“How—” I stop myself from asking and consider. Rehmat was right about my disappearing. Perhaps it is right about this too.

I close my eyes and imagine a deep, quiet lake. Pop did this with patients sometimes, children whose bellies ached for reasons we could not see, or men and women unable to sleep for days. Breathe in. Let the air nourish you. Breathe out. Expel your fears.

I sink into the stillness. Then I call out, imagining my voice stretching across the miles.

“Darin. Are you there?”

At first, there is only silence. I begin to feel foolish. Then—

Laia?

“Yes!” I nearly leap up in my excitement. “Yes, it’s me.”

Laia, what is this? Are you all right?

“I’m fine,” I say. “I—I am in the Waiting Place.”

Is Elias with you? Is he still being an idiot?

“He is not an idiot!”

Figured you’d say that. I wanted to make sure it was really you. Are you sure you’re all right? You sound—

Rehmat appears so suddenly that its glow blinds me. “Fey creatures! Approaching from the west. They must have heard you, Laia. Forgive me—I did not sense them. Arm yourself!”

The gold light fades as quickly as it appeared, and I am left alone in the inky murk. I scramble to my feet, dagger at the ready, my pulse pounding. A cricket chirps nearby and the wind whispers through the branches. The forest is quiet.

And then, in an instant, it is silent. Shapes flit between the trees, too fast to track. Jinn? Efrits?

I scuttle back, trying to use the night to my advantage. The darkness can feel like an enemy, the Blood Shrike said once, insisting I wear a blindfold while she trained me in hand-to-hand combat. Let it be a friend instead.

The shadows draw closer. Where in the skies is Elias? Of course, when he and his big fists and murderous demeanor might actually come in handy, he’s not here.

Something cold brushes past me, and I feel as if my neck has been plunged into pure snow. I dart around the fire—kicking at it to get air on the embers. They flare for a moment, then fade. But not before I see what hides in the dark.

Wraiths.

Stay calm. Elias and I fought these things out in the desert east of Serra. Taking off their heads kills them. Too bad I have a dagger with no reach instead of a scim.

Invisibility will not fool them. All I can do is run. I kick the embers into the faces of the wraiths, and as they screech, I bolt through an opening in the trees. I feel them behind me, all around me, and lash out with my dagger. They fall back—and I have a few more inches, a few more seconds.

Did the Nightbringer send them? You fool, Laia. Did you think he would just let you get away?

Through the gasps of my breathing and the crunch of brush beneath my boots, I hear a creek. Most fey creatures hate water. I tear toward the sound, slipping on the wet rocks, only stopping when I am midstream, with the water at my knees.

“Come out, little girl.” The wraiths speak as one, their words high and reedy, as if a winter gale out of the Nevennes has been given voice. “Come out and meet your doom.”

“Why don’t you come in here?” I snarl. “You ragged bastards could use a bath.”

The blue starlight throws the shadows emerging from the woods into sharp relief. A dozen wraiths, at first. Then two dozen. Then more than fifty, their shredded clothing fluttering in a nonexistent wind.

They could have rushed me in the woods. Ambushed me. But they did not. Which means they want me alive.

Think! There is a reason the wraiths are here and it is not to kill me. Brazen it out, then, Laia. And hope to the skies you aren’t wrong. Without warning, I sprint through the water toward them.

I expect them to move. Instead they catch me and squeeze. Bad idea, Laia. Very bad idea.

Impossible cold lances through me and I scream. The chill is all-consuming, and I am certain that this will be a slow death, like being bricked away and knowing you will never escape.

My body seizes, my vision flashes to a vast sea, dark and teeming. Then to the River Dusk. I see it from above, the way a bird would. I follow its serpentine path through the Waiting Place. But there is something wrong. The river disappears, rotting at the edges. There are no ghosts winding among the trees. Instead, screams echo in the air and there are faces in the water. Thousands of them, trapped. The air grows ponderous, and I turn to face a maelstrom of teeth and sinew, obscenely violent. A maw that is never satisfied.

But it will not have me. No! Though the images I saw still reverberate in my skull, I have enough sense to lash out with my blade, dodging the shadows as they reach for me.

They want my screams, I realize. They want my pain.

“You cannot have it,” I roar at them. “You can have my wrath instead. My hate.”

“Laia—” Elias’s voice calls from somewhere on my right, and the wraiths chitter and draw back.

“She doesn’t belong here, Soul Catcher,” they say. “She is not dead.”

“Neither do you.” Elias’s words make me shudder, for they are delivered in the flat, cold voice of the Soul Catcher. Of a Mask. “Leave.”

He gathers his magic—I feel the air tighten around me. The wraiths recoil and I dart through them.

“Go, Elias!” I shout when I’m within reach of him. “Windwalk! Now!” His arms close around me and we are away.

I shiver from the cold still in my bones and press into him, desperate for his warmth. He moves so quickly that I close my eyes so I am not sick. The maelstrom circles in my head, ever devouring, and I have to tell myself that I am safe.

Safe. Safe. Safe. I chant the word to the throb of Elias’s heartbeat. The rhythmic thud is a reminder that despite his vow and his magic, his detachment and his distance, he is still human. By the time he slows, I have the sound memorized.

The scent of the Duskan Sea cuts through the air first, and then the dull roar of the waves. Seagulls call out, and far to the east, the sun burns away a heavy cloud bank.

We have traveled hundreds of miles. He got what he wanted after all—me out of his territory. As soon as we are free of the trees, he releases me. I crash to the earth, scraping my hand on a tree trunk trying to get my balance.

“The wraiths are far away.” Elias looks northwest, where a Martial guard tower looms atop a hill of dead grass. “But they might track you. Get to a human settlement quickly. When it’s full light, you’ll be safe to travel again.”

“I saw something, Soul Catcher,” I say. “An ocean filled with—skies, I do not know. And faces. Trapped faces within the River Dusk. I saw that—that maelstrom, and it wanted to devour me and you and—”

“And everything else.” Elias glances down at me, and those pale eyes I learned to love darken. Some unfathomable emotion flickers across them, an echo of who he was.

“We can travel together.” I touch his arm, and he starts at the spark that jumps between us. He’s still human. Still here. “We can speak to the Fakirs, the Kehannis. You could ask—”

At the chill in his gaze, I cease. I keep trying to appeal to his humanity. I might as well throw myself against a stone wall. He does not give two figs about me. He cares about the Waiting Place. He cares about the ghosts.

“How many ghosts have you passed, Elias? How much rot have you seen?”

He tilts his head, contemplating me.

“It’s not because of me,” I say. “Something is wrong. What if it is the Nightbringer’s doing? You are dedicated to protecting and passing on the ghosts. The Tribal Fakirs are also dedicated to the dead. They might know where the rot is coming from.”

Stay with me, I think. Stay with me so I can remind you of who you used to be.

“A rider approaches.” Elias glances over my shoulder. The sky pales enough that I can see foam on the waves, and I squint toward the western horizon, searching.

“Tribespeople,” I say. “Musa told them I was coming. They must have scouts watching the forest.”

“Not the Tribes. Someone else.” Elias takes a step back. “The voice in your head, Laia,” he says, and I remember then that I told him of Rehmat. “Beware of it. Such creatures are never quite what they seem.”

I stare at him in surprise. “I did not know you were listening.”

Hooves thunder from behind me. A quarter mile to the northwest, a band of men and horses appears atop a hill. Even at a distance, one of the forms flickers strangely. It swings its head toward me.

Two sun eyes penetrate across the distance, pinning me like an insect on a wall.

“Elias,” I whisper. “Elias, it’s a jinn—”

Silence. I turn to him, to ask him to windwalk us away. But as I scan the tree line, my stomach sinks. He is gone.

XVIII: The Soul Catcher

The dead yew in the jinn grove bears the brunt of my frustration, the trunk creaking as I slam the chain into it again and again and again.

The girl will be fine. She’s swift and clever. She possesses magic.

She will survive.

She’s not “the girl.” She’s Laia. And if she dies, it’s your bleeding fault.