“None of you will die for me!” Brietta shouted.
Every eye turned to Brietta as she stood at the table. She kept her brown eyes on Calder. “I may not know you, but I know yourstruggle. The Hytons have used you and abandoned you, leaving you to starve in the famine they created.”
My brows knitted. I had thought Brietta only cared about Ravenwood’s plight because she was my friend, but…she actually cared. She not only listened to me, she understood.
Brietta stepped away from the bench and walked into the center of the room, sweeping her eyes across the faces of every crimson-clad soldier. “The Hytons have taken so much. They took your sons and your brothers. They robbed you of your hope…and mine too. We will fight the Hytons not because of a mad Duke, but we will fight for us.”
“Us?” Calder sneered. “What do you mean ‘us?’ You are just a spoiled noble girl.”
Brietta reached down and grabbed the hilt of Calder’s sword. Before he could stop her, she held out the blade to the crowd.
The iron must have been heavy, but her arm did not tremble and neither did her voice. “I am the Duchess of Lycaster. Alastar the Mad cannot kill me without destroying himself.” She dropped the tip of the sword to the floor with a soft tap, punctuating her point, and turned to Evereon. “I am your greatest weapon. No steel or stone will dare cross the gate if I am standing atop it.”
The soldiers around us murmured, but not with dissent.
“Never again,” Brietta said. “Never again will the Hytons crush you underfoot. Never again will your cries go unheard. Never again will the lamentations of women go unpunished. If anyone should fall, it will not be for me—it will be for the freedom of everyone in the North.”
Riyan cut me a look and sent a message into my mind: “Is she sure she wants to be a Duchess and not a General? She is brilliant.”
I smiled as Endre rushed to Brietta’s side, instantly rallying support for her cause. I had once thought her greatest talent waspoetry on parchment, but with only a few words from her lips, she had shifted the entire battle. Instead of morale that would wither the moment I gave myself up to Derrick, the army now had something to fight for. She had braided her own ambitions of freedom with the North’s desperate thirst for it.
Brietta had her own army…but Annalisa was still in pain.
I gave Riyan’s back a quick pat and then I weaved through the crowd of cheering soldiers. My magic searched for Annalisa as I ascended the spiraling staircase, following the sound of sheets of rain.
Annalisa’s voice echoed off the stone. “Get lost, Bird Brain!”
I rounded the corner and found them. Annalisa stood near a large window in the hallway, her cheeks shining with tears. Erik stood in front of her.
“Do not listen to those ruffians downstairs,” Erik said calmly. “You are safe here.”
“Oh, I already know what a Ravenwood’s definition of ‘safe’ is,” Annalisa snapped. Her watering eyes turned to me as I approached. “A curse in my blood. Separating me from my true love. Taking me away from my family!”
This again? “Anna, I already told you—”
“Justify it however you want.” She clutched her arms so hard that her fingernails must have pinched through her sleeves. “You never gave me a choice. You got to choose Riyan, Brietta got to choose a war for her freedom, butInever got a choice.”
I avoided Erik’s judging eyes as my stomach knotted. I had just wanted to protect her, but she was right. Just as I was grieving the last hours of my autonomy, Annalisa was grieving the loss of hers.
AndIhad taken it away from her.
“I am sorry, Anna.” I looked into her glassy eyes and her lip trembled. “You deserved a choice too.”
Just as Annalisa’s brow softened, I caught sight of a dark swirl in the clouds. I cut between Annalisa and Erik and gripped the windowsill, looking through the glass panes to the south.
Over the trees was a large cloud of smoke. Judging by the distance, it was coming from the Bloodstone apple grove.
“Derrick,” Annalisa whispered. She pressed her hand against her heart. “Oh, Derrick.”
The destruction was not just cruelty, it was a message. Derrick did not intend to wait us out like Evereon had predicted. He was an Alastar. He was a conqueror.
He was going to smoke us out.
Pandemonium struck as soon as the dark wisps of smoke curled into the sky.
Riyan rushed to the courtyard to repair the fallen wall. Endre and Evereon inventoried weapons. Brietta focused on how to put out any incoming fire. The last I saw of Annalisa was her watering eyes as she shut Astrid’s bedroom door in my face.
My last evening of freedom was in solitude.
