Siege to the Throne (Rellmira Duology #2)

Chapter 1

Kiera

This ship was a cage. The sea, my prison.

Because once again, I’d locked myself in captivity with my enemy. But now he knew I was also his, and I had no key to release the shackles that grew heavier with every mile.

For the thousandth time on this gods-damned tiny ship, I rounded a stack of barrels, my hand instinctively twitching to the hilt of my mother’s blade sheathed at my waist.

For there he was, standing at the railing, gazing out of the endless expanse of rolling waves.

Aiden Falcryn.

His black hair lifted in the cool breeze as he hung his head. He gripped the railing with long, strong fingers I knew too well.

But his father’s falcon ring was now absent from them. I wanted to ask him why. My mind was drowning in a sea of why, why, why. But my voice refused to cross the hastily built wall between us.

Aiden hadn’t spoken a word to me since we’d left the harbor.

He can’t have you.

The words still induced a tiny shiver down my spine.

His dark clothes were still torn and stained from battle. Someone must’ve bandaged the knife wound on his side. I wondered if it pained him much. Or if he carried enough pain in his heart to numb the pain in his flesh—as I did.

Nikella had given me a salve for the many cuts I’d sustained trying to free myself from the ropes she’d bound me in.

Because of him. Because he’d finally learned the truth about me.

But I’d also learned the truth about him. Aiden was my father’s would-be assassin. My mother’s killer. And my . . . my . . . Nothing. Certainly not someone whose pain I should care about.

He was simply in my way, as he’d always been. But I refused to pick a fight with him on a ship full of his recovering allies.

So I did what I’d been doing the last two days we’d been sailing north—I turned on my boot heel and walked the other way.

Thank the gods, I’d gotten my “sea legs” as one of the bone-rattlers had informed me with a laugh when I could barely walk a straight line and kept staggering to the railing to puke my guts into the roiling waves.

They hadn’t spoken to me much since then, but I felt their curious stares follow me as they clambered along the ropes and sails of Mynastra’s Wings. I hadn’t been with their original horde of fighters taking down the Den, yet I’d fled Aquinon on their ship, so who was I?

Nobody asked, and I didn’t tell.

Silence had become my only weapon in a cage no one else could see.

A few of the Dags tried to congratulate me on my excellent use of fireseeds against the Wolves. But I withdrew from them as well.

They didn’t know I was the reason those Wolves were there in the first place. They didn’t know I was the reason they’d lost twenty-one members of their clan—eighteen to the Wolves and three on the ship due to their injuries. The bone-rattlers had lost fourteen of their own as well.

I’d demanded the exact numbers from Nikella instead of Aiden, who’d spent most of the last two days doing what he could for the injured and the dead.

From afar, I’d watched them slide the bodies into the sea. The Dags had sung while the sailors clasped their strings of bones and murmured prayers for Mynastra to treasure their dead brethren’s bones in her bed.

I’d whispered my own prayers . . . and my apologies.

Afterward, I’d paced the deck a hundred times, guilt and rage pounding my heart like the cold waves that crashed over the railing.

But I preferred it over sleeping in my little hammock strung up in the ship’s belly. Because, in my sleep, another man was there.

The architect of so much pain in my life. The reason I was fleeing Aquinon, abandoning my brother and sister to an unknown fate. The mentor who’d beheaded my father and taken his crown.

Renwell. As much as I battled him out of my thoughts during the day, he always found me in my dreams. Taunting me, hunting me, strapping me to Korvin’s table and killing my family members one by one until I begged for mercy.

That look in his eyes—when he’d shot an arrow at me and missed as the sea pulled me away from him—I wouldn’t be able to hide from him for long.

And I didn’t plan to.

A large shadow blocked my path toward the other end of the ship.

Reluctantly, I looked up into the bright blue eyes of Maz’s youngest sister, Yarina.

She’d been one of the Dag warriors to thank me for my resourcefulness, her bloodied scythes sheathed on her back, sweat dripping from her golden braids.

My heart twisted in my chest. Seeing her face reminded me of Maz. Fierce, lovable Maz, who was lying with the other injured warriors while he recovered from Korvin’s flaying. Again, because of me.

Yarina folded her arms over her chest and stared me down. “Mazkull wants to see you.”

I tried to sidestep her. “I can’t.”

She blocked me again, lifting one eyebrow with a smirk. “Got some other engagement planned? Another lap around the ship? I can tell you the scenery won’t change.”

“He needs to heal, not chase me down for conversation,” I snapped.

Yarina’s eyes narrowed. “Look, I don’t know what happened to you back there or why you’re here with us, but my brother has been asking for you since he found out you were on this ship.

” She grimaced. “He threatened to come get you himself and ruin the paste I just painstakingly applied to his sorry back. So if you care about his recovery, you’ll come visit him. ”

Gods damn it, Maz, you don’t want to see me. Unless . . .

My breathing hitched. Had Aiden finally told him what I’d done?

My only weapon was silence, but Aiden wielded the far sharper truth. I’d been waiting for him to use it.

Nikella was the only other one on board who knew who I was and what I’d done. But somehow, I knew she wouldn’t say a word.

I studied Yarina’s expression. Exasperated, sure. But not angry. Not disgusted.

She gestured toward the hatch. “After you, Kiera.”

I grit my teeth. I couldn’t hide forever, but I’d hoped I wouldn’t be on a ship in the middle of the Niviath Sea when I faced my reckoning.

Perhaps the truth would hurt me less if it came from my mouth. But the retaliation from dozens of betrayed Dags and bone-rattlers was sure to crush me just the same.

I slowly made my way to the hatch and stumbled down the stairs into darkness. “How is he?”

“Well enough, I suppose. Got him good and drunk after the funerals. He wishes he could’ve helped us kill more of those bastard Wolves. As do I.” A snarl darkened her voice. “Especially that torturer, Korvin. My sisters and I had plans for that weasel.”

The scars on my back itched as we tramped down the creaking corridor. I still wasn’t entirely convinced a monster like that could be killed.

“What of your other sisters?” I asked. “Davka and Sigrid?” I’d learned their names from Nikella.

“Sigrid lost her left eye, but one of the bone-rattlers gave her a leather eye patch she loves.” Bile rose in my throat, but Yarina continued as if such news were commonplace. “Davka has burns up and down her body from a burning Wolf that attacked her, but she said Aiden’s salve soothed the pain.”

An entirely unwelcome, unwarranted thought slammed into my mind—that of Aiden rubbing ointment into Davka’s skin the same way he’d cared for the knife wound I’d gotten from a Wolf.

I crushed the image—and the squirm of jealousy that accompanied it.

You can’t have feelings for a man who had his sword to your throat mere days ago. Who stabbed your mother in the heart. Regardless of what he says about why.

“I hope their injuries heal quickly,” I murmured.

We halted in front of the infirmary door. I’d never been inside, avoiding it as though it had teeth and claws.

Gods damn your little weaknesses.

I clenched my trembling fingers and shoved the door open.

A gust of stale air tinged with salt and iron nearly made me retreat. But Yarina was crowding my back as she herded me toward her brother, who was lying facedown on a cot. I feared for the flimsy bed under Maz’s massive bulk.

Several Dags and a few bone-rattlers occupied the other cots that littered the low-ceilinged room. Swinging lanterns bathed them in pools of yellow light.

Nikella sat in a corner with a Dag man, threading white bandages between each of his burned fingers. But her sharp eyes, so eerily like her brother’s, speared me from across the room.

“As requested, you great oaf,” Yarina announced. “Now you can stop threatening to ruin my excellent healing work.”

Maz’s head swiveled around, and he gave me a sideways grin. “Ah, lovely, there you are! I nearly didn’t believe Nikella when she said you were on the ship. But I know our illustrious Teacher would never lie.” He stretched out a massive hand. “Sit with me before I go mad with boredom.”

My stomach churned. Aiden had kept the truth sheathed. But why? What was he waiting for?

I grasped Maz’s rough hand and sank to the wooden floor beside him.

Yarina flopped onto an empty cot. “Aiden says you only need a few more days of treatment, Mazkull. Grandmother would put us on night-watch duty for a month if we let you run around re-opening your wounds.”

“I’m fine,” Maz muttered, the spark in his blue eyes dimming.

My gaze darted to his exposed back. The shiny pink skin where his mountain tattoo used to be was still raw in a few places. Shadows danced over my vision.

Maz’s screams. Blood and skin discarded on the cave floor. Korvin’s flaying knife and twisted grin.

“Kiera?”

I jerked my gaze back to Maz’s concerned one.

“Are you all right? Nikella said you weren’t gravely injured, but that’s all she would say. And Aiden has been lost in his own head, barely speaking. What happened with you and Ruru? Did your side of the plan work?”

I swallowed hard. “Ruru . . . Ruru was alive and well the last I saw of him.” Except now he was alone in a city controlled by Renwell. “He still has your whistler.”

“You gave someone your whistler?” Yarina interjected. She slid one of her scythes from its harness and stroked it lovingly. “I could never part with Death Drinker here or her twin, Soul Stealer.”