FARON’S TIME WITH HER SISTER WAS RUNNING OUT, AND YET SHE stood planted like a new palm tree in the hallway outside Elara’s chambers. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Elara. She wanted to sweep into her room with a solution. But after last night’s attack, the Port Sol Temple was so full of people praying that there had been a line for the sunroom—and a sunroom was the only place that Faron could speak to all three of the gods at once.
At the time, Faron had pictured the look of disappointment on Elara’s face if she heard that Faron had thrown people out of the temple on her behalf. And summoning the gods one by one for answers would have only resulted in her sleeping through Elara’s departure. Now, lingering in the hall, Faron wished that she had cleared the sunroom. What was the point of being the Empyrean if she couldn’t use the title to help the people she cared about?
Stop being such a child. Go spend time with your family. With Elara. Before it’s too—
Movement at the mouth of the corridor drew her attention. Two figures were passing by on their way to somewhere else. Reeve Warwick… and Commander Gavriel Warwick.
Of course. Of course.
Faron followed them. The Queenshield who lined the walls showed no reaction to them or to her, making her wonder how often Reeve had been openly meeting with his father. Did the queen know? Did Elara know? And should Faron even tell her when she was about to enter a den of snakes?
She slipped into an empty room just down the hall from the one the Warwicks had entered. Then she reached out for Mala and her powers of illusion. Faron felt the surge of divine magic spreading throughout her body, her senses more alert than they’d ever been, her body running hotter than usual. Mala settled within her, and the room came back into view. It was empty except for a gilded trunk and an ornate mirror. Her reflection in the latter told a story of a wild-eyed girl avoiding her problems.
Faron cloaked herself in Mala’s power, using the energy of her soul to bend the light in the room until she couldn’t even see herself. She was still solid and audible, but if she stayed quiet and out of the way, then the Warwicks would never know she was there.
They’d left the door open, which seemed like the height of arrogance before Faron realized the first problem with her plan. Commander Warwick was standing in front of the window, but he was speaking Langlish—and Faron could barely say her own name in that language. Reeve was leaning against the wall to the left, next to a half-stocked bookshelf. Just like last time, he was putting on a performance. The Reeve Warwick she knew was sarcastic and collected, arrogant and sanctimonious. Now, alone with his father, his shoulders were an insouciant line and there was a dangerous smile on his face.
It wasn’t exactly like looking at a stranger, but it was… something.
The commander had been given a room no different from Elara’s, except that his color scheme was sea blue and salt white, and he had a mahogany desk and cushioned chair by the bathroom. His bed had been made with military efficiency, and if he’d brought any belongings with him, then they were nowhere to be seen. He had no balcony, but he had a set of windows that overlooked the ocean. San Mala was a narrow strip of green in the distance, and he faced it with his hands folded behind his back.
“It’s been five years, but I know you better than anyone here, Father,” Reeve said in patois. “This is my home now, this is the language I speak, and these are the people I would do anything to protect. I trust it won’t come to that.”
Commander Warwick turned. There was a friendly smile on his face, but his eyes were so cold that Faron almost took a step back. Neither of them knew she was here, and yet there was a thick tension in the room. This didn’t feel like a private reunion between father and son, and it certainly didn’t feel like a relaxed meeting between spy and spymaster.
Something was wrong.
“From what I’ve observed,” said Commander Warwick in his accented patois, “these people you’d do anything to protect wouldn’t shed a tear if you died in front of them.”
“The Langlish wouldn’t shed one for you, either,” Reeve said brightly. “That tends to happen after losing an easy war to a child.”
“There is no such thing as an easy war.”
“Then why is the Langlish Empire the laughingstock of the continent?”
“Ignorance.” That single word was filled with so much loathing that even the commander’s rictus smile couldn’t make it seem polite.
Reeve just shrugged, as if this were nothing but a nice afternoon stroll in the park for him. But when he switched into Langlish, and Faron was no longer distracted by his words, she could see the way his hands were tucked into his pockets as if he were afraid they would give him away by shaking. His posture was loose and easy, but she knew him—she knew him whether she wanted to or not—and this verbal battle wasn’t as effortless as he was making it seem. Both of them were smiling, casual and amused, but their eyes were searching for a weakness to fire into.
They hate each other, Mala mused. You can just feel it.
Faron could definitely feel it, and she didn’t know what to do with it. For the last five years, she had believed that Reeve was a trap set by his father, and she had waited for the moment that trap would be activated. Part of her had even been eager to finally have her suspicions confirmed, to put an end to her conflicted feelings toward her sister’s best friend and be vindicated once and for all. But Commander Warwick seemed as if he’d rather kill his son himself than wield him against anyone else.
It was something she would never have believed if she weren’t seeing it for herself.
And if that was true… if Reeve had come here to threaten him even knowing that…
“I had hoped you would be more susceptible to reason after so many years, but I see you’ve chosen to be a disappointment,” the commander said, switching back to patois. “You betrayed us. You ruined everything. Langlish blood is on your hands, while you debase yourself for people who will never care about you. Continue to waste your life on this island of rebels and thieves. It’s no concern of mine.”
Reeve pushed off the wall and strode across the room with a predatory grace. His gaze was sharp, his jaw set. The commander had clearly seen too much in his long life to be unnerved by a teenager, but Faron saw his hands clench just slightly at his sides. As if he were getting ready for a fight.
“You always think you shouldn’t be concerned about me. That’s your mistake to make,” Reeve said in a low voice. “But I’ll find out what you’re planning, and I’ll stop you. Just like I did last time. Just like I will every time.”
Reeve turned to leave but stopped when the commander said something in Langlish that made a shadow pass over Reeve’s face. “You can try,” he replied darkly.
It took Faron a long time to dust off the old knowledge of lessons in the back of her mind and translate one word from the commander’s statement as mother. By then, he was already sitting at his desk, clearly finished with this interaction. His first interaction with his only son in five years.
It didn’t make any sense.
She studied the commander’s back, half expecting him to turn with a smirk that would reveal he’d known she was there all along. But he was flipping through his papers, and Reeve was walking toward the door. The commander didn’t pause, didn’t even seem to be listening for the door to close. It was as if Reeve didn’t matter at all.
Swallowing her confusion, Faron hurried behind Reeve and silently slipped past the door before it shut.
All the bravado Reeve had wrapped around himself dissolved into nothing in that hallway. His shoulders were slumped with fatigue, but his steps were quick with an eagerness to get away from that room. Faron had to jog to keep up with him, and even still, she had no idea what to say or what to feel. Everything she’d ever thought about Reeve—five years of assumptions—had gone up in smoke in the last twenty minutes. Where was she supposed to go from here?
Gods, did she have to apologize to him? Her tongue might fall out.
Reeve didn’t slow down until he’d left the guest wing of the palace and was making his way toward Elara’s room. Faron mumbled a goodbye to Mala before dismissing her, then stumbled a little from the emptiness that rushed in to replace the magic. Reeve caught her arm, erasing the distance between them in an instant. Once she could stand on her own, he seemed to realize what he’d done—or, rather, for whom—and let her go as if she were on fire.
“Did you know I was there?” Faron demanded instead of lingering on how nice his touch had felt. How she almost missed it.
“Where?” Reeve asked. “Following me? I don’t know when you started, but you’ve been stumbling around loudly behind me for at least three hallways now.”
She believed him. Irie help her, she believed him. And if he hadn’t known—if they hadn’t known—
“What did the commander say? When you were leaving that room, he said something in Langlish. What did he say?”
Reeve inhaled sharply and scanned her with too-wide eyes, as if he were trying to figure out exactly how much she’d heard. Then he dragged a hand over his face. “He said that my mother might have forgiven me for what I’d done, but he thought I was too old to excuse it with childhood innocence. And he said that if I ever set foot in the Langlish Empire again, he’ll kill me himself.”
You can try, Reeve had growled back.
Faron suppressed a shiver. Reeve’s tone was matter-of-fact now, but the way he avoided looking at her spoke of a pain deeper than she’d ever taken the time to acknowledge. I’m sorry felt insufficient for something like this, especially coming from her. That’s so terrible would sound sarcastic on her tongue. And Are you okay? seemed like a question she hadn’t earned an honest answer to.
The silence stretched past the acceptable amount of time for her to come up with something. When Reeve finally looked at her, he’d reconstructed his mask with her on the outside where she belonged. Any trace of vulnerability was gone, replaced by a solemn determination.
“More important,” he said, “we have the confirmation that he’s definitely planning something, so we should tell the queen.”
“Wait. We do?”
“You don’t know my father like I do. He didn’t say anything that would incriminate him to anyone else, but he still said a lot. Langley is a laughingstock because people don’t know any better. San Irie is full of ‘rebels and thieves’ rather than people. Even the way he was looking at San Mala was…” Reeve straightened, as if something new had occurred to him. “Curing the Fury will only help him, but I think this goes deeper than that. His loss to San Irie was one of the most humiliating failed military campaigns of this century, and within days of coming back, he’s excused a direct attack, talked the queen into letting Elara leave, and has you essentially working for him. He wants something. He’s planning something. And it’s big.”
Faron didn’t like the idea that things could get bigger than this. The threat of another war hung over her head like a blade, ready to cleave her in two. Part of her remembered the rage that seemed to spark at her fingertips as she was made to perform her power for the Novan dignitaries; they wouldn’t be so entertained if they were facing her on the battlefield, forced to remember once more that San Irie and the Childe Empyrean were a force to be reckoned with. But that was a small part of her, drowned out by nightmares of fire and destruction, smoke and death.
War didn’t prove one country was stronger than another. It just snuffed out lives from each nation until only mourners were left to make sense of it all.
She stopped in the center of the hallway, heart sinking. “What if there’s no way to save Elara without playing right into his hands? What if, no matter what we do, the Langlish Empire is going to—”
“We’re going to save Elara,” Reeve said as if there were no room for doubt. “And we’re going to stop whatever my father is planning. We stopped him when we were younger than this. It should be easier now that we’re older and already united.”
“Are we?” she couldn’t help asking. “United?”
Reeve raised one shoulder in a small shrug. “The one thing we’ve always had in common is our love for Elara. I’m willing to put aside everything else to focus on helping her if you are.”
The apology she wanted to give rattled around in her throat, trapped by her pride. Who said she had to apologize to him, anyway? The best apology was changed behavior, and here he was giving her an opportunity to change.
“All right,” she said. “Truce.”
Her hand reached out, hovering in the air between them. Reeve stared at it and then stared at her. She couldn’t read his expression. Maybe one day she would ask him why he studied her all the time as if she were one of the books he was always reading. She never knew what he was looking for, only that he rarely found it.
Then his hand clasped hers in a firm grip that felt like its own kind of promise. “Truce.”
Faron’s palm felt hot as it fell back to her side. She resisted the urge to wipe it on her skirts. “Great. Fine. Now, let’s go tell the queen.”
A smile crossed Reeve’s face, but he didn’t say a word as they started walking again. Faron hid her own smile, picturing Elara’s reaction when she found out they’d called a truce without her intervention. If they could do that, maybe their combined efforts would find a way to break the bond before the Summit was out. Maybe this was a problem too personal for the gods. Maybe it needed a human touch.
Because Reeve was right. The one thing they’d always had in common was their love for Elara, and it was their love for Elara that could save her.
If it couldn’t… Well. There was nothing that Faron wouldn’t do for her sister.