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KION

“Dragon lords have been defeated. They are no more. So say we all.”

—Inscription on a celebration cup in the Hall of the Kings.

The girl known as Silk was awake, although her eyes were closed.

She gripped the marooned raft as if she still gripped the mage shackles.

Draping across her right hand was a strand of amber waterweed.

The other end floated in the water, swishing with each incoming wave, and when she opened her eyes, she stared at the movement.

What I’d learned about her didn’t fit. Silk was protected. She was the king’s fist, his justice speaker, a woman without emotions, only judgment. But behind the veil lived a girl with a sharp intelligence, and a courageous loyalty I might have respected—if I hadn’t known what she’d done.

That made her a problem for me now.

To Senaria Wraithion, I was the enemy. Kion Abaddon. The dreaded rebel from the Faded Lands. Someone to blame for the decisions she made .

Her insistence that I was her prisoner was laughable, since Silk was the reason I was here.

She was a woman without an identity beyond the name.

No one could describe her with any accuracy, not even the spies I employed, and the anonymity protected her for years.

The people around her were controlled by the king.

Friends were nonexistent. Since she never left the castle grounds without her face hidden and an escort of guards or mages, I’d had no choice but to take a risk.

I’d had to become the bait, valuable enough to lure her away from the protection. To get her to come to me.

The shackles, the King’s Guard, the mage priests—they’d all been overkill for a common rebel captured on the frontier.

But perhaps the men of Thales realized I wasn’t common.

Recent storms uncovered bones the king could not explain without admitting his precious Wall was weakening enough for the enemy to slip through.

Mage priests could certainly recognize magic, and when they caught a rebel with foreign magic more powerful than their own, it alarmed them.

Predictably, the king reacted. He sent his guard with the priests, then his precious interrogator, and she’d walked onto that ship within hours of my battered arrival in Thales. But the trap had been set for her and not for me.

I’d allowed myself to be captured, endured the beatings and the torture because it was the quickest way to get close to this woman. This…enemy.

And now I had her.

Fennor hadn’t been on board with any of it, although he followed orders. Showed up in the middle of a fucking storm and rammed the ship—a rescue mission that could have easily failed.

If it had, I’d be on Deimos this morning and not sitting on this beach with a woman who betrayed the gift she’d been given, used it frivolously and caused untold harm.

It all came down to this. To a girl, half drowned, who claimed I was her prisoner, when she had always been mine. I would lie. Betray her trust. Do what was necessary to get her back to the Faded Lands, where she would face judgment. The way she’d forced others to face judgment for their sins.

I wore a medallion around my neck carved with Orm’s curse because of her. Because she was my curse. My penance— fuck!

She would not be my failure.

The sun spangled the water while seabirds circled in the sky.

The utter simplicity of the Southern Lands—the king’s realm, known for the south wind—was no different from the Faded Lands, other than it was less lush and heavy with stone.

Stone buildings, stone on the streets, a stone-hard perspective that grew tedious every time I had to come here.

I listened to the soft rushing of the incoming waves. The raft rocked, angling sideways with each spreading surge. The wreckage slid, wedging in the sand, and I found a momentary peace in the nudging raft, the shushing waves, the cry of the birds. This was the world as it should be.

But Senaria’s expression had changed from puzzlement to realization, and then alarm.

She pushed upright, testing the wobble of the raft.

When she stepped into the ankle-deep water, she straightened like an ocean siren from the ancient lore.

Her pale hair was wet and streaming. The cotton shift clung to a body too thin for a female her age.

Alluring, though, with the curve of her hips, the promise in her breasts.

An image of virginal perfection, often painted by the old masters.

Sand crusted in the folds of her shift; she scrubbed at the grains while she glanced around.

Not much to see. The rocky headland cut into the beach, blocking access to the bay in the distance. Morning mist clouded the horizon, smudging the ocean’s surface and concealing every trace of the carnage that had raged the night before.

But between the raft and the rocks, a lump of something—or someone—attracted the tiny scuttling crabs and a few curious birds.

She took a step closer.

“He’s dead.” The sound of my voice sent the birds screeching; they scattered grains of black sand as they flew upward.

Senaria jolted, her eyes narrowing while she searched the cliff shadows where I sat with my knees drawn up.

I gestured toward the thing on the sand and said, “A red priest. I salvaged his shoes for you.”

“I’m not wearing a red priest’s shoes.”

Exhaustion kept me silent. I was too tired, too worn down by the low-level annoyance of the mage shackles to bother with arguing. Let her regret it later.

My arms braced against my knees. The shackle chain dangled in a deep curve, wrist to wrist. The silver cuffs glinted as I played with the knife. Her knife—a sleek, serious blade, not a decorative plaything for a woman of the court. Long enough, sharp enough, lethal enough to do damage.

It wasn’t the type of blade a woman carried unless she’d been trained to use it. And I was confident that someone taught Senaria Wraithion how to defend herself.

Her magic flared with beauty and distress; mine did not rise in response. I’d been deadened for centuries now. An inner argument danced across her face, and I counted the minutes while she wondered…Was I still her prisoner? Could she get me back to Thales?

I had no desire to comfort her. “You look different without the veil,” I said. “More like a skinny boy.”

She scowled. “I won’t say what you look like.”

I almost frowned, but refused to mimic her expression.

The sun had dried the hair near her face.

The cotton shift loosened from the curve of her thighs to flutter with the breeze.

A muscle flexed in my jaw. Digging the knifepoint into the black sand, I carved a design, then wiped it away with my hand.

“What was that—what you drew in the sand?” Her arms were crossed, her chin raised.

I drew the pattern again. Wiped it away again. “It’s something you wouldn’t understand.”

“A rebel mark?”

“A penance mark.”

“Like in the cathedral,” she said. “The penance candles beneath the Altar of Orm.”

“I’ve never been in your cathedral. ”

“It’s rubble now. Has been for two centuries.” Her lips pursed before she added, “So we never forget.”

I stabbed the knife into the sand. “Memory is a horrible thing.”

“Horrible if you don’t have it,” she agreed. “Why is your hair the color of moonlight?”

“Why is yours as pale as the morning sun?”

“I was born this way.”

“I was made this way.” A snapping orange crab scuttled toward my foot and I pinned the creature to the sand with the blade, then flicked the knife tip; the crab’s body went flying toward the screeching seabirds.

The vagrant she called Bogo dove in, snatched the meal, and rose with a victorious chirp. Her lips parted, then closed, subduing the joyful sound she’d been about to make. Was it a comfort for her, seeing him? The way it was for me?

Senaria was speaking again. “I guess we’re freaks, the both of us.”

I didn’t answer.

The breeze kicked up. A shiver drove her toward the rocks and the driftwood gathered there. She collected the smaller pieces and dumped them on the sand. Methodical energy vibrated in the effort, as if she found safety in controlling the areas of life that were insignificant.

I knew better ways to ease the edginess, although she’d ignore my advice, hiding her fears behind a stubborn resistance.

Senaria rejected the world before the world could reject her.

Spies told me she slept poorly, barely ate beyond the fresh fruit she craved, and doted on a younger brother who didn’t appreciate it.

Nikias, the boy she feared losing to the king if she failed.

She went back for more branches, sorting them by size with the meticulous attention of a bird constructing a nest.

I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Building a fire for the warmth.”

“Do you see the smoke across the bay?”

She straightened enough to stare in that direction.

“Signal fires from sailors hoping to be found,” I said.

Her lips pressed together. “You’d rather be marooned and freezing to death instead of rescued?”

“It depends on who rescues us.”

Although her hands were clean, she brushed at her palms. A harmless gesture. A distraction while she considered the possibilities.

But she was Silk, the king’s justice speaker. The gesture covered the effort she made to slip into my head, my thoughts. Learn the sins I’d committed. It was tempting to let her play with fire, find out how easily she’d get burned.

Instead, I locked her out of my mind and felt the warmth of her magic recede like the last linger of a sunset.

With a sigh, she said, “The King’s Guard will search for survivors.” For us , although she was afraid to say it. Afraid the king wouldn’t search with much urgency.

“The King’s Guard is as risky as the red priests,” I pointed out. “People saw us escaping together.”

“While under attack, jumping off a burning ship. ”

“Aided by the rebels—that man on the deck? The one you used?” I waited until she nodded. “Rebel.” Also known as Fennor.