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“Did she tell you about this too?” Priya’s face pinched with shame. She nodded. “I heard her as we ran away. She said you had hidden a weapon in the greenhouse. I looked for it when we came back but couldn’t find it. I thought it was only more lies.” “Even after—” My throat felt like it was swelling shut. “Even after you betrayed her, she tried to help you. And she would have told you exactly where it was, if you had given her the chance.” “We didn’t know, Jase,” Mason said.
“She laid her life on the line to save Lydia and Nash! She never showed any fear, but you know what she was afraid of? You! All of you! Do you have any idea how much courage it took for her to return here with me? She heard all those things you said to her. What you were going to do to her. I told her that you would understand. You would listen. That you would love her again. Because that’s what families do.” I felt myself cracking into a thousand pieces. “I guess that makes me a liar, doesn’t it?”
She put her hand on her swollen belly. “Your father’s last gift to me.” She shook her head. “I know, it’s not a good time for another baby.”
His beautiful face he had loved so much. A jagged, stitched gash ran from his chin all the way up to the corner of his eye. It was still puffed and red and angry.
“The only thing I wanted from you was for you to die. That gash on your face? That was only due to my bad aim. That slash was meant for your throat.”
“Once we made it to Marabella, Kazi spoke to the queen not just on my behalf, but on all of our behalves. She told her how Beaufort had first wheedled his way into our lives with his promise of a fever cure. She told the queen about Tor’s Watch’s place in history and our long stewardship of Hell’s Mouth. She told her how we had all pitched in and rebuilt the settlement at our own cost. The queen was very grateful—and curious about our world. She wanted to hear more, so I told her. When I was finished, she and the King of Dalbreck made a proposal to me, an important proposal, and I accepted
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She leaned back and nodded. “Very well, then. I not only have a new daughter, but one who has sacrificed everything to save our family. We must find a way to get my daughter and your wife back.”
stood. “We’re not defeated unless we give up. We are going to be a kingdom—and we’re going to rescue my wife because she has risked everything for us and time is running out for her.”
“Trade what?” Priya asked. “A bag of sour grain?” “Me,” he answered. “As far as they know, I’m the Patrei. I’m sure they’d like to get their hands on me. They want to kill all the Ballengers. Why not give them the top one?”
But I had no intention of sleeping—not until I figured out a way to get Kazi back.
I knew that would disturb my mother. The Ballengers had traditions. Births, deaths, weddings. Priests were part of them all. I had warned Kazi this would happen. She had been sitting on my stomach eating berries, occasionally slipping one into my mouth, her finger lingering, tracing my lips. You know, I had told her, my mother will expect us to marry again in the temple.
“A thousand times over, Kazi,” I whispered. “I would marry you more than a thousand times.”
was wrong, Jase. And I know ten of me isn’t worth one of her, but I would trade my life for hers if I could.”
Soon, I want to tell her. The next time they come we will be hiding in the forest. Waiting. The others say it is impossible. The scavengers are bigger than us and too many. I tell them, there is always a way to make the impossible, possible. We will find that way. I pray that I am right.
She looked at me, her frustration draining, her expression filling with worry instead. It was crazy. I knew I was asking a lot. She closed her eyes and nodded as if fortifying herself, then turned to Paxton. “Let’s go, genius,” she said to him, and they returned to their knot practice.
A shadow. A trick of the eyes. And that’s what I would become. What we would all become.
told them everything they wanted to know. Every practiced word. The arena. The stables. The temple. Darkcottage. Cave’s End. I sent them chasing everywhere. Until the words were gone, and there was only pain.
Hold on to me, Kazi. Let me show you the stars. I watched a sparkling galaxy pass by the small window. From the lowest star on the horizon to the highest one in the heavens. Some were horses racing across the sky. Don’t look down. Keep your eyes on the stars. That one there is Thieves’ Gold. And over there is Eagle’s Nest. I watched them glitter, listening to Jase whisper the stories of the universe. Hold on to me, Kazi. I’ve got you. I won’t let go. “I know, Jase,” I answered. “I know.”
You are going to die with nothing. Be nothing. Montegue was mistaken. Maybe sometimes life and fantasies and family did all go completely wrong. But I had loved and been loved deeply and completely, not once but twice in my life. I would not trade that for all the riches that Montegue had to offer.
The king is committed to protecting his subjects by any and all means.”
They opened the small door, and one soldier crawled halfway inside. It looked like he was struggling. Was Kazi resisting? And then he pulled her out. I got my first glimpse of my wife in weeks, and I knew immediately something was wrong. She stumbled forward, and the guard caught her arm to keep her from falling.
“Did you hear that? The crowd? They love me. I am not a nothing king. I am a great one.” My lips moved, but I wasn’t sure if I said the words aloud. Fool. You’re a fool, Montegue. Truly great leaders don’t have to chase love. It finds them.
did kill my father. And it was the most satisfying thing I have ever done—until now. Watching you hang today will eclipse that.”
For now Kazi was all that mattered. But I knew the rage would come, and then even the gods couldn’t keep me from Montegue.
I talked to Kazi, unsure if she could hear anything, but hoping it would keep her from slipping away from me. “Besides eating a mountain of feastcake, we’re going to have to dance that jig I taught you. In front of everyone. That means we’ll need to practice. Maybe we’ll teach Wren and Synové too. They’re here with me, Kazi. They’re here for you. We’re all here for you. Stay with us.” I pressed my lips to her temple. “Stay.”
I rode ahead, holding Kazi tight in my arm, and yelled to Mije, “Baricha!” to push him faster, a command that had saved me once. I prayed it would save Kazi now. We disappeared into the cover of the forest in one direction, while my family disappeared in the other.
She looked at my mother. I recognized that look. It was the same one she had given my mother when my father was on his deathbed. “No!” I said. “She’ll make it!”
“They’re deep, but they won’t need stitching. And this one here…” She pressed on the one-inch scar on Kazi’s abdomen. “This is from something else. A knife, I suspect.” She shook her head as she covered her back up. “What this girl has been through.”
I lay on the pallet beside her. Holding her. Keeping her warm. Talking to her. Doing everything I could to keep her in this world.
Kazi had taught me the Vendan words for wife and husband. Shana and tazerem. She taught me the other words for family too. Ra mézhan. My sister.
“Give us a few minutes,” he said. Maybe he knew how I had ended up in the king’s custody. Maybe the way I’d attacked him just now had given him a small glimpse of what I’d been through. Thank the gods it was only a spoon in my hand.
While choking his brother? Hardly. I sighed and rubbed my temple. My head still ached. “I suppose nothing’s gone quite the way we planned.” I lifted his hand to my lips and kissed his knuckles. I smiled against them. “But I guess that’s how good thieves keep all their fingers. They slip into the cracks. They find shadows. They make a new plan when the last one utterly fails.”
“We should join everyone,” I said. “Are you sure? If you don’t want to go out there, I understand. I know what happened, Kazi. You don’t have to—” “I have to face them sooner or later.”
She pulled back and cupped my face in her hands, her sapphire eyes glistening. “My daughter.” The word snatched away my thoughts and I couldn’t speak. Vairlyn seemed to understand. “I was not always a Ballenger,” she whispered. “Trust me, it will get easier.”
I stared at the bowl of soup set at my place. Did revenge lurk there? But they had saved my life. All of them. Jase had told me so. It was still sinking in. I would take a chance on the soup.
“If I thought someone had killed Jase, I would do the same,” I said.
Saving them was more important to you than the momentary satisfaction of revenge. When I helped throw you into that net, that’s all I wanted, revenge, not the truth you were trying to share with us.”
“When you discovered your mistake, you risked everything to right it,” I replied. “I suppose that’s all any of us can ever do. Try to make it right.”
had only just woken from my nightmares. I searched for some way to turn the conversation. Pivot. My specialty, but it eluded me. A breath trembled through my chest.
I took a step closer to him. “You could have shot me with an arrow. You could have done a hundred things, but instead you dangled Zane in front of me, knowing what he had done. In an instant, you brought back the horror of a night to a small child. That’s what I became. A terrified child looking for her mother. For that, I should kill you. I was six years old, Gunner. Six.”
I see him looking at me differently now. I look at him differently too, and I wonder about all the feelings inside me that I don’t understand.
“Shhh, Patrei. Her pulse is steady. It’s only exhaustion and a full stomach that have overtaken her. Whatever she has been through in these last few days, you can be certain sleep was not part of it. The agony of the ashti is consuming. She needs rest. That is all.”
There will be times you won’t sleep, Jase. Times you won’t eat. Times you wish the world would stop for just one day. This was one of those times.
What had she been through these past days? As tired as I was, the question kept me awake. I knew she had only told me a small part of what she had endured. When I asked about Zane, she shook her head, and I saw fear return to her eyes.
She told me how he had taunted her, and put a chain around her neck like she was an animal. Some things she couldn’t even say. Later, she said. I promise. But I saw the pain in her eyes. I wanted to kill him. That’s all I wanted to do. But I had a lot of other things I had to do too. Like keep everyone in here alive.
I rolled over and looked at her again. Right now the only job I wanted was to be Kazi’s husband. A good one. A husband who only made the right decisions.
carefully removed the ring from my brow to return to Jurga. I didn’t want Kazi to wake to a face she wasn’t familiar with again. I
We didn’t talk about the last few days, but recounted our days in the wilderness when we first met instead. I sensed she needed memories that would fill her up instead of drain her. Maybe I did too. A reminder of what I was fighting for, a normalcy I hadn’t felt since a skeleton bird fell from the sky. We talked. We disagreed. We remembered. We laughed. It was the first time I had laughed since we’d been separated.
He was my husband, and his secrets were mine. He pushed himself to make everyone else stronger. He was willing to sacrifice his home and centuries of history to protect what mattered. Sometimes it takes just one person who won’t let evil win. The queen had been talking about Greyson Ballenger, but today, my husband was that person.
this what your husband did to you?” I smiled. “Maybe so. I’ve gotten better at sharing and talking.” She sighed. “I don’t know. As one of his other wives, I found his talking to be a bit boring. All he ever wanted to talk about was you.”
