“Yes,” I said with no hesitation. “It’s easier to tell yourself you’re not when someone else pretends to be brave for you. Whoever’s leading her must have pretended he is very powerful.”
After everything he’d done, he was.
“What happens if we don’t find her?” Dax stuffed his hands into his pockets.
I didn’t want to think about it. My mind crawled with dangers, each more grim than the last. But I had to face them.
“If she got out, then nothing’s stopping her from telling the Northern Clans all the crater’s secrets,” I said. “She can’t return here. She wants Ryker and I dead. She knows where to strike best to achieve that.”
“How can you be sure she’ll help them attack?”
“Because it’s the exact opposite of what I would do.”
He nodded a few too many times. “Good.”
I looked at him from the corner of my eyes. “Why?”
“Because that girl knows secrets we need. I went down to the dungeons to get them, only to find Vylkor–” He trembled. “That poison is sinister. How did she hide it? How did she poison him? Why didn’t she die as well? Who cares if we take back the Protectorate throne if we can be offed in mere seconds?”
“They need to skulk in the shadows and use poisons to try and best us,” I seethed. “I’d take that as a compliment if I wasn’t so damn mad.”
Mad about everyone we’d lost.
Enraged that we still had to protect everyone while this so-called heir touted glory.
Furious that we had no clue who he was or where he could be hiding so that I could make him suffer like he had others.
As we neared the fortress, cold, hungry, and depleted of all hope, my spine tingled at the same time Sylvester cawed. A moment later, Ryker appeared from beyond the pines.
I’d expected to see him stony and stoic once more.
Perhaps tired, after facing the crater’s vengeful wilderness for days.
Instead, he thundered our way like he wanted to rip the ground up to find Nadya.
Maybe others didn’t notice. The warriors who’d greeted him with short, respectful bows didn’t seem to feel anything amiss.
But I saw.
That same fury flowed through me, blazing my veins.
We locked eyes and I felt seen.
Not like Dax and my cousins saw me, as a pillar of certainty.
Not as someone who guided and faced the worst, like the civilians.
But as a person who’d had enough and couldn’t show it.
And I wanted to reveal it.
Roar it.
I muttered a quick goodbye to Dax and met Ryker right in front of the fortress stairs.
“The armory,” he answered my unspoken question.
We marched together, hard enough that the ground rumbled under our heavy steps.
