Folding the Sky

-33-

"I'm sure there's an invite list," Kalindi pointed out, collapsing down onto one of the wooden pallets, resting her chin in her palms. "I don't imagine we'd be on it, either."

Zuri paled. "I'm not forging another one of those. Jem'll just yell at me ferociously like she did last time."

"Well, my ferocious yelling got us inside the market, didn't it?"

"Yes," Zuri admitted, frowning, "but at the expense of my good mood."

"There is a list, but it doesn't matter if we're on it," Sorin interrupted with a roll of his eyes. "We can get in through the secret wine cellar."

Jem stared at him. "The secret what now?"

"Think of it like catacombs, but for wine storage."

Chike shuddered. "What an absolutely dismal way of describing that."

Sorin ignored this. "It's a large room underground," he went on, matter-of-fact. "There's two ways to reach it: through a trap door in the kitchen, or a tunnel starting outside, by the garden fence. You see, I call it a secret wine cellar, but it was also a safe room for emergencies. For that reason, not a lot of people know about it. If there's any way to get inside, it's through there."

Even though Sorin spoke without a single quaver in his voice, his gaze consistently meeting the others' in the room, Zuri's stomach still clenched with nerves. She wasn't sure what she was more afraid of: that, somehow, not all of what Sorin was telling them was the truth, or that it was. A house dripping with wealth, brimming with people who breathed money like oxygen. How could she ever infiltrate something like that? They would see right through her.

It's worth a shot, she had said.

That much was true. If the world depended on it, what choice did she or the rest of them have?

"Secret wine cellar-slash-panic room it is," Jem said with a huff, folding her arms. She met Sorin's eyes, one brow risen. "How long do we have until this festival, then, catboy?"

Sleep was a dandelion leaf floating atop a stream: the second Sorin got close enough to reach out for it, it drifted away from him again, trembling along the water's undulating surface. He spent the night in a senseless haze, never quite asleep but not quite awake either, his consciousness a photo with its edges blurred.

Needless to say, when dawn slid through the warehouse windows and kissed Sorin's eyelids, he welcomed it. He sat up, palms digging into the ragged wooden pallet as he got to his feet, counting the other sleeping bodies still slumped motionless around him. There were four—the princess, the assassin, the only one he'd successfully stabbed, and Jem. Just one was missing.

Sorin let out an annoyed sigh. Wherever she was, she probably hadn't strayed far, and she'd be back soon. He'd leave all the illogical worrying for the assassin; he had other things to do.

Much of his stay at Mulaim was a bloodstained blur; it wasn't a time his mind liked to venture back to. He had to make sure the outer entrance to the tunnel was still there, otherwise their plan to get into the ball was effectively null and void.

The chateau was far, but he knew the way. Sorin lowered himself to a crouch, morphing into his feline form. Everything around him rippled into a new universe of olfactory color, and that's when he caught it—her scent. It was soft, gently floral, the scent of lilac carried on a breeze, and as much as he tried to, he couldn't shake it from his bones.

With ease, Sorin hopped up to the windowsill and down again, paws kissing the dewy grass on the other side. The scent ambushed him again, nearer this time, just around the warehouse's back. Sorin traced his way around the perimeter, sneezing as lingering sawdust and mildew pinched his nostrils.

He heard the calm rush of the brook, the soothing babble of water tumbling over stones, before he saw her. Zuri was bent over the creek, dark curls falling around her brown shoulders, her butterscotch dress blanketing the riverbed around her as if she were kneeling in a pool of gold.

Sorin stared, but only for a moment, before he returned to his human skin and uncoiled slowly to his full height. "I thought sneaking around was my thing."

Zuri jolted, whipping around. A few wet curls hung lankly around her face, a darker black than the rest. "Sorin?" she said. "I—by Kiro, you scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here?"

An eyebrow raised. "I could ask you the same."

Vexation permeated Zuri's face; she stood, brushing off her skirts. "Cleaning up a bit," she answered, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "There's no running water in that warehouse, if you haven't noticed, so I had to improvise."

Slowly, Sorin's eyes trailed to the pile of clothes strewn in the grass beside her, the linen the same light peach hue of the dress he remembered her wearing yesterday. "Oh," Sorin said. His face was suddenly warm. "I see."

Zuri read his expression, and though a smirk tugged at her lips, the levity was gone a moment later. As she looked at him, something in her earth-toned eyes had gone sad. "Actually, I...sort of wanted to talk to you."

"Well," said Sorin with a scoff, pivoting on his heel, "the feeling is not mutual. Sorry for bothering you."

"Wait a second. You don't get to do that; you're the one who came to me."

"It was a mistake, obviously. I've got things to do, so I'll leave you be."

He took another long stride away from her, but her hand latched around his wrist. Sorin cringed, his feet locking in place.

For a beat, neither of them spoke, but the silence itself was deafening, like a ceaseless throb in his ears.

"I know..." Zuri began softly, and for a moment he was glimpsing the recent past, when darkness had closed in around him and her voice had been his only tether to reality. "I know it wasn't an easy decision to make—to come help us, I mean—so I just wanted to say thank you. And that I'm on your side."

Thank you.

As if he had done them a service, and not the other way around; as if opening her hands to him before the ruins of the mill had not been a conscious act at all, but merely instinct. The worst part was that he could tell she meant it; the two words quivered with a certain kindness he'd only ever heard before in one other person's voice.

It unnerved him to no end.

Sorin pulled his arm from her grasp, sharply enough that Zuri recoiled in shock. "Thank me when I've brought Vernon to his knees. Thank me when we know the world's not ending. Don't thank me now."

"Sorin, I just—"

The rest fell on deaf ears, as he was already walking away from her, never once glimpsing back over his shoulder.