Her mind was numb; it latched on to hope. That Ana had arrived in Cyrilia and sent reinforcements to Kemeira.
But—no, that wasn’t possible. The timing was off. Ana would have barely reached Cyrilia by now.
Linn was so distressed that she didn’t notice the shoreline until Kaïs grunted and stumbled. They fell, splashing between the waves and cold sands, shivering to their cores.
“Why?” Her teeth chattered. “Why are there Cyrilian ships in Kemeira?”
Kaïs knelt next to her. He had shed his cloak, revealing his tight-fitting black tunic and leather boots. His hair was plastered across his cheeks and curled at the nape of his neck, dripping ocean water. “Linn. You’re injured.”
She looked down at her leg and finally found the source of the throbbing pain. The flesh on her left calf had been split open; she thought she saw the pale gleam of bone amid muscle and sinew. Blood already darkened the sand where they sat.
She heard rustling, the clinking of jars, and realized Kaïs had somehow salvaged his survival pack and was looking through it. “I’m going to sew it shut,” he said. “Drink this. It’s a sedative.”
She took the vial he handed her. The liquid was bitter—an alchemical concoction for injured soldiers. It burned all the way down to her stomach.
Within moments, warmth tingled through her limbs, and the pain began to ease. The world began to slip from her, her thoughts running groggy.
How had it gone so wrong? One moment they’d been on their ship; there’d been a bright light, and the next thing she knew, she was on the shores of a kingdom she’d left eight years ago,bleeding out from an injury. Her ship, her crew, everything she had for her mission had been destroyed.
And an enemy navy pressed at the doorstep of her homeland.
Sluggishly, she watched Kaïs rattle a globefire; heard the sharp crack of glass, saw him hold a needle to the flame. His hands were astonishingly gentle as he knelt at her leg and began to sew, the needle points eliciting no more than strange pricks and tugs against her skin as thread slid through flesh. The waves swirled, the roar turning dull in her ears.
Kaïs took off his cotton shift and tore it into long, thin shreds. With militaristic precision and efficiency, he began to wrap the makeshift bandage over her wound. When he was done, he slipped on his tunic again. Then he wrapped his arms beneath her shoulders and knees, pulling her close to him, and stood.
She let her head lean against Kaïs’s shoulder, keeping silent as he walked. Wet sand turned into mud and rock; salt spray and ocean air gave way to the musty smell of leaves and the crackle of brush. Moonlight filtered through the trees, their branches so gnarled and different from the straight, sleek conifers of Cyrilia.
At last, Kaïs stopped beneath an outcrop of rock that stretched over their heads, in some semblance of shelter. Gently, he deposited Linn on the moss.
“Give me your chi,” he said, and she unstrapped it from her wrists. He walked a few steps away and wrung it out. It was still damp when he returned it to her, but she immediately fastened it back onto her wrists.
Kaïs disappeared again, and she heard rustling as he shucked off the rest of his clothes, water splattering the leaves as he wrung them out. Dully, she surveyed her surroundings: the uneven edgesof rock overhead, barely peeking out over vines and ferns; the smooth lichen beneath her feet; the occasional chirps of birds and bugs echoing in the forest. The air slowly warmed her skin, gentle and humid in a way that it had never been in Cyrilia. Back there, the wind had cracked, sharp and dry and cold.
Bushes rattled; Kaïs appeared by the mouth of their cave. He prowled over and sat down across from her. Without further word, he took her injured arm and began to unravel the sodden, torn bandages of her cast, replacing them with fresh ones. The air swirled with unsaid thoughts and unspoken questions.
Linn broke the silence first. “Were we attacked?”
“Yes. Likely by Cyrilian Affinites, judging from the fire damage.”
“The rest of the crew,” she whispered.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to them. I only sensed you calling on your Affinity and found you.”
Even now, his voice was steady, calm, the anchor to her turbulent world.
Linn shut her eyes briefly. Pale blue flags, flying insignias of a Cyrilian Deities’ Circle with a crown in the center. “Those ships bore imperial Cyrilian flags.”
“Yes.” Kaïs kept his voice level, but she heard the tightness to it. “It appears Morganya’s forces are here.”
Why?It was the question that had haunted her since the very moment they’d seen those ships. What could have drawn Morganya to Kemeira, an ocean away from the Cyrilian Empire?
The answers lay with those ships docked out in the darkness.
But not tonight.
Her head spun; she felt light from blood loss. Linn wrapped her arms around herself and drew several deep breaths. “We rest,”she said, sounding more certain than she felt by far. “We eat, regain our strength. And in the morning…”
Her gaze caught on her leg. It lay stretched out in front of her, wrapped in bandages soaked red. There was the faint tingle of pain, countered by the woozy fog of the sedative he’d given her.
