N ura had many advantages over me. She had managed to build an impressive presence in Threll over these last months, branching out
from the land the Orders had obtained after the fall of the Mikov family. And she had the slaves that she had purchased, a thought that still made my stomach turn.
I’d seen the reaches of her influence here over these last months. But it never got less strange to see this—soldiers in Orders’ uniforms swarming Threllian compounds.
I was so close.
When I had seen Max, chained and guarded at the edges of the compound, I’d almost wept. I couldn’t make out his face. Yet I immediately knew that it was him, the recognition hitting me like a punch to my gut.
“Are you sure it is him?” Ishqa had pressed, over and over again, making no secret of his skepticism.
I was sure.
Her people, of course, were waiting for me.
The explosion, a gift from Ishqa’s Fey potions, rocked the gates, leaving the massive stone doors hanging from the hinges. The smoke was thick, purple from the Fey magic mingling with the blue of Lightning Dust—we’d only managed to get a little of it, but it was plenty to make the blast powerful enough to break through stone.
The smoke burned my lungs, my eyes. I charged straight through it. Let them think that I was Wielding it. Let them believe that I still had the power they’d heard whispered about during the Aran civil war.
I’d memorized the formation of the guards. Memory, combined with my weak vestiges of magic, filled in what sight could not.
At first, I was so focused on my fight that I didn’t feel it—but as I crossed the threshold of the compound, what had been a punch to my gut earlier became a yearning hunger pang. I could feel Max’s presence as if every trace of magic inside of me reached for him.
The soldiers were on me in seconds. I fought on instinct alone, blocking weapon after weapon, hitting bone.
Pain exploded in the back of my skull. White light flashed. Magic.
I countered too slowly. Another blow landed. My knees hit the ground.
Too many sets of hands swarmed me, holding me down. I reached for my sword, but it was yanked from my grasp.
I let out a snarl. Bit an arm that reached over me. Fought back like the animal they thought I was. But soon I found myself pinned, soldiers wrestling shackles onto my wrists. I had made it ten feet beyond the compound gates.
I blinked the blood from my eyes. A man in a captain’s uniform stood over me.
“After all I had heard about you, I have to say, I expected this to be harder,” he said.
I spat at him. He rewarded me with a crack across the back of my head, hard enough to make my vision blur.
“Threllian bitch,” he muttered, wiping the spittle from his face in disgust. “Lock her up. The Queen wants her alive. Keep her far away from him.”
I fought them the whole way. Tears streamed from my eyes—from the smoke of the explosion. I let them believe it was because I was caught.
I pretended that I hadn’t planned for this to happen exactly as it did.
They dragged me to the eastern side of the compound. There, one of the guards—one of the Threllian guards—came just close enough to me to mutter in my ear.
“The west side. He’s been freed,” he whispered in Thereni. The other guards weren’t close enough to hear, and couldn’t understand us if they did, anyway.
It wasn’t the Threllian guards that we had to worry about. I saw the moment I was taken into captivity that they recognized me.
This was the factor Nura didn’t consider.
She had the land, the manpower, the magic, the prisons. She set a trap with iron teeth. Tallied on paper, it was laughable to think that one person could pose any threat to these things. But she was thinking of me, a single slave—not the hundreds that oiled the gears of her burgeoning Threllian empire. She prioritized earning the steadfast loyalty of her Threllian subjects, but she didn’t know this place, didn’t know them. I’d learned a long time ago that there was nothing you couldn’t do if you knew what people truly wanted.
I knew what this man wanted.
His name was Viktor. He had come into Nura’s possession because he had been a slave on Esmaris Mikov’s estate and had chosen to stay after the Orders had taken it over. I didn’t know him personally, at least not well, but when I had seen his name on the list of soldiers stationed at this base, it had sparked familiarity. His sister and his nephew were among those Serel, Filias, and I had freed from a neighboring estate several months ago. They had joined the rebellion. Viktor wouldn’t know that they had been freed, or where they were now—but I did.
So, hours earlier, when Viktor had been making his daily early-morning patrols of the ground, it hadn’t even been difficult to find him alone in a base this understaffed. He knew who I was immediately. When I told him of his family, I watched his eyes widen. I’d seen that look so many times. Before he even opened his mouth, I knew he would help us. People will do anything for hope.
Now, Viktor took my arm, pulling us out of sight from the rest of the base. We had seconds. Even though the base was woefully short-staffed at night, I had attracted attention and riled up the guards here—just as I had intended to.
Viktor shoved a sheathed dagger into my hands, which I slipped into the waistband of my trousers. My heart was beating so fast.
“I saw him go,” Viktor said. “He and his brother are leaving now.”
Brother?
I barely cared about that moment of confusion. I was minutes away from seeing Max again. The hope was so intense that it terrified me.
“Go to the east side,” I said. “My friends will be waiting for you. They will get you out.”
His eyes gleamed beneath the lantern light. He slipped me a small metal key, and as he did, he paused to squeeze his calloused hand around mine.
“Thank you, Tisaanah. Thank you.”
I nodded, my own throat tight. “You’re the one who deserves the thanks.”
He gave me a small smile, then looked over his shoulder. “We should wait no more than a half hour before freeing you. They’ll be sending the rest of the Aran soldiers back now that they know you’ve been captured. It will only get harder to get you out later, and if they realize he’s gone—”
The high-pitched screech cut through me like a scalpel, sharp enough that it shattered the air. It lasted for several long seconds, and by the time I managed to regain my senses, I realized the ground was shaking. Panicked shouts erupted outside. “Get that thing under control! Stop it! Kill it! Kill it!” someone was shrieking, before going silent.
Viktor’s eyes went round. Happiness fell away in favor of sheer terror. “What is that?” I asked.
“We need to go right—” Viktor started, just as the most horrifying creature I had ever seen tore through the wall of the base.
