Sorsha gave a high-pitched laugh. “Oh, go on!” she shrieked. “Throw me against the floor,harder! What?” she added, pouting as Ana loosened her grasp on the girl. “Are youafraid?”
Wordlessly, Ana dropped her Affinity from the girl and took a step back. Something about Sorsha unsettled her down to her core.
Sorsha clambered to her feet. Her hair was disheveled; strands stuck to her face, but she seemed not to notice. “How disappointing,” she said, and for a moment, she sounded like an echo of her father, their tones dulcet and cold. “Such a powerful magek, wasted on a spineless little girl like you.”
“Killing you wouldn’t do me any favors for my meeting with your father tomorrow,” Ana replied.
Sorsha’s face darkened. The transformation was so stark that Ana felt as though she were looking at a completely different person. “Don’t,” Sorsha snarled, “assume you knowanythingabout my father. He’d never give a second thought to killing me if it weren’t for the fact that he coulduseme.”
“What do you mean, ‘use you’?”
Sorsha cackled. “Nothing much.” She leered at Ana. “I’d like to think we’re not so different after all, you and I. Monsters make the most powerful weapon in the arsenal.”
The words chilled Ana. She averted her gaze from the girl’s scars. “If you won’t leave, then I will.”
She left Sorsha standing in the midst of the great library, a wild smile stretching from ear to ear.
“Are you all right?” Kaïs’s voice was deep and low as they descended the steps to cross the courtyards back to the Ambassador’s wing. The trees on either side of their walkway danced as wind brushed through them. High above, stars shimmered in the heat haze.
“Fine,” Ana replied. “If she bothers you, come to me. I told her to leave us alone.”
“I will.”
It had never occurred to her that she might defend this yaeger, or that she might even feel a rush of gratitude toward him. “Thank you for staying with me,” Ana added.
He inclined his head. They spoke no more as they traversed the courtyards, yet this time, the silence between them had shifted to something less hostile, even companionlike. At the steps of the Ambassador’s Suites, Ana bid him good night. The weather was beautiful, the air warm, and she wanted to walk a bit more to clear her head and mull over the information she had learned today.
Yet even as she strolled around the veranda behind the Ambassador’s wing, she couldn’t stop thinking of Sorsha’s bone-chilling laughter, the wildness to her eyes, the way she dismissed her father’s abuse without batting an eyelash.
Monsters make the most powerful weapon in the arsenal.
Darkness had fallen and moonlight cut bright through his open balcony doors when Ramson finally got back to his feet. He’d been stretched out on his silk divan, staring up at the ceiling, the overlapping carvings of sea and sky and earth blurring and swirling into one with his thoughts.
His head was still aching, but he’d managed to wade through the voices eddying in his mind to begin to string together a coherent set of actions.
Which all started with getting off his chaise.
The room swayed as he stumbled to the balcony. The sea glimmered as far as the eye could see. The Bregonians thought it symbolic that they could see all three major oceans from the Blue Fort. To the east, the foam-flecked waters of the Whitewaves that led to Cyrilia and the Southern Crowns. To the west, the swirling turquoise of the Jade Trail, their trade route to the Aseatic kingdoms. And to the north, the unknown Silent Sea that held glaciers as deep as the bottom of the ocean itself, waters colder than ice, it was rumored.
Ramson leaned against the balustrade. Night had sucked the moisture and warmth from the air, and the breeze that greeted him was cool and refreshing. It cleared his head immediately, snatching the alcohol from his breath. Gods be damned, he’d forgotten how strong pure Bregonian brandy could be. The rest of the evening had been a blur—he could only recall the silhouette of his father’s back turning on him, the door shutting with a click.
Gathering his thoughts felt like trying to hold broken glass: the fragments of information were sharp and refused to fit together. His father hadn’t been able to—hadn’twantedto—give Ramson a clear answer on the Affinite trafficking in Bregon. He’d vehemently denied that Alaric Kerlan could be let back into this kingdom. And he’d easily given away a high-ranking position in the Navy to study Ana’s Affinity.
Most important, though, he’d confirmed that the artifact with the ability to bestow multiple Affinities upon its bearer lay within the walls of the Blue Fort.Thatwas the most important piece of information he had to get to Ana…before he left the Blue Fort.
By whatever twisted sense of humor the gods had, he watched her stride into his sight at that very moment.
Ana approached on the path that cut through the alder trees, her hair and gown spilling behind her and silvered by the moonlight. She was walking quickly, and he noted her stiff posture, the way she shifted her head every now and then, as though trying to glimpse behind her.
It took him no time at all to spot the two guards trailing her, ducking between the trees.
With a light leap, Ramson flipped over the railing of his balcony. It was a low drop to the ground, and the sound of wind and water masked his footsteps as he took a path that would cut directly into the walkway she was on.
Ramson slipped behind an alder tree, counting down the even beat to her footfalls.Five, three, two steps—
An invisible force wrapped around him and slammed him against the tree trunk.
Ramson coughed as a familiar figure stepped in his path. “Ana—it’s me—”
