Free Nightspell by Leah Cypess Page A

to the coronation ceremony, his
    choice is not binding, which is where my father’s trouble currently lies. I don’t want to be king, not anymore.
    Not now that I’m—” He stopped, lips pressed together, and Darri knew she hadn’t succeeded in hiding her
    reaction. “My cousin Cerix, on the other hand, does want to be king. Quite desperately. And if I were to
    disappear, he would be next in line.”
    Darri hadn’t the slightest clue what Kestin was get ing at. She said, “If . . .”
    “If I find out who kil ed me, and avenge myself, I wil cease to be.”
    “Is that what you want?”
    Kestin was very stil , but his black eyes blazed. “Yes.”
    Darri couldn’t tear her eyes away from his. She had been raised to understand the importance of vengeance;
    and she knew, oh she knew, what it was to want one thing so badly that nothing else mat ered. She leaned
    toward him and said, “You want my help.”
    “I need your help.” Kestin leaned forward too; she could see the beads of sweat on his forehead, the sharp
    creases around his eyes.
    Darri lifted her eyebrows. “Why me?”
    Kestin blew out a short breath. “My father has forbidden any of his subjects to help me. He wants me as his
    heir. The dead are backing him because they want one of their own on the throne. And the living are al too
    afraid to help me.”
    The disdainful undertone in the way he said “the living” made Darri blink. For a moment she had almost
    managed to forget that the man in front of her was dead.
    Bile rose in her throat. She swal owed it hard and straightened abruptly. “What if you change your mind, at
    the end? Decide you don’t wish to just . . . vanish?”
    “If I know who kil ed me, there wil be nothing to decide.” Kestin went translucent as he spoke and made a
    violent gesture with his arm, which went right through the wal behind him. “That’s how it is, for ghosts. It’s an obsession. As the living desire procreation, so do the dead desire justice.”
    Darri wrenched her eyes away from that arm, her stomach roiling. The remnants of the wine didn’t help at
    al with the sudden wrenching emptiness inside of her. Because she had no doubt that Varis would accede to
    this plan.
    Nothing had changed, she told herself. She had come to trade herself for Cal ie. She would marry Cerix
    instead of Kestin, and Cal ie would get to go home, and it would be exactly as she had planned. Nothing had
    changed just because she had dared believe, for a short while, that there was a happy ending for both of them.
    Kestin’s eyes were intently watchful, and something in their dark gaze made her think he sympathized.
    Which was probably his intent. She looked at his arm, stil half in the wal .
    “I wil help you,” she said quietly, “if you promise me that you’l make Cal ie go.”
    “Of course. She’s not a prisoner. ”
    “Not let her go. Make her go.”
    Kestin’s eyebrows slanted, two diagonal black lines on his ash white forehead. He pul ed his hand out of the
    wal and passed it across his face. “Even if she’s content here?”
    She’s learned not to think about the perversion that surrounds her, Darri thought. That’s not “content.” But of
    course she couldn’t say that to Kestin, and in any case, she had no interest in discussing her sister with the dead prince. “Yes.”
    prince. “Yes.”
    Kestin nodded, and Darri drew in a deep breath. This was good, she told herself. This was exactly what she
    wanted.
    She folded her arms over her chest. “Then we’re agreed. I’l help you find your murderer. How did you die?”
    He looked up at her in surprise, his hair fal ing back over his cheekbones. She had guessed it was a rude
    question, but she didn’t have time for him to get around to the subject on his own. She lifted her chin and
    waited.
    Kestin bit his lower lip. “I was strangled in the middle of the day. I didn’t even realize I was dead until I
    woke up in the evening, and found out it was three ful