CAS HAD SAID nothing to Em since she’d stupidly told him he was kind. And reasonable. Did anyone like being called reasonable? She wouldn’t blame him if he hated her even more now.
She’d noticed he’d learned to step carefully and cover their tracks without her having to explain. He might have been ignoring her, but he was clearly taking mental notes about everything she was doing.
They were still fairly close to Gallego City, and small wooden homes dotted the river. It didn’t seem like the warriors had expanded past the city, but they walked carefully, both her and Cas’s hands constantly poised over their swords.
“There.” Cas pointed to a nearby home, with a dock stretching out into the river. A small rowboat was tied to a post on the dock.
She looked out at the sun, which had almost fully disappeared. She’d been skeptical about the boat when he mentioned it, because they’d be easily spotted on the river in daylight. But the warriors would be less likely to spot them at night. And they wouldn’t have to worry about leaving a trail.
Cas walked to the river and she followed, casting a glance over her shoulder as they reached the dock.
He crouched down next to the metal loop that the boat was tied to and tugged at it. “Get in,” he said to her as he worked on the rope.
She carefully stepped into the boat, keeping her hand on the dock as the boat tilted beneath her. “Is now the wrong time to mention that I’ve never rowed a boat?”
Cas smiled, cocking one eyebrow. “Seriously?”
His smile knocked her even further off balance, and she had to take a moment to steady her feet on the boat. “There aren’t a lot of rivers in Ruina. And we traveled by foot in Vallos because the hunters always congregated at the rivers.”
“See those hooks right there?” he asked, pointing. She nodded. “Put the oars through those.”
She grabbed the oars and sat down.
“And you’re definitely facing the wrong way.” One side of his mouth turned up as she felt her cheeks flush. She wasn’t sure if she was blushing because of his adorable amused expression, or because she was embarrassed to not know what she was doing.
“Hey!” The scream made both of them whirl around, and Em saw a guy standing in the doorway of his house. He took off toward them.
Em spun around and stuck the oars through the loops, keeping a tight grip on them. Cas yanked the rope free and tossed it away.
The man tore across the grass, his face furious.
“Move,” Cas said to her as he hopped into the boat. She did as instructed, handing him the oars. He leaned back, moving the oars over the water, and they pulled away from the dock.
The man pounded onto the dock and seemed to seriously consider jumping in. But Cas rowed quickly, smoothly, and had put a good distance between them and the dock within seconds.
“I’m sorry!” Cas yelled at him, and Em pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. He caught her expression and laughed. “What? I am.”
“First time you’ve ever stolen something?” she asked.
He cocked his head. “Yes. Unless you count all the fig tarts I’ve stolen from the kitchen.”
“Those fig tarts technically belong to you, so no, I don’t count them.”
He began to smile wider, but the grin abruptly disappeared. The familiar lump settled back into her throat. One minute of the old Cas was even more painful now that she knew that he would never smile at her like he used to.
“What was the first thing you stole?” he asked.
His smile was gone, but he hadn’t said the words like he was picking a fight. He squinted at the water, leaning backward and forward as he moved the oars.
“Food,” she said, after considering for a moment. “A few weeks after my father died. Me and Damian and Aren had gone on the run to Vallos, and none of us were experienced hunters. I was starving and this woman had dried beans sticking out of her bag. I swiped them and we ate for several days.”
“Did you feel guilty?”
“Not at the time, no. I didn’t really feel anything except rage then. Thinking back now, I wonder if she’d intended to eat that for several days as well.”
He nodded, still staring at the water. She didn’t know what that nod meant, and he didn’t offer a response, so she kept her mouth shut.
“And you really don’t have any Ruined power?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Did your mother intend for you to inherit the throne?” he asked.
“No, Olivia was next in line. I was supposed to be her closest adviser.” She ran her fingertips over the water. “I was fine with it.”
“Really.” He lifted his eyebrows.
“Yes. She’s even more powerful than our mother was. Our people shouldn’t have denied me the throne after Olivia was taken, but I never disputed that she should have been the one to rule if she’d been there.”
“Ruined power is the only thing that matters when inheriting the throne?” he asked skeptically.
She shrugged. “It’s no more arbitrary than the firstborn inheriting.”
“I guess.” He looked at her for the first time since they’d started the conversation. “Was your mother disappointed?”
Em shook her head. “No. She thought I had other powers. Nonmagical ones, I mean.”
“Like what?”
“She said my strengths were being rational and calm. The ability to make people fear me. She said I inherited that from her. She had big plans for me, apparently. Leading armies and working as an extraction specialist.”
“An extraction specialist,” Cas repeated.
“Extracting information from people,” she said. Her guts twisted, and she had to look away from him. Would her mother have given her a choice? Or would that have been her job, whether she liked it or not?
“My father always said that extraction was Wenda’s specialty,” Cas said, his tone betraying a hint of bitterness.
Em stared at the water, wishing he hadn’t asked about her mother.
“He said her torture methods were unlike anything he’d ever seen. It was one of the reasons he had to invade.”
“And was that also why he took Olivia?” she snapped.
“Maybe he feared that her daughters were going to turn out exactly like her, considering she was already preparing one of them for a career in torture.” His voice rose, the oars moving faster.
“I can think of worse things than turning out like my mother!” As soon as the yell left her mouth she regretted it, but the anger swirled inside of her too violently to back down.
“I can’t think of anything worse, actually,” he spat. “She tortured people for fun—”
“Your father just tortured one of my best friends!” she interrupted.
“And your mother would have tortured every person in Lera if given the chance!”
“Well, she wasn’t given the chance, was she?” Em shouted.
“And maybe that’s not such a bad thing,” Cas said tightly.
“Lovely. Please go on about how you think it’s so great that my mother is dead.”
“Really. You’re telling me that you aren’t celebrating that my father is dead.”
She pressed her lips together. He had her there. Lera—and the rest of the kingdoms—were much better off without him.
And maybe she could understand why Cas felt that way about her mother.
“Perhaps we should just both agree that both our parents were horrible people,” Cas said drily.
She let out a startled laugh. Cas cocked one eyebrow at that reaction, and she felt a fresh wave of almost hysterical laughter bubbling to the surface. She leaned over her knees, her giggles echoing across the river, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle them.
She caught a glimpse of Cas’s stony face, and she knew the laughter was going to dissolve into tears. The ache of keeping them in pushed at her throat, and her attempts to force the tears away were entirely unsuccessful. They spilled down her cheeks. She pressed her forehead to the tops of her knees.
“Are you crying?” Cas asked, like it was the first time he’d ever seen anyone do it.
She didn’t want to admit it out loud, so she remained silent and tried not to let her shoulders shake.
“You’ve lied to me, attempted to destroy my kingdom, basically killed my father, and now you’re crying?”
She sniffled. The boat tilted slightly, and she peeked up to see him scanning the area, holding the oars out of the water.
“I . . . I can’t even go anywhere,” he said. “I’m stuck on this boat with you, watching you cry.”
She wrapped her arms around her legs as she tried to get ahold of herself.
“It’s been a bad few days,” she mumbled.
He was quiet for several seconds. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer, calm. “It really has.”
Em woke to Cas yelling her name.
She jerked awake, her brain cloudy and her body stiff. She’d fallen into a deep sleep, and it took several seconds to pull herself out of it.
When the fog cleared, she realized the boat was going very, very fast.
And the noise . . . what was that?
She whipped her head around, squinting in the dim, early morning sun. A waterfall. It was still too dark to see it, but from the speed they were going, they must be rapidly approaching it.
Cas grabbed her hand, the boat lurching dangerously to the right. “Get out of the boat!” he yelled. “We’re going over—”
His sentence ended in a gasp as the boat tilted down.
She lost Cas’s hand as the water swallowed them both.