Ana couldn’t help but smile back. “Don’t salute me,” she whispered, giving her friend a nudge. “I can’t get used to it.”
“Aye, aye,” Daya replied, tapping her fingers to her forehead again. Ana laughed, and together they boarded the ship. The wind out here was stronger, and her crimson cloak arced out behind her as she turned to stand at the front of the ship.
At her back, Daya shouted orders, and the members of her new crew sprang to action. There were others on the ship, too, Ana noticed with a surge of pride: the Affinites Linn had freed from the dungeons, who had fought with them during the Battle of Godhallem, were scattered about the deck, dressed in fine Bregonian clothes. Within just several days, the gauntness to their cheeks had filled, and the pallor to their skin had been replaced by healthy flushes. King Darias had promised all the trafficked Affinites safe passage back to their own kingdoms, but several had volunteered to join Ana’s cause. They made the sign of the Deys’krug over their chests as they spotted her, and Ana returned the gesture.
The gangplank began to retract, and as the crew began to haul anchor, Ana leaned against the railing and gazed out. A crowd had gathered at the steps now, courtiers and guards and servants and other personnel of the Blue Fort. She caught sight of King Darias at the very top of the stairway. He grinned at her, and she raised a hand to wave back.
Yet there was no glimpse of the person she had most wanted to see. Ana kept searching the crowd even as the sails unfurled with a whumpf!, even as the ship began to glide and pick up speed between the massive searock pillars that lined the waterway.
And then they were drawing farther and farther from the buildings of the Blue Fort, and the great ironore doors were opening, the currents on either side of them speeding up as they turned to the waterway that led out to the open sea.
“Ana, look!” Daya shielded a hand to her face and pointed behind them.
Ana turned. Dozens of ships had begun to follow theirs, sails blooming with both the blue Bregonian seadragon and the red Cyrilian tiger.
Red Tigress, Ana thought as the wind around them picked up and the open sea rushed to greet them. Against all odds, she had survived, and she sailed for home with a fleet of the strongest Navy in the world.
She’d wondered, in the days after the Battle of Godhallem, who she was now without her power. She’d looked into the mirror and thought of a time long ago, when a lonely girl had sat in her empty chambers in a great palace looking at her red eyes and believing herself to be a monster.
But, Ana realized, without her Affinity…nothing would change. As long as unfairness existed in this world, as long as there were people who upheld cruelty and oppression, she would keep fighting.
She still wore her gloves out of habit rather than necessity, but the hood of her new cloak rested against her shoulders. Ana turned her face to the sun, and breathed in.
Remember who you are, Shamaïra had whispered. Who the people need you to be.
She’d been stripped of her title, and she’d been stripped of her Affinity. But, Ana thought, she would not let herself be defined by either.
“Captain,” she called. “I’d like to send a message.”
Daya turned to her crew. “Scribe!” she called, and a boy came forth, a gray Bregonian seadove balanced on his shoulder, scroll and quill in his hands.
“Your Highness,” he said.
Ana reached into the folds of her cloak. With a light tug, the chain around her neck came loose, and she pulled out a silver Deys’krug. Ana unfastened the chain and handed it to the scribe. “Address it to Yuri Kostov, Commander of the Redcloaks.”
As the scribe bound the chain to the seadove’s leg, Ana quietly tucked the Deys’krug into her shirt pocket. No matter what happened, the pendant was a symbol of a friendship she would forever keep close to her heart. We will come full circle again, she thought. Yuri.
“What will the note say?” the scribe asked.
Ana looked forward, to the open sea, to the endless horizon. Behind her was the full support of the Bregonian Navy, flying new flags—her flags. Ahead lay uncertainty, and a long battle to be fought.
“ ‘Prepare for war,’ ” she recited. “ ‘The Red Tigress returns.’ ”
Linn watched from her balcony as the oceans of Sapphire Port blossomed silver and blue with the swollen sails of a hundred ships. They sluiced through the glistening, sun-warmed waters, and it wasn’t until their outlines painted the horizon that she realized she was smiling.
She closed her eyes and summoned her winds, and in her mind, she was a little bird borne on their currents, dodging and swerving between great masts and swollen hulls and ten thousand liveried soldiers. She sent her winds as far as they would go, twirling and dancing between waves of leaping fish, ballooning the sails and kissing the ships.
May the winds watch over you, my friends, she thought, and for a brief moment, she might have sensed her winds wrap around a familiar presence—fiery as flames and sharp as a steel blade, shrouded in a brilliant red cloak. She thought she felt familiar fingers lift into the air, as though Ana knew that the winds bore Linn’s spirit and held out a hand in farewell. And then she was too far gone, beyond the sphere of Linn’s reach with her Affinity.
There was a knock inside her room. She didn’t have to turn to sense his presence like rock carving through her winds, firm and strong.
“King Darias sent this for you.” Kaïs’s voice was quiet. He hadn’t left the hallway outside her chambers since she’d been carried here from the healers.
He laid a plain, flat box in her lap. Wordlessly, Linn lifted the cover.
Her throat caught as she unfurled the object within. It was a chi. A chi that was slightly bent, torn in some places and carefully patched up with different material, carefully washed clean. But as she smoothed it out between her fingers, the wing glimmered.
A note was tucked between its folds; it fluttered out like a butterfly with a life of its own. Linn caught it between her fingers.
We all have monsters in our minds, it read, but it takes courage and perseverance to defeat them. I know you will defeat yours.
Monsters, she thought, closing her eyes. They all held monsters within them.
A hand clasped her shoulder. She turned to see Kaïs by her side, gazing down at her. “I have not had the chance to apologize,” he said quietly.
“There is no need.”
“I was not going to.” She looked up at him in slight surprise, but he continued. “Someone very wise once taught me this: action, and counteraction.” He clasped his hands together in an imitation of the sign Kemeirans made, of yin, and yang. “I will go wherever you will go. I pledge my swords to protect you, my shields to defend you.”
“Kaïs—” Her voice caught. “What about your mother?”
“Ana promised me her safety. If Morganya’s troops find out that I have betrayed Kerlan and survived, they will hurt my mother.” He paused. “Besides, I think my mother would want me to fight back, to make amends for my mistakes of the past.”
“To fight back,” Linn repeated, and she understood that she and Kaïs walked the same path now. Emotions stirred inside her, and she found words spilling from her lips—words that she had been too shy to speak aloud before. “That day when I freed the Affinites in the research dungeons,” she said, “was the first time I…no longer felt like a victim. Like I could truly make an impact, in changing the fates of people like me.”
He looked at her then, and she had the feeling that those eyes were piercing into her very soul. “My mother has the ability to see Time, and she has always told me she prefers to look to the future instead of the past.” A gentle breeze stirred his hair, which fell in waves over his temples. The Bregonian sun had returned a healthy tan to his face. “I cannot change my past, but I can fight for this world’s future.”
Somethin
g flickered between them, deeper than friendship, or even love: the knowledge of a shared experience, a common goal. They had both been brought into the Empire at a young age, exploited and abused for their abilities.
Now, they were free to make their own choices.
“If we are to fight,” Kaïs said, his tone shifting to something akin to playfulness, “then we must begin training. You are the best warrior I know; let us make a bet as to whether you can best me with one hand.”
Linn’s smile turned to a smirk. “I do not think that is even a question,” she replied.
Kaïs took the chi from her and grasped her uninjured arm. With a light tug, he pulled her to her feet and began to strap the contraption to her back. “There,” he said when he was done.
A strong gale tossed the curtains of her room into the air, pushing her forward. Linn took a step toward the balustrade. With one arm, she pulled herself up, Kaïs’s hands guiding her as she steadied herself.
Looking down, she felt that same fear push against her, the whispers of doubt beginning to cloud her mind.
Wingless bird.
I have broken you.
A breeze snatched the note from King Darias out of her hands. It twirled in the air before her, and she caught a glimpse of the words. I know you will defeat yours.
Linn straightened. The wind was stronger now, whistling like the voices of her past come to remind her of what she was made of.
Choose to be brave.
Linn felt a stir of Kaïs’s Affinity in her mind, nudging her forward, and she knew what he would say to her in this moment.
Look at me. Those molten silver eyes, the strength of his grip.
The world opened before her, sparkling water and endless sky.
Now, fly.
Linn drew a breath. Summoned her winds.
And leapt.
The small town of Elmford lay stretched out along a shore of white sand beaches, its stone houses squat and sturdy along the daily drag of waves. A few dozen steps inland, outside the town, was a little hill that rose from the fine, soft sands. Wild grasses grew on it, and interspersed between were patches of white heather, swaying gently to the wind. Dressed in a gown of summer white, it sat patiently, looking out at the sea like a guardian angel.
Elmford’s bare dust roads lay quiet in the early-morning light as Ramson passed through, alone on horseback. His Navy uniform was stiff and new, threaded with golds and silvers. It felt like a dream, to be wearing it.
He’d gone back to Sapphire Port to inspect the ship where he’d found Kerlan’s lair. Instead of the makeshift laboratory, he’d found the place swept empty, without a single sign of anyone having ever been there. The spies that Kerlan had stolen into Bregon, ex-members of the Order of the Lily, had disappeared without a trace.
Except there was always a trace, and if there was anyone who could sniff it out, it was Ramson Quicktongue.
The opportunity had presented itself when King Darias appeared in his chambers a week ago with the offer to reinstate him in the Navy. They’d reached a deal of sorts. At the Succession, King Darias had announced the launch of a special fleet within the Navy dedicated to track down and destroy what remained of Kerlan’s spies in Bregon. Ramson had watched from the shadows.
It was mostly the ocean, here, that brought back so many memories. The waters were warmer in the south of Bregon, and Ramson remembered standing at the edge of his broken-down house by the beach, dreaming of the day that a figure that was his father would return to him and his mother.
His horse’s steps were soft in the sand, and it wasn’t long before he spotted the hill. His knuckles whitened on his reins. His father hadn’t lied; he could make out the white heathers, starkly and vibrantly alive on an otherwise barren shore.
Ramson dismounted and walked to the hill. He carried a small jar tucked carefully beneath his arms.
I suppose you’ll die unknown and irrelevant, your unmarked body rotting along the sewage of the Dams.
Just like your whore of a mother.
Ramson knelt by the unmarked grave. He threaded a hand through the fine, soft sands, the clumps of wild grasses and white flowers that covered the hill like a gods-woven blanket.
Before, his greatest fear had been that he would never amount to anything in his life. That he would die a bastard son of a father who despised him, a man made of lies and deceit and forged by trades of blood. He had loathed his birthplace, the shameful secret that had earned him whispers of packsaddle son and illegitimate child like knives in his back.
It had occurred to him, in the moments after he’d walked out of Godhallem with his new mission, that he could turn his life story around. He could fabricate a tale of his mother as a duchess from a distant town to whoever cared to ask; he could have requested to retrieve her remains and have them buried in the highest burial site in his kingdom.
But, Ramson thought, running his fingers through the little heather flowers, he didn’t need that. He’d had enough of lies; he’d had enough of pretending to be someone he simply wasn’t.
“I’m back, Mam,” Ramson said quietly. “I’m sorry it took so long.”
The little white heathers fluttered with a gentle breeze.
Once, a long time ago, beneath a blistering noon sun and with the warmth of a wooden jetty at his back, Jonah Fisher had told Ramson to live for himself. Jonah had spoken the words that would define Ramson’s trajectory and haunt his dreams even long after the boy was gone.
Your heart is your compass.
But what happened if your heart pulled in two different directions?
The Whitewaves stretched tauntingly into the horizon. He’d gazed out from the balcony of his private chambers the day she had left, the outlines of Ana’s ships seared into his mind long after they’d disappeared.
Ramson shut his eyes and swallowed, and the crashing of the waves thrust memories pounding into his head, flipping faster and faster like the pages of a book. He’d thought he’d made the right choice, but whenever he closed his eyes, she was all that he could think of, the fierce glare of her eyes, the stubborn set to her chin, the tilt of her head that beckoned a challenge at him.
He’d let himself go that night, under the torrents of rain and thunder and wind that still raged in his chest. They had clashed like water to fire, and he’d tasted the hunger and conflict on her lips, so close to his own desperation.
She had asked for his help that day, right before the Succession, and it was as close to pleading as he’d seen her come. And Ramson had known he’d made the right choice then—yet that certainty had begun to erode with each passing day.
She was to lead Cyrilia—he believed it—and there would be no space in her life for him. He would not abandon everything he had wanted and worked for his entire life to give way to his feelings.
Ramson ran another hand through the white heather before standing and making his way to the sea.
It was strange, he thought as he stood on the white sands of his past, gazing out at the seas and remembering his most fervent, crazed childhood dreams. He’d wanted to lead the Bregonian Navy. And he’d wanted to stand at the edge of the ocean, watching the sea swallow the sun with his father.
It was as though the gods had granted his wildest dreams with the most ironic twist of fate. He had everything he wanted. And he stood now, watching the waves with the ashes of his father.
But someday, when I am gone, look from the sky to the shining sea, across the magnificence of this kingdom our ancestors have built from the ground. And perhaps, then, you will know a little of how it feels.
The uniform weighed on his shoulders, his new task heavy on his mind. He’d spent his life running away from his father, from Kerlan, from becoming anything those men had ever stood for. But Ramson wondered, as he watched the waves push and pull at the shore, whether he had simply run in a fu
ll circle and ended up right back at the beginning, trying to undo the damage those two men had caused in his life, in this world.
Jonah had asked him to live for himself. Ramson wasn’t sure he could grasp that meaning yet—not as long as any remnants of his father’s or Kerlan’s legacy lived on to see another day.
If this was what he needed to do, if this was what he logically thought was the right thing to do…then why did his heart seem to pull in another direction?
The ocean stretched vast and lonely before him, and in that moment, Ramson knew that he was a man with everything and nothing all at once.
He scattered the contents of the jar, watching as the ashes of his father spread over the ocean breeze and disappeared, swallowed by the endless, empty sky.
EPILOGUE
The snows had stopped when Yuri returned to Goldwater Port. Instead, the world had frozen over in a layer of gray, soot scattered black over ashes.
He wound his scarf more tightly around his neck and held out his hand, igniting a small flame in his palm as he made his way through the city. The once-colorful streets of his childhood town were dark and empty, glass from shattered windows and debris from dachas crunching under his boots as he walked.
It was the first time he’d been back since the day of the Imperial Inquisition four weeks ago, and the sight of his massacred town was something Yuri would never forget. He and the rest of the Redcloaks had hidden in a shelter in the Syvern Taiga, not daring to communicate with Goldwater Port in case the Imperial Inquisition was watching their base. Yuri had been waiting weeks for his mother to send a snowhawk signaling that the town was clear.
When the silence had stretched on, he’d resolved to check on the state of things himself.
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