Running Out

Running Out
Amval

With my sister’s hand in mine, betrayal ringing in my ears, I scoot away from the crack in the floor. I don’t want to keep watching. Seeing Cirocco smooth out his expression into pleasantness and Ingrid struggling to do the same as they went to his room was enough for me.

I want to go back to the moment before Kaloni’s announcement, when my whole world made sense.

Joli recovers better than I do, tearing through the dark and dragging me after her. Somehow, she’s still dancer-light on her feet. I sound like a stampede.

The wind I’ve been able to count on all my life leaps to my command almost before I call it. Thank the Goddess. My thoughts alone are heavy enough to drag me through the floor, onto the heads of the revelers downstairs.

Kaloni did this. All of it.

Joli shoots through the door and lets the tapestry swing back into place. “Your bag—what’s in it?”

“Essentials,” I mumble. “For if I had to run.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asks.

Because my friends in the stable needed my help. Because I had to know what Ingrid wagered.

I didn’t realize she’d wagered everything.

Joli shakes her head. “She’s my sister. Pull it together.”

Right. Of course. Everything has changed, and nothing has. I reach for all the pieces of Sash, now scattered around my feet.

Armored boots click at the mouth of the hallway.

“Shit.” Joli glances toward them, the way we should go to get out the fastest.

But not the only way.

I am not losing another sibling tonight. I whip around and dart in the opposite direction. She stumbles for a moment but then catches up.

“The roof?” she asks through the mind-link.

I nod. She raises a wind at our heels, speeding us up. I’m surprised Esen told her about the connecting stretch of roof he used for a prank he needed my help with, but it seems there are many things I don’t know about my siblings. We round a corner into a long gallery of royal portraits, half of which are still missing. We keep finding them in strange nooks of the palace—or in nobles’ manors, mysteriously.

“You’re back,” Joli says, half of an old code from our days on the road.

“You’re front,” I reply, darting for the massive, locked bay window between paintings.

I don’t need to check if she’s in the right place. As soon as we could raise an alarm, we were all trained to watch.

The lock glimmers at me. In another life, I would have the keys on hand or simply get a housekeeper to open it for me. In this one, I have to try my hand at a trick Father taught us for emergencies, which I was never particularly good at.

I coax a thin ribbon of air into its teeth and try to feel the shape of the missing key.

“West wind,” Joli says. She can hear someone coming from the west but can’t see them yet.

I grit my teeth. The air should fly free, not be forced into these tight little curves. My control wanes as the element itself fights me.

And I can hear the boots now, over my hammering heart. They shouldn’t even be on patrol yet. Kaloni must be looking for something. My stomach drops. Even if Kaloni hasn’t gotten around to taking me out directly, she’ll have warned the soldiers.

“My back,” Joli snaps, nerves taut in her voice.

I grimace and release my control to swap with her. She was never any better at this than I was, but I’d rather face the soldiers first. If I can shift, I can buy her a few minutes to get away. I pull a spare veil out of my bag and throw it over her head to hide her face before turning to the westernmost door.

The footsteps grow louder. Joli’s breathing is even, steady. I flex my hands and prepare to shift.

Click.

She grabs my hand, not wasting time on words, and pulls me out onto the roof. I chase her over the tiles to the next glowing window, my mind spinning. Ingrid said Joli disappeared sometimes, but that was the night she proved Astralis to me, the night we danced. All the other details slip through my fingers.

Joli picks open the next window so quickly there’s barely time for me to mount a watch. Still, a soldier steps into the portal of the open window behind us and cocks his head.

“Go!” I push her through the window as she opens it.

She shoots me a look as we barrel forward, but we don’t have time to explain.

“Down,” I say. “We can take the northeast servants’ door.”

“The window in the map room is faster.” She bolts in that direction.

“The map room is two stories off the ground!” I barely manage to dodge a maid exiting one of the many guest rooms. At least her quiet shriek makes Joli tie the veil I tossed around her head properly.

“Trust me.”

And I do.

Together, we fly down a zig-zagging staircase and through rooms barely decorated, rooms I forgot we had. We lost so much while we were gone.

At Kaloni’s hand, we’ve lost even more since our return. On the run, we had each other.

Finally, we reach the map room. Wind swirls around our ankles, ready to catch us or throw us forward. Joli unlocks this window, and I see thick, hardy vines curling up over the sill. The sort that disrupt the bricks, that the gardeners are supposed to destroy on sight.

She catches me looking and smiles. “I’ve been bribing them to leave these be for about six months now.”

Surprise is a luxury for later. I spin the wind like sugar into a basket to catch us if we fall, and we crawl out the window. New calluses on my fingers come in handy, but the vines make climbing so much easier that I’m irritated I didn’t find them, tucked into one spoke of the star, when I first started breaking into my own palace to see Ingrid.

Thinking of her sends a starburst of pain through my mark. I almost lose my grip, and only the wind keeps me in place.

I land on the ground next to Joli.

“No more running until we’re out,” she says.

I coax the wind back to step-softening silence, and we move. We dodge between pools of light from windows and avoid patrols I didn’t even know happened out here. We reach the retaining wall, and she shoves her hand at a curtain of less dangerous ivy.

Instead of shattering her fingers against stone, she reaches deeper, parts the plants, and reveals a faded wooden door. Another key from her ring, and it opens. I stare at my youngest sister as we step out of the palace.

“Follow as closely as you can.” She relocks the door and shifts into a dark wolf. “I have… a few traps.”

Someone shouts behind us. I throw myself into a shift and take off, away from the lights and danger of Som Palace. Following so close I could snatch her tail between my teeth keeps me distracted, at least. The moment I stop, the moment I start thinking…I don’t know what comes next.

Joli leads me away from the beach, away from the forest where Mother and Father were murdered, away from the town. After long minutes of running into nothingness, the terrain tilts. A small cluster of low hills sits not far from the palace, toward Moonlight Beach, but they’re nearly worthless. Over-mined and over-farmed. I’ve never even visited them.

She dodges through them like she grew up here. I match her every footfall. Where could we possibly be going?

In a valley between hills, the entrance to an old mine yawns. Joli darts inside, shifts, and shimmies into a set of clothes waiting for her at the mouth. As I shift and throw on some clothes from my bag,  she lights a lantern hanging on the wall.

“At this stage, I figure you have more to hide than I do.”

The soft firelight illuminates walls lined with bags, boxes, and crates. All of them are labeled. From Oakspring Dunes, to Thunderpeak. From Starfall Mountain, to Seedmoss Rapids.

Smuggling. That’s what Ingrid said. Joli disappears for days at a time to be a smuggler.

She shifts a few crates to pull out a burlap sack that moves like grain. “You can sleep here until we come up with a better plan.”

“You’re a smuggler,” I say.

“Yes,” she says as if that should have been obvious by now. It is, I suppose. I just still can’t imagine how I didn’t know. “Do you mind?”

Her posture shifts just slightly toward a pry bar lying on one of the crates. I shake my head.

“Good.” She returns to setting up my burlap bed. “You know, I could use a groom. I have horses outside the palace, but we have all the best ones inside.”

I laugh helplessly. My littlest sister is offering me a cut of her smuggling business!

“I wouldn’t make fun of someone who just saved my life, if I were you.” She crosses her arms defensively.

“I’m not.” I put a hand on my chest, try to crush the laughter down before the whole storm of emotion behind it explodes out. “I’m just… surprised. How does a princess become a smuggler?”

“She grows up on the run.” Joli perches on another box. “And then, when the running’s done, she discovers that being a princess is a whole hell of a lot less interesting.”

“Have you tried to get involved in the politics?” I already know the answer—no—but Sash wouldn’t.

She snorts. “How? Every secondary and tertiary position in the court already has one of my siblings in it.”

“I never thought of it like that.” I sit on the ground.

“Why would you?” She shakes her head. “I needed something for myself. Something my family wasn’t already doing—or trying to do for me.”

The realization I had before returning to Ingrid rings through me. “I think I understand. My parents… they had such high expectations of me that they dictated my every move before I made it. They never intended to, I suspect, but that doesn’t change much.”

“And I can’t even complain about my parents anymore.” Joli’s smile wobbles. “They should have stopped having children before me. Everyone knows it, and I’m not allowed to be angry about that anymore because my sister fucking murdered them.”

“You can still be angry,” I say immediately.

“To who?” she demands. “My grieving, apparently potentially evil siblings? Ingrid, who barely knew them and is destroying her life to solve their murder? Or all the friends I have inside that place?”

“You sound lonely.” That shouldn’t be a surprise to me either. I should have known, should have made time for her. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m your savior, not your latest penitent.” She stands. “You have food in there?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what?” She glares down at me, tears in her eyes, prickling with a fight she doesn’t seem to be able to have with anyone. When did we start keeping so many secrets from each other?

“But you’re right,” I say slowly. “I do have more to hide than you.”

“Okay?”

I reach up and pull my veil off. Joli’s dark gaze dances around my face.

Then, she bursts out laughing.