Page 25 of The Crow Games

Faceless revenants filled the tables with a feast. I kept my eyes on the ground as they worked. When they were gone, the fruit alone had my mouth watering. I helped myself to it before I even bothered grabbing a plate, standing over the buffet like a goblin, shoving food in my mouth from the serving trays. Bright burgundy grapes, sliced apples, iced pears and peaches. Everything was ripe and fresh, not a speck or wrinkle or distortion in sight. It was nothing like the dried things my sister and I tolerated in Kosh. It was too perfect, like Wulfram. Divinely made.

My sweet tooth summoned me next. I ate a doughy bread that was braided, the inside smeared with chocolate. I consumed it until my fingers were sticky, and my spirit soared. I could have eaten my weight in that bread, but Ruchel pushed a plate of crisply fried patties made of shredded potato at me. She showed me how to dip them in tart cream, and I never wanted to eat anything else.

“I don’t have the stomach for meat,” she said as we shared a cheese plate and a bowl of roasted almonds and chestnuts. “But if you want it, Nola knows where they serve the best fish and pheasant. They’re her favorite.”

Sated, I wrapped up the rest of the nuts and hearty slices of bread in cloth napkins and stowed them in my satchel—all food that would keep well to aid me in the next trial. Ruchel did the same. We replenished our water supplies from the pitchers. As soon as a pitcher was empty, a revenant came to replace it.

I saw the girl I’d met before the trial, the young yellow-haired woman with the beast-born tail. She was faceless, her soul gone, nothing but an empty shell animated by death magic. My stomach plummeted at the sight of her refilling pitchers.

“Thank you, Hilda,” Ruchel said to the girl, though the revenant paid her no mind at all, her movements brisk and mechanical.

The train made its way out of the tunnels. Night had fallen. Darkness turned the desert dunes outside a brilliant shade of purple. A quarter-moon lit the sky, and millions of glittering stars winked down at us from between the clouds. Ruchel regaled me with her favorite historical facts and read a book out loud from her knapsack, a history on the Otherworld by a folklorist named Esther Weil. The chapter she read from was a reflection on how one realm impacted the calendar system in another. Sharing knowledge renewed her mind energy best, she explained.

“And it helps if you pretend to be interested,” she instructed.

“You’ll never think for a moment I’m not riveted,” I said, and I fulfilled my promise, nodding along and making listening noises as needed. She had a soothing voice. I didn’t mind it.

When she’d finished the chapter, she shut her book with a snap. Her ochre eyes found mine and trapped them. “The legends say the moon will be full the day the Crow Games finally begin and the covens battle to the death.”

“I thought you said those legends were nonsense.”

Her gaze flicked out the window before settling on me again. “It’s strange, is all. All the months I’ve been down here, the moon has been a pale sliver in the sky. The faintest crescent. Now look at it.”

I glanced at the fat quarter-moon, a vibrant shade of silver more luminescent than the stars around it. “Hm.”

“The first night you’re here, and it’s the fullest I’ve ever seen it.”

“Coincidence, of course,” I said casually. My stomach knotted at the implication. My mouth went dry, but I didn’t dare finish my glass of water. I didn’t want the revenants to come back to refill it.

“Of course,” she said, her smile faint and unconvincing.

I tried to smooth things over with Emma and Liesel by gifting them the salt and garlic I’d gathered during the trial. They’d make better use of such things anyway. Emma accepted them with polite reluctance, but Liesel wouldn’t look at me.

When it was time for sleep, I selected a compartment across from the one Ruchel and Nola shared. Mine was smaller than the others, with only a single bed. Blue and the sisters declined to sleep near us.

“You made a blood vow,” Ruchel reminded them.

Nearness to one’s coven had a restorative effect. We replenished our energies faster, healed quicker, and the spells cast together were stronger.

“We did,” Blue said. She waved off the sisters, and the green witches continued down the aisle without her. Her flinty eyes glanced my way before meeting Ruchel’s head-on. “We don’t intend to break that vow.”

“Then start acting like it,” Ruchel bit out.

Blue’s jaw set. She turned on her heels without saying another word.

Inside my cabin, behind a closed door, I found clean undergarments amongst the random items stored in the luggage compartment. Changing into them made me feel like a whole new person. It renewed my spirit better than even the food had. Kicking my boots off was lovely too. Nola had warned me to sleep with them in my bed to deter thieves from taking them. The doors only locked from the outside. I did so, tucking them under the blankets, dirt and all.

“Goodnight, Lisbeth,” I said to the empty room. After twenty years, it was still a habit.

Why do you have to be dead?I wanted to say it out loud, but the words caught in my throat.Who killed you?Did you show your gray accidentally by possessing someone again? I won’t be mad. I just need to know.

If a god had killed her because she was a gray, then why had I been spared? Spirit magic ran in families, just as elemental specialties often did.

My long life had taught me that it was always those in power who had the most to lose, the ones who hoarded authority and refused to share it who were the ones quickest to hurt innocent people like Lisbeth. King Alrick was the greatest of the gods. He wasn’t known for being cruel, but he was also a god I had never interacted with. I hadn’t recognized the sigil that burned on the ceiling of our shop, so all the gods I did not know remained high on my murder list, gods who spent all or most of their time in the Otherworld. Alrick now took the lead. By reputation, he had the most power, and he never shared it. He had the most to lose against a gray like Lisbeth and myself . . .

But how could I get my hands on a sample of Alrick’s magic so that I could test my theory?

Before my thoughts could go racing off out of my control, Lisbeth’s sweet voice visited me.

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