Текст книги "The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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48

ORAYA

The hallways nearest to my room were the riskiest. I avoided the path I had taken the day that I’d escaped down to Vincent’s office, but I was still very aware that Septimus had known about those tunnels. Though the path I was on now didn’t directly connect to the one I had taken then, I couldn’t be sure how much else he had discovered. By the time I reached the top level of the castle, I was moving very slowly, barely breathing, listening for any guards while simultaneously being silent as a ghost.

I didn’t hear much activity out there, unlike on the lower floors. The only thing in this wing was my room and Raihn’s, neither of which were the actual king’s quarters. Simon and Septimus had managed to launch their coup successfully by catching Raihn off-guard, but that didn’t mean they had any more manpower than he did. They’d have to use their forces sparingly, focused where they were most needed.

I had to hope that neither Simon nor Septimus thought they were needed up here.

I waited at the passageway to the main hall for several long seconds, ear to the door, before moving. When I heard nothing, I slipped through, sword in hand, promptly closing the passageway behind me.

The hall was empty. Silently, quickly, I moved along the wall, rounding one corner and then another until I came to our hallway.

Emptiness would have been too easy.

Two guards waited for me.

Both of them, thankfully, were Rishan, not Bloodborn—no blood magic to deal with. They recognized me right away, but I didn’t give them time to react before I lunged for them.

Two of them. Once, that would have been intimidating. Now, it was a relief. Only two? I could handle two.

As if awakened by the promise of imminent bloodshed, the Taker of Hearts warmed in my hands, the red glow of the blade flaring.

I thought about Mische, as the two men started for me.

I thought about the way their chosen master had abused Raihn, and the marks he had left long after the ones on his body had faded.

And suddenly, it wasn’t so hard to call upon my magic, the cold white of Nightfire mingling with the hot bloom of Vincent’s sword.

The last time I’d used it, I’d barely gotten to appreciate what an incredible weapon it was. This time, when the blade plunged through the first soldier’s chest, barely meeting resistance, burns of searing white spreading across his chest, I had to admire it.

It had never before been quite so easy to kill.

The second man staggered back in shock when he saw how quickly his companion fell. But to his credit, he wasn’t a coward. After a momentary stagger, he was coming at me again, sword drawn.

That half-second pause, though—that was enough.

I stepped aside, using his own momentum to throw him against the wall. It was awkward to use the sword when I was so accustomed to using my dual blades. I had to force my body to fight in a completely different way, mimicking Vincent’s steps instead of leaning on my own. In that moment of hesitation, he opened a slash across my cheek that left me hissing in pain.

I could so perfectly envision how Vincent would have countered. I’d witnessed it many times.

My execution wasn’t perfect, but it got the job done.

When I pulled back, my breath heavy, the Rishan was slumped against the wall, the Taker of Hearts skewered through his chest.

I withdrew it, not bothering to wipe the blade. Not that I had to—it was as if the weapon absorbed it, as hungry for bloodshed as I was. My Nightfire simmered. Already, I was thinking about wherever Raihn was right now—thinking far too vividly about him being overtaken in the dungeons, surrounded by soldiers, getting strung up again the way he had during the ball—

I went to my door and tried the knob.

Locked. Of fucking course.

I knelt, examining the locks. All four required keys.

Could I... melt them, the way I had the day I escaped? Or...

I glanced down at my sword, coated with the beading remnants of blood. It seemed ridiculous to try to stab a lock into submission. Then again, if any weapon could do it...

My gaze fell to the blood on the blade.

Then the bodies it had come from.

I went to the nearest slumped corpse. There, on his belt, was a little ring of silver keys.

Considering stabbing a door before I even looked for the keys. Goddess fucking help me. I was grateful Raihn wasn’t here to see this.

With some brief fumbling, I unlocked three of the four locks. It was only on the fourth one that it occurred to me:

Why was my room being guarded?

And why was it locked to begin with?

This thought only hit me as I pushed open the door, only to immediately dodge a vanity chair swinging at my head.

“Fuck,” I spat, hitting the ground in just the right way to disturb the worst of my wounds.

“Gods!”

Thump, as the wielder of the weaponized chair let it fall to the ground.

I rolled over, wincing, to see Mische standing over me, her hands covering her mouth, eyes wide. She was still in her gown from the party, though it was now wrinkled, her makeup smeared.

“I am so glad you’re alive!”

She dropped to her knees, looking like she was about to fling her arms around my neck, then went suddenly serious, brow contorted.

“What the hell are you doing here? And why do you smell like that?”

Once Mische’s questions started, they didn’t stop.

“Where’s Raihn?” she asked, as she helped me up. “How did you get in here? Did you see what’s happening outside? Is there an army coming?” And then, again, like the first time wasn’t enough, “Where’s Raihn?”

“We can talk and walk,” I said. “We don’t have much time.”

Though, Goddess, I was happy to see her.

I lowered to grab my sword, which had fallen in Mische’s wild chair attack, and when she saw it, her eyes bulged.

“Is that—”

“Yes.”

“Gods, Oraya. You’ve actually wielded it?”

For some reason, Mische’s disbelief was the thing to make my own set in all at once, a wave that I’d been suppressing for the last two days.

It had been... a very, very strange two days.

“It’s... yes.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I just cleared my throat. “Let’s hurry. Guards might be coming or—”

“There were only those two.”

Mische put aside her shock, her face going serious.

The pendant.

Right. I went to my vanity and yanked open the top drawer.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Why aren’t you in the dungeons?”

A beat of silence.

“Let’s just go,” she said, going to the door, her back to me. “You said we don’t have time.”

I paused. There was a note to her voice that seemed… odd.

But she was right. We didn’t have time. I rummaged through one drawer of my vanity, then another, my heart rate rising.

It had been in here.

The pendant had been in here.

I was certain of it. I had been very careful about where I put it. I checked on it every night. But in the drawer was only a nest of useless fucking silks.

No pendant.

Not even a hint of its magic.

“Goddess fucking damn it,” I muttered.

“What?” Mische asked.

“Did someone come in here?”

I ripped open another drawer, just in case I was wrong, even though I knew I wasn’t.

“Before me? I’ve only been here for a day. It took a few hours for them to—”

I slammed the drawer shut, hissing a curse.

They’d found it, then. They’d searched this room. Of course they had. Septimus was a prick, but he wasn’t stupid.

It was gone. If it was in this room, I’d feel it.

I didn’t have time to think about what that meant. Not when, with every passing second, Raihn could be having his ass handed to him down in that dungeon.

I returned to Mische, who stared at me with a wrinkle between her brows. She had questions, I knew, but like me, she knew now was not the time to ask them. She went to one of the Rishan corpses and grabbed the sword from his still-rigid hand.

I’d fought alongside Mische several times now. But it still seemed a little strange every time I saw her with a weapon, mostly because she was so competent with them, and that seemed at odds with a personality like hers.

The two of us crept down the hall, moving swiftly and silently along the walls.

We just needed to get back to the tunnel and get back down to Raihn before—

It was the worst luck.

Horrifically, hilariously terrible luck.

A figure arrived at the top of the stairs at the exact same moment that we rounded the corner. We had no time to hear his steps and backtrack.

Our eyes locked. Ours to his. His to ours.

Fuck, I thought.

Mische went so still it was like she stopped breathing.

Before us stood the Shadowborn prince.

49

ORAYA

It took me a moment to recognize him. I’d only seem him from across the room at the wedding, and I’d been distracted then. Highborn vampire men tended to have the same sort of look about them—the high cheekbones, the smooth skin, the sharp eyes, the dangerous allure designed to lure in prey. The Shadowborn prince had all those things in abundance. A beautiful, dangerous person who fit in seamlessly among all the other beautiful, dangerous people.

It was only once I saw the diadem upon his head of thick hair, and the style of his clothing—fine, tight-fitting brocades—that it clicked into place.

A little smile of recognition spread over his lips, too, though his gaze fell to me only for a moment before sliding behind me—lingering on Mische.

What the hell was he doing here?

If I’d given even the slightest thought to where the Shadowborn prince had gone when the coup broke out, I would have assumed that he’d fled the city. What interest would a Shadowborn have in remaining to watch the Nightborn tear each other apart?

Then again... why wouldn’t he want to watch that? Vampires. Shrewd and bloodthirsty, so easily entertained by violence. So enthralled by the idea of their enemies on their knees.

And why wouldn’t Simon want him to see it all, if it meant a chance at gaining the respect of a powerful Obitraen leader?

Smart of him. Because the prince was valuable.

If I was a better diplomat, maybe I could have seized this opportunity. I could imagine Raihn doing so skillfully—putting on just the right mask to show the prince what he wanted to see.

But I wasn’t Raihn. I wasn’t Vincent. I looked at this prince and saw nothing but a threat, every nerve in my body screaming, Kill him!

Doing that would be foolish. A political nightmare. But—

The prince stepped closer, his eyebrows raising.

“Well,” he said, “this is—”

A smear of bronze-and-gold streaked past me. The brush of a body knocked me momentarily off balance.

The next thing I knew, Mische was on top of the prince, and blood was everywhere.

I had never seen Mische fight like this, not even in the Kejari. It was animalistic, not her typical light, quick movements, but vicious and brutal. The two of them tangled on the ground, limbs flailing, wisps of shadow magic making it impossible to make out what was happening.

I dove after her a split second after she moved. But by then, their fight was already a mess of gore. First Mische was on top of him, stabbing wildly, red-black blood spattering her face and then mine as I rushed over to them.

Then, just as I was within striking distance, he slammed Mische to the floor, snarling as his dagger inched closer to her face.

All thoughts about diplomacy or alliances or impending war disappeared.

I threw myself against him, wrenching him off her. He recovered fast, recoiling, turning on me. I had my sword ready to charge through his chest—

But before I could, Mische leapt on him.

It was an incredible strike, even by the standards of vampire speed and strength. Accurate, quick, powerful.

She didn’t even hesitate as her blade breached his breastbone. It was so gracefully beautiful that the ugly slam of his body against the wall startled me.

She’d driven that sword all the way through him, and she still just kept pushing—pushing that blade against the wall, the two of them inching closer. Her face was unrecognizable, a mask of fury, remnants of her gold makeup settling into lines of pure rage.

The Shadowborn prince did not blink as he died.

And when he was gone, his eyes just kept staring right through her.

She still kept pushing, even though the blade was now buried in the wall. Her once-stunning golden gown was now drenched in black.

The silence was suddenly deafening, save for Mische’s heaving, shaking breath. She was trembling violently.

I touched her shoulder.

She drew in a gasp and stumbled backwards, her hands clapping over her mouth. The sword remained stuck in the wall, through the prince’s body.

“Oh gods,” she breathed. “I—oh gods. What did I just—”

She had just murdered a prince of the House of Shadow.

Cold fear settled over me.

I stuffed it down, far beneath more pressing matters.

“We can’t worry about that—”

But Mische whirled to me, and something about the look in her eyes gave me pause.

I recognized that look. It went deeper than the frenzied shock of an unexpected kill.

Perhaps I had worn a similar expression the night I had run to Vincent’s bedchamber in tears, after my lover had raped me.

My mouth closed.

I thought of the expression on Mische’s face when she had seen the prince at the wedding. And I knew. I didn’t have to ask.

But she still choked out, “It’s—he’s the one who—”

The man who had taken her as a teenager. Who had Turned her against her will. Who had abandoned her to die when she got sick.

Now I understood why Mische was brought up here, to these rooms. Somewhere comfortable and attractive, rather than unpleasant dungeons. She was a gift returned to her maker. A token to keep the foreign prince’s favor.

My gaze fell to the prince’s body, which slowly sagged against the blade skewering him to the wall. I resisted the overpowering desire to spit on his corpse.

Diplomatic issues be fucking damned. I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry.

I grabbed the hilt of her sword and yanked it from the wall—and the corpse, which went sliding down to the floor with a dull thunk. I held the weapon out to her.

“Raihn needs us.”

It was all I needed to say.

She blinked, clearing almost-tears. Her jaw set. She nodded and took the sword, the prince’s blood dripping onto the tile floor.

“Let’s go,” she said.

We moved swiftly through the tunnels. I prayed that I would find Raihn at our rendezvous point—the juncture of the two paths, where we had last separated. But when we flew down that last set of stairs, nothing met us there but two darkened hallways.

Dread clenched in my stomach. But I didn’t hesitate.

“That way,” I said to Mische, and the two of us swept down the next path, the one that would take us down to the dungeons.

I knew what we were charging into before we reached the door. Mische heard it before I did, with her superior ears—but the sounds grew louder quickly, a distant thrum of banging and grunts through the walls.

I knew what violence sounded like.

Soon we were both running, abandoning stealth for speed. By the time we made it to the door, there was little doubt of what was going on beyond it. It took palpable effort to force myself to slow down as we slipped through, the tunnel letting us out into a hall just beyond the dungeons. The sounds of steel and flesh echoed against the stone walls.

Three long strides, and I was around the corner.

Movement. Guards. Steel.

Bodies.

Blood.

Raihn.

I barely took the time to observe all this before I was throwing myself into the fight.

My sword found one guard’s back, aiming straight for the heart. The blade cut through the flesh so easily, with so little resistance. Raihn flung the body off him, meeting my eyes for only a split second before he had to turn his attention to the other soldier lunging at him.

That moment, though—it was enough to convey so many things, a million shades of relief.

Raihn, injured as he still was, had been struggling against half a dozen guards—more, maybe, before we had gotten there—even with the help of his Asteris.

Now, that changed.

I’d forgotten how good it felt to fight beside Raihn. How intuitively we understood each other. How he watched my body even without watching, anticipating every move, complementing it. It was like slipping back into a comfortable jacket.

Strike after strike blended together, my awareness fading save for the next move, the next opponent. My Nightfire flared at my blade and Raihn’s Asteris surged at his, our light and dark intertwining.

Alone, he had struggled. Together, we were devastatingly efficient.

Minutes and the final body fell.

I pulled my blade from the still-twitching guard and turned to Raihn.

He swept me up in an embrace before I could even open my mouth, his face burying into the space between my neck and shoulder.

And then, just as quickly, he released me, leaving me swaying.

“What was that for?” I said.

“Your endless charms,” he replied.

Then he saw Mische and stilled. His eyes widened at the sight of her blood-covered gown.

“Where were you?” he said.

But she just smiled and shook her head, as if shaking away the vacant look that had been there moments ago. “Later. Good to see you, too.”

She was right. We didn’t have time. We were lucky that Simon’s forces were split in too many directions right now, but it was only a matter of time before either the bloodbath upstairs or down here attracted more attention.

The cells were built into the walls and barred with thick, solid metal doors, with only a small slit looking in. Raihn was already rummaging through the bodies, groping for keys, and when he found them, he tossed them in the air with satisfaction.

Then he went to the first door, swinging it open to reveal a highly disgruntled-looking Vale. He was still wearing his wedding finery, though it looked like he’d put up a hell of a fight, the silk torn and blood-spattered.

“Lilith,” he blurted out, desperately, like the name had been thrashing behind his teeth for hours.

Raihn had been so sure Vale would be the one to betray him. But looking at him now, the possibility seemed incomprehensible.

Raihn’s face went serious, like he was having the same thought. He went to the next door and unlocked it, releasing an equally disheveled-looking Lilith. Vale was on Lilith immediately, cradling her head as if inspecting her for damage, while she muttered “I’m fine, I’m fine,” under her breath.

Meanwhile, Raihn opened the third door, releasing Ketura, who just looked pissed. The first words out of her mouth were, “That fucking prick.”

I wasn’t sure whether she was talking about Simon, Septimus, or Cairis, but in any event, I agreed.

“That fucking prick indeed,” Raihn muttered. “But later. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Vale and Ketura armed themselves with the guards’ discarded swords, and I led us back down the hall to the tunnels, carefully closing the door behind us. I had no doubt that it wouldn’t take long for Simon’s men to piece together who was responsible, going by the Nightfire burns and the evidence of Asteris on the bodies we’d left behind.

We had to get out of Sivrinaj, and fast.

We moved swiftly through the tunnels. When we were nearing the sewers again, the sounds from the castle within grew much louder, footsteps echoing through the stone with renewed urgency, garbled raised voices shouting commands.

“That about us?” Raihn muttered.

“Probably,” I said.

I flung open the passageway to the sewers and held it open for the others, then sealed it behind us. Jumping into the muck wasn’t any less disgusting the second time, but running from imminent danger did have a way of making it a little more tolerable. Still, I couldn’t argue with Mische’s gagged curse as we hit the water.

As the traitors in the castle roused to our presence, ready to tear apart the city to look for us, we swam.

We swam for our damned lives.

50

ORAYA

I wasn’t used to flying for this long. My wings ached. More than ached—they burned. My body was depleted. As the only human—fine, half-human—my stamina wasn’t as strong as the vampires’, and a week of nonstop travel was beginning to get to me, especially since I had never done this much flying at once.

I was grateful, at least, that I didn’t need to carry anyone. Raihn carried Mische, and Vale carried Lilith for the latter half of the trip. As a Turned Nightborn vampire, Lilith did have wings, which were a beautiful speckled amber that matched the color of her hair. But she wasn’t a strong flier yet, and while she did her best to fly for most of the trip, eventually it was just faster for Vale to carry her.

I could see Raihn watching me too closely, looking for signs that I needed the same. But I was the Heir of the Hiaj vampires. I wouldn’t let anyone carry me anywhere if I could help it. I could deal with a little pain, even if it had me cursing silently to myself every time we landed or took off.

When the wall of sandy stone emerged from the darkness, the moonlight illuminating a patchwork of cave structures, I practically wept with relief.

“Is that it?” I asked. “That’s it, right?”

Mother help me, please let that be it.

“That,” Raihn said, sounding as relieved as I felt, “is it.”

My legs felt like jelly when we landed, nearly collapsing beneath me in the soft sand. Goddess, the idea of flopping over in it honestly sounded appealing. We had only rested during the strongest hours of direct sunlight, even traveling—albeit slowly—when the sun was weak enough that the vampires could shelter themselves with layers of protective clothing. I was exhausted.

But I locked my legs and forced myself upright. I’d never seen the cliffs before—they really were an incredible sight, bone-white stone rising from the desert sands, punctured with holes and openings that led into an elaborate cave system. They were taller than I’d imagined, stretching all the way up to the sky like they were reaching for the moon. They looked oddly like bones—a flat expanse of ivory skull and eye sockets.

Most people stayed away from this area. The heat and humidity were brutal out here, and the cliffs a perfect habitat for hellhounds and demons. What’s more, it was highly isolated out in Hiaj territory, a hundred miles from the nearest city.

What reason would anyone have to be out here?

Unless, of course, you were a fugitive.

“Well, I think this is you, princess,” Raihn said, hands on his hips. “Go on over and shout hello. We’ll kill whatever runs out at you.”

I approached the nearest opening, squinting into the dark. I conjured Nightfire in my palm, though the white flame did little to illuminate that darkness—unending darkness, the kind that swallowed up light itself. It reminded me of Vincent’s wings. Reminded me, I supposed, of my own.

“I don’t know about that,” Mische said from behind me. “Looks... ominous.”

“I wouldn’t go in that way,” a smooth voice called from above, distant against the desert breeze.

I looked up to see a slender figure standing in the mouth of an upper tunnel, leaning against the wall. She wore all tight-fitting black—Nightborn leathers—and her ash-brown hair, bound in a single long braid, flew out with the wind.

“Demons everywhere,” Jesmine said. “Better to come up this way, Highness.”

I wasn’t totally convinced that Jesmine and Raihn weren’t going to stab each other to death the moment they were left alone. After seeing the wounds on Raihn’s back, I honestly wouldn’t have blamed him if he did. But as Jesmine led us through the tunnels and into the settlement she’d built here with those that remained of the Hiaj army, she was surprisingly respectful of him, despite a few wary glares.

The tunnels were dark and hot. I imagined that baking clay must feel a whole lot like this. But they were also hidden, and they were shelter. It was no wonder that I’d had such a hard time communicating with Jesmine, even through Vincent’s mirror. Aside from the fact that the thing would never be perfectly cooperative with my blood, Jesmine was in such a remote location that I had to imagine we were stretching the range of that magic.

Remote, in this case, was good. Remote was exactly what we needed.

It was unnerving to see what had happened to the Hiaj army over these last few months. What I had always known as an all-powerful regime of warriors had now been reduced to a few hundred men and women sheltering in caves. Others, Jesmine explained, had dispersed into the kingdom, taking shelter elsewhere after the armory battle—while her most loyal forces remained here, hiding, waiting.

The caves were dim for my human eyes, though they were sparsely lit with Nightfire lanterns. Warriors had erected tents in the offshoot tunnels, claiming some semblance of privacy for themselves, while common areas had been staked out in the main paths. It stank in here, the heat rotting the carcasses of the vampires’ prey—foxes, wolves, the occasional deer, and even a demon or two, though I couldn’t imagine how repulsive that must’ve been. Surely an act of total desperation. I’d been trained to recognize hungry vampires my entire life, and these ones were hungry indeed, their eyes tracking me as Jesmine lead us through the camps.

Still, the way they looked at me, even on the cusp of starving, was... different now. They noticed my human blood. Smelled it. That was biology. But they didn’t look at me as prey anymore. Maybe the red ink on my chest had something to do with that.

Jesmine took us to her private dwelling—a collection of objects stored in a dead-end enclave, covered with a demon-hide flap. She’d stacked a few crates to create seats and pushed several more together for some semblance of a desk, upon which she’d spread a number of papers, most of them scribbled and bloodstained. It reminded me of what Vincent’s office had looked like, near the end—chaos. This, I supposed, was what it looked like to lose a war.

Jesmine settled on top of the desk, long legs crossed. Up close, in more light, I could see that her once-fine leathers were now in rough shape, the fabric torn and patched. Several buttons were undone, revealing the top of the long scar between her breasts.

I’d admit it: I hadn’t thought much of Jesmine when Vincent promoted her, seeing little more than her sultry voice and low-cut dresses and delicate, well-tended beauty. Now, looking at her like this, my image of her from back then seemed laughably two-dimensional. I wasn’t sure that I liked Jesmine, but it was hard to deny that I respected her.

She looked us up and down, one by one—me, Raihn, Mische, Ketura, Vale, Lilith.

Then she said, “You all look like you crawled out of a sewer.”

“Fitting observation,” Vale grumbled.

Mother, I couldn’t wait to get out of these clothes. I’d gotten used to my own stench, but I had no doubt that it was putrid. Probably like someone who had drenched themselves in shit and then moved nonstop across the baking-hot desert for a week.

A little smile curled at the corner of Jesmine’s mouth.

“I’m well aware of the tunnels,” she said. “Probably smart of you to use the most unpleasant one.”

I didn’t want to admit to her that the real reason we had picked the “unpleasant one” was because Vincent hadn’t trusted me enough to show me any others.

“We made it here alive,” I said. “That counts for something.”

“I’d say it counts for everything.” She leaned forward, her violet eyes like Nightsteel in the darkness. Her face was such a perfect mask of deadly beauty that it stunned me.

“Now please, Highness,” she said, “tell me we’re about to take back our damned kingdom.”

In response, I found myself smirking.

“Why else would we come all this way?”

I had told Jesmine some of what had happened when I contacted her before the rescue, and her own sources—still extensive, and still very effective, despite her current circumstances—had apparently filled in more. But I briefed her on all of it just the same. She listened in silence, expression growing harder and hatred sharper. By the end, her fury was palpable.

“And now a Bloodborn prince and a Rishan imposter sit on the throne of the House of Night,” she spat. “Vincent would be appalled.”

Vincent would also be appalled to see me standing here alongside the Rishan Heir. Actually, a lot of my behavior these last few weeks would have appalled Vincent. But I tried not to think about that at this particular moment.

“Not for much longer,” I said. “How many men do you have here? How many more could you call back?”

Jesmine’s lips thinned. It took her a moment to answer, like it pained her to admit this. “We’ve lost many. I don’t have enough to retake Sivrinaj directly. Not with the Bloodborn there.” Her gaze fell to Vale. “Though if you wanted me to get rid of the Rishan, that would be another thing.”

Vale made a wordless sound of disgust, his nose wrinkling, and Jesmine laughed softly.

“Vale Atruro,” she purred. “What an honor to meet a legend. What were you, Neculai’s... third-best general?”

“First best, now,” he said tightly. “Others are dead.”

“Such a shame,” she muttered.

I wasn’t sure who would get my bet if the two of them lunged at each other.

“Trust me, you’ll be grateful to have him.” Raihn gave her a wolfish grin—the kind designed to expose fangs. “Vale, how many Rishan men can you get? Loyal ones, I mean. Simon doesn’t have them all.”

Vale gave Jesmine a chilling smile. “Enough to take what little remains of the Hiaj.”

Jesmine practically hissed, and Raihn sighed.

“You know what I’m asking,” he said.

Vale’s gaze slipped back to Raihn, slipping into serious thought. After a long moment, he said, “A thousand. Maybe more.”

Raihn looked back to Jesmine, brows arched. “Well look at that. A thousand here. A thousand there. Sounds like an army to me. Maybe even a good enough one to take back Sivrinaj.”

Ketura looked sickened by this idea. “An army of Hiaj and Rishan?”

“An army of whoever the hell is willing to help us get the Bloodborn out of this kingdom and the crown out of Simon’s hands,” Raihn said. “Does anyone here object to that?”

A long silence. No one voiced it, but we could all feel plenty of objection in the air.

“Of course,” I said, “there’s option two. Which is to simply let them have the crown and wait for them to inevitably come root us out. If that sounds more appealing to anyone.”

“Them?” Jesmine said. Her eyes narrowed at Raihn. “What about him? What you describe is exactly what we have been living these last months. Why should I put my soldiers’ lives on the line for his throne?”