Will closed his eyes for the span of a breath.
In.
Out.
His gaze found Tyr. Blood dripped from his maw, but it was his eyes, fury-bright in the fading light of the fire, that had him pushing to his feet. His body ached, his muscles screaming in protest.
Where are you?
He needed rest—they all did. But they couldn’t. Not yet.
Where are you?
He had to find her.
He was going to find her.
Where are you?
“Burn them,” he muttered to Aidon. He turned his back on the bodies littered throughout the clearing. “Burn them all.”
2
Aidon had spent many long nights in his youth envisioning his future, vacillating between yearning to lead and crumbling beneath the weight of his birthright, all while suffocating slowly beneath the secret he had been desperate to keep.
He’d imagined a thousand different scenarios, all laid out like chess pieces on a board that he attempted to strategize his way through, so none could take him by surprise. And yet the future had anyway. Because in all of those scenarios he’d run through, in all of his battle plans and contingencies, he’d never imaginedthis.
Fleeing.
Hiding.
“Run,” Aleissande had said as soon as his flame had ceased. The Diaforaté’s charred corpse hadn’t even hit the ground yet. But Aidon had already registered the look of horror on Josie’s face as she realized what he’d done to save her—as his troops realized what their king had just revealed in the heat of battle.
Aleissande’s hand had curled around his forearm andtugged. “Run, Aidon!”
He’d never heard fear in his general’s voice before. And sohe’d done exactly as she commanded: he’d let the chaos of the battle hide him, and he’d run. His cowardice had driven him through the city, up the steep paths toward the palace. He’d thought, if nothing else, he could lend himself to his friends one final time.
But he’d been too late.
Tova was dead. Aya was gone. And Will…
Will had been standing over Gianna’s body, a vacant look in his eyes that still hadn’t vanished, even now. It had been enough to snap Aidon out of his own daze, enough to have his instincts come roaring back to life.
“We can’t be here,” he’d gritted out, bodily tugging Will away from the carnage. If they were found in the room with a dead monarch and her general and a member of her Dyminara, people would assume the worst.
At least, that’s what logic had whispered in his ear.
He’d chosen to see it as just that: his battle sense rearing its head in the midst of a fight the two of them would not be able to win. But tonight, he wondered, not for the first time, if it had been fear. Fear was, after all, the master of deception. It paraded as logic. As reason. As justice.
Even as love.
“We’re a few days’ ride from the Druswood,” Will muttered from where he knelt before a meager fire, picking up on a conversation—or perhapsargumentwas a better word for it—they’d been weaving in and out of for days. Will’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the stolen map he’d spread on the floor of the cave. Aidon didn’t fail to notice that he hadn’t bothered to wash the blood from his skin.
Aidon tipped his head back, the rock rough against his spine as he sat against the cave wall. He shut his eyes and exhaled slowly. The pressure in his head was getting worse. It had started a prickle of pain between his eyes, but now, it was sharp enough to make his jaw clench as it pulsed in timewith his heartbeat.
It was almost enough to distract from the way he shivered in the cold. Damn the northern climate’s refusal to bend to summer.
“I still think we’d be better off going to Cullway to secure a skiff,” he managed to mutter. “The mountains have provided us generous cover. Without it, we’d be dead by now.”
