Ahnna laughed, and the sensation of it almost brought her to tears because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had something to laugh about. “Can’t say I see you two wielding hoes.”
“You and Ensel’s mother both.” Bronwyn spit on the sand. “That mouthy cow is cut from the same cloth as your grandmother, Ahnna, because she never saw or heard a damned thing that she didn’t feel a need to voice an opinion about.”
“Well, rumor has it that Nana is on Ornak, so consider yourself warned,” Ahnna said, then her eyes tracked to where her brother and Lara stood in deep conversation with Sarhina. Lara looked like she was barely holding her emotions in check, Aren’s arm wrapped around her and Sarhina holding one of her hands. “Is Delia okay?”
“Right as rain and busy crawling around in the dirt with her cousin as they plague the chickens,” Bronwyn answered. “Ensel and his people in the mountains have made Delia their own, and they’ll protect her unto death. He’s as good a man as you could ask for, kind and patient with children, but fierce as an angry bear when he needs to be. Loves Sarhina like life, but he knew what he was getting into with her. Knew that he’d be holding together hearth and home while she changed the world, so he’s prepared for the worst.”
The worst being that Sarhina never came home to her daughter and husband. That Delia was never reunited with her parents. War tore apart families, and Ahnna couldn’t help but wonder if there would ever come a time when their world was free of it. Or if it was a miserable inevitability that greedy and power-hungry people would always rise to the top, leaving death and suffering in their wake as they reached formore.
“Where is Keris?” Bronwyn asked. “And Zarrah, for that matter? Sarhina said she’d gone north.”
“We don’t know.” Ahnna swiftly explained what had happened, finishing with, “They were alive when we left them, but I don’t know if they managed to get out of Harendell.”
“Lestara is treading on dangerous ground if she thinks that Valcotta won’t sail to Zarrah’s defense.”
They reached James where he was standing far up the beach, and Bronwyn took one look at him and said, “You look like shit, Ashford. What happened to your face?”
“Shovel.”
“Someone try to bury you?”
“Yes.”
“They the ones who ended up buried?”
“More or less.”
Bronwyn cast her eyes skyward and shook her head. “For Ahnna’s sake, I hope you are a better lover than a conversationalist, because your skills in the art of small talk are sorely lacking.”
James only shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her.”
“Oh, we will,” Taryn chimed in. “We intend to learn all the details.”
Ahnna hid a smile as her husband’s composure slipped, but then shouts rang out from the lookouts on the cliffs surrounding the sea. “More Harendellian ships have arrived! They are shooting warning shots at the Maridrinians! They’re driving them off!”
“Signal my ship to go,” Sarhina shouted back. “We have what we need.”
Yet Ahnna barely heard the woman’s orders, because all she saw was the way the color drained from James’s face. Without saying a word, he broke into a run, heading for the narrow path leading from the cove to the clifftops. Letting go of her friends, Ahnna raced after him. “James!”
He didn’t stop, and fast as Ahnna was, she couldn’t match his long strides. He already had a spyglass in hand by the time she reached the top, and was watching the two ships facing down the Maridrinianvessel. Its deck was full of panicked crew rushing to get sails up, and within minutes, they were heading south.
James handed her the spyglass. “Look at the front of the ships.”
The sun was still rising, the light poor, but Ahnna focused on the Harendellian vessels. Her blood instantly ran cold, because mounted on the foredecks were catapults of some kind. As she watched on in horror, one of the monstrous vessels turned and the soldiers on deck worked as a team to load a rock into the catapult.
Crack!
Her stomach lurched as she watched the boulder sail through the air to land with an explosion of water perhaps a hundred paces from the base of the cliffs. Ahnna sucked in a breath, then shouted, “Return!”
Crack!
A shipbreaker was released, the rock soaring through the air toward the ship but falling just short with a splash that soaked the crew aboard. “We have the advantage of the clifftops,” she said. “Greater range.”
“If they come close to use those, we’ll sink them,” one of the soldiers manning the shipbreaker muttered, then gestured to the pile of boulders behind him. “We’ve got rocks for days.”
They’d have to risk an entire ship that had to have well over five hundred men aboard, but Ahnna couldn’t shirk the sense of dread pooling in her stomach. Especially when she noticed that James had left her, running along the edge of the cliffs that circled the island. Exchanging a worried glance with Aren, she chased after him, the light growing with each step she took.
Her breathing grew rapid, heart thundering as she circled around and around until she reached James at the northernmost point. He stood frozen, watching the shadows of the island stretch, the sun revealing more of the sea with each passing second.
