Chapter Twenty-Two The Blacksmith’s Daughter #3
Omira answered for him. “The ass attempted to take out another Dread Wolf last night on the beach and nearly got himself killed when he tried to crisp it. Pirax’s gift is gone. Luckily, I was there.”
Reya’s eyes blazed. Her scent was all over the beach. She’d been there yesterday afternoon bribing fishermen for whispers of Kraken blood. “Why would you offer to train me?”
“You needed the practice. I did what was necessary.”
She hurled a finger in his direction. “Bullshit. I don’t need another person’s death on my conscience.”
“I’m dying either way.”
Reya’s fingers made half-moons on her palms. “When is your birthday, Caelan?”
“Get out,” he said. “All of you.”
“What?” Reya and the twins said in tandem.
“I want to be alone.”
“Tough shit,” Omira said.
“Did you think I left because I was going on holiday?” he growled at his friends, pushing them away for fear of what they might do if they learned the truth of what could save him. “I wanted to be alone then, and I want to be alone now.”
Reya raked her hair back from her face and rubbed her temples with her thumbs. “Do me a favor, Caelan, and stop being so melodramatic and self-sacrificing for one rotting second so I can think.”
“His birthday is the first day of autumn,” Thance finally replied.
Reya pinched the bridge of her nose. “Giving you less than a season cycle until that thing kills you.” No wonder he had agreed to her sixty-day contingency. He barely had that long.
“We have another problem.” Omira tossed a piece of parchment onto the table with a glower.
Reya couldn’t translate the message scrawled in the First Language across the page, but she could tell from the dark, slanted ink, like someone had pressed the quill too hard to the paper, it was nothing good.
“We just received word that one of our own was captured by the Silver Guard in Edris. Someone with highly valuable information.”
“What do they know?” Reya asked with dread.
Thance scratched his jaw. “We’ve been using transcenders to run reconnaissance on the prison for the last year—Sages like Caelan with inconspicuous animal forms. We recently discovered that one of the fortress’s original hidden passageways was never sealed off.
The Rhiterrans either know nothing about it or they think no one else does.
The Sage they captured is the one who found it. ”
They could, in theory, get in and out of the prison undetected to smuggle in weapons, fighters—all without sounding the alarm. If, of course, that information didn’t make it back to the Rhiterrans.
“We are officially running on borrowed time.” Omira placed her hands on the table, scowling at the message like it was a declaration of war.
“If the king learns we know of the passage, he will destroy it, or worse. The longer we wait to attack, the closer he gets to a successful experiment. If he can take our magic, then we have already lost this war.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Caelan said roughly, standing to pull his tunic over his head, wincing with the movement. “We have the letters, but we don’t have much time. We’ll sail to Delthia tonight and I will persuade Nivaan to send an army. I should have gone weeks ago.”
“If we go to Delthia without a cure, you’ll die,” Thance said. “And you expect us to just sit back and watch?”
“I expect you to face reality,” Caelan said. “If there was another way, we would have found it by now.”
Reya’s gaze drifted back to the harbor, as if pulled by an invisible string.
“Technically, that’s not entirely true,” she murmured.
There was still one way to get the job done.
She’d been trying to shrug off the realization for days while searching for another failsafe.
It was probably the worst plan she’d ever had, in which a thousand variables had to go her way.
Reya would have to leave the cloak and ruby dagger behind.
She would need the power of a different legend to get the support she needed. The legend of the Guardian.
To kill a myth, she would become one.
It was a dangerous gamble. Her death wouldn’t stop Lennox from getting his money back by way of Leo and Paxton. Was she capable of betting their lives? Even if she returned to Rhiterra and gave Lennox the white flag now, how soon would he use her brothers against her again anyway?
If she pulled this off, they would all be free.
Caelan was the magic-born’s best chance, a storm of power that could not just end life but give it back. A leader with friends who would die for him. He was brave and self-sacrificing and all the things she wasn’t.
So he needed to make it.
Maybe she’d been chosen to wield the God Power not to save all the magic-born but rather just one magic-born. This one. Maybe this was what the numen had been trying to prepare her for; the All-Gods had shown her the path. Now she merely had to take it.
Reya could feel her father watching her in that moment, could still hear the words he’d forged into her very soul.
Never run. Never bow. Never die.
She squeezed the hilt of his sword in answer. This time, when she looked his ghost in the eye, the hurt wasn’t quite so deep.
“Kraken blood, if it ever existed on this continent, is long gone,” Reya said. “Now there’s only one place we’re going to find it.”
They all turned to her.
Caelan scrubbed a hand down his face. “Tell me I didn’t just hear that.”
She looked toward the ocean that beckoned beyond the harbor. “You wanted a Guardian. You’ve got one.”
“Reya,” Thance cautioned. “I want to save Caelan as much as anyone. But what I think you’re proposing… it might kill all of us anyway.”
“I’m not suggesting it’s without risk. Even if we do this, he might die. But if you go to Delthia without a plan, he will definitely die.” When the twins made no reply, Reya gestured to Caelan. “If you have another suggestion that will solve all our problems, I’m all ears.”
“If someone doesn’t kill this thief, I will,” Omira muttered.
Caelan was staring at her like she had sprouted an extra head. “Do you even know what a Kraken is?”
“You’re all convinced that the power I carry is enough to turn the tide of a war.” A power that, for all it cost to bear, would finally be worth something to her.
“But it’s a power you’ve only begun to explore,” Caelan countered.
True. Unleashing the kind of power she needed to wield to kill a Kraken could send her into a Rage or worse.
But it would take weeks to sail to the Kasmore Deep, with nothing to do but practice.
It was a calculated risk, especially given that she and Caelan only had so much time left.
But she’d made a career out of calculated risk, and this was one she was willing to take.
“You asked me to use Una’s gift to help your people. Now I’m attempting to do that, but you don’t want me to try. How is this any different?”
“Because I can no longer protect you!” Caelan rarely raised his voice, and they all stared dumbstruck at the anguish in the sound. “If the cost of my life is yours, then I cannot pay it. I will not pay it.”
In that moment, Caelan looked for the first time like the fallen general he claimed to be, and Reya was suddenly livid.
“You’re such a hypocrite,” she seethed. Incredulous eyes snapped to hers, eyes that she noted had shifted to an almost human shade of hazel.
How dare the bastard call her a coward only to give up himself?
She didn’t care that he was trying to protect his friends and her.
Reya shook her head. “Where is the male who stole my coin and blackmailed me halfway across the continent to steal for him? Where is the general who has waged war on an empire for over five centuries? The warrior who collects debts from kings and heralds the rise and fall of kingdoms? You’re honestly telling me you’re prepared to fall on your sword? ”
His eyes narrowed. “Careful, Reyanwyn.”
“Why? Technically speaking, I believe I outrank you.”
Thance pressed his lips tightly together.
“What?” Caelan barked, head snapping toward his friend, who just shook his head. “Unless you’re taking up your mantle,” Caelan lowered his face to hers in a way that drove her wild, “you have no rank at all.”
Omira cut in dryly, echoing Reya’s words. “Technically speaking, you resigned as general, so neither do you.”
Reya raised both brows and shrugged. See? There you have it.
“Why are you doing this?” Caelan asked, sounding as pained as he did angry.
“I need that blood just as badly as you,” Reya said. “Just like you, I have people depending on me. So let me do the job you hired me to do, let me use the magic you’ve been training me to use. Otherwise, what was the point of any of it? Of me?”
Caelan looked around the room. “Nothing? Neither of you are going to help me speak sense to her?”
“Sorry, brother.” Thance grunted, barely containing his laughter. “Looks like she’s giving the orders now.”
Another heavy silence fell over the room.
“You’re forgetting one massive problem, thief,” Omira said, crossing her arms. “Even if we could kill a Kraken, no captain in his right mind is going to sail us into the Kasmore Deep.”
“You’re right.” Reya grinned. “What we need is a pirate.”