No one knew what they were looking at.
But she did, and she couldn’t sit idle another day while the prison opened itself wide. She had to warn him, the king whose blood could undo everything they’d bled to build.
Anara shifted restlessly, white scales catching the firelight. The dronsian’s eyes followed every movement, her tail lashing steadily against the stone floor, while her thoughts sparked like embers in the back of Drakaa’smind. Fragments of firelight, memory, regret. Questions she battled on lonely nights.
“He would want me to keep fighting,” Drakaa said, then whispered, “I have to keep fighting.”
Drakaa yanked open another cabinet and pulled out fur-lined leathers. Her knuckles struck something cool, buried in the back. Breath held, she tugged free a narrow chain half-buried beneath folded vellum. A silver pendant swung at its end—a dragonfly, wings spread wide, tail curved mid-flight, suspended from the chain by one fragile wing.
Her heart skipped. The dragonfly stared back with silent, still eyes.
Anara climbed to her shoulder and peered down at the jewelry. Her nostrils flared, and a low rumble rose in her throat. Not threatened or uneasy.
Drakaa closed her fist around it before Anara began sharing memories she didn’t want. “No time for ghosts. Not right now.”
The door opened, and Soyala slipped inside, skin pale. She froze, black gaze scanning the room. “You’re leaving.”
“The ships will sail soon.” Drakaa snapped the trunk closed. “I need to be on one.”
“Is this about the prison?”
Drakaa nodded. “We’ve sat by watching this go on long enough. One of the stones has been compromised, and if Iraklis’s heir?—”
“I’m aware of the consequen—” Soyala went still, and her head tipped back.
Drakaa pulled Anara down into her arms and waited with bated breath. The air prickled against her skin, electric, drawing her hair straight up off her arm. A sourceless wind whipped through the room, threatening the fire at the center.
Soyala’s chin lowered, and her eyes shone white. Her voice came raw, torn from a deep place, and resonated with that of many.
“A lover’s sacrifice, carved in blood, severs the soul in two. One fades into shadow. One bears the weight of both.”
The brazier flared, and Anara shivered.
But Drakaa heard him within those many voices and stepped closer to the seer under a godspell.
“My love,” she whispered, touching Soyala’s cheek. She sank deep into memory for another moment, when it was just her. Just him. No wallsbetween them. His name stirred on her tongue, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
Soyala’s white eyes found hers, and with trembling fingertips, the seer stroked hair away from Drakaa’s face. “There can be no beginning without an end,” he said through the seer.
“I remember.”
“The lovers will come to you,” he said. “Tell them. The sacrifice comes either way. Make it count.”
Chapter
Fifty-Two
Five Weeks After Thorne’s Final Stand
Dawn had not yet broken, yet a thin seam of gold stretched across the horizon. Sun rays bled through the darkness in crooked lines, spreading like veins over the metal-colored water, bright and jagged, as if cracking the entire world apart.
Selene stood at the rail, fingers curled around the wood. Behind and around her, Warian Bay bristled with motion. Dockhands shouted, rigging creaked, and boots thudded on planks slick with seawater. Gulls wheeled overhead in air thick with tar and salt.
One ship in particular was nearly ready to cast off with Omar and his family aboard. She and Augustus had said their goodbyes the night before, and they’d been the hardest yet. In only a few short weeks, they’d become family. They owed Omar their lives.
Although Omar would say differently. He’d owed Cassiahis, and with the end of this war, he’d fulfilled his oath. That didn’t stop him from accepting an entire ship as payment, however. Or making them honorary members of his family.
“Compass-Rose,”he’d called her last night—a nod to the symbol on navigational charts. Then, to Augustus, “Keep holding her steady, Keelheart. She’ll take you where you need to go.”
