Noa shoved her doubts away. Gabriela wanted her to doubt, and she wasn’t going to play her game. “He’s not perfect?” Noa repeated. “He’s killing mages. Not just dark mages—people like you. He wants to wipe out magic in Florean completely.”
Gabriela didn’t look at all surprised by this news. Her gaze grew distant. “I don’t expect you to understand, Noa. Maybe one day . . .” She let out her breath. “The thing is, I don’t believe in heroes. There were no heroes to save my village when it burned, and there will be none to prevent Julian from filling Florean’s waters with sea serpents and Florean’s government with criminals as bloodthirsty as him. The truth is that most of the time, the only thing that can defeat a monster is another monster.”
Noa watched her for a long moment. Her heart thudded, and she felt vaguely sick. Gabriela watched her in turn, waiting.
“I’ll tell you how many times you should apologize,” Noa said finally. “Until you choke on it.”
Gabriela’s expression darkened. She stood to go, but paused at the door and motioned to someone Noa couldn’t see. “I’m sorry you’re not willing to listen. We’ll talk later, and I hope you’ll think about what I said. I still consider you my friend.”
Noa opened her mouth, but another mage had appeared at Gabriela’s shoulder, murmuring a spell in Marrow, and she found she couldn’t speak. Her voice was gone. Gabriela gave her another sad look, as if someone else had tied up her dear friend Noa, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She swept from the room.
Noa spent the next hour wrestling with the ropes binding her hands. All she got out of it, though, was chafed wrists. She even pushed off her boots and tried to undo the knots with her toes, but toes, it turned out, were little more than useless lumps stuck on the ends of your feet. Noa supposed it was her own fault for not doing regular toe exercises to strengthen them in case something like this ever happened, and resolved to start if she ever got back to Astrae.
Noa’s next idea was to try to grab the shadow of the bed cast by the lavastick, part of which lay on the wall by her head. She couldn’t reach it with her fingers, so she tried to grab on to the edge with her teeth.
She strained her neck, stretching as far as she could. Unfortunately, this wasn’t far, and she just missed the shadow. Gritting her teeth and sucking in her stomach so that the rope slackened slightly around her torso, she stretched another precious inch. She nipped at the shadow and managed to drag it toward her. It tasted sweet and slightly sticky, like sap, nothing like what she’d expected (not that she’d given much thought to the flavor of shadows). She flicked it over her head like a blanket and shoved her face through the hole underneath.
Success! She was looking into Death. It was like looking through a window several feet off the ground. She seemed to be in the shadow cast by a hill.
“Otter?” she called, and then she started. Her voice was back! Clearly, blood spells lost their hold in Death. That was lucky—or creepy, depending on how you looked at it. “Otter!”
One of the creatures flowed into view, licking fish off its face. “Oh!” Noa said. “Are you the same otter who was helping me before?”
“Do I look like the same otter?” the otter said haughtily.
“Er,” Noa said. “Sorry. I hit my head, and I’m a little confused. You’re far handsomer than the other otter.”
The otter puffed out its chest. “Really?”
“Oh, yes. The handsomest otter I’ve ever seen,” Noa said, wondering if she was laying it on a little thick. With otters, though, it seemed like the thicker, the better. “Look, I know you’re probably busy with . . . ah, otter business, but do you think you could help me with something?”
“Do you want me to look for someone?” the otter said. “We’ve all been looking for the queen, like you asked. It’s fun, but we haven’t found her yet.”
“Thank you,” Noa said. “But right now, I need to get untied.”
The otter crept up to the edge of the window Noa was looking through. “You’re caught in a trap.” It sounded sympathetic. “Does someone want to skin you?”
“Something like that,” Noa said darkly. She thought fast. “Your teeth look sharp.”
The otter bared them. “The sharpest teeth you’ll ever see.”
“Sharp enough to gnaw these ropes?”
The other made a disdainful sound. It shook its fur and leaped out of Death.
Noa drew her head back, blinking away the brightness of the cabin. The shadow drifted back to its original spot with a sort of wet snap, like lips smacking together. The otter was sitting on her chest. It scampered over to her left wrist and began to bite at the ropes.
“Ow!” Noa said, or rather mouthed, for her voice was gone again.
The otter gave her a sly look, then went back to gnawing. It didn’t say anything. Noa guessed that otters could only talk while they were in Death, given that she’d never heard them do it in her world.
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. “Someone’s coming!” Noa mouthed desperately. “Hide!”
The otter ignored her. It grabbed the rope in its teeth and yanked. The rope tore, and Noa was free—part of her, anyway. She grabbed the blanket, which had been covering her arms before, and yanked it back into place. A quarter second before the door opened, the otter slither-slunk into what seemed like little more than a crevice in the wall, and vanished.
Gabriela entered the room with a servant. “Just leave it there, please, Mona,” she said. “Thank you.”
The servant placed the tray of food down on the table and bowed herself out, but not after darting a curious, wide-eyed look at Noa.
Gabriela sighed after she left. “I’m afraid the
