Page 154 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

What if that is why Kosmel led me so far and then left me to fend for myself?

I swallow against the dryness of my throat. I don’t know what’s right anymore—but I can’t make any decisions about it either way if I’m too unhinged to even care.

Don’t listen to him, Julita says, more forcefully than before. All he ever wanted is to get whatever he can for himself.

“Or rather, you won’t see,” Borys says, adjusting his grip on his dagger. “Because I need to get back to my work, and I can’t have you interfering again.”

As he shifts his stance to strike, my mind flashes back to Wendos in the All-Giver’s tower. Wendos, turning his back on me rather than closing in for the kill.

Borys is obviously the smarter one.

And how ridiculous that back then my magic saved me, and now it’ll only doom me.

Borys leaps at me. As I shove myself to the side to avoid his strike, Julita squirms in the back of my skull. We need him off-balance. My gift won’t help—he hasn’t told us to do anything. But there has to be a way…

Abruptly, her presence seems to stiffen. I can—we can do this, Ivy. I won’t let him cut you too. Be ready.

With those words, she throws herself forward in my head.

My instinct is to resist the wave of dizziness that sweeps over me. I recognize what it means. I’ve felt her uninvited attempts to take control before.

But she knows the man in front of me far better than I could. She’s got more of a plan than I do.

I let go, and Julita’s presence floods to the front of my mind. With her in control, my body scrambles backward down the hall.

Borys whirls on us, and Julita hurls out my voice in a tone that’s all her. “You haven’t grown at all since you were twelve, making me bleed with Wendos, have you, big brother?”

Borys goes rigid in mid stride. He stares at me.

Before he can decide it’s all a trick, Julita hurtles onward. “Oh, yes, it’s really me. And I haven’t forgotten a second of those midnight trips out to the woods—the time you used a sharpened stick instead of a proper blade, the time you scraped my skin raw with the rough edge of a rock.”

In my hazy state at the back of my mind, I wince in sympathy. My ghostly passenger has always avoided going into detail about the torment she suffered at the hands of her brother and his friend.

What I imagined was horrible. It’s worse hearing her describe it out loud.

Borys’s jaw drops for a second before he reels it in.

“Julita?” he says, his voice ragged with disbelief.

She makes a disparaging sound. “Wendos tried to murder me back in Florian, but neither of you understood how strong I am. I managed to hang on with the help of my friend. And I’ve been helping her pick away at your idiotic, psychotic uprising bit by bit.”

I’m not sure what she’s aiming for here. Maybe she’s simply letting out all her bottled-up anger.

But she told me to be ready. She must be going somewhere with this.

I have to watch for an opening.

Borys hasn’t quite let his guard down. He still holds his dagger in a fighting stance.

His eyes narrow. “This is some stupid trick. Or magic. Julita can’t really be here.”

“I’m sure you’d like to think so,” Julita says. “But I know how you pissed yourself that time Dad’s stallion kicked you in the thigh when you were six. I know the town boys beat you up on your ninth birthday when you tried to boss a bunch of them around like you were already a count. I know that when you were ten, you ate slugs on a dare with Wendos and then vomited all over Mother’s favorite tablecloth.”

“Shut up!” Borys’s eyes flash with fury. He steps closer, his jaw flexing. “You were never good for anything other than filling in when we had nothing better to practice on. I’ll just have to finish what Wendos started.”

“You have always been a spineless, pathetic bully who was too scared of taking responsibility to do anything worth respecting,” Julita spits back at him. “This woman is the best friend I’ve ever had, and you’re not taking her down with you.”

Borys lunges—and the tickle of Julita’s presence by my forehead heaves forward. My awareness jolts back into place in its wake just in time to see her brother clawing at his face as if there’s something in his eyes.

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