Salt Kiss (Lyonesse #1)

five

I’m given a half day to move my things to my new apartment at Lyonesse—not that I need it. After years of bouncing between deployments and bachelors’ quarters, all I’ve got are a few boxes of clothes, a handful of books, and a service cross I’ve only taken out of the case once, to wear to my father’s wedding. For a moment, I finger a picture from my graduation from West Point: a clump of eight of us, grinning in our grays and whites, slender cadet swords dangling from our waists.

We couldn’t wait to graduate, to join our compatriots in Carpathia, to go make a difference , whatever that meant. In Carpathia, a new country that had been carved out of the mountains a decade before, no one actually knew what a difference looked like or how anyone could tell if they’d made it. Because while peace had been won there once, it had only lasted until a man little better than a dictator came into power. And then after he’d been deposed, the American military had flooded back in to help the Carpathian government hold on to their own country.

We were there to keep the peace, to build infrastructure, to train their new soldiers and airmen—but the enemy wasn’t some outside force wearing brightly colored uniforms. They were the Carpathians, or rather a minority of them: zealous Carpathians wanting to see their country as the most violent and hostile version of itself. And they were willing to kill their neighbors and friends to see it happen.