Swearing, I adjusted my footing and readied another arrow. Yarina’s bow twanged as she fired. Someone shouted. A body tumbled down the cliff face and splashed into the sea.
“I count three more,” she said. “I’ll take?—”
An arrow sprouted from her arm. She stared at it in shock. “Lucky bastards,” she muttered and sagged to a bench.
Rage flooded my body like the oily fire we’d just left behind. With a roar, I fired again. Another body plummeted.
A flaming arrow bit into our hull, and I yanked it out.
I fired again and again, bringing down another body, but more arrows fell around us. The sea grew rougher as we rounded the last bend. I stumbled, and my final arrow went wide.
A guard’s arrow streaked past my ear, and someone gasped.
Kiera.
I whipped around, my eyes landing first on Kiera, then on Bardo, who’d slumped over, an arrow in his neck.
Roark bellowed in agony, reaching for his friend.
I slung my bow over my empty quiver and gently pulled Bardo’s limp body from the rowing bench. After settling him in the stern, I took his place.
“Keep rowing,” I murmured to Roark as he shook with pain, glancing back at his dead friend. “Get him home.”
We pulled together in silence.
Yarina watched us from the bow, cradling her injured arm. “I’m sorry, Aiden,” she croaked.
“It’s not your fault,” I grunted.
It’s mine. Always mine.
Kiera was right. I led people right into danger. Why they kept following me into it, I didn’t know. Perhaps they shouldn’t. I’d been playing at being a leader for years now with nothing to show for it but imprisonment and death.
I’d even failed to kill the one man I’d set out to. Weylin had murdered my father, ordered Renwell to kill my mother, and stolen their kingdom.
He’d been at my mercy, my sword tip under his chin. But all I could think about washer.And how she’d hate me for it. Even though she already did for what I’d done to Brielle.
In the end, perhaps it’d been fitting that Weylin was murdered by someone he trusted.
The stab wound he’d given me throbbed in tandem with my breath. I’d probably pulled the stitches by rowing and using mybow. A dribble of warmth tracked down my side, but now wasn’t the time to check it.
“We’re taking on water, Aiden,” Nikella announced.
I glanced down at my boots and hissed a curse between my teeth. Several inches of dark water sloshed inside the boat, like wine in a drunkard’s cup.
“There’s a hole in the side,” Nikella continued. “The fire from the second barrel must have burned through the wood.”
“We won’t make it,” Roark said dully, his huge hands sliding off the oar. “Mynastra will just have to take us all.”
I glared atMynastra’s Wings, a hulking shadow that was anchored a very long swim away.
Could Kiera even swim? I’d never asked.
Her face looked paler than usual, her mouth a grim line as she stared at the large expanse of rolling sea like it was her executioner.
I hated to lose the boat, even more so to lose Bardo, but I had to save the others.
“Start shouting,” I told them. “We’re far enough from the cliffs that the guards can’t reach us.”
