But if I couldn’t get Samra to agree with even my simplest decisions, how was I going to convince her to ally her rebels with Rhodaire? My response had been to force my decisions, but that only made her dig her heels in deeper, creating a chasm between us.
Maybe leading didn’t mean just making decisions and enforcing them. That was what Razel would have done. What my mother would have done. Maybe leading meant being the kind of person peoplewantedto follow.
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about today. I shouldn’t have forced all this without you on board. I should have listened.”
At first, I didn’t think she would respond. Despite her decision to help us, I knew Samra didn’t like me much. She resented me for my mother’s decision not to help the Ambriels. I understood. My bitterness at my mother had only grown in recent weeks.
I tried again. “Your father—”
“I don’t give a damn about my father,” Samra said with deadly quiet. “He can rot in the night’s depths for all I care.”
“But your family—”
“I didn’t mean him.” Her hands tightened into fists at her sides, then relaxed all at once. “I was twenty-one when Illucia attacked five years ago.” Her voice had a slight rasp to it, as if the words were still too raw to speak. “My mother was a soldier. She died early in the fighting. My father is the leader of the high council, or what little remains of it. When Razel’s army took Seahalla, she forced the council to submit to her.”
It was an easy image to conjure, a line of leaders on their knees before the Illucian queen. Razel liked to exert control, and she liked to force people into submission when they stood against her.
“When they came to our house, my father refused,” Samra continued. “Even though he was already loyal to the bastards. He thought he could extort them for more money and power.” She spit the words out like sand. “My older brother and I were there when they came. They slit my brother’s throat.”
The words pierced ice cold, and I wrapped my arms about myself for warmth. Another family member dead at Razel’s command. In her lust for power.
An ember of fury flickered to life in my stomach. Lately, it never seemed to leave. Everything I saw around me, every thought I had of Illucia or Razel—it all lit a fire inside me. I let it burn.
“I broke the jaw of the soldier nearest me.” She flexed her hand as if remembering the sting of bone against her knuckles. “They blinded me in one eye in retribution.”
Samra didn’t stumble over the words. Didn’t shift her weight or clench her hands or betray any hint of the turmoil inside her. She relayed the events like a general reporting the dead—grave, reverent, colder than the sea spray misting against my skin.
“My father submitted of course. My younger brother and sister were in Trendell at the time. They unknowingly returned home only to be used as more leverage against him.”
“It’s them you wanted to protect,” I said quietly.
She didn’t reply, but her silence was as good as a confirmation.
A soft breeze lifted her dark curls and pulled at the ends of my braid, prickling like frosted teeth at my skin. The ember in my stomach blazed hotter.
“I’m going to stop her.” My voice trembled with rage. “I’m going to make her pay for what she’s done.”
The captain shifted her dark eyes to me. “Careful of what promises you make. The Night Captain doesn’t take kindly to liars.”
I shivered. I’d heard stories of the Night Captain as a child, mostly from my mother on the rare occasions when she spent the evening telling me stories, but two weeks of nights on Samra’s ship had given me a new appreciation for the legend, which spoke of flaming ships left burning in the night after Diah’s crew was done with them. Apparently, even mentioning her name was considered ill luck. The night was her domain, and uttering her name on a lone ship with nothing but miles of vast ocean in every direction risked invoking her power.
I held Samra’s gaze. “I give you my word.”
She studied me, her eyes obsidian in the moonlight. Then her gaze softened, and the barest hint of a smile pulled at her lips. “Perhaps you’re not so bad after all, for a Rhodairen.”
The unspoken meaning behind her words rang louder than the crash of the sea:perhaps you are not your mother.
Perhaps you are better.
“Did Caylus ever tell you how we met?” Samra’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. I shook my head, and she continued, “Most of the fighters that come to Malkin’s court are free. Caylus was one of the few in his debt whom he forced to fight. Though at the time, I didn’t know anyone was, or I’d never have gone there.
“After Illucia claimed the Ambriels, I started joining the fights. I had trained all my life, and throwing myself into those fights was the only thing that kept me from killing every Illucian soldier I saw.”
Her jaw tightened. “One day, I learned who Caylus was from a girl who claimed to be his sister. When he fought, I saw the way he receded into himself, as if he became someone else entirely in order to do what he had to. He hates fighting, and because of that, he won’t be able to make this journey with you. He’s spent too long fighting. Given too much of his life to it. If you go down this path, he won’t walk it with you.”
My cheeks flushed with a frustration I didn’t fully understand. “You don’t know that. He’s here, isn’t he?”
He’d left behind his new life, his workshop and his bakery, all to help me escape, to fight. Without him, I never would have made it out of Illucia.
