Blaine tried to swallow back the words, but the compulsion was too strong. The glow of the aether flickered across his eyes, across his teeth, and the words came out anyway. “The Serpentine River.”
“Were you with them?”
“No.”
So he wouldn’t know where the prince might have been taken or if Alasandair was still alive. Caris came from Cosian, a city as far east as one could get in Ashion. Terilyn doubted the star gods would have hidden the two children in the same geographical area. That left one child going east, and if Eimarille had gone west, north and south were the only other options.
Urova had seen no signs of someone who could wield starfire at the level of Rourkes, and that country was loyal to Xaxis and Innes, which made them loyal to Eimarille. She doubted the North Star would have risked a Rourke child growing up in supposed enemy territory.
Which left the south, but for all that Solaria was trouble, there’d been no sign within the Houses of someone who could rival Vanya’s vaunted strength when it came to starfire. Terilyn settled back on her heels, lifting her stiletto away from Blaine’s face, thinking about how he’d recently lived as someone else while in Amari and been raised as E’ridian since he was a boy. How Caris was registered in the nobility genealogies as part of the Dhemlan bloodline, raised up as far from the political heart of the country as one could get.
The star gods had stripped them both of their identities, giving them new roads to walk, new names written into genealogies. If they’d wanted to hide the prince—if they’d wanted to fully strip Alasandair of his identity and keep him out of the fray—the Houses would not be the best choice.
But the wardens would.
They’d lost the quarry and laboratory housing a death-defying machine in Solaria, the location burned by starfire. When Joelle had reported the loss, Eimarille had thought Vanya responsible for the destruction, despite Joelle’s assurances it couldn’t have been anyone belonging to the Houses. Who else could have had that degree of starfire held at their fingertips?
It seemed, perhaps, Eimarille had been mistaken.
If the prince was somehow still alive, Terilyn could only hope he’d been caught up in the attack on the Warden’s Island. Regardless, it was a possibility Eimarille needed to be warned about in person, not something voiced over the wire.
Terilyn stood and sheathed her stiletto, staring down at Blaine. “We’ll take him with us to New Haven. I want—”
She broke off at the muffled, distantboomthat filtered down to her ears. Terilyn’s gaze snapped to the ceiling, her free hand going for the snub-nosed pistol holstered at the small of her back. Her fingers trailed over the grip before she spun on her heels. “Secure the room.”
She stepped into the main area of the basement, nearly running into Kendrick. The captain reared back at her appearance. “My lady, there’s smoke coming from the airfield.”
Terilyn strode toward the stairs. “Was there a crash?”
“We don’t know.”
“Then find out.”
If an airship crash-landed, the cascade effect of the explosion would be tremendous. If her airship got caught in the destruction, she’d have to look to a steam train to get out of Foxborough.
Unfortunately, her luck didn’t hold. Word came within the hour that the airfield was unusable. The thick black smoke rising from the north wasn’t from just a single airship berth but all of them—destroyed, the military scout said, by wardens. The shock of who the perpetrators were was reverberating through the city, all anyone could talk about as the fire brigade sought to keep the fire from spreading across the prairie.
“The attack started with the crown’s airship,” the scout said with a grimly apologetic look on his face.
“Of course it did,” Terilyn murmured, lips twisting in displeasure. “We didn’t think they’d retaliate so quickly. It would have been better if the entire population of the Warden’s Island had been eradicated.”
Kendrick bowed his head at that indirect chastisement. “Apologies, my lady.”
“They know a representative of our queen is in Foxborough but not our exact location. We’ll need to leave immediately.”
“The mayor has ordered the city gates closed under an emergency order. The rail stations have all been evacuated, as it’s expected the wardens will target those next,” the scout said.
Terilyn was too well trained to show how much the news made her want to curse. She turned to face Kendrick, staring him down. “Find us a way out of this city.”
The wardens couldn’t lay siege to Foxborough, but they could and were making it difficult to flee. Terilyn refused to become a sitting target.
She refused to leave Eimarille to fight this war alone.
Six
VANYA
“You are distracted,” Taisiya said.
