldn’t throw stones, and Mae certainly had her own predicament right now.

  She couldn’t confront her sister about her shadiness when Mae herself was desperately trying to hide a forbidden tome she had lifted from their elders’ sanctum without permission. No justification in the world would work to explain away her ill-gotten gains.

  3

  Mae elected to divert Ember’s attention more and perhaps get her sister to move on.

  “So you’re looking at the architecture,” Mae said nervously. “Find anything interesting?”

  “Very,” chirped Ember with the beady-eyed gaze of a bird swooping down on its prey. Apparently, she had regained her focused intensity and could see that Mae was stalling for some reason.

  Perfect, Mae thought miserably. Just in time for me to lose my courage.

  Perhaps if Mae had just walked off down the hall, Ember wouldn’t have been tipped to the fact that something was off, but Mae couldn’t just leave her sister in the hall with her most prized possession. It wouldn’t even take Ember a minute to spot the badly hidden tome in the corner. Not the way Mae had just shoved it across the floor, and now that meant Mae was stuck here trying to keep her sister’s attention from wandering off her while desperately hoping she would leave, which she didn’t seem inclined to do. Meanwhile, Mae’s back was still to the wall, and she felt sweat begin to roll down her neck. She was still trying to project confidence, but it was hard to do when your older sister was staring at you as if she could pull your secrets out of you by peeling off your skin bit by bit. As if noting Mae’s nervousness and reveling in it, Ember flicked the hand holding the lantern, making light momentarily flare in Mae’s eyes and throwing her off balance just a bit again.

  “So sorry,” Ember said as Mae quickly turned her head away to get the glare out of her eyes. When she turned back after blinking away the spots dancing in her vision, Mae watched Ember warily.

  It was another piece of movement that seemed like it could have been a mistake. But Mae would be a fool to think it hadn’t been intentional.

  “I’m curious now that I see it, though,” Ember said in a too-cheery voice.

  “See what?” Mae asked as her heart jumped in her throat.

  What if she saw the tome? she wondered, horrified, not sure what to do or how to get out of acknowledging it.

  “Well, your tea and scones, of course,” Ember said. “Seems a rather strange place to have a morning meal.”

  Mae blinked in shock and then turned to look at the small plate she had discarded on a ledge, at just the right height for Ember’s lantern to pick up the glare of the plate.

  “Oh, right, that,” Mae said. “You know me. Sometimes I like to get away from it all.”

  “Right,” Ember said, sounding almost convinced. “Well, this is certainly a place to do it.”

  Mae shrugged.

  “Well, I’ve got a bit of work to do myself. ‘Idle hands make trouble for all,’ as they say, and we wouldn’t want that.”

  “Oh no, we wouldn’t what that,” Mae echoed weakly. Ember was still hesitating, and even though she had remarked on the breakfast Mae had long forgotten about, there was something else up her sleeve, and Mae could feel the trap was closing in but wasn’t quite sure how to maneuver around it.

  Her sister didn’t hold polite conversation for just any reason. She had something on her mind.

  As if to answer her unvoiced question, Ember jiggled a basket that Mae only now noticed was on her back. The shoulder straps were hidden by the folds of her outercoat.

  “The washing is going to take a while, but I’m prepared,” Ember said lightly with a false sincerity.

  “Of course,” Mae said. “Are you taking the shortcut through the backways to get to the old washroom?”

  “Yes,” Ember replied. “It’s less crowded than the new one by the sickrooms.”

  Mae’s eyes flickered once more to the basket on her sister’s back. It looked barely half-full, and she’d eat her shoe if dear Ember hadn’t come this way in search of her. But she couldn’t prove that. She just knew her sister’s favorite game was to hassle her, and Ember’s eyes always lit up with an eagerness for trouble when Mae was around, so it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to assume the worst.

  But that was all it was—an assumption.

  Wanting this interrogation to be over, Mae said as meekly as she could, “Well, I’ll just let you be on your way.”

  “Hmm, yes,” Ember replied. “But I haven’t yet asked you…”<
br />
  She trailed off, leaving her words ominously unfinished.

  “Asked me what?” Mae said.

  Ember smiled. “What brings you this far off the beaten path?”

  Mae looked around as she thought about an acceptable answer.

  “Well?” Ember said.

  Finally, Mae replied with a shrug, “I was just looking for some solitude…you know, with all the healers in our home plus the family, it’s getting crowded out there.”

  “That’s true,” Ember said slowly. Then she began to tap her foot on the hollow wood floors, and Mae practically jumped out of her skin. She wondered what was next.

  When will she move on? Mae thought desperately.

  Apparently not that soon, because Ember continued to study Mae with all the patience in the world, and cornered, Mae couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “What do you want, Ember?”

  Ember cocked her head with a suspicious look in her eyes. “I can’t just stop when I see a sister?”

  “Drop the act. You know and I know that you’d have no time for me unless you were up to something.”

  “What?” Ember asked with a politely shocked gasp.

  “Spit it out,” Mae barked.

  Ember’s eyes narrowed into a glare. “You don’t talk to me that way, you little brat.”

  “Ah, there’s the sister I know and love,” Mae said dryly.

  Ember huffed. “Well, if you’re going to insist on dropping pleasantries, and I was just beginning to enjoy having a civil conversation, we can do that.”

  It didn’t escape Mae’s notice that the longer they talked, the more confident Ember became, and the more vocal her objections were to Mae’s answers. If Mae could look into Ember’s mind, she would be fairly certain she would see anger flaring, and that anger changed the quivering, analytical mind to a sharp-toothed, sassy hoyden with fangs.

  If anyone had asked Mae, that was what she would have said, anyway.

  No one asked. Instead, she continued her conversation with her sister that was rapidly drawing down on what little patience she had. At least Mae wasn’t tired anymore; there was that. She was just irritated.