He sighed, wistful. “You were drastically improving your skills, but sadly, they’ve turned violent.”
Risa ignored him. She stood shakily, the world threatening to go off-kilter. There were no signs of the Sanguines or life at all among the debris scattered across the miles of dunes that stretched before her.
Brunie was missing. Risa felt a pang in her heart. The sand extended as far as her eyes could see and probably far beyond it, but she had a feeling that the cat would outlive them. Chances were he was already in the shade of Madros’s capital, lounging in some other idiot’s arms.
She turned back to Javi. “How’s your head?”
He sat up and reached back with his fingers. They came away covered only in sand.
Good. They were alive, the airship had fallen apart aroundthem, Madros gleamed in the distance, and Javi was falling in love with her.
Shit.
When death had seemed inevitable, Javi’s words hadn’t registered very much, especially since she had been more concerned with the feeling of his lips against hers. She hadn’t bothered to think about what the kiss meant or what the consequences would be, especially in the face of their survival and her unbroken curse, which enjoyed finding all the ways it could hurt those she cared for. Her mother swore that little accidents staved off really big Bad ones, but Risa didn’t think falling out of the sky in an airship could be considered alittle accident. If they had managed to survivethisaccident, she didn’t want to know what the big one might entail.
Though that was a problem for another time. First, they had to rescue Amina. Who was probably somewhere within the white-walled city of the Madrosian capital, its skyline undulating like a wave in the distance.
“Damn.” Javi groaned at the sight of it across the sand dunes. “We’re going to save Amina, aren’t we?”
“Unfortunately.”
He groaned louder. “I’ve already almost-died several times over.”
“Javi.”
“Severaltimes.”
“Javi.”
“I know, I know,” he sighed in defeat.
Risa didn’t blame him. She was reluctant, too, and not only because she had a sneaking suspicion that her bad luck was going to return with a vengeance, absolutely determined to wreck her life further. Amina needed their help, and Risa didn’t want the lastwords between them to be tinged with anger. After all, neither Javi nor Amina deserved what had befallen them. They wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for Risa. She owed it to both the prince and the princess to see this whole thing to the bitter end.
Javi reached to twine his fingers through hers, perhaps in support or commiseration, but something in the rubble caught her eye. It was tiny, nearly invisible in the wreckage if it hadn’t glinted in the light.
She rushed toward it and fell to her knees to dig in the sand. Once it was in hand, she recognized it immediately.
Linda’s gift to Amina.
The pair of white wings glimmered. She remembered how it had been pinned onto Amina’s cape, but now it looked off, lying with its bent clasp in her palm. Its spinning center was stock-still, a needle pointing decidedly forward, toward a dune. At first, Risa thought it must have been a broken compass, but the needle did not point north like it was supposed to—it pointed toward an inscribedMslightly askew from the white city.
The brooch had never stopped spinning while the princess wore it.
“Shut up,” Risa said, her eyes growing wide, hope rising in her chest. She blinked up at Madros, the heat making the image of the capital ripple in the air. “Shutup.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Risa held up the pin, shaking it at Javi. “It’s a compass.”
“We don’t need to go north.” At least he said it gently, like he was speaking to a child, his eyes soft and sweet as he nodded at the city and its stark-white fortress walls that kept the desert at bay. “We need to go there.”
She shook her head and shoved the compass under his nose. “It doesn’t point north. It points toAmina.”
“Not to jinx it, but I thought this would be more dramatic,” Javi observed. “We’d storm the city, take out an army, present the lost heir, and be hailed as heroes.”
Risa winced, but Javi was right. She had expected to find an army marching through the sand toward them after the crash. That didn’t happen, and so she assumed there would be a battalion waiting at the gate, barring entrance. Instead, the Madrosian capital rose up from the dunes, an impressive fortified castle nestled at the center of the walled city. The gates in the wall were carved from white stone, and they remained unguarded save for one lone soldier who stared at the dusty ground and didn’t lift his head in acknowledgment as they neared.
Up close, the wall towered above them like an impassable mountain. Pillars carved with perfectly symmetrical geometric diamonds gave it a dizzying, striking effect. The main gate followed the same design, and together the gate, pillars, and walls seemed to shimmer without any help from the unbearable heat.
