It was exactly as she’d left it—stark and humorless, with wood paneling, a bed draped with a simple gray blanket, and a lonely map of Sennalaith adorning the walls. As she crossed the room, her feet crunched on dead plants. Once the guard was gone, she moved to the wardrobe and, taking a deep breath, she pulled open the doors.
The smell nearly toppled her—cedar and leaf rot. Dry brown vines covered the walls. She slammed the doors shut and took three more tremulous breaths before she opened them again.
It was a large wardrobe, and quite deep. Inside hung her old clothes: sky-blue Sennaliathic uniform jackets, and a few purple dragon scale trousers and shirts for battle. Her father liked her to stand out—his little demon child.
Taking a lantern from the vanity, she stepped into the closet and knelt before the back wall, feeling for the notch. She found it and slid a panel aside, then crawled on her hands and knees into the narrow space beyond. It was no more than a nook, barely tall enough to sit up in. The floor was carpeted with one of her mother’s favorite ornate rugs. Valenna had stolen it from the library when she was twelve. Her father never noticed, and the servants didn’t tell.
The walls were fitted with shelves she’d built herself at the cost of dozens of splinters and blisters. The shelves were lined with books, also taken from the library, and scattered with seashells she’d snatched and hidden in her pockets while training by theshore. Juvenile sketches of dresses she’d dreamed of between battles peeled off the paneling.
It was like a museum of her sad childhood. All her hope and grief and will to survive spread out in front of her like a picnic of pain.
A dry tendril of strangling ivy attempted to climb the walls, but it was weak, withering.
Finally back in Sennalaith, Valenna found, with a pang of disappointment, that her desire to burn her father and his entire kingdom to the ground had worn thin. She’d escaped this place once, and she’d worn beautiful dresses, read wonderful books, and married a kind man whom she loved with an overwhelming passion. Next to all that, her vengeful wrath seemed small, common, like a mangy cat.
Drawing up her knees, Valenna covered her face with her hands and wished she could cry. She had done a wicked, desperate thing in betraying Cobblepine and, though she couldn’t regret it, she knew that Evander would never forgive her. Before Cobblepine, her anger had thrived on her innocence and her father’s guilt. He was a bad person, and she was a good person. But now, she was a bad person too. Her father had traded the lives of thousands upon thousands of soldiers to avenge his beloved wife. She had traded the people of Cobblepine to save her beloved husband.
They were the same.
Suddenly, there was no air in the closet, and she felt like another second crouched in the dark would suffocate her. She scrambled out into the bedroom, rushed to the window, and threw open the curtains—then jumped back with a startled scream.
Raska perched outside. She blinked twice at Valenna, then swung her body around.
“Wait!” Valenna threw open the window and leaned out. Raska, hanging from the brick sill by her taloned feet, paused, her wings outstretched.
“Is he alive?”
Raska croaked through the slits atop her beak.
“Did you take him to Ashkendor? Please, Raska, I need to know!”
Raska flapped her huge wings, dropped from the windowsill, and flew away.
Chapter forty
Evander
Cadmus’s soldiers had conscripted fifty men and women of fighting age from Cobblepine, five of whom had been trainees in Silvanlight under Evander. Haldir kept these five, then split the others into groups and sent them with four lieutenants to travel to distant encampments—isolating them from their own people to prevent violence or dissent.
Lysander’s brutal death shook the Cobblepine conscripts, but not in the way Haldir had intended. Instead of frightening them into submission, he’d solidified his place as a tyrant and a murderer, and the remaining Cobblepinions eyed him like a pack of wolves watching a deer.
Even though Lysander had been a cruel boy, and almost a passive murderer, his death sickened Evander … and made him nervous. Who would be the next victim of Haldir’s irascible temper?
They trudged over the open plains all night, through the following day, and into the second night. As dawn broke, the breeze rose with it, chill and smelling of sea salt. The shimmering blue marsh lapped against oyster-crusted boulders on either side of the raised dirt path as seagulls and egrets soared over the water, jeering at the grim line of weary conscripts.
Tired as they were, antagonism radiated off the Cobblepinions like steam from a hot spring.
The military encampment at Stratus stood on a stretch of sand overgrown with clumps of bristle grass. The camp was arranged like a wagon wheel with the mess hall, infirmary, and armory at the center and neat rows of white tents extending outward like spokes. Behind the camp, the dragon paddocks crisscrossed the sand, ranging around a long gray barn.
A village teetered on stilts over the marsh, its bleached wooden buildings glowing in the sunlight like they were made of bone. While the locals preferred to travel in dinghies pushed through the water with long poles, a creaking boardwalk still led from the camp to town, and the soldiers were allowed to frequent the tavern without passes.
A brushy pine forest bordered the camp, and peering over the squat trees stood Cadmus’s summer home. It was four stories tall, eight windows from side to side, with a blue tiled roof and whitewashed brick walls.
As soon as they stepped off the road and into camp, Hera decided she’d done enough walking and lay down. Evander made a few half-hearted attempts to rouse her, but she ignored him, so he curled in the crook of her front leg and fell asleep.
He slept fitfully, worrying about Valenna, worrying about Hera, and, strangest of all, worrying about Samara and Giles and the other conscripts.
Cobblepine had rejected him, left him to die, driven Valenna to leave him and return to her father. He should be furious. Instead, he felt guilty and wretched.
