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‘But you weren’t.’

‘No.’ Thea took a breath. ‘But this woman… She’s the fiercest thing I’ve ever seen. She scares me.’

Wren rested her hand atop Thea’s. ‘Then consider me terrified.’

Thea gave her a questioning look.

Wren chewed her lip for a moment. ‘You’re the one person I know who doesn’t get scared.’

‘What?’ Thea baulked. ‘I get scared, Wren. I’m scared every fucking day.’

‘Then you hide it well.’ Her sister’s fingers laced through hers. ‘We’ll get through this.’

Thea squeezed her hand in answer.

* * *

Later, their group sat around a small table on deck, the midday sun beating down on them, warm despite the sea breeze whipping about them. Wilder was showing her how to oil her armour to keep it in good condition as they talked.

‘By now, the whole of the midrealms will have been alerted about the invaders,’ Torj was saying. ‘To attack one of the three kingdoms is an act of war.’

‘But there was no warning, no chance to prepare,’ Kipp said, flattening his palms over the map spread out before them. ‘With the distance between Tver and the other two territories, no one will get there in time, save for the Guardians stationed nearby. No royal armies —’

‘We don’t need royal armies. The best warriors are with the guild,’ Wilder said, pointing to a patch on Thea’s armour she’d missed with the oil. ‘We just have to hope that there were some decent units stationed throughout Notos.’ He turned to Thea and Wren. ‘You have no idea of the numbers she had?’

Thea had told him of the woman they’d both seen, and how she’d rallied an army of monsters, just as the rumours told. She shook her head, still tending to her leather vest. ‘No, and what’s to say the numbers we saw are the only ones? It might be a portion of her forces.’

Torj let out a heavy sigh. ‘We should have listened to Audra. Warswords or not, we need more Naarvian steel.’

‘Will Vernich be heading to Tver?’ Thea asked.

‘Of course,’ Torj replied. ‘But whether or not he’ll get there in time is another story.’

Kipp pressed his hands together in front of him. ‘It depends on how these forces attack. If they’re heading there with a mind to use the element of surprise…’

‘Then Tver is fucked,’ Thea finished for him.

‘Correct. However, Wren said that this woman wants something – something about brothers and sisters?’

Thea recalled the winged woman’s words…‘We will come for them!’she had shouted as the darkness bowed to her command.

Finished with oiling her armour, she frowned and glanced at the Warswords. ‘How do we find out if King Leiko has half-wraith prisoners?’

‘Once we’re back on the mainland, we can send a raven… Though we might get to Notos before we receive the reply,’ Wilder answered. ‘Are you thinking it’s a rescue mission?’

‘Anything I say is just speculation. Wren and I saw a fraction of a much bigger picture. All I can say for certain is that she has the power of the wraiths behind her. She can manipulate shadow. And it’s strong enough to tear the Veil.’

Kipp traced the lines of the map again. ‘Well, I suppose we need to hope that it’s a retrieval operation as much as it is an attack. It will mean they won’t go in heavy-handed, that there’s planning involved: setup, camps… An escape route.’

‘If they can travel like they did across Harenth, then they’re lost in the wind to us,’ Wilder said.

‘We won’t know until we’re there,’ Torj replied.

They sat there strategising for hours, the Warswords and Kipp leading the discussion. But the more outcomes and possibilities they prepared for, the less in control Thea felt. There was no coming back from this; she knew it in her bones. Whatever waited for them in Tver would change the course of history, would change all their lives.

With the strange blanket over her senses, and the impending doom, Thea felt that familiar instinct to turn inward, to shy away from those around her and revert to the quiet within, its silence louder than ever without the thrum of magic in her veins.

But Wilder was there, Wren was there, her friends were there with her, and they wouldn’t allow her to do such a thing.