“Do you want a list?” he replies, grinning wider, and something in me snaps. I hit him hard, one balled fist to his shoulder. He’s huge, but he doesn’t fight the momentum of my blow, and lets it knock him backward, catching me off guard. I fall with him, and we land on the earthen floor. His head thumps back, a hollow noise, and he grumbles in pain. When he tries to get up, I push, holding him firmly beneath me.
“You’re not getting up until you pull yourself together.”
To my surprise, he only shrugs. He even winks. “Not much of an incentive.”
“Ugh.” Once, the noble ladies of Norta would have fainted if Prince Tiberias winked at them. It only turns my stomach, and I punch him again, this time in the gut. At least he has the good sense to keep his mouth shut, and his eyes blissfully wink-free. “Now tell me what your problem is.”
What began as a smile twists into a frown, and he lays his head back. His brow furrows. He contemplates the ceiling. Better than acting like a fool.
“Cal, there are eleven people coming with us to Corros. Eleven.”
His jaw clenches. He knows what I’m getting at. Eleven who will die if we don’t pull this off, and countless more in Corros if we leave them alone.
“I’m scared too.” My voice quivers more than I want it to. “I don’t want to let them down, or get them hurt.”
Again, his hand finds my leg. But his touch is not urgent, not pressing. It’s simply a reminder. I am here.
“But most of all”—my breath catches, hanging on a sharp edge of truth—“I’m afraid for me. I’m afraid of the sounder, of feeling like that again. I’m afraid of what Elara will do if she gets to me. I know I’m more valuable than most, because of what I’ve done and what I can do. My name and face have as much power as my lightning, and that makes me important. It makes me a better prize.” It makes me alone. “And I hate thinking this way, but I still do.”
What began as Cal’s breakdown has become mine. One dark night I spilled my secrets to him, on a road thick with summer heat. I was the girl who tried to steal his money then. Now, winter looms, and I’m the girl who stole his life.
The worst of my confessions lingers, rattling my brain like a bird in a cage. It knocks against my teeth, begging to be free. “I miss him,” I whisper, unable to hold Cal’s gaze. “I miss who I thought he was.”
The hand on my leg balls into a fist, and heat spreads from it. Anger. Cal’s easy to read, and it’s a welcome respite after so long in a den of lying wolves.
“I miss him too.”
My eyes snap back to his, startled beyond belief.
“I don’t know what will make it easier to forget him. To think that he wasn’t always this way, that his mother poisoned him. Or that he was simply born a monster.”
“No one is born a monster.” But I wish some people were. It would make it easier to hate them, to kill them, to forget their dead faces. “Even Maven.”
Without thinking, I lay down, my heart against his. They beat in time, mirroring our joined memories of a boy with a quick tongue and blue eyes. Clever, forgotten, compassionate. We will never see that boy again. “We have to let him go,” I murmur against his neck. “Even if it means killing him.”
“If he’s at Corros—”
“I can do it, Cal. If you can’t.”
He’s quiet for what feels like an eternity, but can’t be more than a minute. Still, I almost fall asleep. His warmth is more inviting than the finest bed in any palace. “If he’s at Corros, I’m going to lose control,” he finally says. “I’m going to go after him with everything I have, him and Elara both. She’ll use my anger, and she’ll turn it on you. She’ll make me kill you, like she made me—”
My fingers find his lips, stopping him from saying the words. They cause him so much pain. In that instant, I glimpse a man with no drive but vengeance, and no heart but the one I broke for him. Another monster, waiting to take true form.
“I won’t let that happen,” I tell him, pushing away our deepest fears.
He doesn’t believe me. I see it in the darkness of his eyes. The emptiness, the one I saw in Ocean Hill, threatens to return.
“We are not going to die, Cal. We’ve come too far for that.”
His laugh is hollow, aching. He pushes my hands away gently, but never lets go of my wrist. “Do you know how many people I love are dead?”
I know he feels the thrum of my pulse, and I’m too close to mask the pain I feel for him. He almost sneers at my pity.
“All gone. All murdered. By her.” Queen Elara. “She kills them, and then she erases them.”
Another would assume he’s thinking about his father, or even the brother he thought Maven was. But I know better. “Coriane,” I murmur, speaking the name of his mother. Julian’s sister. The Singer Queen. Cal doesn’t remember her, but he can certainly mourn her.
“That’s why Ocean Hill was my favorite. It was hers. Father gave it to her.”
I blink, trying to remember past the nightmare that was the Harbor Bay palace. Trying to remember what it looked like while we were fighting for our lives. Dimly, slowly, I remember the colors that dominated the insides. Gold. Yellow. Like old paper, like Julian’s robes. The color of House Jacos.
It’s why he looked so sad, why he couldn’t burn the banners. Her banners.