Erases magic.
The words raced across my mind. There was no way to know the specifics of what that meant. The ring might only remove magic from a suminaire, but there could be more to it. If the ring erased magic, it might erase the magic binding our contracts. If that were the case, I didn’t need to know how Alastair voided them. I could use the ring instead.
I turned that thought over until the room clock chimed.
My eyes stung so badly it was hard to keep them open. But I had only three days left, and I didn’t know the first thing about using magic or how to work the cosmolabe. Whatever might happen after this moment, I couldn’t give up until I drew a map to that ring.
I checked the wardrobe. No cloak to cover my blood-flecked frock. Only a single dress. I dragged a nail down the bodice and shivered. Black as midnight, a hundred little moons purled across its waist in silvery thread. The material was exquisite, fitting for a suminaire of the same ilk as Bel.
You’re not nothing to me, he had said. This whole time he knew what I was, and yet he’d kept it from me. He betrayed me and tried to send me home, away from everyone I cared about. But I had magic thrumming through my veins. Surely I could have done something, helped him find a way out of this mess, but he clearly didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.
A mixture of hurt and anger struck me so forcibly, I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from kicking over furniture. I needed my wits now more than ever. Failing, unfortunately, was not an option.
Quickly, I changed and shoved the cosmolabe and the silver disks in my dress pocket.
“I’m going out for supplies,” I muttered to the liveried worker stationed outside my door. His eyes were bloodshot and barely open, but he followed at my heel.
Silver disks jangled as we raced across the hotel. At the front, the doorman opened the black-lacquered door.
“Welcome to Ahnka, the heart of Preet,” he said between yawns. “We suggest a scarf for the wind.”
Ahnka was a small city high in the mountains east of Verdanne. The elevation and thin air made my ears pop and the world tilt the moment I stepped across the threshold.
Here, the hotel’s fa?ade swooped with a sharply angled roof that blended in perfectly with the carved stone buildings on either side. They all hugged a cliff, tethered to the vertical rock face with copper cables that were green with verdigris. Around me, a network of carved footpaths were lit by bronze lanterns.
Hot wind slammed up the dusty gorge. I licked my dry lips and tasted the salt from my tears. If I thought of Zosa, the tears would undoubtedly come again, so I took a long breath and concentrated on the heat, on the silver in my pocket, on the task at hand.
A switchback of narrow steps led to a series of connected buildings perched precariously along a cliff edge. Thankfully they weren’t dark. Oil lamps bobbed from nearly every tall window. Shapes danced behind gilded shutters. String music drifted down from above, along with other strange sounds—including one very long, distinctive moan—that meant I could wager a guess as to what was up there.
Preetian Wish Markets were infamous, even in Verdanne, for selling everything from edible gold and scrimshawed whale teeth to kisses that could cure any illness depending where on the body the kiss was administered.
Enter with a wish in mind, leave with it granted, Maman had told us when we were little, even though the wishes were bedtime tales and certainly not real magic. We were old enough to know real magic only came from suminaires. But it didn’t stop Zosa or me from counting the paper stars we’d stuck across our ceiling and dreaming up silly wish after silly wish.
The liveried worker, my unlucky guard, scratched his head. “We’re going up there?”
“Wasn’t in your job description?”
I felt somewhat guilty for forcing a worker who didn’t know any better to follow me. Then I thought of Zosa’s severed fingers on Des Rêves’s square of silk and the guilt evaporated. I started up. The worker groaned, but followed at my heel.
At the entrance, a woman greeted us. Her golden-beige skin was delicately freckled and her russet hair hung in braids against a tunic made from an iridescent fabric that I wished Béatrice could see; it would make her green with envy. But unlike the head of housekeeping, each of this woman’s fingers were tipped in blades like miniature scythes; apparently one did not steal from a Preetian Wish Market.
“Welcome,” she said in accented Verdanniere, then frowned. “Are you well, mademoiselle?”
“No. Not well at all. Oh—” I clutched my ankles, gasping for breath from the climb. When I was sure I wouldn’t vomit, I stood up, still a bit wobbly, and glanced downhill. The worker—my lovely guard—hovered near a bush, heaving his guts up.