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Royad pins me with a stare as if to drive home his point—or biding his time before his next attack. Instead of waiting for him to throw a punch, I launch into action, landing a blow on his shoulder that makes him do a double take.

“Your king’s heart is as precious to me as it is to you, Royad. I love him. I want to protect him. I’m ready. To. Die. For him.”

He stares at me, rubbing his shoulder, breath coming hard and fast, and I stare right back, rain mingling with tears as such violent anger grabs me that it’s hard to keep a straight thought.

Erina took my mate mark. He hurt me, but even worse than that, he hurt Myron. He tortured my mate, locked him up in a cage and let him bleed. He took his powers, took his strength, his senses. He took everything from him. And at our last encounter, he tried to take me as well.

“Try me, Roy,” I dare him. “I might be a queen, but I was an outlaw first. I learned to fight on the railing of a ship, held my own against pirates and soldiers alike. I’m not the fragile little bird you think I am.”

“I never said you were fragile.” The grin he gives me is wicked and victorious, and I know he rallied me on purpose to test my limits.

The next punch I throw is straight to his jaw. Royad ducks, blocking me and delivering a blow to my side that takes my breath. I don’t pause to catch it, though. Already coming up, I spin and kick out with my leg. My heel connects with Royad’s sternum, putting him on his back.

Mud splatters in a circle, and we both gasp for air as I hold out my hand, helping him back to his feet, studying his movements. He’s tall and broad. Not as tall as Myron but equally fast, I’m sure. My Crow senses help me analyze every tell of his muscles, the way he slightly sways to his left leg before attacking.

With a hook of my knee, I catch him in the stomach as I twist from under his punching fist. Royad grabs me by the leathers as he falls, pulling me down with him, and his knee lands on my back. How he got on top of me is beyond me, but I’m back in the clearing by the Flame estate, guards shoving me down, forcing me to lie still as their torch took Myron’s mark away.

“No—” I pant, chest tight, air eluding me. “Please. Not the mark. Not the—” I’m thrashing. Kicking and screaming like a wild cat when the weight mercifully slides off my back, hands gently rolling me over so I face my attacker.

“It’s just me.” Royad’s blue eyes stare down at me, full of terror as he realizes it takes me a few moments to recognize him. “It’s all right, Ayna. You’re safe.”

Royad doesn’t attack again that morning.

We return to the palace, dripping wet and ready for the fried bacon and fresh toast the scent drafting from the kitchens is promising, but when we enter the dining room, the table has already been cleared, and the others are standing around a map rolled out instead of our breakfast, various expressions of worry marring their features.

“What happened?” Royad is by Myron’s side first, bending over the spot his cousin is fixating with a troubled gaze, and I notice the crimson-topped pins sticking out of the paper in inch-wide intervals.

“The rebels sent word,” Recienne responds. “We know what path the weapon will travel. We only need to get there in time to stop the delivery.”

Ayna

Usingmy water magic to draw the worst of the wetness from my leathers and Royad’s and dumping it in an empty vase on the carved mahogany sideboard by the back wall, I join the others, eyeing the distance from the Askarean border to the final pin marking the most recent location and ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I’m already in my armor; all I need is a weapon, and I’m ready to enter a battlefield.

“They’ve been following reports of the caravan passing through for a while, but it’s only today that they were certain they know which direction they will travel.” Tori catches us up. “They would have tried to stop it ontheir own, but there is a small army travelling with the delivery, and not all of them seem to be human. It would be too great a risk. They’d lose and expose themselves at the same time. We need their network to build an army from the inside of Tavras.”

However Tori comes up with those strategies, I fully agree. We can’t lose the rebels. They got me out of Erina’s palace, and I will not send them to their certain death because of a delivery we can destroy on our own. “When do we leave?”

At my request, Royad throws me a concerned glance that is echoed by his cousin whose eyes wander back and forth between us, reading the silent communication.

“Pouly said it will take about two more days before the caravan is out of the settled regions. We don’t want to attack around people and risk the destruction of their livelihoods.” No one is more surprised than I am when Herinor states he wants to make sure to keep civilians safe.

Interestingly, Kaira doesn’t bat an eyelid at his comment. “Is he secretly a teddy bear? Because if he is and you’re not telling me, I swear to the gods of his sacred Neredyn I’ll rip his head off and dig out the stuffing.”

Kaira gives a startled laugh, but in her mind, she shoots me a sharp warning. “He’s exactly the bloodthirsty grump you know him to be. Only his priorities of bloodshed have shifted.”

There is so much to unpack in that statement I don’t even want to begin.

“No civilians.” Silas nods his agreement. “That will shorten our window of opportunity for the attack, though.” He leans over the map, drawing a line with the tip of his knife,the film of color peeling away and rolling to the side as if to form a corridor for the steel. “If we attack here”—he pins his blade into the paper right above the symbols of a small farm village by the edge of a forest—“we might need to accept some collateral, but we’ll have enough time to get it done, and we’ll easily hide all traces of our carnage.”

Myron puts down his hand on the table with a slap. “No. Carnage. No. Civilians.” His growl is death and night, and Silas sinks back into his seat.

I’m hypnotized by the expression on Myron’s beautiful face, the black veins creeping into the white of his eyes, but from the edge of my vision, I can make out a trickle of ink-black fog coiling around his fingers.

“No civilians.” Silas lifts his hands in defense.

No one else dares to look at Myron, except for the King of Askarea, who nods his approval. “You make for a formidable ally,” he says, brushing his hand over the map and eradicating all traces of Silas’s suggestion. The knife slips from the sealing paper, color bleeding over the scar like it’s never been gone in the first place.

“We’ll wait the full two days and attack during the darkest hour of the night after the second day,” Recienne decides, pointing at the spot where the Plithian Plains open and the number of settlements slows. “Human soldiers will be at a disadvantage. We could be in and out without slitting throats. All we need is to spill the magical weapon so it can no longer be used. From all that we know, it should be as easy as that, and once it’s destroyed, we won’t need to fear the attack of a full army any time soon. It will give us timeto plan ahead and figure out a smarter way to defeat Erina than by slaughtering his army. Without the magic-nullifying serum, they are no match for us.”