She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to be with him. She wanted…she wanted him.
“You never asked me.” Her voice was tight, if only so that she could steady the maelstrom of her thoughts.
“I never thought I had to,” he replied, and she had the impression she was speaking to a stranger. She’d expected a quip, a teasing glimmer in those hazel eyes, a wicked curve of hismouth.
But the man standing before her was no longer the Ramson Quicktongue she’d met in that prison in Cyrilia, with his quick grin and cunning words and beguiling smile. Sometime, in the course of their journey, he had become Ramson Farrald, con man and commander of a Navy fleet.
She tore her gaze from his. Her chest felt tight, the wounds on her heart still raw from the loss of her Affinity. This, though, was an ache she had never experienced before: the sensation that her heart was being torn completely in two.
He had made his choice.
And she had made hers.
Deny it,she thought.Say you’ll stay with me.
But even as she leaned against the sun-warmed rock, the susurrus of waves and the cries of seagulls tiding over them, she knew what was meant to happen.
A day will arrive when you will be asked to sacrifice that which you hold dearest for the good of your empire.
Had Shamaïra seen this moment? Had she been trying to warn Ana, back then?
Had she known how it would feel to have her mind wanting one thing and her heart another?
“So this is the end,” Ana said quietly. The sentence hung in the air, half question, half statement, lingering. Waiting for his response.
He had been watching her with a small crease to his brows. And then the tension seemed to leave his body and he exhaled. “Ana.” Her name sounded like a supplication coming from his lips. “I…” He shut his eyes briefly, and she thought of that day in the storm, when they had held each other at the cliff’s edge and he had kissed her.
It had felt like the start of something back then. Not theend.
“Will I see you again?” The words slipped from her lips before she could help herself.
Ramson was quiet for a long moment, watching her carefully, and she wondered whether he would respond with a cruel truth or a kind lie.
At last, he spoke. “I don’t make promises.”
She heard the second part to his sentence, almost as clearly as he’d spoken it to her that day on the ship, when the moon had shrouded them in silver and the sea had glittered azure.So I don’t have to break them.
“Well, then.” The distance between them stretched, a gaping abyss, an uncrossable ocean. Her voice threatened to break, but Ana forced the words out. “I have another appointment. I suppose this is good-bye.”
He said nothing, only watched as she turned and walked away, each step taking an eternity, widening the chasm between them until she turned a corner and he disappeared between the rock and the sky and the sea.
Ana crossed to the guest quarters of the Blue Fort. The searock walls seemed somehow muted, the danger and mystery of their edges shaved off with the changes of the past few days. She remembered coming here less than a week ago, and the place had seemed like an impenetrable fortress to her.
Now, it still was, only it had taken Ramson with it, too.
Kaïs waited outside the chambers as she reached them; he hadn’t left for the past two days. His eyes flickered as he watched her approach.
“Are you all right?” His voice was deep, somber.
Ana had grown to dread that question. She wondered whether he was reaching for her Affinity with his, and whether he found only emptiness where it had once been. “I’m fine,” she replied. It was simply another pain she would grow numb to. Her gaze flicked down Kaïs’s face, and she thought of the promise she had made Shamaïra. It seemed like a lifetime ago. “Your mother would be proud of you,” Ana said quietly.
He bowed his head. “I cannot return to Cyrilia. If Morganya’s troops catch me alive when all of Kerlan’s troops are dead, they will know of my betrayal. They will hurt my mother. And so I have a favor to ask of you, Kolst Imperatorya.”
“Call me Ana,” she replied. “You needn’t ask anything of me. Do you really think me so heartless as to leave your mother behind, when she saved my life? I promised to help Shamaïra find her son, and now that I have, I promise I will not rest until she is safe and out of harm’s way.” Tentatively, she reached out a hand and rested it on his shoulder. He grew very still, but did not flinch away. “I will find her, Kaïs.”
He lifted his eyes, and for a moment, they looked at each other. Something had shifted between them, like ice beginning to thaw. He had made mistakes in his past—as had she—yet now, their choices had led them to different paths. Ones that had begun to converge.
Ana looked past him, to the open doors of the chamber beyond. “Is she inside?”
