“Aye, aye,” Daya replied, tapping her fingers to her forehead again. Ana laughed, and together they boarded the ship. The wind out here was stronger, and her crimson cloak arced out behind her as she turned to stand at the front of the ship.
At her back, Daya shouted orders, and the members of her new crew sprang to action. There were others on the ship, too, Ana noticed with a surge of pride: the Affinites Linn had freed from the dungeons, who had fought with them during the Battle of Godhallem, were scattered about the deck, dressed in fine Bregonian clothes. Within just several days, the gauntness to their cheeks had filled, and the pallor to their skin had been replaced by healthy flushes. King Darias had promised all the trafficked Affinites safe passage back to their own kingdoms, but several had volunteered to join Ana’s cause. They made the sign of the Deys’krug over their chests as they spotted her, and Ana returned the gesture.
The gangplank began to retract, and as the crew began to haul anchor, Ana leaned against the railing and gazed out. A crowd had gathered at the steps now, courtiers and guards and servants and other personnel of the Blue Fort. She caught sight of King Darias at the very top of the stairway. He grinned at her, and she raised a hand to wave back.
Yet there was no glimpse of the person she had most wanted to see. Ana kept searching the crowd even as the sails unfurled with awhumpf!,even as the ship began to glide and pick up speed between the massive searock pillars that lined the waterway.
And then they were drawing farther and farther from the buildings of the Blue Fort, and the great ironore doors were opening, the currents on either side of them speeding up as they turned to the waterway that led out to the open sea.
“Ana, look!” Daya shielded a hand to her face and pointed behind them.
Ana turned. Dozens of ships had begun to follow theirs, sails blooming with both the blue Bregonian seadragon and the red Cyrilian tiger.
Red Tigress,Ana thought as the wind around them picked up and the open sea rushed to greet them. Against all odds, she had survived, and she sailed for home with a fleet of the strongest Navy in the world.
She’d wondered, in the days after the Battle of Godhallem, who she was now without her power. She’d looked into the mirror and thought of a time long ago, when a lonely girl had sat in her empty chambers in a great palace looking at her red eyes and believing herself to be a monster.
But, Ana realized, without her Affinity…nothing would change. As long as unfairness existed in this world, as long as there were people who upheld cruelty and oppression, she would keep fighting.
She still wore her gloves out of habit rather than necessity, but the hood of her new cloak rested against her shoulders. Ana turned her face to the sun, and breathed in.
Remember who you are,Shamaïra had whispered.Who the people need you to be.
She’d been stripped of her title, and she’d been stripped of her Affinity. But, Ana thought, she would not let herself be defined by either.
“Captain,” she called. “I’d like to send a message.”
Daya turned to her crew. “Scribe!” she called, and a boy came forth, a gray Bregonian seadove balanced on his shoulder, scroll and quill in his hands.
“Your Highness,” he said.
Ana reached into the folds of her cloak. With a light tug, the chain around her neck came loose, and she pulled out a silver Deys’krug. Ana unfastened the chain and handed it to the scribe. “Address it to Yuri Kostov, Commander of the Redcloaks.”
As the scribe bound the chain to the seadove’s leg, Ana quietly tucked the Deys’krug into her shirt pocket. No matter what happened, the pendant was a symbol of a friendship she would forever keep close to her heart.We will come full circle again,she thought.Yuri.
“What will the note say?” the scribe asked.
Ana looked forward, to the open sea, to the endless horizon. Behind her was the full support of the Bregonian Navy, flying new flags—herflags. Ahead lay uncertainty, and a long battle to be fought.
“ ‘Prepare for war,’ ” she recited. “ ‘The Red Tigress returns.’ ”
Linn watched from her balcony as the oceans of Sapphire Port blossomed silver and blue with the swollen sails of a hundred ships. They sluiced through the glistening, sun-warmed waters, and it wasn’t until their outlines painted the horizon that she realized she was smiling.
She closed her eyes and summoned her winds, and in her mind, she was a little bird borne on their currents, dodging and swerving between great masts and swollen hulls and ten thousand liveried soldiers. She sent her winds as far as they would go, twirling and dancing between waves of leaping fish, ballooning the sails and kissing the ships.
May the winds watch over you, my friends,she thought, and for a brief moment, she might have sensed her winds wrap around a familiar presence—fiery as flames and sharp as a steel blade, shrouded in a brilliant red cloak. She thought she felt familiar fingers lift into the air, as though Ana knew that the winds bore Linn’s spirit and held out a hand in farewell. And then she was too far gone, beyond the sphere of Linn’s reach with her Affinity.
There was a knock inside her room. She didn’t have to turn to sense his presence like rock carving through her winds, firm and strong.
“King Darias sent this for you.” Kaïs’s voice was quiet. He hadn’t left the hallway outside her chambers since she’d been carried here from the healers.
He laid a plain, flat box in her lap. Wordlessly, Linn lifted the cover.
Her throat caught as she unfurled the object within. It was a chi. A chi that was slightly bent, torn in some places and carefully patched up with different material, carefully washed clean. But as she smoothed it out between her fingers, the wing glimmered.
A note was tucked between its folds; it fluttered out like a butterfly with a life of its own. Linn caught it between her fingers.
We all have monsters in our minds,it read,but it takes courage and perseverance to defeat them. I know you will defeat yours.
