“In the morning, we go and gather information on those ships,” Kaïs finished matter-of-factly, as though the deep gash in her leg did not exist. As though he hadn’t had to save her and carry her from the ocean to here. He stretched out next to her. “Stay close to me. It’s the best way to preserve the heat in our bodies.”
Linn curled up in the crook between his elbows and his torso. His chest was warm and solid, and the steady beat of his heart calmed her. She felt him smooth out her chi, draping it over her shoulders like a blanket.
Beneath it, though, Linn was wound tight as a spring. In one night, her plans had been blown to pieces. Kemeira, once a safe haven in her mind, had been swept into the bloodshed and violence that Morganya had inflicted upon Cyrilia, and then Bregon. And if Morganya’s ships had reached even the Kemeiran Empire’s shores, then Bei’kin and the Temple of the Skies might not be safe from her clutches.
Linn’s hands fisted. She had endured too much, come too far, to back down.
This was her war.
This was herhome.
And she would not let Morganya win.
Ana woke to a gentle, lulling rhythm, the squeak of wagon wheels, and the muffled thud of hooves against snow.
She inhaled sharply, eyes snapping open. It took a moment for her to orient herself. The last she’d known was the searing cold of icy waters, blinding darkness, vicious currents buffeting her this way and that until there was no up or down, no sense of where the water ended and the sky began.
The floorboards beneath her rocked—that was not her imagination—and all around her there was the creak of wood and nails. She was in a carriage, moonlight pouring red through the bars of a window across. It was still night, yet the moon had sunk low over the other end of the sky; she must have been unconscious for hours after her ship was hit.
Her ship.
Ana tried to sit up from the pallet, only to find that her handsand feet were in chains. She lifted a wrist, examining the dull luster of her binds, as though light itself did not reflect from them. She knew the material: blackstone, a substance that inhibited Affinite powers. The sight of it drew bile to her throat, and she remembered all too well the feeling of nausea that camewith it,the draining of her Affinity as though she’d lost one of her senses.
Yet now, she felt nothing from the chains save an unpleasant chafing and a coldness where they touched her skin.
There was movement in the corner. Ana looked up sharply as a figure peeled from the shadows.
Relief filled her as the man stepped into the light of the Blood Moon beneath the window. “Kapitan?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “Kapitan Markov?”
It was him, in the flesh, dressed in an immaculate suit of gray armor, his hair flecked with grays like salt and pepper: the old guard who had watched her grow up, who had told her stories to tide her through the worst of her nightmares back at the Salskoff Palace, who had stayed by her side all along. She recalled each weathered line of his face as one would the contours of a map, and she noticed with tenderness that there were new creases to his forehead, his cheeks, around his mouth.
Yet his eyes…the warmth in them was gone, like a fire put out in an empty hearth.
“Kapitan.” She was beginning to shiver. She was still wet, the chill of the ocean water seeping into her bones. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
Kapitan Markov only continued to watch her with that haunting gaze. She noticed he wasn’t chained, and his sword was strapped to his hip. One gloved hand rested against its hilt.
“Kapitan.” Her relief had dried into cold fear. “Unlock me from these chains at once. This is an order.”
Yet a creeping realization was beginning to twine its grasp around her as she looked into the face of her guard and one of her most trusted confidants. It was as though someone else worehis skin, so vastly different was his expression, the way he looked back at her without seeing her.
She’d encountered this once before in her life. She’d seen this type of hollow gaze in the eyes of her brother, Luka, during the last days he’d spent under the mind control of Morganya, forced to take a poison that slowly killed him and left the throne to their aunt. In the face of her father, who’d suffered the same fate unbeknownst to the world.
Ana pressed herself against the wall of the wagon, chains clinking as she folded her hands together to stop their trembling. Outlined against the window, the body that belonged to Kapitan Markov stood stone-still and silent, watching her.
The light outside was beginning to flicker: yellows and oranges mingling with the eerie red glow of the Blood Moon. It was torchlight, Ana realized.
Beyond the darkness of a Cyrilian winter night, there came the gleam of distant fire. As they drew closer, the outline of a town unfolded: the uniform rise and fall of roofs, the spires and steeples of a cathedral. The firelight grew brighter as their carriage pulled up to a cobblestone road.
A crowd was gathered at the town square around a stage. Ana caught sight of the gray-hued gleam of armor and the colorless cloaks of Imperial Patrols lined up beneath a wooden scaffold. Onstage, a figure paced back and forth.
Even from here, Ana recognized her aunt’s poise and elegance. The Empress Morganya was dressed in a resplendent gown of silver that reflected crimson in the night, her gestures sweeping and grand. She held an otherworldly aura, as though she were a Deity reincarnate. As she spoke, her words indiscernible from this distance, the crowd shifted like a puppet beneath her strings.
A sickening feeling gripped Ana’s stomach as she watched her aunt, the Empress she was meant to dethrone. Ana had only been gone from Cyrilia for a little over a moon, and the last she’d seen of it was her empire burning under a mad empress’s reign.
Yet…as they drew nearer, the scene shifted, the sounds of the crowd drifting to Ana through the barred window. What she had taken to be cheers began to change to jeers and boos. Among the torches raised, she could make out banners and posters lifted, pointed aggressively at the stage.
Banners and flags…with the sigil of a red tigress on them.
