And despite his surprise, he’d kissed me back. Everything that had happened afterwards just felt like a fever dream.
Hayle was still holding Avalon to his chest now as we sailed back to Boemouthe. He seemed to always be touching her, at least if he could. She was cradling the injured raven in her arms,a bandage wrapped around his injured wing so he couldn’t fly and damage it more. As she baby-talked at the large black bird with his beady little eyes, he fluffed up and cooed pathetically in return. He was definitely milking its injury for all it was worth.
I sat beside Iker on the deck and looked out over the ocean. “Find out anything interesting?” I asked quietly, and he nodded. Iker had been using his time in Eaglehoth to undertake his very favorite hobby. Spying.
“The Upper Lines like to talk, and there are rumblings of dissent coming from the Sixth Line. They should be next.”
I nodded. I didn’t know how I could extract Avalon from Boellium—not to mention Vox and Hayle—without raising suspicion, but I knew that she had to come with me to Doend for this whole campaign to be a success. We couldn’t keep having tournaments as a cover.
“I’ll figure out something,” I told him, resting my head back against the railing as I listened to the soothing sounds of someone from the Eleventh Line losing their lunch into the murky waters of the Alutian Sea.
The birds were flocking in the sky, and I tilted my head. That seemed… wrong.
I looked over at Hayle to find him also watching the birds. He stood, slowly moving toward me, and Avalon trailed behind him, the raven in her arms.
“That isn’t right,” Hayle murmured. “There shouldn’t be that many birds this far from land. If there was a school of fish or something, they’d be circling. They look… panicked?”
Quarry squawked and flapped his good wing, but Avalon just held him tighter. “You’re in no shape to find out what’s wrong, so don’t even start,” she told him softly, before looking at Hayle. “Can you connect with any of the wild birds?”
Hayle scrunched his face in concentration, and I saw the exact moment he connected. Saw the moment he knew whatwas happening, because his face went pale. “Boellium’s under attack.Vox!” he yelled, and Vox appeared at our side. “Boellium is burning. We need to get back there fast.”
Vox didn’t ask questions, didn’t argue. Wind suddenly whipped around us, filling the sails. We skimmed across the ocean, and I wondered how much was sailing and how much was just Vox Vylan picking up the boat and floating us home. The display of his strength was both awe-inspiring and terrifying.
We rounded the cove, and there in the bay were my ships, on fire and sinking. My men. My soldiers. My eyes went to Iker, who looked as shocked as I did.
Fuck.We’d been made. “Someone ratted us out.”
I looked between the four people around me, lingering on Vox. He glared back, daring me to voice my suspicions out loud. It had to be him. He was the one with the most to lose.
But still, it didn’t sit right, so I kept my mouth shut. There was a time for accusations, and it wasn’t now.
I turned to Iker. “We need a count. I need to know where my men are. We need to…” My words trailed off as Boellium came into view.
The college itself was on fire.
“Fuck…” I breathed, and the voices of the other conscripts on the ship rose up, their desperate panic overriding any training.
Iker was already gone, giving the boat’s crew instructions. Vox stared at the burning impassively, like he was watching dancers perform at a gala, rather than a building that had stood for thousands of years burning to the ground.
Shaking his head, he looked around at the conscripts on the boat. “Get into formation,” he shouted. He started organizing the conscripts on the boat by their strengths, which told me he knew a lot more about every single person at Boellium than he’d let on. He partnered the Upper and Lower Lines together, thosewho were weaker in hand-to-hand combat but strong in magic with those who were opposite.
When he stopped in front of Hayle, his eyes were burning. “You have one job, Taeme. You know what it is.”
I knew what it was too. Avalon stood staring at the flames, her hand clasped tightly in Acacia’s. She would be his priority, regardless of what Vox had said.
When he got to me, he just nodded. I wasn’t going to take orders from a Vylan, and I had my own mission. I needed to find my men. I needed to know what had happened.
I hid the ship from the people on the shore, and as we unloaded silently onto rowboats, the sounds of war were like a hot poker drifting down my spine. Screams and shouting, the scent of smoke and burning flesh—it all painted a grim picture that we couldn’t see. What thefuckwas happening?
Delphine Lunderov directed the currents to put us into a cove near the back side of the college. I tried to pick up the thoughts of the conscripts inside the walls, but I was either blocked or their thoughts were too chaotic to latch onto.
Vox alighted first. “You know what to do. Fight if you can. If it looks hopeless, there’s no shame in retreat. Live to fight another day, conscripts of Boellium.”
The small groups split off, and I cloaked them all in defensive magic. Unless they were being looked at directly, they wouldn’t be seen.
Vox nodded at me as he started off out front, and we climbed the rocky outcropping toward the guard gate at the rear of Boellium’s outer wall behind him, Iker and I in the center, either side of Avalon and Acacia, and Hayle and his hounds bringing up the rear. We slipped through the gate, down along a track so thin that my shoulders brushed both the stone outer wall and the side of the food hall.
We didn’t find a single other person as we worked our way around the wall, which was worrying, but I couldn’t understand just how bad of a sign it was until we made it to the courtyard.
