I was confused about the bowl of raspberries.
“Where did those come from?” I asked Sammerin when we entered
the tent. He shrugged, said he had no idea, and mentioned that berries were the last thing I should be concerned about when my hand was hanging from a few threads of flesh.
The two of us sat at the table now, Sammerin painstakingly reconnecting every piece of severed bone and muscle. It hurt horrifically. Even after all this time, I still found it stomach-turning to watch him work. So instead, I watched the raspberries, frowning. A single fly circled them lazily. They seeped red onto the white cloth beneath them.
It was hard to get raspberries out here. This encampment was so far east that the rolling plains of native Nyzerene started to wither into desert. It was a temporary base, as the rebel leadership—me, Serel, Filias, Riasha, and our closest teams of spies and diplomats—mapped our next steps in our war for freedom against the Threllians and the Fey.
My head hurt. I blinked and saw Melina’s small body falling to the ground.
I pushed away the thought, burying it instead beneath a thousand other worries.
“Any news from Orasiev?” I asked. “Shirav? Malakahn?” “Not as far as I’ve heard. Not that that means anything.”
I chewed my lip. I just needed something to think about. And I wanted to know that Orasiev was alright. Remarkably, we were actually starting to win this thing, and victory felt more precarious than loss ever did.
I hadn’t fully realized the spark I was igniting by killing the Mikov family, nor the flames that we were fanning by returning to Threll. Slaves across the country had begun to realize how much power they held, and how much more possibility lay beyond their lives. The city of Orasiev was the first—a lesser estate overthrown by a successful slave rebellion. We took Shirav next, and then Malakahn, and finally, Exendriff. Four cities that belonged—truly belonged—to once-dead civilizations. Yes, they were small ones, spread across the outskirts of the Threllian empire. But they were ours. We had fought and bled for them.
For the first few weeks in Orasiev, I woke up every morning certain that Threllian Lords would be at our gates by sundown, ready to tear us to the ground. Miraculously, it did not happen.
These were strange times. The entire world, it seemed, was at war. The Fey—and by extension, their Threllian allies—were locked in a bloodthirsty conflict with Ara. This played out both across the sea and in Ara’s Threllian territory, which Nura had slowly but surely expanded from what was once the Mikov estate over recent months.
A thousand knives were poised at our backs—Nura’s, the Fey’s, the Threllians’. And yet, perhaps because everyone was so distracted by all the other people they had to go kill, our infant nation still stood.
Still, at least once a week I dreamed of fire consuming the tentative freedom my people and I had created, just as it had once consumed a stone cabin and sprawling garden that I thought of as—
I hissed in a breath as pain shot up my arm.
“Sorry,” Sammerin murmured. “Reattaching nerves.”
I made the mistake of glancing at my wrist and immediately regretted it. Sammerin frowned down at my hand, examining, not for the first time,
the strange mark. The gold had formed an intricate pattern, like spiderwebs that started at my fingertips and twined down the front of my palm. It ended near my wrist, the metallic streaks dwindling and disappearing. The marks felt different than my flesh—harder, and colder, like metal—but I could still open and close my hand normally.
“And Ishqa had no ideas as to what this could be?” “He said he will look closer when he returns.”
He’d barely had time to glance at it before dumping me on the ground and flying away again. Apparently, he had somewhere very important to be that I had disrupted with my butchering of our plans. We were all used to it.
Ishqa came and went as he pleased, often disappearing for days or weeks on end without a word. Not that any of us could complain. Our mysterious Fey ally, and the information that he brought us, had been key to so many of our victories against the Threllians. Ishqa viewed the Fey as our ultimate adversary, and every blow to the Threllian empire weakened them by extension.
“Hm.” Sammerin looked concerned. But then again, he always looked concerned, these days.
My other hand curled into a fist of frustration.
“Whatever this thing is, I don’t think it’s a weapon,” I said. “At least not one that is powerful enough.”
Powerful enough to break into Ilyzath.
I didn’t need to say that part aloud—not to Sammerin. He knew that Max’s imprisonment dominated my every thought. These last few months had been a brutal balancing act. The rebellion needed me. I gave them every part of myself that I could offer. I gave them my steadfast leadership, my scraps of magic, my dreams for the future, my plans, my diplomacy.
But there was so much I couldn’t give them, because half my heart was trapped in a prison hundreds of miles away.
Sammerin’s deep brown eyes flicked up to me with wry amusement. “You say that,” he said, “but we both know that you’ll try, anyway.”
I chuckled.
He was right. In here, with Sammerin, I could speak my doubts. But out there, I would keep them locked away. I would relentlessly learn about this thing that had attached itself to me, and I would tell myself and everyone else that I would use it to free Max, and I would refuse to accept any alternative.
I did not dignify uncertainty aloud. “You’re right,” I said.
“I always am.”
“And I have always known it.”
“Smart woman. Certainly too smart for Max.”
The sound of his name sucked all the air out of the room. Sammerin’s smile faded. He didn’t meet my eyes.
I frowned. There was something odd about that expression.
But before I could say anything, the door to the tent opened, and Serel and Filias entered.
“Whew, that looks better than it did an hour ago,” Serel said in Thereni, brightly. He kissed the top of my head. “Good. That must’ve hurt.”
“Glad you got out safe.” Filias peered at my hand. “So. This is it.”
I nodded. I had told Serel and Riasha about the artifact when I had arrived back at camp.
“Ishqa will help us learn more about it once he returns,” I said. “Surely it’s powerful, if the Fey are so desperate for it. It will be valuable for the rebellion. And to use against Ilyzath.”
I had done exactly what Sammerin knew I would. Confidence, after all, was my only defense.
But Serel and Filias were oddly silent. They exchanged a long, meaningful look. They had been giving each other a lot of those looks, lately—like they had a language all their own. Serel hadn’t talked to me about it yet, but the attraction between them was obvious.
This, though… this was not lovestruck gazing. I glanced between them. “What?”
Serel sat in the chair across from me, his blue eyes deep with concern. “There’s something that we need to talk to you about.”
A pit formed in my stomach.
“It’s been five months,” Filias said. He stood awkwardly, his hands bracing on the back of Serel’s chair. “Three since the night you almost—”
“—Since we started sending battalions to Ilyzath,” Serel cut in, a little too sharply, shooting Filias a disapproving stare.
My mouth had gone dry. I nodded.
I had personally gone to Ilyzath many times at first, desperate to find a way to penetrate its walls. But after one horrible failure that ended with Serel fishing my limp body out of the sea, I agreed that we would send teams of soldiers there instead, freeing me to do work for the rebellion that only I could do.
Even that… I didn’t like it, even if I knew they were right. “The eleventh group just returned to Orasiev,” Serel said.
My heart leapt, even though I knew—I knew, from Serel’s expression, that it was not good news.
“And?”
Sammerin reconnected another nerve. I barely felt it. Serel’s face was grim. He shook his head.
“Jaklin Atrivas died last night,” Filias said. “The Ilyzath guards killed him, and the rest of the team couldn’t save him.”
My heart crashed to the floor.
I knew Jaklin. He was one of our best warriors, and a good leader. He’d been critical to the successful takeover of Orasiev. He had two young children.
I closed my eyes and saw Melina’s lifeless body.
“What a loss,” I murmured. “Give his family anything they need. Food. Money. Give them—give them a pension. I’ll find a way to pay for it personally.”
Serel and Filias exchanged another glance. Filias’s face was hard, and Serel’s eyes big and gentle.
“They have never managed to make it past the outer walls, Tisaanah,” Filias said. “Not once.”
“I have managed to make it through,” I said. “I can go with them again next—”
“We have only made it this far in the rebellion because of you. Don’t think we don’t know that.” Serel gave me a weak smile. “There are so many things that only you can do. You’re our greatest advantage.”
“I can’t keep throwing away good people and good soldiers on an impossible mission,” Filias said. “Not now, when we need them more than ever to defend the rebellion. I’m sorry, Tisaanah. I’m—” He looked so deeply uncomfortable. “I’m sorry.”
I flinched—as if I’d been struck by a devastating blow.
Do not lose control. Do not fall apart. Look forward.
“I understand,” I said, tightly. “Then I’ll go alone, again. By myself. No one to risk but me.”
“That’s a death wish. You barely even have—” Serel stopped himself before saying it: You barely even have magic. “You can’t survive that.”
“I’ve done it before.”
He reached out and took my hand before I could pull it away. “I thought we lost you the last time, Tisaanah,” he murmured. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Serel looked at me with such unending love. And yet, in this moment, I resented him for it.
I don’t care, I wanted to say. I’d rather die trying to save him than stop.
“I’m willing to take the risk.”
Filias and Serel exchanged another look—gods, I wished they would stop doing that.
“This is bigger than you,” Filias said. “You know so much. If Nura captured you—”
The anger—the sheer rage—hit me like a wave. He thought I was a liability.
He was telling me that he was going to leave my lover in prison, and was forbidding me from getting him out myself because he thought I—I, who had sacrificed everything, sacrificed far too much—was a gods- damned liability.
I jolted to my feet, yanking my hand away from Serel’s grasp.
“I won’t leave him there. I agreed to help you. I agreed to start going on missions here. But I have always made it clear from the beginning that I will not leave him there.”
“I know, Tisaanah—” Serel started, but I cut him off.
“Did you know that he was the only one who helped me get you out? The only one? None of us would be here now if it wasn’t for him. Every single one of us owes him our lives.”
“It wasn’t the decision we wanted to make,” said Filias, a little gruffly. I took in several long breaths, struggling to control my emotions.
I turned to Sammerin. “Do you understand this?” I asked, in Aran.
He gave a small nod, and something about the look on his face made me feel as if the floor had opened beneath me.
“You already knew,” I murmured.
He winced. “I tried to talk them out of it.”
I have one excellent friend who’s far better than I deserve, Max had told me, once. And if Sammerin were ever in that position, I would never allow him to stay there.
The sound that escaped my lips was a strangled, sad excuse for a laugh. “He would have died before he let you remain in that place. And now you are giving up on him, too? You’re his brother.”
Sammerin looked as if I had struck him. “Never, Tisaanah. Never.”
“I don’t like it, either,” Filias said. “I really don’t. But we have all lost people. We have all left people behind. And we can’t lose more of them just to get one back. We just… we just can’t.”
Serel half-rose, reaching for me. “I’m so sorry, Tisaanah.” My eyes fell to those gods-damned raspberries.
Now I understood. We’re so very sorry, Tisaanah. Here, have some raspberries.
In that moment, I hated—truly hated—every single one of them. “I need to be alone,” I said. “Please.”
They didn’t argue with me. I didn’t see whatever pitying looks they might have given me as they left. The minute they were gone, I picked up the bowl of raspberries and hurled it against the table. The clay shattered just as my composure did. The berries were overripe. They hit the wood in a crimson smear, spattering my face like blood.
