“I don’t know how to feel about being back here,” he said instead, his brow furrowed as he stared at Pearl Bay Palace. The white stone glistened in the midday sun, so bright it was almost hard to look at, but the deep windows were shadowed, hiding the dangers within. “My whole life changed here. One night, one moment, one decision, and my life was divided into abeforeand anafter.”
“Yeah.” Faron sighed, relating to that more than she would ever admit.
“I know you think I’m a spy,” he continued. “Other people have called me a hostage, as if the queen only keeps me here as insurance to stop Langley from invading again. I’ve even heard that I’m a target, here to be blamed for my family’s crimes.” Faron had no idea what he saw on her face when he looked at her, but it was enough to make him smile faintly. “I’m whatever you guys need me to be. I don’t get a choice. But if you want to know what I think—”
“I admit that I’m curious to hear that as well.”
The delicate moment frayed and dissipated. They turned as one to see Commander Gavriel Warwick approaching them from the direction of the side lawn. The clipped grass looped around the edges of the airfield and filled the space between it and a carved marble wall that blocked the ocean. On the other side of that wall, water seeped onto the shore, and one of the two islets off the coast of San Irie—San Mala or San Obie, both uninhabited but still part of Aveline’s domain—was just visible on the horizon.
Faron would have noticed if he’d flown his dragon overhead, but he could have just been dropped off on the beach, or he could have been taking a walk, and she hadn’t noticed until it was too late, and here he was mere feet away from her, andshe was trapped—
Only Reeve’s hand on her shoulder kept her from spiraling at the sight of this figure who had haunted her mind for half a decade. The commander was a tall man with skin the color of old glue, a close-cut beard the deep silver of a blade, and a smile that stretched his square face out to cartoonish proportions. A Langlish starburst pin decorated the right breast pocket of his black military uniform. He looked like someone’s doting uncle, the kind who put sweets alongside the money in children’s birthday cards.
It was hard to believe that he had given the order to burn San Irie’s temples to the ground.
That he’d been planning to burn the rest of the island along with them.
The last time Faron had seen the commander was when Aveline’s army had retaken the palace. He had surrendered in the throne room, his arms around his wife, his heavy gaze on his son, Reeve, standing defiantly among the Iryans. It had been tooeasy, so easy, as if the commander had known something that they didn’t.
But as he stopped before them now, Faron began to doubt for the first time that his secret weapon was Reeve. Reeve had relaxed beside her, but it was a forced kind of relaxation. Even she could see it was off from how unruffled he usually was.
“Hello, Father,” Reeve deadpanned. “Shouldn’t you be inside with the rest of the dignitaries?”
“I wanted to make sure the Hearthstone Academy students were settled.” The commander examined the hand Reeve still had on Faron’s shoulder. She took a step to the side so it dropped away, but that drew the commander’s predatory attention to her. “Childe Empyrean, it’s an honor.”
Is it?Faron barely managed to hold back. She didn’t want to start an international incident just because she couldn’t play nice as well as Elara could. She forced a smile that almost hurt. “Welcome, Commander. I hope you have time this week to take in more of the sights.”
And she meant it, if only out of spite. Shewantedhim to see how well they had managed to rebuild, how much they had grown when they were not trapped beneath the claws of Langley’s war beasts. Through centuries of colonization, the Novan empires had destroyed so much of what San Irie could have been, and Iryan culture was a hodgepodge of theirs. Their city names were a mix of languages from the countries that had occupied them. Many of their dishes originated from the parts of animals they were allowed to eat during enslavement. And while newer buildings were crafted in part or in whole with scalestone, older neighborhoods were built from metals and stones that weren’t even native to the island.
But for these five years, they’d been free. They had flourished when no one had believed they would. They had come together under Aveline’s rule, grown strong enough that thereweresights to be seen. Faron wanted to rub it in Commander Warwick’s face:You have no power here, and you never will again.
For the first time, she understood why Aveline had planned the Summit. Shefeltit.
Like his son, however, Commander Warwick smoothly avoided rising to her bait. His smile, when he looked back at Reeve, was a drawn sword waiting to strike. “You speak patois almost like a native. How quickly you adapt to the blood on your hands.” He nodded in Faron’s direction. “See you tomorrow, Empyrean.”
Faron watched him stride toward the palace with the straight-backed posture of a soldier, and, as soon as he disappeared up the hill, she shuddered as if a lizard had crawled down her spine. Something about the commander’s presence sucked all the air out of the area, making her feel as if she were suffocating under his influence. Reeve was silent beside her, his jaw clenched as if he’d lost something he hadn’t expected to.
The look on his face… She’d never seen it before. For the hundredth time that day, Faron wished that Elara were here. Elara would know what to say, what to do, to stop Reeve from looking like an open wound that not even Faron wanted to throw salt in. She hated remembering that he was just an eighteen-year-old boy who was more acquainted with loss than she wanted to acknowledge. His countrymen had died because of his choices. The boy he’d been before that night had died, too.
Faron shoved those thoughts away. She couldn’t stand any reminder that Reeve Warwick was human. It weakened her resolve.
“Adaptable, huh,” she said, and if it lacked the usual amount of venom, then she refused to acknowledge that, either. “What an interesting skill. Useful for a spy.”
That jolted Reeve out of his stupor. He rolled his eyes. “We should go find our rooms.”
“Is that your polite way of saying you want to get away from me?”
“As much as I love letting you accuse me of things I didn’t do, I figured you might want to take a bath and call your sister.”
“How thoughtful of you,” Faron said, mostly to hide the fact that itwasthoughtful and shedidwant to call her sister. “Fine. I’ll see you later, then. Or I won’t. I don’t care.”
Reeve’s slow smile almost reached his eyes. “Of course not.”
CHAPTER SIX
ELARA
UNREST SPILLED THROUGH THE STREETS OFPORTSOL, MAKINGElara nervous as her squad rode into the capital. Faron had told her stories of the reconstruction—buildings restored, houses reoccupied, flowers replanted—but it was still hard to look at everything without seeing flame and ash every time she closed her eyes. People clogged the roadways, many of them holding signs that made their anti-Novan sentiments clear, and, though she didn’t see evidence of the riot that had called them here, she could see why the officers had been worried.
