She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)

That evening, Anwei spread the tomb maps across her bedroom floor, looking up when Knox appeared in her doorway. “Has Noa come back yet?” Anwei asked.

“No. She said she’d meet us at the wagon tomorrow before we leave.”

“Interesting.” Anwei’s brow furrowed. “And Altahn? You dragged him all over the city today and he… did nothing?”

“He’s always there. When I’m awake. When I’m asleep. Watching.”

Anwei shrugged, looking back down at the maps. “You’re always welcome to sleep on the floor in here. So long as you don’t snore. And leave when I want you to.” Smoothing her hands over the vellum, she traced the bold strokes Lia had drawn. Walls, barracks, a side gate. The inner tomb, the traps she’d seen, and the cave beneath the drop that the aukincer’s son had been so sure of.

It was everything they needed. Everything they could get, anyway. There were probably more traps to reckon with, but they would get the shapeshifter, bleed the information they needed out of him, then kill him. Somehow. Arun would finally be avenged, and Anwei would be…

A pit opened in Anwei’s stomach. She would be someone new. Someone without a ghost chasing her ever deeper into the dark.

“Go over this with me one more time,” she said. “We drug Altahn and leave him with Gulya. Drug the goats.”

Knox flinched. “I’m still so confused about the goats.”

“We can’t look the same going out of Chaol and then coming back in.” She shifted forward, smoothing the map Lia had drawn of the dig. It was very detailed, with labels, arrows pointing out the more congested paths, and names on some of the cabins. Anwei’s fingers stopped next to a very small and cramped notation that read, Director Van.

She looked up at Knox. “We’ll meet up with Noa at the Ink Cay ferry launch. Take the wagon down the trade road dressed like workers headed up the coast. We leave the wagon by the road, sneak up to the dig, and distract the guards by burning the bael wreaths on the western wall. The main gates will be shuttered, closing everyone in—workers and archeologists alike—so no one will be able to get out once the panic starts.” Most people involved with the dig had been stuck inside the walls since the moment they arrived, according to Lia, including the director. Which meant the snake-tooth man would be stuck there with everyone else.

Knox crouched down next to Anwei, his arm brushing hers. Anwei automatically edged to the side to make room, but then stopped. He was the one who was touching her. He was the one who had been looking back at her down in the temple.

He moved away himself, his fingers glossing over the wall on the cliff side, the one they were planning to climb. “I’m not sure how Noa and company are going to handle this.”

“She’s excited about it.”

“A little too excited.”

Anwei nodded. “I’m not sure how seriously she’s taking any of this. It’s like she thinks she’s running away from home but could turn around and go back anytime she likes. Maybe she’s testing this life out to see if it fits.”

Knox licked his lips, glancing up at her. “I’m not complaining, but the last time she was involved didn’t exactly go well.”

“The ball? She did okay with the salpowder, though I suppose we didn’t ask her to do that.” Anwei looked down at the old floorboards, tracing the grain of the wood with her fingers. “I should be doing this alone. Then we wouldn’t need a huge distraction. I probably wouldn’t be going into the tomb at all, I wouldn’t need the gamtooth serum—this has all gotten so complicated.”

Knox snorted, a smile touching his lips. “You just don’t want to fix the sword for me, do you?”

“Fix the sword?” Anwei stared down at the paper, her eyes blurring. “What do you mean? How am I supposed to do that?”

“We’re going to get the shapeshifter to tell us how to let Willow out of the sword, and then you…” Knox looked at her, his chin jutting forward. “Anwei, how else did you think this would work? You said you could get the shapeshifter to tell the truth, not force him to perform some shapeshifter ritual to undo the soul trap my sister is stuck inside. I thought you understood what I meant when I asked—”

“When you asked to be a part of this?” Anwei pushed back from the map, finding her feet. “Knox, I’m not a shapeshifter. I don’t trap people in swords. I don’t do any—”

“I know you don’t. You heal people, and you are capable of—”

“No, Knox, you don’t understand. Maybe once, a long time ago, I might have been able to help you, but…” The horrible storm reared up in her head, thunderclouds and lightning. Rain beating on her back, blood streaming down her arms and legs. Anwei pulled her sleeves down, her scars burning. “It’s not there anymore.”

“Anymore?” Knox stood too, looking quite cross. “Anwei, you’ve never lied to me before. I mean”—he put a hand up, closing his eyes—“you’ve said plenty of things that weren’t true. But not about the important things.”

“I can’t, Knox. These powers you’re so sure I have—they don’t exist.”

“They did that night at the governor’s house or I’d be dead. You did it with the salpowder—didn’t you see Altahn’s eyes bugging out while he tried to figure out what you had mixed in to do the impossible? It was impossible. But you changed it somehow. Like the nameless god can.”

Every word pounded into Anwei like an accusation, just like the ones that had been thrown at her after Arun died, her mother and father looming over her, the town council already at their house, as if they’d known what was coming. She shook her head. “The gamtooth serum will be done stewing by the time Jaxom rises tonight. We’ll have just enough time for it to set before we leave tomorrow. You’ll look for the shapeshifter while Noa scares the workers. I’ll go down into the tomb—”

“You were the only one who could make that powder—to bond it together or whatever it was you did. Have you thought that maybe you’re the only person who can open the tomb, Anwei? Lia said that there was something wrong down there, that it affected the workers and the aukincer’s son. What if only someone touched by the nameless god could make that tomb, and only someone with his power can break it open?” Knox’s voice was rising. “You know that’s probably what we’re up against. It’s the only reason I agreed to this plan, because I thought you knew—”

“I’ll get the sword,” she continued, her voice getting louder, as if it could drown out what Knox was saying. “And we escape through the refuse gate. Lia is going to drug her father and load him, her sister, and her sick mother into a carriage to meet us in Gretis. We exchange Altahn for the money in Gretis, keep the shapeshifter drugged and stuffed out of sight until you get what you need from him, and then take care of him. Once we’ve got Lia and her family and Shale’s money, we’ll be over the border within a week.”

Knox fell back a step, his face pale and his fingers twisting in his hair. “Please, Anwei. The two of us working together is… big. Special. Like Calsta and the nameless god have somehow struck a truce for the first time in more than five hundred years.” He leaned back against the door, folding his arms across his chest. “If you won’t try, then how is anything ever going to change?”

“Is that what we’re supposed to be doing? Changing things?” she snapped. There was a weight to what he was saying, but she could feel only the heftiness of it, not the reasons behind it. “I can’t do what you are asking. No more, do you understand me?”

“No more? Anwei, this is our lives. How are we going to kill him—a shapeshifter, who can’t die—unless we—”

“I’ll figure it out.” Anwei pushed past him and ran for the stairs.

Anwei’s absence from the room pressed on Knox, as if that moment of anger between them had somehow lessened her hold in his mind. Willow was waiting to fill the void.

Find me, she hissed. Her voice burned—not the way Calsta’s did, but with ice and acid instead of honest flame. He shrank away from her, head in his hands, but couldn’t help looking around the room. Checking under the bed. Checking the floorboards for loose sections.

Knox. Calsta’s voice came, but it was quiet, overwhelmed by the flood of Willow in his mind. Knox, stop. Listen to me—

Find me, Knox.

“Can’t you tell me where you are?” he snarled, his temper spiking at the growing burn inside him, Willow’s fingernails in his brain.

“What are you doing?” Knox looked up to find Altahn standing in the doorway.

Something snapped back into place in Knox’s head, and he found himself with Anwei’s blankets wadded together in his arms. The drawers in her desk sagged open like broken teeth, and her bed frame was pulled out from the wall. Altahn’s brow furrowed as he looked around the room.

“You’re not supposed to come out of my room.” Knox carefully set the blankets back on Anwei’s bed. Groping inside his head, he looked for Anwei’s warmth and the haven it had provided over the last few days. The moment Knox concentrated on Anwei’s bond at the back of his head, Willow’s outline receded, but she laughed as she went.

She had always cried before.

Knox followed Altahn to his room, then locked it after the Trib was safely inside. He leaned against the door, breathing in deep and letting it out slow.

Anwei wasn’t going to help him. Anwei couldn’t help him.

She’ll help you, Calsta’s voice whispered. For the first time the goddess sounded unsure. She has to, or all of this will be for nothing.