Chapter One #2
Fucking hell. “How is your magic so strong?” Larus is earth-born, but while most earth-born are talented with conventional weapons, manipulation of metal is unusual outside of certain families.
I’ve seen Larus move his blade with a grace I could barely fathom, but I’ve never seen him knock steel from the air like that.
I’ve never seen him shatter an iron chain as he did to free himself.
“Carrying burdens. Standing my ground. Forging alliances.”
He’s listing off some of the actions that strengthen an earth-born, and I see his point. Much as my continuous deception has strengthened my magic, Larus’s actions in readying us for war over the past few months have strengthened his.
“Betraying the people who trusted you?”
“More of a shadow-born thing,” he says, his voice sharp and raw, scraping like a whetstone against the edge of a knife.
He takes a seat on the ground in front of the cage.
There are other voices moving about the camp not far from us.
I don’t have long if I want to get out of here.
“Are you going to listen to me now, or do I need to restrain you before you try that move again with your feet?”
“Go on,” I say, glancing at the rope he cut from my hands. If I could get ahold of it and get it around his neck, he’d have no way of breaking it. It was made from something living.
“I have a plan. I’m sorry it had to be like this, but Adria caught me before I could get you out.”
I sneer at him in disbelief. “How can I possibly trust you? How could you lie to me, Larus? You’re my Guardian.” I hate the way my voice chokes on the words. “Why didn’t you just tell me you were for the war? That you wouldn’t help me? Why did you let me believe you were on my side?”
“Keep your voice down,” he says, moving closer.
Perfect. I move closer too, bringing myself just inches from the rope.
“I am on your side. I tried to tell you earlier, and I thought you understood when you stopped fighting me. Clearly, I was wrong.” He touches his throat where I choked him.
He speaks as quickly as he can with his strained voice, pausing to cough or to pretend to tighten my chains as people walk nearby.
“I couldn’t stop the siege or even the timeline change once Adria turned against you, but I did manage to get word to my mother.
She didn’t want to join up with Felix in the first place, so it wasn’t hard to convince her to take the opportunity to take him out when he’s least expecting it.
Her ships are out there in the harbor, waiting for us.
Once we get away, they’ll turn on the other Enezian boats if they’re in the position to do so, or they’ll smuggle supplies to Faros through the blockade if what’s left of Ronan’s navy isn’t enough to secure a victory. ”
If Larus is lying about this, I can’t tell it. “But why would you take me with you? Why not just leave yourself?” I thought he had left when he wasn’t seen for several days after I told Ronan about our plans.
“I wasn’t sure how deep your loyalty to Ronan went or whether he would turn on you once the fighting started. It’s a war, Sylvie. I wanted you safe with me. I didn’t want you to be a pawn in their games, a political prisoner used to force a negotiation.”
“Ronan would never do that to me,” I say with some heat, and I’m certain it’s true.
“I see that now. I saw it in the throne room. You truly love each other, don’t you?”
I look into Larus’s eyes. I can’t lie to him.
I nod.
“Gods, Sylvie. Of all the men in the world.” He shakes his head, sighing. “Your father—Vahlo grant him rest—how can you stand it? I can barely look at him. Every time I do, I imagine Lysander falling.”
I understand that. I did too, once. But I can’t tell Larus the truth about who killed my father.
He can never know what Taran did for Ronan; it’s too dangerous.
“It was a war. A war my father started, a duel he requested to end it. He knew the risks. I don’t blame Ronan for refusing to lie down and die with his kingdom on the line. ”
That’s what Ronan had done, figuratively. But the lie protects him, and it strengthens me. And I’m still not sure if I believe Larus enough to trust him. I’m not sure I would even if there was less at stake.
“You’ve changed,” says Larus. “You aren’t the girl who told me she let a man run into her sword rather than act to save her own life just a few months ago.” There’s something like pride in his voice, pride and some degree of understandable skepticism.
“No, I haven’t changed. I think,” I say slowly, “that this was always who I was. Who I am. Ronan didn’t change me.
” I know this is what Larus is getting at, even though he didn’t say it directly.
“He freed me to be who I always was, who I was meant to become.” He freed me of the burden of trying to live up to the family name, of trying to make them proud. Of trying to be something that I’m not.
He smiles in spite of himself, unable to conceal how much he cares for me. “Love looks good on you.”
I seize the opportunity to reason with him.
“Larus, you have to take me back to him. He’s…
I love him, but he’s a fool. He’ll risk anything to get me back, and Selara needs him.
If you don’t want me to be a prisoner, help me get back to him before he gets himself killed.
Please. He saved your life, Larus. I don’t know if you realize it, but when Adria tried to kill you, he saved you in the throne room. He did that for me.”
Larus sighs deeply. “I know. What a mess this all is. I hope you know that I didn’t want to bring you here. I had no choice. Adria wanted to go herself to finish the job, to kill you both. The only way I was able to convince her not to risk it was if she let me go instead.”
“How did you convince her to trust you at all? She tried to kill you in the throne room.”
“She knew I just wanted to protect you, and she knows she needs me. She needs those ships. You know how fire-born are. She’ll never apologize for what she did in there, but she must have regretted it immediately because she didn’t fight me on the way out.
I convinced her she could use me to get to you and that she could use you against Ronan.
I told her I’d get you, and she knew that I’d do my best because of how much I care for you.
But she didn’t send me alone, and I couldn’t lose them, not without risking your life, with you unconscious. So I brought you back here.”
I’m certain Adria has other motives in keeping Larus alive, but I can see how his performance in the throne room kept her from realizing the extent of his deception. By acting like he was simply trying to keep me alive, he concealed our machinations against her.
“Did she make you cut your hair?” I ask. I’ve wanted to ask since I realized it was him, but I was too angry and afraid for my life to do so.
“No, that was my idea. No one recognizes me without it, and that could be important when we’re out at sea.”
“Out at sea? You said you had a plan?”
Larus nods. “There’s a boat coming. My niece was going to help us escape—she managed to get away when Adria caught me, but she’s been following us.
She’s upstream now, biding her time until we’re free.
The boat is light and small, light enough to float over the booms into Faros.
We’d planned to pass through to get to the fleet, but we can leave you there at the palace.
You can let Ronan know what we’re planning so he can use his navy to help.
” He pauses to clear his throat as someone comes to check on the hounds.
“Having trouble with her?” the man says.
“No,” says Larus, shifting my chains from view so the Nithyrian soldier can’t see that they’re broken. “Just making sure they’re good and tight. She’s sneaky, this one.”
There’s a tense moment while the man seems to consider what Larus is doing for too long. Then he nods and throws some slabs of meat into the hound cages close to the bars that separate me from them. I jump back as they charge at me, snarling and tearing at their dinner.
“I heard that about her,” he says. Then he dumps some water into their water trough and heads back into the camp without another word.
“We have to go now,” I hiss at Larus the moment he’s beyond earshot. “He knows something’s wrong.”
Larus is already breaking the shackles on my wrists and ankles. He hands me the knife I threw at him. “Don’t make me regret giving you this.”
But I won’t hurt him, not now. I can’t believe I did earlier—gods, I was going to kill him. Maybe I really have changed.
I scan the area around us. The camp is behind us, but the way before us, the way to the river, is marshland.
Walking through it will be slow and horribly noisy even if I drop my shadows.
The only option is to head west into the desert.
There are likely more Nithyrian legions out there, but we won’t need to get far from the camp before we can cut back to the river and signal the boat Larus was talking about.
The chainmail Larus stole is noisy, but so is the camp. I keep the shadows on us the entire way, spreading them as far as I can to try to camouflage our escape. It’s late enough now that the moon has set, giving us additional cover.
We make it one hundred paces onto the dunes before the alarm bells sound.