But there was something…differentabout her empire tonight. Something sharper, somethingoff,the pine-scented wind and snow bladed with a tang of blood and steel. There was more than ice to the air; there was a sense of hostility from the way the waves lunged at their hull to the way the clouds roiled fast overhead. As though the land itself knew of the war awaiting.
The crew set about their preparations; a sound Affinite, one of the many they had rescued from Bregon’s cruel research dungeons where they had been waiting to be tested on the siphons, carried Daya’s instructions across the rest of the fleet following behind.
Their ships sluiced forward in the night. The glow of the red moon was now covered by snow clouds, and a mist had appeared over the waters. The crew gathered on the decks, watching in tense silence as they approached. Daya’s lips moved as she counted down the seconds, a bronze pocketwatch held in the palm of her hand.
A sailor near the edge of the ship gave a soft exclamation. “Ruselkya,” he said.
Ana leaned over the railing. From here, the waters lapping atthe hull of their ship were black, tinted with a faint red hue. It resembled blood.
Gliding beneath the surface were long, spectral shapes, threading between waves. It was only when they turned, tails flashing silver, that Ana caught sight of their torsos, and their long hair streaming behind them.
Daya came to stand next to her. “Are you familiar with the sailors’ myths about ruselkya?”
“They bring misfortune,” Ana said, thinking of the storybooks she’d read of the water spirits in the past. Whereas ice spirits—syvint’sya—ranged from gentle to malicious in nature, ruselkya were believed to be remnants of vicious, darker magic left in this world by the Deities.
Daya nodded. “I’ve heard stories from sailors who went to the farthest corners of the Silent Sea and found themselves inthe ruselkya’s grasps. But I’ve never seen them this active, nor so close to land.” She was silent for a moment, a troubled expression crossing her face. Then she shook her head and barked a laugh. “They’re all just stories. What’s real is the thousand-strong Bregonian fleet behind our backs. You still have that charm I gave you?”
Ana reached for the amulet at her neck: a pendant in the shape of a sun, no bigger than the tip of her pinky finger. It was made of garnet from the Kingdom of Kusutri, Daya’s home. Daya had gifted it to Ana as a good-luck charm, saying the bloodred hue of the stone matched her better.For when you get your Affinity back,the sailor had said.
Ana stroked a thumb over the gem’s smooth surface. “I’d never lose it.”
“Good,” Daya said. “Now, come with me—I’m making rounds to check that all is in order. We’re a quarter hour to shore.”
Ana was about to follow when something caught her attention. She blinked, looking over the railing, across the midnight-black expanse of sea, wondering if it had been a trick of the Blood Moon’s light.
But there it was again: a flare of light, piercing the fog, small, but growing larger.
“Daya,” she began, but then the night around them lit up like day.
The first explosion slammed Ana into the wooden deck, her bones jarring and her teeth rattling in her skull. Heat gusted in her face. The sky and sea reeled all around her as she lifted her head, vision blurring in and out of focus. Flames licked at the wood, rising with the wind to engulf members of the crew and splinters of debris strewn across the floor. The entire midsection of theStormbringerhad been torn off; a hole gaped in the railing, and water was beginning to fill in.
The second explosion plunged her into the water.
Kingdom of Bregon
The foyer was dark, and the man in the shadows was dying.
Captain Ramson Farrald stepped over the threshold into the liminal space between darkness and light, his steps muffled by the dust-covered carpet in the house. Even from here, he could make out the skeletal form of his mark, slumped over in the armchair. Only the slightest rise and fall to his chest, the tip of his head, and the gleam of his rimmed spectacles in the watery sunlight indicated that he was alive at all.
The mansion itself was in almost as much neglect. Colloquially named “the Nest,” it was rumored to be the headquarters where the remnants of Kerlan’s forces were gathered. Ramson wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he’d arrived—something akin to a shabby version of the Kerlan Estate, perhaps, oozing with unnecessary opulence, or a simple wooden shack packed to bursting with mercenaries and ex–Order of the Lily members.
Not a man, dying alone in an empty house, surrounded bynothing but scrolls of parchments, books, and binders of papers.
Ramson held up a leather-gloved hand, signaling for the Bregonian Navy soldiers in his squad to wait outside. Then hestepped forward, drawing his misericord. “Seems I’ve finally found you,” he said quietly, “Scholar Ardonn.”
Just weeks ago, Ramson had wrested the Kingdom of Bregon from its spiral of corruption at his father’s hands and restored the rightful King and the Three Courts into governance. Yet the war was far from over. Alaric Kerlan was dead, but the roots of the criminal empire he’d planted—in both Cyrilia and Bregon—ran deep. King Darias of Bregon had appointed Ramson under a secret task force to dig out the remnants of Kerlan’s criminal network.
A fortnight’s search had led Ramson here, to the northernmost tip of Bregon, where it was rumored the remnants of Kerlan’s forces were gathered at a headquarters referred to as “the Nest.” According to King Darias’s sources, the Nest and the last of Kerlan’s forces could hold the keys to knowledge about the deadly weapons with the power to steal Affinities: siphons.
A single candle burned on the table before the scholar. Up close, he looked nothing like the Royal Scholar who had worked with Alaric Kerlan to develop siphons—the one that Ramson had once glimpsed aboard the ship where Kerlan had conducted his experiments. Where Ramson had seen, with his own eyes, a former colleague named Bogdan wield the powers of a siphon and the Affinities it had stolen.
Ramson took in the sharp edges of his quarry’s face: sunken cheeks, hollowed eyes, ash-gray beard falling out in tufts. Instead of the turquoise-collared white robes he’d once worn as a symbol of knowledge and power, he had on a commoner’s tunic and pants. He looked like a portrait left exposed too long in the sun, fading fast.
Yet the sight sent a thrill shooting through Ramson’s veins.Here was the man who might hold the keys to all the information they needed about the siphons—where they were, how to destroy them, and, most importantly, how to reverse their effects.
Scholar Ardonn gave a long, low chuckle. “So you’re the bastard son.”
The words would once have twisted in him like a knife, opening a wound that had never fully healed. But now, Ramson found only a passing sadness, the stir of his father’s memory.
