Ana slowed as sand turned to wet wood beneath her feet, damp and creaky from years of abandonment. Fear crawled up her veins at the sight of the man before her.
Sadov’s teeth glinted white as she approached. “Hello, Little Tigress,” he crooned. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away for long.”
By Ana’s side, Daya drew her weapon. Tetsyev had gone very, very still.
“Morganya’s faithful lap dog until the very end, Sadov?” Ana said. And then with the strength and fury of all she had suffered beneath his cruelty, she flung her blood Affinity at him.
Their Affinities hit each other at the same time. The world bled black, familiar nightmares flipping through her mind.
Suddenly, it all vanished. She heard Sadov give a gurgling gasp. When Ana blinked again, the Imperial Advisor was on his knees. Tetsyev was drawing back, blood on his hands glistening red. Glass glinted between his fingers. He’d broken one of his tonic vials and jammed the shards into Sadov’s neck.
Sadov turned, a flash of metal in his hands. When Ana cried out a warning, it was too late.
Tetsyev stumbled back. Red spilled from his throat, and even as he closed his hands over the wound, it ran down his chest, soaking his alchemist’s robes.
Ana seized the blood in Sadov’s body and tore. And just like that, the man who had tormented her for half her life crumpled to the frozen sand. The last expression he bore was one of fear, carved on his face even after the light had faded from his eyes.
Ana knelt by Tetsyev’s side. Blood, there was blood everywhere—too much of it. She pressed a hand over his throat. Liquid warmth leaked between her fingers.
The alchemist’s eyes were bulging, his lips opening and closing as he looked at her. She bent her ear to his face and caught the last of his words, no more than the whistle of wind between his cracked lips. “…atone for…my mistakes…”
Then, without another sound, the man exhaled, the muscles in his body loosening. His eyes closed for the last time.
Ana lowered him to the ground. She understood the meaning of the alchemist’s words. Since her first meeting with him, moons back when she’d been on the hunt for her father’s murderer, he’d told her of his wish to atone for his sins—for his complicity in the murders of her parents and her brother.
It was this that had driven all of his decisions: to save her life more than once, and finally, to leave Morganya’s side and fight with her.
She traced the symbol of a Deys’krug on his chest. “May you find peace at last, Pyetr Tetsyev,” she said softly, and rose.
Daya was out on the jetties already, circling one of the posts with a cutter tied to it. She looked up, her face drawn. “This one’ll do,” she said. “It’s small, but it’ll be fast.”
The sky had shifted to a nebulous, colorless gray, halfway between light and dark. The waters of the sea broke against the docks, turbulent and vicious. Far off, she could make out the faintest flicker of a familiar blood signature, one that conjured the whisper of a prayer, the kiss of a dagger pressed to crimson lips, cold eyes the color of pale tea.
Morganya.
There was no more delaying it; every obstacle in her way had been met by sacrifice from the people around her—from Yuri and Henryk and the fallen soldiers on her battlefield to Tetsyev and Linn, and those still fighting nearby to buy her time.
Now, she looked to Daya, standing in the cutter with one hand on the mast and the other on the wheel to steady herself against the relentless churn of waves. Daya had always carried herself with assurance and staunch honesty; it was only in this moment that Ana saw fear color her friend’s expression.
Daya gripped the sails tighter and nodded. She gave a thumbs-up, crooking her mouth into a grin. Her lips moved, forming soundless words.I’m your captain, Ana.
Standing on the precipice of her empire and gazing out into the infinite white waves, Ana had the urge to glance back, tocatch a glimpse of her army, the sight of a familiar land she was not sure she would see again.
She swallowed. If she did not step forward now, she might never have the strength to.
Head held high, chin lifted, shoulders back, Ana stepped onto the boat.
She did not look back.
There was nothing in the silence but shadow and silhouettes, and the steadypat-pat-patof his valkryf’s hooves. They drummed out a rhythm of time trickling to an inevitable end.
The conifers farther south were beautiful, ice clinging to their branches like diamonds. This far up north, Ramson ventured into a world with all the color leached from it. The cold dug into his bones with a vengeance.
The nights were so long that time had begun to blur, broken only by an intermittent, watery dawn. He rode until he was exhausted, and slept huddled beneath his valkryf, a fire roaring before him and a globefire cradled between his hands. Several times, he dozed off on his saddle, only to wake up and find that his steed had strayed slightly.
His compass was steady in his hands, and the arrow pointed north.
On the fourth day, the air shifted. It was more by sense than anything else that he knew he drew close to the ocean. He could taste it in the wind that whipped ruthlessly against his furs: the briny tang of salt, the smell of the sea.
