Everything stopped.
I stared at the prince, and he stared back, his black Vykryn uniform transforming him into a shadow in the night.
And then my mind caught up, and I was lifting my bow, and his hand was reaching for one of the swords strapped to his back.
But I was quicker.
I lashed out with my bow, striking the back of his sword hand with the upper limb. He hissed and leapt away to put space between us.
He threw up his hands. “I’m not here to fight you, Thia.”
The slight rasp in his voice pulled at something in my chest. A reminder that I’d cared about him. That maybe I still did. “Then walk away.”
“I can’t. I need—”
I didn’t wait for him to finish, slashing again with my bow.
He dodged, hand returning to his sword. “Listen to me, Thia.”
“I’ve done enough of that already.”
I’d listened, and I’d believed him. But I understood now. Ericen might be a better person than his mother. He might not believe in the ways of his people that led them to wage war and conquer nations, to spill blood in the name of their god.
But he was still the prince of Illucia, and he would not betray that.
The air stilled. My hand tightened on my bow. His eyes traced the line of one of my leather-gloved hands—the glove he’d given me. Then I moved. Quick as a wingbeat, he drew a sword from the sheath on his back. I nocked an arrow, drew, and loosed just as his sword knocked my bow aside. The arrow grazed his arm, but he didn’t slow, sweeping the flat side of his sword toward my ankles.
Kiva’s sword caught the blow. She followed through, throwing Ericen back. He moved with the blow, easily keeping his balance.
“Thia, wait—”
I slashed again, not giving him time to speak. He deflected it, then shot forward inside my reach. I tried to twist away, but he caught my wrist and swung me hard into the wall beside the door.
My breath left my lungs in a whoosh of air, but I clung tight to my bow, even as he pinned my wrist into the wall. I felt the heat of his body against mine, a flare of energy in the chill night air. Felt the rise and fall of his chest in time with my own, his gaze locked onto mine.
“You can be more than what she made you,” I whispered.
He recoiled. Kiva’s footfalls were the only warning he had before she slammed into him, throwing him aside.
Regaining his footing, he backed away, sword pointed down, other hand raised in a show of peace. “Listen to me. I came as soon as I learned about my mother’s plans with the fires. I didn’t want you to walk into a trap.”
“Funny,” Kiva growled. “This feels a lot like a trap.”
He ignored her. “Please, Thia.” His blue eyes were bright in the light of the moon, beseeching. “I need to talk to you. There’s something bigger going on here. Bigger than Illucia and Rhodaire.”
You have no idea. Illucia didn’t know about the rebellion forming against them from the ruins of the nations they’d decimated.
“After you escaped, I went back to the throne room. Auma and the monks were gone.”
Kiva flinched at the mention of Auma’s name.
“My mother was furious. The things she was saying—” He cut off, hesitating.
“What?”
“They didn’t make any sense.”
“You’re not making any sense, Ericen,” I growled.
“I’m trying to help you.” He stepped forward as if to press the sincerity of his words into us.
I stared at him expectantly.
His jaw worked. “She said something about the Sellas.”
I stilled. “What about them?”
“She wasn’t making any sense,” he repeated, shaking his head. “She was talking about them like—like they were still alive.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said even as a chill trailed down my spine.
“I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“Why should we believe a word you say?” Kiva asked.
Ericen looked at me. “Because I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t choose her over you.”
I stepped back, stunned. The night we’d escaped from Sordell, Ericen had been right there. He could have called the guards, could have sent Vykryn riding after us a wingbeat behind, but he hadn’t. He’d let us go.
Ericen lowered his hands to his sides. “You were right about her, Thia. About everything. I always knew you were, but I was too much of a coward to act on it.”
I swallowed against my dry throat, unsettled by the earnest look behind his eyes. He’d lied to me before. In Rhodaire, he’d convinced me he was every bit the cruel Illucian prince I’d expected, and I’d believed it. He was too good at telling me what I wanted to hear.
Who was to say he wasn’t pretending now?
But what did he gain—what did Razel gain—by his coming here alone to spin a wild tale?
Slowly, he sheathed his sword. “I made a mistake. I get that. But I thought you of all people would understand how hard it is to have your entire life turned upside down. For everything to change.”
My grip tightened on my bow. After Ronoch, normal had seemed so far away, the word had lost meaning. That lost feeling was akin to drowning, trapped beneath the dark waters with no idea which way was up.
“You asked me to leave everything I ever knew behind.” Ericen’s voice roughened. “I thought I couldn’t do it, but I was wrong. You showed me that I could.”
“And you showed us that you’re a traitorous bastard,” Kiva replied. She angled her sword toward his throat. “I don’t believe a word he’s saying, Thia.”
But I wanted to. I wanted to more than anything, and that scared me.
Ericen didn’t look away from me, even as Kiva’s sword hovered inches from his throat. The idea of her running him through bothered me a lot more than I wanted it to. He held my gaze unflinchingly, a familiar glint in them. A challenge. To trust him?
The rooftop door banged open.
Another dark figure erupted onto the roof brandishing a black gold sword. I barely got my bow around to block the upward strike. The force of it knocked my bow from my hands, sending it skittering across the rooftop.
Kiva pivoted to intercept the second attack, forcing them back. I retreated, Kiva between me and the now grinning Vykryn. Shearen looked every bit as vicious as he had when he’d tormented me in Sordell.
“You made for a wonderful distraction, Eri,” the blond boy said.
My stomach dropped. Ericen had been stalling. Everything he’d said was a lie.
The prince stepped forward, lips parting as if to say something, but he swallowed the words down even as his eyes begged me to understand.
“This was far more than I expected to find.” Shearen hefted Sinvarra, grinning at the growl Kiva emitted. “You’ll be returning with us, Princess. Ericen?”
The prince drew his sword, his eyes promising apologies even as he lifted the blade.
A resounding screech barely preceded Res’s diving form. Rising from the dive, he landed, talons extended, on the rooftop ledge, wings flared wide. In a powerful stroke, he brought them together, releasing a wind that forced Shearen and Ericen back a step.
Kiva moved, striking Sinvarra from Shearen’s hands. She swept the sword up through her forward momentum and rose with the point directed straight at Shearen’s neck. Ericen fell still, eyes wide at the balancing crow. Was that…awe? I’d known Ericen had an interest in the crows. He’d tried to ask me about them more than once, and I’d refused to answer. But I’d always thought it was a fascination with their power. Not this…reverence.
“This seems familiar.” Kiva grinned and pressed the sword point a little deeper into Shearen’s skin.
He hissed.
“I should slit your throat,” she said.
“No!” Ericen lurched forward but stilled when Kiva tilted the blade further.
“Ericen,” Shearen growled, but he fell silent at a sharp look from the prince. The last I’d seen the two of them, they’d been at each other’s throats. Now Shearen was taking orders without complaint? What had happened these last couple of weeks?
I hurried across the roof to snatch up my bow, nocking an arrow and aiming it at the prince. “Leave.”
“Thia—”
“Be thankful I’m allowing you to go unharmed,” I said, ignoring Kiva’s sidelong gaze that asked why in the Saints’ name I was doing just that. But I couldn’t explain it to her. I barely understood it myself.
Despite everything that’d happened, I couldn’t bring myself to think of Ericen as my enemy again.
Ericen grabbed Shearen’s arm, forcing him toward the door. Even up against a crow, Shearen looked loath to surrender. But as Ericen shoved him through the door, the prince glanced back at me, and I swore he looked relieved. Then they were through the door and down the stairs.
I leaned over the building edge. Two massive black Illucian warhorses waited at the mouth of the alley below. Shearen and Ericen emerged, swiftly mounting and kicking their horses into a canter.
Make sure they clear town, I told Res.
He leapt into the air, circling us once before taking off after the horses as they made for the boulevard that curved out onto the traveling road.
“Come on,” I said to Kiva. “Let’s go check on the others.”
* * *
With the help of the town’s leader, Samra had seen to the townspeople. By the time we returned, they’d already organized cleanup crews and started guiding the remaining crowd back to their homes.
As Kiva left me to get a report from a nearby soldier, Samra stepped up, blocking my path. She’d yet to remove her mask. “You let him go.”
I frowned. “Malkin? What did you want me to do, kill him?”
Her gaze cut toward me. “You’re at war. You’re forging an alliance against one of the greatest military mights this world has ever seen. You can’t scare it with a little rain and wind. Eventually, you and that crow are going to have to spill blood.” She didn’t wait for me to respond before pushing on through the dispersing crowd.
I let her go, unsettled. My mother probably would have captured them and had them executed or killed them before they could escape. I hadn’t wanted to risk Res when forcing them out was an option, but it was more than that.
This was the first time I’d ever asked him to hurt someone. The first time we might have killed or seriously injured someone. But Samra was right. Eventually, we would have to.
I continued through the crowd, seeking Caylus. I didn’t make it far. It seemed every single person wanted to speak to me. They bowed and thanked me, pressing tokens of thanks and luck into my hands that I respectfully returned, promising them their safety was enough.
Then a curvaceous, thick-muscled woman stepped into my path, a broad smile on her kind face. I let out an involuntary gasp of recognition. “Jenara!”
The retired rider wrapped me in a hug so warm and tight, I never wanted her to let go. It’d been months since I’d seen her, first the day of the town festival, when I’d watched her crow make animals out of water, and then again in the capital for each yearly hatch night. She’d been there on Ronoch, and she bore the tiny speck-like scars of falling embers.
“Thia,” she said in a voice of warm honey. She pulled back, holding me at arm’s length. “Saints keep me, it’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too,” I said with a grin.
“That was some impressive work by your crow.” She nodded to where Res had just landed on a nearby building, his bright silver eyes searching the crowd with a familiar hunger. The connection between us prickled with a feeling I knew well: food food food.
“Even for a storm crow, the directional control of the water and the transition to ice was incredible. Especially at his age.”
“I’m starting to think there might be a reason behind that,” I replied. She lifted a brow, and I hurried to explain the odd occurrences with Res’s powers, ending with my theory that somehow, he might have access to the other crow powers.
“Fascinating,” she said, rubbing her chin. “Why don’t you and I put it to the test in the morning? I’ll help you train him as if he were a water crow, and we’ll see what he can do.”
I grinned. “That’d be perfect.” We shook hands, and I scanned the crowd. “You haven’t seen a tall Ambriellan boy anywhere, have you?”
“The one that viper pulled in front of the crowd? He’s in the town hall building.” She gestured at the structure behind her.
“Thanks.”
We parted ways and I made for the hall, asking Res to keep an eye on things outside.
There was something familiar about the building, its layers rising up toward a point, the edges carved in delicate swirling designs. One of the big double doors had been pinned open, but the other bore the proud, massive shape of an aizel, its coat carved about it like melting clouds of mist.
Black metal hooks that would have once held lanterns to light worshippers’ way jutted out periodically. A shiver prickled my skin.
This had once been a Sella temple.
Ericen’s warning pulled at me, but I shoved it aside. I couldn’t trust him.
The doors opened into a narrow hall with rooms shooting off on either side. People bustled about, and I pulled one aside to ask after Caylus. They directed me to one of the small side rooms, where I found a healer finishing up tending to the cut from the guard’s blade.
The healer bowed to me as I entered. Caylus didn’t even look at me. He sat on a small workbench, eyes trained on the floor.
“Can I have a moment with him?” I asked the healer. The girl nodded and slipped from the room, closing the door behind her.
Caylus’s hands tightened about the edge of the table, and I knew he did it to keep them from shaking. A flush filled his cheeks.
“What is it?” I asked softly.
He shook his head, bringing his hands to his face. “Malkin,” he whispered. His fingers curled in as he dragged them along his face and behind his neck, lacing them tightly. His elbows pressed together like a cocoon to hide in. “You shouldn’t have to fight my battles for me.” His voice came out hoarse. “No one should. But I—I just…”
His words scraped at raw memories. Hiding under the covers. Craving darkness, solitude, quiet. A place where I couldn’t fail, and I couldn’t lose. Even now, I worried I’d slip, my past my constant shadow.
I stepped closer. Gently, I wrapped my fingers around his wrists, his skin warm to my touch, and pulled his hands from his face.
It felt like reaching for a drowning man.
“I understand, Caylus,” I said gently. “I know what it is to feel useless. Powerless. Weak. But you are none of those things. Sometimes, we need a little help. That’s what I’m here for. To help fight those battles.”
Finally, he looked at me, and what I saw in the depths of his eyes trapped my breath in my throat. From the day I’d met him, Caylus had always been quiet, a little nervous and a little awkward. He didn’t trust easily, and he’d always seemed uneasy, like he expected the world to crumble around him at any moment.
He was broken, and it was Malkin’s fault.
My skin warmed, a trace of heat rising from my stomach to my throat like a tendril of smoke from a growing fire. Suddenly, I regretted my decision to let him go free. He hadn’t deserved my mercy.
Malkin had done this, and he went unpunished because of Illucia. Because of Razel. She’d destroyed so much more than I’d realized, hurt so many people.
Caliza. Kiva. Caylus. Auma. Samra.
Even Ericen.
I wrapped one of Caylus’s large hands in both of mine and silently made myself a promise. Before all this was over, I would make Malkin Drexel regret ever laying a finger on Caylus.
And I would tear Razel down.
His lips parted, then closed, then pressed into a firm line.
“There’s a story about an Ambriellan sailor,” he began at last, “who sailed the world alone. When he didn’t return, his friends assumed he’d died. Then one day, a merchant ship came across his boat, floating off the Illucian coast. When they asked him whether he was lost, he said he was. When they offered to give him directions, he said he knew the way home.”
As he spoke, his fingers flexed in and out, the white scars stark against his golden skin. “‘Well then,’ the ship’s captain asked, ‘how can you be lost?’ And the man replied, ‘Because no matter where I am, it’s never where I should be.’ And when the captain asked him where that was, the man said, ‘I don’t know. I can’t find it.’ Unable to help, the merchants left him there. They say to this day you can spot the sailor’s dinghy floating in the mist, still searching.”
Maybe it’d been his detached tone as he told it, or maybe it was the way he stared at the wall before him, but the story left me uneasy, the room crowded with his words.
“That’s not a very happy story,” I said.
“No, it’s not. But I understand him, the sailor. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll spend your whole life searching for it.”
My throat felt dry. “What are you looking for, Caylus?”
He leaned his head back against the wall. “I don’t know.”
The words settled heavily. When I first met Caylus in Illucia, he’d only just escaped Malkin weeks before. His wounds, both physical and invisible, had been so raw. Just like mine. Together, we’d helped each other heal.
And seeing Malkin again had ripped his wounds right back open.
Caylus’s hand fell over mine, and only then did I realized I’d curled it into a fist. “I just—” The words caught in his throat. “I just need some time to think.”
I felt myself nodding, and though I knew he wanted time alone, I couldn’t quite make myself leave. It felt like abandoning him.
“I’m here for you if you need me,” I said.
“I know.” He smiled, and it settled the unease inside me. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe he really did just need some time to process everything. But as I stood to go, crossing the short gap from bed to door, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the distance opening between us might never be closed again.