Linn could recall clearly the last time she had been on these walls. It had been her first taste of freedom after having been held in forced servitude throughout her many years in this empire. She’d lost hope until the boy behind her right now had found her in the dungeons of Kerlan’s Playpen and handed her the keys to her chains.
She plucked her dagger from an Imperial Patrol’s neck and flung it, hearing a satisfying thud as it found its next mark. The parapets behind her had been cleared; Ramson had snatched a torch from the guard tower and was signaling his troops. The ice Affinite leaned over the crenellations, her eyes squeezed shut and face creased in concentration as she held up the bridge of ice she’d frozen across the Tiger’s Tail. From up here, Linn could make out the figures of Ramson’s battalion making their way across, ready to scale the walls.
The next Imperial Patrol fell beneath the slice of her blade, and Linn suddenly found herself face to face with an Inquisitor. She paused, startled by how young he was, his face barely past boyhood, the armor fitting too large on his shoulders. He staredat her, throat bobbing, the tip of his sword unsteady as he fought to stop the trembling of his hands.
Yet it was his eyes that she focused on: eyes that held a shadow of familiarity. Eyes resembling those of a trapped animal.
Linn recalled what Ana had told her of Morganya’s mass capture of Affinites and the mandatory draft into her newly created Inquisitor ranks. Many must have been forced into their positions against their will.
Her bloodlust suddenly faded. When Linn blinked, time seemed to fracture and she was looking back at herself, cornered and vulnerable.
I am not your enemy,Kaïs had told her once. And it had been true, she realized; it wasstilltrue. That she and this Inquisitor—thisboy—were simply two sides of the same coin, Affinites with nowhere to hide, forced to live and fight and die for a conflict that wasn’t theirs.
Except, now, Linn was fighting for this all to end.
She lowered her blade. “I am not your enemy,” she said quietly.
Surprise flashed across the Inquisitor’s face.
“I do not wish to hurt you,” Linn continued, and she heard Kaïs’s voice in her head, speaking the same words; words that she had thought over time and time again. Knowing now that he had recognized the same thing she did now: that it was not each other they were meant to be fighting.
The Inquisitor’s lips trembled. “I don’t have a choice.”
“I know,” Linn said. “I was once where you were. Forced to serve a cause in which I had no say. But this war that the Red Tigress is waging—it is for equality. When I could control my own path again, I chose to fight with her because she is one of us, and because her side is one in which I have a say, in which Ihave a choice.” Her knife was steady in her hands, but her heart thumped against her chest.
Tears trickled down the Inquisitor’s cheeks. “I don’t want to fight anymore,” he whispered. The tip of his sword wavered. “I just want to be with my mama.”
Slowly, Linn lowered her own weapon. “Then help us end it,” she said.
A clatter of metal as the boy dropped the sword, falling to his knees.
Linn grasped his shoulders. “You did a brave thing,” she said, before turning to Ramson. She cried: “This section of the wall is clear!”
“Help me with these rope ladders!” he shouted. “Once my unit gets up here, we can open the gates from the inside, and we’ll have the Palace!”
Several ladders already hung from the wall, secured; below, Linn caught sight of soldiers beginning to scale them—Bregonian soldiers, their armor glinting, their hands and feet steady from years of training.
Linn rushed over and began to help Ramson fasten the rest of the ladders. “Ramson,” she said, her fingers fumbling and clumsy in the cold. “Where is Ana?”
“At the gates,” he panted, breath fogging before him. “Her army’s trying to get through the entrance—”
“I need to find her,” Linn said. “Ramson, in my journey to Kemeira, I have learned of an artifact—one that Morganya is seeking. One so powerful that it can grant a mortal the powers of a god.”
He froze, looking up at her. The coil of rope in his hands slid from his grasp, falling to the ground with a thud. “The core,” hesaid quietly. “Is that what you’re talking about? A source of all the alchemical power in this world?”
She was so astonished that she nearly dropped the rope ladder she was holding. “How do you—?”
Ramson’s expression tightened, and in the instant before he looked away, Linn caught a flash of helplessness. “Ana caught wind of Morganya’s search for it. We’ve been trying to locate it, but Ana decided to march on Salskoff before we could puzzle out where it could be.”
Linn’s mouth fell open; she touched her fingers to the wooden token pressed to her collarbone beneath the folds of her clothes. “I have the map to it,” she said. “Ramson, we must destroy the siphon that holds her Affinity. If we do, it will return to her.” The words tumbled from her lips in her rush to speak. “And this core—the Deities’ Heart—can do it.”
In three strides, Ramson was at her side. He took her shoulders in his hands. Linn had never seen such urgency in his gaze. “Linn,” he said. “Sorsha’s dead. Morganya took the siphon stolen from Bregon. Ana took the one Sorsha was wearing—but it’s killing her.” The open desperation in his tone unmoored her, his expression wild as he glanced to the soldiers mounting the walls, the smallest slice of enemy territory they’d fought to take. Within the span of a breath, a war waged in his eyes. “I can’t leave—I can’t abandon my battalion, my soldiers. You need to go to her. Go to her—and find the Heart.”
Before Linn could respond, there came an enormous explosion and a crack that whipped like thunder. Linn leaned over the crenellations to see that a giant crevice was torn across the Kateryanna Bridge. On one side was the Red Tigress’s army, a mixture of Bregonian Navy uniforms and civilian dress; on theother, like an immutable white wall, was a regiment of Inquisitors, bearing down upon Ana’s battalion.
Ramson swore. His face seemed to have drained of color, and his knuckles shone white as he gripped his misericord.
Linn hesitated. She had not anticipated that this might be the last time she would see Ramson. Had she even thanked him yet for releasing her from her contract at the Playpen at the very start of this journey so that she could make her own choices?
