“How are you still alive?” she whispered, ignoring the mutters behind her. “The cove is red with blood. The sharks killed everyone.”
James’s arms closed around her back, holding her close. “I stayed still.”
“That doesn’t work in a frenzy.” All logic screamed that he shouldbe dead, because the cove’s water was entirely crimson, onlypieceswashing against the shore.
James shrugged, then touched his right cheekbone with a wince, seeming more concerned with his rapidly swelling eye than the fact he was nearly eaten. “A big shark with scars and a missing eye came right up to me and had a good look, but it went after an Amaridian instead.”
Ahnna went still, and the muttering behind her went silent.
Heart in her throat, Ahnna turned her face to look at her brother. Aren’s face was drained of color. “I saw her earlier. I recognized the scars on her sides.”
Ahnna nodded, her chest so tight it made it hard to speak. “If you won’t trust me, I hope you’ll trust a guardian.”
The murmurs burst out among those watching, but Aren only looked away.
“What are you talking about?” James’s breath was warm against her ear. “What is so important about the shark?”
Her lips parted, but the words caught in her throat and all she managed was, “That shark is a guardian. One of the oldest in Ithicana.”
“What does that mean?”
Ahnna couldn’t get the words out, so it was Lara who answered. “There is a myth that if the guardians show a person mercy, it means the person is loyal to Ithicana.”
“I see,” James said, but Ahnna barely heard him, her memory filled with another moment in which Ithicana’s guardians had offered salvation. Of how she’d raged then against putting stock in myths but now desperately clung to the spark of hope it planted in her heart.
Lara knelt next to them, her skilled gaze taking in James’s throat. “That needs stitches.” Then her focus moved to Ahnna. “I know there is a lot to tell, but what do we need to know right now to salvage this situation?”
Coughing to clear the lump in her throat, Ahnna said, “Alexandra is behind Edward’s murder. She inflicted those injuries on herself as part of her scheme to frame me. Her reasons are myriad, but what matters is that her goal is the bridge and she and Katarina are working together. All the grain is full of poison, and the ship that delivered up north already struck its blow.” She blinked away the memory of the bridge full of bodies of her people. “Aster is dead. He told me before he died that he sent soldiers by foot and ship to try to stop everyone from eating the poison, but I…I don’t know if they made it in time.”
Aren swore, but Lara’s eyes only darkened as she climbed to her feet. She snatched hold of the shirt of one of the Amaridians and dragged him up. “Did you know the bread you were feeding us was poisoned?”
He struggled, trying to get away, but she only produced a knife, which she pressed to his throat. “Half my people on this beach are going to die because they ate your poison. Did you know?”
“They won’t!” he squealed. “The sample grain they gave you was good, I swear it! No one here will die from it! Please let me live!”
Lara only gave a snort of disgust and dragged her blade across his throat. She shoved him into the water, then gave one of the wounded Amaridians a sharp kick that sent him rolling off the rocks into the sea with a splash. His screams cut off a heartbeat later, only to be replaced by more screams as Lara systematically shoved the Amaridian survivors into the water.
Lara then took a horn from Lia and blew a series of notes. Commands to attack. Commands to show no mercy.
A ragged breath pulled from her, and Ahnna sagged against James, only now realizing how much she’d feared that they wouldn’t believe her. How much she’d feared her family would condemn her for all the tragedy that had befallen them.
Vaguely she was aware of sounds of battle in the distance. Explosions, screams, and the clashes of weapons, her people boarding and taking control of the other ship before it could flee back to Katarina.
She should get up. Should fight.
James ran a hand down her spine. “Let your people have this fight.” He rested his cheek against hers, lips brushing her ear. “You did it, love. You saved them.”
Saving her people had been Ahnna’s goal. It had driven her through fear and pain and suffering, because no part of her had been willing to give in while her people’s lives were on the line.
She’d not saved them all, and the weight of those losses would haunt her forever, but Ahnna set aside her grief, because the war had only just begun.
Shoving emotion behind walls and embracing the soldier within her, Ahnna climbed to her feet and started up a path through the trees until she reached the cliffs overlooking the seas. The other ship was listing in the water, a large hole in its hull and its decks swarming with Ithicanians. The Amaridians were on their knees in surrender.
Aren stopped next to Ahnna’s elbow. “That grain would have become bread that fed every person in Ithicana,” he said softly. “Not just soldiers, but innocents. Children.”
“That sort of evil deserves no mercy,” she replied, her heart hardening. “Kill them all.”
“Lia, ring the dinner bell,” Aren ordered. “Let Amarid feed the fish.”
