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Why do you care?

He couldn’t afford to. Each time he did, it ended in death.

Arrik turned his back on her and strode for the door. “Take her to the brig.”

“Do you want me to question her when she wakes? Another royal is a problem,” Shane called.

Arrik paused in the doorway and glanced at his second over his shoulder. “I’ll do it. There are always illegitimate children running around when it comes to the monarchy. If our princess doesn’t give us what we want, we’ll tear the isles apart looking for the source of the rumor.”

13

Wren

Wren’s head was filled with fire and rain and smoke and fog. Water swirled all around her, throwing her this way and that, and she discovered she could not breathe. She forgot what it felt like to beableto breathe. Then, somewhere far off in the distance, she heard a voice.

An achingly familiar voice.

“Go!” Rowen called to her. “Take Britta and go!”

But Britta is not with me.

Confused, she frowned and tried to shake off the fatigue.

She is…with Rowen’s grandparents. And I am…

Wren woke with a jolt that shook her to her very core. Everything around her was moving in an uneven motion that meant only one thing—she was on a ship. Blurrily, she tried to make sense of her surroundings.

“What hap—” she began to say, only to gag when the ship hurled over a particularly large wave. It was this roiling feeling of seasickness that clearly awoke her from unconsciousness, for though she was comfortable fighting on a ship and sailing out across the sea in the worst of conditions, being trapped in a confined space upon the waves plagued her with the worst kind of nausea.

Bile burned the back of her throat as she finally figured out where she was.

It was barely a room with height enough to stand. Her stomach lurched again, and she tried to crawl forward. Wren blanched when she discovered her wrists were shackled, chaining her to the damp wooden wall.

“Blast it,” she managed to spit out, then immediately regretted it. Despite all her training to the contrary—and in no thanks due to the terrible condition of her body—Wren could not stop herself from vomiting the moment she opened her mouth. Tears stung her eyes as she heaved over the edge of the narrow bunk again and again. Even when her stomach had nothing left to throw up, she could not stop retching, until her mouth tasted of bile and she wished for nothing more than a hearty gulp of water—or wine—to wash it away.

She slumped in her chains. They barely gave her the space to sit, let alone lie down, so she placed her cheek against the wooden wall of the ship, trying to ignore the stench of her own vomit. The wall of the ship was cold, and it helped settle her stomach, despite the rocking all around her.

She swallowed hard and breathed slowly to keep from puking.

Focus on nothing, Nothing at all. You are nothing. All of this is nothing.

Wren closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

The second time she woke was slower and gentler than the first. It was as if her broken body was easing her back into the impossible task of consciousness, for which she was grateful. She became aware of the fact she no longer felt so seasick, and that the tumbling of the ship had settled.

Which meant they were well past the Dragon Isles.

Fear and a thread of excitement assaulted her.

She’d never been away from her home.

Don’t get so excited. You’re a prisoner.

Her skin prickled. Someone was watching her.

She opened her eyes.

“You!” she hissed through gritted teeth, though she was so dehydrated and her throat so hoarse that it came out as barely a whisper. Crouched in front of her was the Verlanti warrior she had tried to kill back in the chapel, who had wrapped his hands around her throat and—