“The ship burned,” Lane said. “Ian was the last one on board.”
Robin tightened her grip around the man’s waist, leading him toward the small fire.
“I can help,” Lane said, his voice barely audible through his cracked lips.
“Sit for a minute first,” Robin replied, knowing better than to argue with him.
He collapsed into the sand.
Willa deposited Nele next to him, and the two wet swimmers huddled together for warmth.
Robin turned back to the waves, looking for the next shape.
Willa joined her. “When did you get here?” Robin asked Willa. Last she had seen, the cook was still in Lockwood.
“A few hours ago,” Willa replied. “Ilida said she could handle porridge and stew for a few days and sent me to make sure youall were fed.” Willa looked back at the growing group of Majis at the fire. “Looks like she was right, as usual.”
Behind them, soldiers assembled across the beach, but Robin avoided looking directly at them. She had one focus, one goal. She would not let them stop her.
More shapes appeared in the water, coming in greater numbers now. Robin waded back out into the water, scanning every shape for a familiar person.
Willa, Liam, Rigelt, and several of the Majis themselves worked with her. Meeting the exhausted swimmers and helping them to the shore.
“Take this,” Willa said as Robin approached the fire with yet another Majis. “It’s warm.”
Robin accepted the leather flask and took a long drink of the burning liquid before handing it to the man she had just brought in.
The liquid tore at her throat, offering no comfort.
She looked back at the soldiers then. The Iseldan line stretched the full length of the beach. Five men deep, standing shoulder to shoulder in the growing light. Behind them, up on the bluff, the Chendas men were still falling into formation.
General Zimri stepped forward from the line to survey the water. He watched Liam and Rigelt walking more Majis in from the sea, but he made no move to stop them.
She had counted nearly three dozen Majis. If two ships had gone down, that would only be half of them. She moved further north, toward the cliffs and away from the soldiers.
This was not how it was supposed to happen. This was not the choice she had wanted to offer to the freed Majis.
Against the pinkish-blue sky she could still see the smoke from the burning ship, a long hazy cloud drifting south with the wind. Ian had gone out there with a plan. She had accounted forall the things that might go wrong. But she had not accounted for this.
She had not accounted for the pain in her chest that had nothing to do with the chaos magic wound that still festered there.
No new shapes appeared over the waves.
She needed to return to the Majis before the Zimri or Gautho chose to make a move. She could see them still, the soldiers lined up waiting.
But she did not want to turn her back to the sea. She did not want to stop watching.
This was all wrong. She should be the one missing in the waves. She had never feared a world in which she gave everything during this final fight. Ian would mourn for her, but he would take his father’s crown and continue on in the life that had been laid out for him. He would attempt, in his own bumbling way, to make their kingdom a better place for every person within it.
That world was righteous. That was the world that could move forward. Not this one. Not this one.
Ian, you must come back to me!her heart sang out to the waves, even though her mouth was too numb to move. Her throat too dry to speak. Her lungs too pained to force out air. “I need you,” she managed to croak out, though the sound was lost to the waves.
Then she saw it, another dark shadow.
Chapter 48
Ian was too tired to lift his head above water by the time the shore came into view. The early morning light was just beginning to spread, illuminating the shape of the monastery high up on the northern cliffs.
