He was still working to process what he had seen earlier in the night—the makeshift lab in the hull of the ship, the Bregonian scholar. Bogdan’s look, the way he’d pleaded toget it out of him, get it out of himeven as he’d performed his Affinity to gold.
Kerlanhad been the one to inform Morganya of this weapon he’d called a siphon. It made so much sense—that he would cut off the parts of his Order that posed a threat to him under Morganya’s new regime and find a way to gain her favor while plotting his vengeance.
And the things Kerlan had said about Roran Farrald…no, Ramson couldn’t wrap his head around them just yet, no matter how much he thought they sounded exactly like something his father would do.
He needed to get going. What was it that Kerlan had said? That the biggest party of all awaited him in the Blue Fort.
“Goddess Amara. I’mextraglad I saved your life, then.” Daya tapped the knives looped through the metal hoops of her belt. “Good thing I have a way with locks.”
Ramson pushed himself to his feet. The world swayed unsteadily for several moments before settling down. Blood rushed to his legs. He couldn’t have been out for long.
Which meant Kerlan couldn’t be too far ahead.My forces have already infiltrated the Blue Fort. Within hours, my army arrives, and we strike.
The impossibility of the task almost crushed the air from his lungs. Kerlan was going to invade the Blue Fort,tonight.He was going to crown himself king and trade Ana back to Morganya.
He’d left for the Blue Fort already with two wagons full of his most loyal ex-Order members. Just how many were left, roaming about Bregon? Were some of them already hiding in the Blue Fort?
Ramson shook the dizziness from his head. He needed to warn someone. He needed to—he needed to get to his father.
A gust of wind slammed into him, cold and sharp and biting. Beyond the quays, the waves grew violent, rearing and smashing against the wooden jetties. The moon slid behind storm clouds.
Ramson tilted his face to the air. It smelled of rain.
A storm was coming.
“Daya,” he said. “Where are the nearest stables?”
Daya put her hands on her hips. “You owe me alotof goldleaves.” She winked. “It’s right over there, next to the first pub.”
Ramson looked to where the cliffs met the sea and the Blue Fort loomed. “Something very bad is about to happen. If I don’t come back, will you promise me to find the princess and get away from here?”
The playful expression on Daya’s face slipped at the urgency in his tone. “Fine,” she groused. “I’ll have you know that I’ve never done anything for anyone as afavor.Don’t disappoint me, Pretty Boy.”
The previous version of him would have cringed at a promise to pay back a debt. Now, Ramson couldn’t think of anything he wanted more, after it was all over.
If there was an after.
Ramson tapped two fingers to his forehead in mock salute before he turned away. “I hope to the gods I won’t,” he replied as he set off at a sprint.
Linn splayed her feet and stood on her toes. There were some who preferred to fight like earth or like fire. Linn fought like her element, the wind. She had never been the strongest or the biggest in her classes with the Wind Masters, but she learned the flow of her opponents’ energy and then used it against them.
“I do not want to fight you.” Kaïs’s voice was steady yet low with regret as he reached for his double swords. The sound of metal sliced through the air. “Do not make this hard, Linn.”
“I did not,” she replied. “You did.”
Something in her heart had broken when she’d seen him in the dungeons, shattered by the depth of his betrayal. After so many years of being alone, seeing the silver armor and white cloaks as signs of a ubiquitous enemy, she’d thought him different. She’d begun to trust him.
It had been a mistake.
She felt his Affinity in her mind, yawning over her winds like an unrelenting hand. Her Affinity snuffed out.
Linn stood her ground. She had trained to fight without sight and without sound. In Cyrilia, she had been forced to endure without her winds under the traffickers’ blackstone or Deys’voshk too many times.
She wouldn’t need them to win, now.
Kaïs watched her with those inscrutable eyes, and she held his gaze. A current of energy seemed to crackle in the air between them, as though they were two moving parts of a whole. A yin and a yang.
He sprang first, and Linn tucked herself into a roll beneath him. The clash of their blades rang out under the paintings of the Bregonian gods, reverberating in the silence.
