For as hard as Rian fought to conspire against me, he’s remarkably quick to let me go when his country is under attack. Within minutes of learning that Oren Crane has abandoned me and Lochlan here in favor of attacking the palace at Tarrumor, Rian and his people have departed, taking soldiers and horses with them. It leaves me free in the house with Tessa, as well as Lochlan and Rocco, which would seem ideal—until I realize there’s a woman with dark spiral curls pulling desperately at Rocco’s arms.
“Let me go,” she’s saying. “Let me go, Erik. I need to get him.”
“I’ll go with you,” he says. “I’ll help you. Let me saddle a horse—”
“We can take the wagon,” says Tessa briskly. “We’ll go after them.”
“It’s too slow,” the woman wails. She slips free of his grip and bolts from the house, the door slamming open behind her.
Rocco doesn’t even glance at me. He makes a sound of pain, presses a hand to his waist, and runs after her.
“Corrick.” Tessa takes hold of my hand and squeezes tight. Her eyes are gleaming in the moonlight. I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe she’s with me. I want to take hold of more than her hand. I want to inhale her breath until the end of time. I want to make sure no one ever takes her away from me again.
But she says, “We have to go. We have to help Olive.”
“We just got free,” says Lochlan. “You want us to ride into their war to help some girl we just met?”
“Yes,” she says, but she’s not looking at him. She only has eyes for me. Every emotion I’m feeling, I see echoed in her gaze. Love. Desire. Need. Relief. Hope.
But there’s also a plea there.
I remember the very first night she looked up at me in the Wilds, the very first time she needed my help—how badly I wanted to give it, no matter the risk. I think of all the nights since that she’s begged me for action, for revolution, for change.
I have no idea who Olive is, or why any of this is so important to Tessa. I just know it is, and I’m done failing her.
I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. My mind is already making plans. I know Tessa can’t ride well, and I rather doubt Lochlan can. “You said there’s a wagon? Do you have any weapons?”
Lochlan’s mouth drops open. “You can’t be serious.”
“As you said, you’ve faced an army before. This probably won’t be much worse.”
“We have everything the guards brought on the ship, so there’s armor and supplies, too,” Tessa announces. “Come on. We have to hurry.”
I move to follow her, but Lochlan is staring at me as we pass.
I look right back at him. “You don’t owe him anything. You don’t have to fight this battle.”
“You’re right,” he says. “I don’t owe him anything at all.”
Then he falls in step beside me.
Tessa talks while I drive the wagon. The horses run hard, the wood rattling and bouncing over cobblestones. Lochlan clings to the railings in the back. I learn everything that’s happened while she’s been on Fairde, from their walk to Rian’s palace to the poison that she assumes is spreading through the water. I don’t have all the pieces of what happened in Kandala yet, but I have a lot of them. I learn about Olive and her son, Ellmo, and the medicines they’ve been distributing, and the way everyone here reveres Rian.
In turn, we tell her about Oren Crane, about Lina and Mouse and the rest of his henchmen, about the way he seems to have a stranglehold on Silvesse that he maintains through fear. She hears about how Lochlan and I have been forced to work together, but he doesn’t mention the reading lessons, so I don’t either.
“Why was Olive so panicked?” says Lochlan. “You said she and Rian don’t get along.”
“They don’t,” Tessa says. “But the children were in the palace.” She pauses. “To keep them safe while Oren was ‘rescuing’ me.”
I glance at her. “The children?”
“Little Anya, too,” she says.
I remember the little girl from Rian’s ship who played jacks—well, knucklebones—with me. She had bright eyes and a lively laugh and scarred arms from whatever Oren Crane did to her.
I grit my teeth. As much as I hate Rian, Anya is a child. I think about Lina and Mouse and what I’ve seen them do, and I crack the whip, driving the horses faster.
The glow of fire lights the sky before long, and Tessa gasps. Smoke begins to obscure the moon. We hear the sounds of battle before we see it, because the boom and roar of cannon fire followed by screams are unmistakable.
“We’re close,” Tessa says, and there’s horror in her voice. “The palace is just over this hill.”
Then we crest another hill. Tessa gasps again.
“The palace,” she says.
“What palace?” says Lochlan, and he’s right.
There’s no palace at all. There’s nothing but fire.
We tether the horses and take a spot at high ground to try to assess the situation. We’re armed and ready for battle from what we gathered from the guards’ trunks, but I know Tessa isn’t a soldier—and from the look of things down below, the three of us aren’t going to make much of a difference.
Oren Crane’s ship has pulled into the harbor, and he appears to be firing on what’s left of the palace. Without Rian and his best people here, there was no one left to defend anything. It seems that a lot of Oren’s men have already claimed the ground below. What’s left of it, anyway.
Tessa pulls a spyglass from our supplies and peers down at the harbor. “This is horrific. I don’t see Olive or Erik. Not Rian either. I don’t know Oren’s people, though.” She hands the spyglass to me. “What do you see?”
I look through the lens. “Oren is still on his ship.” I frown. “With Lina and Mouse.”
Lochlan swears. “They’re horrible.”
“She is,” I agree. “Mouse wouldn’t be.” I shift the spyglass and find a crumpled body leaning against the railing. Ford Cheeke. He’s bleeding from his temple, and there’s more blood in a pool under his body. I don’t know if he’s dead or not, but it doesn’t look good.
I swallow heavily. I didn’t do it, but I feel as though I was a part of the cause.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Another cannon fires. The sound cracks through the night, and we all jump. Fewer screams erupt down below.
Because Oren’s people are winning.
My heart keeps pounding. I don’t know how to help here. I tried to do the right thing, and it didn’t work. I tried to be the King’s Justice, and it didn’t work.
I look at Tessa and Lochlan. This isn’t even my battle, but they’re both staring at me expectantly. They’re looking at me to lead. Somehow it reminds me of that day in the clothier’s shop, when I needed to be the one to provide hope. Just like when I had to handle things for my brother, success—or failure—has become my responsibility.
I steel my spine and look through the spyglass again. Oren is on the ship. Untouchable from the shore. He’s sending people down to fight on the ground, but he’s safe on the water, as usual. He used my plan to get Rian and his people away so they’d have an advantage.
He used Rian’s desire for revenge, or for me—or both—to get them away.
The numbers down below are dwindling. I don’t have an army. I don’t know the people here to rally townspeople. It’s not like Lochlan’s rebels in Kandala. We don’t know anyone at all. My chest tightens dangerously.
Tessa puts a hand on mine. “You don’t have to win this war alone.”
The weight of her hand presses into mine, and again, I can’t believe she’s here, that I’ve found her, that we’re together. I can’t help it. I pull her to me.
“Forgive me,” I say. “I don’t know if I can win this war at all.”
Lochlan picks up the spyglass and looks himself. “Do you remember what you said about the treble hook when we were on Silvesse? Do you think you could still do that?”
I frown. “That I could scale the wall to break in?”
“Yes.” He glances back at the wagon. “We have some treble hooks in the guard gear.”
I look at him sideways, because I can’t figure out his angle. “Ah . . . if only we had a building to break into?”
He hands me the spyglass. “There’s half a dozen rowboats sitting in the harbor. No one’s touching them because they’re useless against a brigantine. Half of them might be on fire. But we could try.”
“Try what?” says Tessa.
“You don’t need to scale a wall,” says Lochlan. “How about a ship?”
Tessa is going with me first, because I wouldn’t have it any other way. Our treble hooks whistle up through the night and latch against the hull with a clink, and we wait to see if anyone hears. The sounds of the battle and the slap of the water against the hull must be too loud, because no one comes to investigate. I wait anyway. I’ve been double-crossed too many times now.
But then we’re climbing.
“If only we had masks, it would be like old times,” she says, a little breathless from the effort.
I look at the faint tracing of her profile in the moonlight. “I like it better this way.”
“I hope you know I plan to sob all over you properly later.”
“I hope that’s not all you plan to do all over me later.”
She gasps, then grins, her smile bright in the darkness.
“Not for nothing, but I am right here,” Lochlan says from below us.
But then the ship fires again, and we clutch tight to the ropes as they shudder with the force of the cannon fire.
“I’m rather shocked to see the two of you getting along so well,” she says once we’re climbing again.
“We’ve come to an understanding, I think,” I say.
“Karri will be so relieved.”
If we can get back, I think, but I don’t say that.
I tap my finger over my lips, and she nods, because we’re nearing the rail. The three of us climb over silently. This part of the deck is pitch-black, which is why we boarded here. But there aren’t dozens of people on board anymore—most of Oren’s sailors are on land, or down below, firing the cannons. We’re going to have to be strategic to take out Oren, but we don’t need to sneak past a ship full of sailors. Even still, I tell Lochlan to stay at the back, to make sure no one can come up from behind us. Then Tessa and I slip along the railing, staying in the shadows.
Oren’s attention is focused ahead, on the battle on the ground, so we have an advantage.
He’s standing with his back to the main mast, though, so I can’t just shoot him and be done with it.
I grit my teeth. Lina is off to the side, closest to us, but she looks bored. I suppose the death and destruction of hundreds of people doesn’t excite her. I don’t know where Mouse is now. Maybe they’ve sent him ashore, too.
But there’s Oren, right there, against the mast. Watching Rian’s city fall. The fires are so hot that I can feel them from here.
Tessa’s hand brushes mine, and I give it a quick squeeze. We cling to the shadows and wait for him to move.
He doesn’t.
The ship fires again, another cannonball rocketing toward shore. The floorboards underneath us give a shudder, and I expect that to be the moment that Oren steps away from the mast, but it’s not. He’s clinging to that spot like it’ll save his life—and it very much is.
Sweat forms in the small of my back. We can’t stay here forever. Someone will eventually look this way. More sailors will eventually come up on deck. I look from Oren to Lina and wonder if we should shoot her first—but there are enough people on the deck that I worry they’d retaliate before we could get to Oren.
I consider my brother praising Rian’s crew, their devotion to him. I don’t get the sense that Oren has that. There’s a reason he spends so much time on this ship, protecting himself. Torture and fear breed something, but it isn’t loyalty.
We have to take him out first.
He needs to move away from the mast.
As if he knows it, he’s stock-still, braced against the wooden beam. In any other situation, his refusal to move would almost be comical. The few sailors on board have changed position. Even Lina has moved. But Oren doesn’t.
And then, suddenly, he does.
I lift my crossbow, but I don’t have a good shot. I have to slip out onto the deck, just a bit. And there, he’s turning.
A board creaks, or maybe light shifts, but Lina sees me. She gives a shout of warning. That might be what saves Oren’s life, or maybe he just has fate on his side. Because I pull the trigger just as a swell of water hits the ship, throwing us both off-balance.
My bolt goes shooting past him. And I’m visible on the deck.
Oren’s eyes flare wide, and I scrabble to get another bolt from my belt, but it’s not going to be quick. I’m not going to be fast enough. I can’t get it loaded, and Oren is surging toward me; he has a blade—
Another crossbow snaps, just beside me. A bolt appears in his chest, and he crumples.
Tessa is breathing hard. “I’m not watching you die again,” she says.
Lina screams in rage, and I lift my newly loaded weapon to fire just as Tessa is wrenched away from me. Lina’s body jerks as my bolt goes through her shoulder, but I don’t kill her.
She smiles anyway, and I look to my side.
“Good job, Mouse,” says Lina. “Break her neck.”
