Chapter 4
“Celia?” Thea breathes, tears streaming down her face.
The key drops from my fingers and falls between the planks of the dock. A dozen of feet away from me—cast in a sheet of bright sunlight, my crew stares at me—rhodium chains hanging from their wrists.
Celia’s fierce, stormy eyes hold Thea’s.
I scan the others. It’s undeniable they’re mine, but time has warped their features—ten years of imprisonment clinging to the edges of their eyes, pulling down their shoulders.
This whole time, they’ve been here. Together. Waiting for me to find them.
King Golan dips his chin at the guard holding Thea back. “Let her go.”
The guard drops the chain, and Thea bolts forward, her wrists bound as she throws herself toward Celia. I force air into my lungs as they collide, and Celia holds Thea against her chest, her own shackles tangled in Thea’s braids.
My eyes soften, and it’s as if my heart has restarted its beating. Like my position in the world makes sense again, having them beside me.
My attention lands on Kressa, and I grit my teeth together—composing myself the best I can despite the tears stinging my eyes. “Please.” My voice comes out thick and garbled. “I’ve been waiting a decade for this.”
“This wasn’t part of the agreement.” Her chest rises on an inhale, but she won’t meet my gaze. Instead, she turns to her father. “Why’d you bring them here?”
The king’s lips twist into a smile. “Deliver the queen to her crew.”
Unlike Thea, the guard at my back doesn’t drop my chains. He pushes me forward, and as I pass Kressa, I catch her throat bob on a swallow. This must be a hitch in her plans. An outcome she couldn’t predict.
I set my gaze on the ten women who never strayed from my side—the ones who have seen me in battle, cried with me, shared their lives with me. Without them, I’m nothing.
They watch me approach, marking each of my steps.
I come to a stop. Words tumble in my head, but I’m unsure where to start. After ten years without being in their lives, how am I meant to begin? Finally, I swallow back my tears and manage, “I’ve missed you.”
Silence.
Astrid and Leigh lower their eyes. Chain links tap together as Odette wrings her hands. Elayne, Collin, Ivy, and Katrina shift on their feet. Even Inez, who I haven’t seen since she was twelve, swallows and turns her face away from me. None of them look my way.
A weight settles on my chest.
“We haven’t.” Celia levels me with a glare. “You’re no captain of ours.”
My breath catches in my throat, and my legs threaten to go out from under me.
Thea stiffens, unraveling herself from Celia. “What are you talking about?”
Celia doesn’t balk. “While we couldn’t remember who you were or what you looked like, we remembered what you did. How you told all of us to stay on the ship—that you were only going into the castle to deny the marriage. A quick in and out. Never once did you mention your assassination plan.”
“I wanted to keep you safe,” I whisper, the space behind my eyes burning.
“And how did that turn out?” Celia’s lip curls back. Her steel eyes bore into me, sandy hair falling past her sternum. “What kind of captain lies to her crew? What kind of woman lies to her friends?”
Her words cut through bone, etching themselves deep into my marrow. Those same thoughts have haunted my mind for years, but hearing them spoken aloud, from a woman I love, tears my skin to ribbons.
I stagger back a step, bumping into the guard behind me. He grunts and jerks me sideways.
Thea shakes her head. “Briar spent years looking for you all, risking her life while—”
“While you were a courtesan,” Celia finishes, glancing at Thea before returning her attention to me. “How was it, Briar? Spending a decade in a castle while we wasted away in a dungeon? Interrogated for answers we didn’t have?”
Thea gnaws on her lip, scanning the new scars climbing Celia’s biceps. I study the others—their torn nail beds, the brands on the curve of their shoulders. Their prominent collarbones. My stomach churns.
It doesn’t matter what I was doing, or how hard I was trying to find them. They were tortured and starved while I lived in luxury.
Silence hangs heavy behind me. A dozen stares rest on the space between my shoulder blades, weighing down my spine. The entirety of the Earth Court royalty—watching me reduced to nothing.
I deserve every word.
Celia lowers her voice to a snarl. “If it weren’t for what you did, your mother would still be alive.”
A chasm opens in my stomach, and my power, bound inside my chest, retreats farther. Even if it weren’t for the rhodium encasing my hands, I’d be unable to call it to my fingertips.
But I have to do something.
“That’s enough,” King Golan barks. “Take the rest of them back to the dungeon. The queen doesn’t leave my sight.”
My eyes shoot wide. I whip around, tear the chains out of the guards grasp, and throw my forehead into his nose. Bone splinters, and he cries out, dropping to the ground.
My heart thunders in my chest, and guards close in on me, their swords drawn. In my periphery, Thea jerks forward, but a guard pulls her back. I fight against the cuffs, but the rhodium holds tight, stifling my power. If only I could harness it—lift the waves and throw the guards into the water.
A guard sprints free from the others, and I lunge as his sword screams through the air. He overcorrects, and I throw out my leg, slamming it into the space behind his knee. His sword clatters off the edge of the dock, and I leap onto him, pressing my shin against his throat.
“Briar!” Thea cries.
I look up as a boulder flies through the air. Scrambling off the guard, I duck, but the stone slams into my ribs and throws me sideways.
My back crashes to the wood, and I gasp for air, rolling onto my side. Thea shouts, her chains rattling as she fights the guards’ hold.
I brace my hand against the dock, and my eyes widen on the cuffs—a smile pulling at the corner of my mouth. They’re still secured around my wrists, encasing my fingers, but the metal threading my hands together snapped from the impact.
I jump to my feet, and King Golan’s eyes narrow. He lifts a hand, and in the distance, a boulder breaks free from the mountainside cradling the harbor. It sails toward me, but I sprint forward, my broken chain dragging in my wake. I gather the loose end in my opposite hand and close in on Elias.
Before he has a chance to move, I throw the chain around his throat and cinch it tight.
The boulder drops into the water.
“Let us go,” I snarl, blood dripping from a wound at my shoulder. “I won’t fail at killing him a second time.”
Elias grapples for the chain, but I squeeze tighter, until his skin puckers through the gaps. Golan’s hands flex at his sides, his shoulder-length hair jet black against his emerald uniform. It’s unnerving, how closely Kressa resembles him.
“Let him go,” Kressa shouts.
My attention jerks to my crew. Kressa has Thea’s back pinned against her chest, the tip of a dagger against her throat.
“Now,” Kressa says, her voice lethal.
Thea trembles, and Celia throws herself toward her, but guards step between them and hold my crew back.
I swallow, watching Kressa’s expression as Elias gasps for shallow sips of air. Sunlight catches on the scar spanning her throat—the one I gave her when she was glamoured as her brother.
She knows what Thea means to me. She wouldn’t hurt her.
She’s bluffing.
And if I lower the chain from Elias’s throat, I give up our only chance at escape.
Kressa presses harder, and a bead of Thea’s blood gathers on the blade.
Elias’s movements grow jerky and frantic, but I don’t loosen my hold on him. Golan steps toward me, but Thea screams as Kressa plunges her blade into the meat of her shoulder.
My heart races in my ears as blood pours down her arm and copper tinges the air.
“Her throat is next,” Kressa snarls.
A lump hardens in my throat, and the air thickens, closing in around me. Sweat drips down my nape, and Elias’s hands drop to his side.
“Damnit, Briar, let him go!” Celia screams, her voice raw.
Inez’s eyes are wide, rimmed with red. Tears roll down Collin’s cheeks as she clings to Katrina, her fingers pressing indents into her skin.
A ringing fills my ears, and I blink, dropping my hands. The chain unravels from Elias’s throat, and he pitches forward, gasping and grabbing at his neck. Red, angry imprints circle his skin, and Julian catches him, holding him upright.
Kressa’s blade falls from Thea’s neck, but her eyes don’t leave mine, her chest heaving as the guards herd my crew into the back of a barred carriage. The spot where her power resides in my chest hardens over.
There are only two dozen feet between Kressa and me, but it might as well be oceans. Whatever Gemma said—about us being bonded—is wrong.
There is no world where my soul is tied to Kressa’s.
Julian and another guard flank me, each twisting an arm behind my back.
“Deliver her to the throne room,” King Golan says. He turns my way for a heartbeat, yet long enough for me to catch the slight tilt of his lips.
He planned this. There’s no other reason why he would dare bring my entire crew to the docks, knowing it was our first reunion after a decade. He knew they hated me for what I did.
Celia’s words sink into me like a burn. But she’s right. I lied to them on purpose, thinking if I went alone to kill the prince, I could sneak in and out. I did it to keep them safe.
And yet, all I did was hurt them.