As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Thirty

The forest warped and blurred as Niccola fled down its paths, deeper and deeper, until the pursuing footsteps of the royal guards finally gave up behind her. The sky had brightened to midday when she finally slowed. She was deeper in the forest than she'd ever been before, with only her own trail to follow back out to the living world. Niccola collapsed against the nearest tree and buried her face in her hands.

She'd made a terrible mistake.

She'd run to the sound of Isaiah's scream just in time to see him hauled away. The guards had spotted her. Shot at her. Missed—she could thank the density of the Talakova for that—but given chase, until her legs shook and her whole body threatened to give out from under her. She'd made a mistake. She'd told Isaiah the truth, but the truth had stopped making sense as she uttered it. As he picked it apart, driving question after question into her deepest insecurities. He didn't understand. Didn't know how it felt... there was no other explanation for his lack of will to throw off his parents' control.

Only there was, and she'd seen it herself, in person. She knew he was scared, and that they had so much more in common than she'd said in that moment: in feeling inadequate, judged by people close to them in some way or another. But Isaiah didn't believe he was right. Didn't trust his own decisions enough to take action on them, even when all the evidence was laid bare. Niccola had trusted herself completely... until this.

She couldn't betray her duty to her sister—the debt she owed for her negligence. To ask for Calisian help on that would have been a slap in the face of her attempts to command the throne: to show that she was just as capable a ruler as her parents had been, magic or none. To bring down the woman who had stolen her sister from her. Only in her self-sacrifice would Varna regret what they had lost after she showed them they didn't deserve her.

But she'd still hoped to have Isaiah's help at least a little longer. The time when she'd planned to strike out alone had come, and she suddenly didn't want to. She'd make any excuse to keep Isaiah at her side, but she'd blown that chance, done the right thing and still managed to break his trust, and now she didn't know what the right thing was anymore. She'd had good reasons for keeping her secrets. She hadn't known if he would prove different from his parents, in the end. But even that dug into her chest, reminding her of all the times he had. How much more willing he'd been to work with her at first than vice versa. She had just wanted to use him for her own means, and he'd suggested alliance instead.

She'd broken his trust, robbing him of the most stable base he might have had to buck his mother's grasp. That wasn't an unfair expectation of him. Both their realms were at stake, and the Catastrophe would repeat itself if he didn't take control of Calis and lead it down a different path. Niccola wanted him in the palace, and she wanted him here, and now she had neither. Isaiah had been captured, dragged back to a prison that he wouldn't leave again unless he could put up such a resistance—alone.

The sky's colour had changed.

Niccola squinted up at it. What had been full daytime an hour ago at most had faded into shades of late afternoon. The realization hit her like a bucket of frigid water. The time distortion. A day outside must be only a handful of hours here; it had been late morning when she and Isaiah had seen Erelah die, and Niccola had been running or resting for only a pair of hours since. If even that. Everything was such a blur, it was difficult to tell. In only half an hour more, though, night had fallen. Niccola remained in her pretense of a hiding spot, hugging herself at the base of the tree. The moon was full, shedding shattered fragments of light through the Talakova's canopy. Niccola nearly stopped breathing as one crossed her arm. She could see the pattern of her own skirt through it.

Eight moons. It was more than that: another lie. It had been eight and a half, almost nine.

Niccola stumbled to her feet. Some raw survival drive pushed her back towards the forest's edge. She had to slow down time again. She had to find Dinah, but Dinah wasn't someone she wanted to face alone. She needed time to track the woman down without the pressure of her ninth Crow Moon breathing down her neck, time to free Phoebe and still... still what? Isaiah didn't trust her anymore. Phoebe would take the crown, as per Varnic tradition. Niccola was unneeded. Unwanted. Her sister mattered more, together with the death of the woman who had stolen the whole crown lineage of Varna. For that, Niccola would rather sacrifice herself than the guards Varna would need in order to defend itself if blame for the second Catastrophe fell the same way as the first. And if that finally quelled the Varnic whispers about a magic-less demi-queen sitting on the throne, she would be happy.