Otherbound (25 page)

“I know you hate me, too.” Cilla turned briskly. One hand stayed on the railing. The wind brushed her hair into her face in a way that was wild and beautiful and did nothing to hide the uncertainty in her eyes. “I understand. I wanted you to know that: I understand, and I'm sorry. I should've stayed behind.”

“If you weren't with me, you'd die. I don't want you to.”

“I'm still sorry.”

“I know.” Before she could change her mind, Amara said, “I just don't know if it changes anything.”

Cilla's shoulders squared, as if she was bolstering herself. “I deserve that.”

Amara raised her hands to speak, then stilled. She'd never thought about these things. There was no point. But she didn't only
think
about them now, she said them straight to the princess's face, and she wasn't even scared anymore.

It wasn't right. It wasn't comfortable. But it was safe. The thought took her breath away.

“Maybe I was wrong before,” she signed. “I don't think I hate you. I hate what you are; I hate what I am, too. We can't change either of those.”

“I can. When I'm in power, you'll get everything you want. I'll remove your tattoo. You'll live where you want to. You'll get however much silver you need.”

Amara laughed. “I'd want books. I want to read books.”

“There's a library in the Bedam palace. You could take every last book in there.”

“I'd want to live on the beach. I'd see diggers every morning.”

“Yours.”

“I'd want to see Eligon.”

“I'd arrange it.”

It'd be that easy for her, wouldn't it?

Behind them, Captain Olym called orders. The crew adjusted the sails. “I thought you wanted us to be equals,” Amara said. She'd depended on Jorn for food, shelter, safety. Being dependent on Cilla, instead—that wasn't freedom.

“But I owe you.” Cilla thought. “All right. Tell me what you do need.”

Why was Amara laughing again? None of this was funny, but she couldn't help it. The world sank under her feet, and Cilla promised her silver and books and diggers, and she turned them all down. She was turning into Maart. He'd say these same things—or maybe he wouldn't. He might take all that Cilla offered and say he deserved it. He'd be right, too.

“I need …” The wind tangled Amara's hair, and the sea stretched out endlessly before her. “I don't know,” she said, almost dreamily.

“You're not making this easy.” Cilla's laugh was a nervous one.

“I didn't realize a lot of the things you've told me,” Amara said. “Like that you had no choice but to spend time with Jorn. Like that we played games together because you weren't allowed to play with anyone else. I grew up thinking
I
wasn't allowed to play with anyone else.” She hesitated. “Like that I'm all you have.”

“Of course you're all I have.” Cilla's hand touched Amara's, sending a jolt through her.

She'd wanted to say something else but was no longer sure what.

Noon had come and gone, and it had taken the sun with it, turning the sky bland and the sea dark, then dangerous. The ship was supposed to arrive in Bedam that afternoon. Instead,
it moored at Roerte, a southern mainland town, with Captain Olym repeating apologies a dozen times over. “I can't risk this weather,” she told her passengers, standing by the plank that led to the mainland. She was shaking in her drenched shirt but refused to get out of the rain until everyone left the ship. “The Gray Sea is too erratic. Listen: I know Roerte well. I can tell you how to travel to Bedam by land, or I can arrange a stay at an inn. We'll head out tomorrow morning if the weather's improved by then.”

A thunderclap punctuated her words.

She didn't say the next part, but Amara saw it written on her face:
Damn the ministers to every last spirit-abandoned corner of this planet.
Storms never came on this suddenly by themselves.

Amara and Cilla made up the rear of the group, not wanting to risk the crush of people. They'd gone by another two islands before mooring here and had picked up at least twenty more passengers. “You two, please come with me,” Captain Olym said when they stepped onto the plank. “I won't have you staying at an inn, Princess. I have a farm inland. You'll be my guests.”

Within the hour Amara and Cilla were drying off by the crackle of a fireplace. In the dining room, Captain Olym and her father, who managed the farm in her absence, conversed in singsong Alinean.

Cilla was touching her lips where the mage had struck her. A small, healthy crust had formed, but it was in danger of falling
off after getting soaked by the rain. The skin underneath might not have healed enough yet.

“I know, I know, I'm being careful,” Cilla said on catching Amara's warning look. “It itches, though. I suppose you wouldn't know. Aren't we a pair?”

Amara smiled. As long as she kept smiling, the world couldn't crash down on her. Maart was dead, and she was in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar town, with strangers in the next room, yet she could use her signs openly. She hadn't heard Jorn's voice in hours. She wasn't working, and all of that made her feel jittery and so, so strange. She kept hovering between terror and elation and numbness, and she couldn't decide which was safer.

She studied Cilla's lip. “If I find my parents, where will you go?” Amara asked.

“I could find the original royal line on the Alinean Islands. If they know I'm alive, they may help me reclaim my throne.”

Cilla knew as well as Amara did that that would never happen. The Alineans had surrendered their claim to the Dunelands years ago. Wars were bad for business. “The Islands are an ocean away,” Amara said instead. “How would you survive a trip that long without me?”

No answer.

Amara hid a sigh as she squeezed her scarf and rubbed her wear dry as well as she could. She didn't want to undress in a place so visible. Cilla shouldn't, either. She'd already revealed her
shoulders, which was more than royalty ever ought to do publicly.

“What's that noise?” Cilla asked. Amara stopped her movements to listen. The rain beat on the windows, and the wind tore at the unsheathed, tied-down sails of the mill outside, but Cilla couldn't mean that. Through all that noise came voices. Distant laughter.

Amara stepped toward the window. She felt exposed without her scarf, showing bony shoulders and wiry arms and that almost hidden tattoo underneath matted hair, but in this weather no one would be looking in.

Lights shone from a small house across the field.

“Servants,” Amara told Cilla, who sat on the carpet and rubbed her toes dry. Their boots stood next to her, heating by the fire.

Sometimes ministers lent servants to help out farmers in need. That kept the farms running, the food production going, and the ministers earned a decent cut. Amara shouldn't have been surprised that Captain Olym had servants. She and her father alone could never handle a farm this size.

Amara stared at the flickering yellow of the servants' windows in a storm-darkened world. The laughter rang out through the rain. The servants were probably enjoying the reprieve from work the storm gave them. They'd be drinking or playing games or telling stories, as she'd seen the older servants at the palace do, or perhaps secretly improving their speech, as some servants managed.

Bedam was the nearest big city, so these servants must have come from there. Their tattoos would match hers. Would they remember her? Would they know Lorres, the caretaker? He'd always looked out for Amara.

She turned just as Cilla was gingerly feeling her cut lip again. Cilla would need protection once they parted ways. Finding other healing mages to help, trustworthy ones, seemed impossible. What Cilla needed was someone like Nolan, someone to heal her before the curse even took hold.

Was that an option? Those pills of Nolan's had changed so much. If he could travel to another world to possess Amara, couldn't he possess someone else, too?

It would let Amara go free.

Amara pushed herself away from the window. Even if it were an option, it'd be too dangerous. Amara had been lucky to survive when Nolan's presence mixed with the spell at the harbor; combining it with Cilla's curse might kill Cilla in an instant.

Three steps into the room, Amara slowed, then stopped. One hand reached for the bed hatch next to her for support. The movement wasn't hers.

She hadn't felt Nolan take over—she never did. She no longer blacked out or slumped. His mind didn't creep in to shove hers aside. The world went on as usual, except suddenly her breaths seemed out of sync and her body moved in ways she hadn't approved. Invisible strings tugged at her, and she
saw only the effects on a dangling puppet and its wooden limbs.

You promised!
she shouted in her mind, knowing Nolan wouldn't hear.

He'd caught her thoughts. He must've stepped in at just the wrong moment.

“I'm sorry,” Nolan said.

Cilla looked up at the movement. Nolan took two confident steps and crouched in front of her. The drenched carpet cooled Amara's knees. A spark from the fire landed on her hand, but Nolan shook it off. “Amara needs to know you'll be safe,” he told Cilla. “How much risk are you willing to take?”

Amara wanted to scream.

Nolan explained Amara's thoughts and the risks involved. Cilla said nothing. Amara saw the same look on Cilla's face she'd seen on Jorn's, that way of scanning Amara for what lay underneath. Jorn had been trying to find Nolan. Cilla was looking for a sign of Amara.

“You and me, huh, Nolan?” Cilla finally said.

“I know you don't care for me—”

“Do it,” she said. “Take over.”

“Like I said, I don't know if I even
can
switch bodies. If it does work”—Amara's lips wrangled into a smile that felt nothing like her own—“you'll be the first to know.”

He left her.

“Don't.” Amara stumbled when her body returned to her,
then lunged toward Cilla. “There are other options. What if we can't find my parents? What if we find another mage? The one at the market—if she'd seen your mark, she would've believed you. We can find others! Ones who heal!”

“If this works,” Cilla said, “you won't have to sacrifice yourself anymore. Sometimes … sometimes layering magic has only minimal effect. We might not notice anything.”

Amara felt Cilla's stare on her lips, her eyebrows, just like before. Their faces were fingerwidths apart, close enough for Amara to taste the heat of Cilla's exhales and see a raindrop dangling from her earlobe. They'd toweled off their faces already; she must've missed a spot.

Cilla smiled wanly. “You two really are different.”

Amara leaned back to sit on her haunches. “Don't let him do this. Tell him no. Nolan might listen if you change your mind.”

“He shouldn't hijack you like that,” Cilla said. “But I like the way his face looks on yours. He looks more relaxed in your body than you ever do.”

No, no, why wasn't Cilla
listening
? If Nolan was trying to make this work right now, as they spoke, Cilla might only have seconds left before the spells mixed.

This could be the end of it.

“Now you look even less relaxed,” Cilla remarked. Her voice sounded breathy. Not like her. Everything Cilla did, down to her jokes and laughs, were weighed down by something else. She
cared about what she said and did even when she pretended not to. “I don't mean that I like seeing him in you. It's just nice to see Nolan be … what you could be.” It was Cilla's turn to sit upright. She leaned in. Black hair hung in soaked strands along her cheeks. “I'd like seeing it on you far more.”

“Tell him you've changed your mind.” Amara's mind spun. Her knees dug into a soggy carpet she could never afford, and across from her Cilla was speaking nonsense, and she might die right now, or in two minutes or two hours or two days, whenever Nolan figured out how to switch bodies. Amara couldn't lose her, too. “Please.”

She never said
please
. Even if a servant was allowed to make requests, there was no point.

“The truth is,” Cilla said when Amara tried to smile, “I like seeing you no matter what.”

And then Cilla's hand was on Amara's shoulder, and her lips on Amara's, and they were hot and full and Amara leaned in before she could stop herself. Her hands found and wrapped around Cilla's hips. She pressed herself closer.

This wasn't like kissing Maart. This was soft and desperate and something Amara had wanted so, so badly even when she'd hated herself for it. Her mind whispered
stop
and
wrong
and
Maart, Maart, Maart
. And
don't do it, Nolan, you can't, don't
and
let this work
and
all the pain she caused
and
you'll hate yourself
and
it won't last!