Page 22 of Winds of Destiny

Turo

Cam!

I want to run to him, but I can’t. It’s not the soldiers between me and him that stop me—I’m not afraid to face them. I’ll kill anyone who gets between me and Cam. Anyone . But the man who has Cam in his grasp right now is no simple Kamoran soldier. He just took Lulu down without even touching her. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. There’s only one person in Kamor I know of capable of killing like that.

King Embros. He has one poisonous hand wrapped around Cam’s neck and the other resting over his heart. If I charge in, Cam will be dead before I make it ten paces.

Embros whistles, sharp and piercing. It leaves my ears ringing, and I almost miss the fact that the fighters closest to me are backing away now, retreating toward their lord. Two of them are practically carrying a third, and if their looks could poison me from a distance like Embros, I would be dead right now. My legs tremble with the urge to follow them, but I stop myself.

“Well fought,” Embros calls over to us. “Well fought indeed. Consider keeping your lives here the ultimate victory.”

“Give back Prince Camrael,” Kai says, his voice low and menacing. “Or prepare to spend more of your men in your effort to keep him.”

“I suggest you worry about keeping yourself out of trouble,” Embros replies. He sounds almost jovial, so pleased with his prize. It doesn’t matter that he’s lost over half his people. All that matters is that he has who he wants.

Who I want back. Right the fuck now.

“Much as I value the young man in my arms, rest assured that I will kill him if I have to. You both know of me, I believe.” He tilts his head in question. “Have you ever supposed me to be merciful, Prince Eleas?”

Wait, what?

Cam stiffens, his eyes popping open with shock.

I’m too furious to have time for shock.

“If I catch sight of you following us, what happens to the prince will be on your heads,” Embros says. Then he and his fighters turn and walk out into the grass. Every step takes Cam farther away, until I suddenly lose sight of him altogether.

I can’t…

I can’t!

I don’t realize I’m running after Embros until Kai forces me face-first into the dirt. Fear and emotions I can’t even name wage a war so fierce inside me that I don’t even feel the pain of impact. I can’t feel anything. I can’t think of anything. The second Kai’s weight is gone, I leap up and turn my sword toward him. He doesn’t blink, just knocks it from my hand with an ease I didn’t expect.

“Turo, stop,” he says with gentle sorrow. “He’s gone.”

“No.” I won’t hear it. If I do, I’ll be broken for good.

“He is.”

“ No .” Kai’s touch on my shoulders is grounding, meant to stabilize my fracturing mind, and I can’t bear it, but I can’t deny the truth, either. Cam is gone. I let him go. I let him be taken from me by that fucking snake . I couldn’t even get him to his new home safely. I failed the person I love most in the entire world.

You’ve been failing him for years, you coward.

All of a sudden, it’s like the bones have been pulled right out of my body. I fall down to my knees and hiss as fresh agony shoots up my side from my hip. What the…

“You’re cut.” Kai is beside me again, untying my armor as quickly as he can. “Here, and here…but the worst one is…” He grimaces. “It needs to be sewn up.”

“There’s no time,” I say dazedly. “We have to go after Cam.”

“We can’t.” Kai shakes his head. “Not right now. Not like this.”

I can’t even fight him on it because I feel as weak as a sea slug. Kai helps me to my feet, throwing my arm across his oversize shoulders, and together we stagger back to the wagon and the many bodies left strewn around it. Kai carefully doesn’t look at any of his friends, just rummages for the medical supplies before rolling me onto my front so he can get to work disinfecting the wound. That’s too painful to think through, much less speak, but after he pours the last few drops from the bottle of refined spirits onto my wound, I have a moment to breathe while he prepares to stitch me up.

I have so many questions, many of them for Kai—Prince Eleas, apparently, and that’s some shit that will need to be dealt with—but I don’t want to distract him while he’s digging into my back with a fishbone needle. I curse under my breath and turn my hazy vision toward the horizon.

“Fucking idiot,” I snarl as Kai begins to sew. “All he had to do was run. Just take Lulu and run. What’s hard about that?”

“Leaving us behind, I expect,” Kai says. The stabbing pinch of the needle is steady—he knows what he’s doing.

“He’s supposed to leave us behind. He’s a fucking prince ! Not a disguised one, either!”

The needle pauses for a moment.

Yeah, I heard that, you bastard. “What? What? You can’t tell me you didn’t want him to run. I know you care for him. I know you put his safety before everything else.”

This time the stab of the needle is almost reassuring. “I do.” Kai sounds bitter. “And I failed. I failed before we even got to the Gate.”

Ah. That’s what I thought. Someone on his side betrayed him, someone powerful enough to ensure that the Gate wouldn’t open for an arrival as important as their prince and his husband. Probably one of Huridell’s top generals, or maybe even a member of the royal family.

“Someone is definitely working against you. Who doesn’t want you to make an alliance with Zephyth?” Although who in their right fucking mind would prefer to ally with the snakes in Kamor , I don’t even know.

“The only person who could launch an attack against the guards from inside has to be someone with complete authority over the Gate and its personnel. There are only two people with that kind of status in the whole city. One of them is Prince Eleas”—Kai levels a look at me as if gauging my reaction—“who you now know is me.”

And I’m pissed as fuck to be learning about the deceit, but this isn’t the time.

“The other is Anarx, the king of Huridell.” The needle pauses again. “My father. Which means he’s been planning this with Embros for some time.”

“Why leave Cam in the dark about all of this?” I feel ridiculously slow, like my mind is stuck underwater while the rest of me is flopping about on land trying to pick a direction to flail in. “Why didn’t you tell him who you are? That way he— we— could have prepared ourselves better.” Although I don’t know what we could have done against an attack of this size, even with more warning than we already had. The burned walls of Traveler’s Ease float across my memory.

We knew they were out there. We didn’t take it seriously enough.

“I was too worried about our damn security.” Kai sounds incensed with himself. “From the moment I made the decision to make an offer to Cam, I felt pressure on me from all sides, mostly from factions within my own city. Not all of it was from people who wanted me to move faster, either, especially with the Kamorans sniffing around a few months ago. I decided it was safest to move incognito. Maybe if I hadn’t, maybe if I’d come ready for a formal marriage to Cam, my father—”

“Clearly, your father doesn’t give a shit about you,” I snap. “But why does he want you dead?”

Kai growls under his breath, stabbing the needle in hard enough that I can’t stop flinching. “Sorry,” he mutters. “I think he might want me dead because once I’m married, I’ll have fulfilled the last requirement of kingship. I’m in the direct line through my mother, while he married in. He’s called ‘king,’ but really he’s been acting as my regent ever since my mother died. I inherited her power, I’m a trained warrior, I’m making alliances that will benefit our people… It’s time for him to step down, and he knows it.”

“Yet you gave him the space to plot against you?” You idiot , I don’t say, but I’m sure he can hear it anyway.

“I never thought he would go this far.” There’s genuine pain in his voice, the pain of a son confronting the fact that the flawed man he nevertheless honors as his father not only has no intention of giving up the throne, but he’s also plotting his son’s death. “I would never have risked Cam if I suspected Father to be capable of this.” The stabbing stops, and the little tugs indicate he’s tying off the thread.

Good. I have places to be.

“So you need to fight Anarx for control of your city now,” I muse as I flex my hip, testing the damage.

Kai smacks my ass, the contact jolting me out of all thoughts for a second. “Stop it, you’ll pull the stitches. And yes, eventually I’ll have to fight him for control in Huridell, although I don’t expect that to be very hard. The people and the elders favor me.”

“And look what your expectations have gotten you so far,” I say, managing to keep any mockery out of my voice. It’s hard, though.

Kai moves his hands, and I push onto my knees, wincing at how the wound burns. It’s going to slow me down, but there’s nothing else for it. “Well,” I say. “I wish you the best of luck with your civil war.”

Kai looks at me with one eyebrow raised. “And where do you think you’re going?”

“After Cam.”

“Turo, you’re in no shape to go after him like this.”

I frown. “I’ve had worse.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not badly wounded.” Kai shakes his head. “Get down before you fall.”

“Fuck you, your highness .” There’s no way I’m not going after Cam.

“No, fuck you for letting your feelings get the better of your intellect,” Kai shoots back. “What exactly do you think is going to happen if you go after Cam right now? Our supplies are wrecked, we’ve no mounts to ride, we can’t seek assistance in Huridell, and I have no doubt that Embros is keeping a close watch for us. Do you want to risk him hurting or killing Cam because you lack the ability to be patient?”

“Shut up,” I snap. “You’ve been traveling with me for two weeks. How often did you see me before I wanted to be seen?”

“You didn’t have a five-inch gash in your back while you were stalking bent over through the grasses before,” he replies. “Go on, touch your toes. See how many stitches you pop.”

“I—” It pains me, truly pains me, to concede this particular point, but he’s right. There’s no way I’m bending over right now.

“If you’re seen,” Kai says, a bit more gently now that he’s got me dead to rights, “and captured, what do you think it would do to Camrael when Embros tortures you in front of him? You’re a strong man, Turo.” He steps forward and grabs my forearm, and it’s only then that I realize I’m swaying on my feet. “Strong enough that you made Embros think twice about spending the rest of his men on killing us. Don’t throw that gain away by letting him ruin you in front of Camrael.”

“There’s no gain!” I shout—or try to shout. I’m feeling the fatigue now, and the dreadful thirst that comes from fighting and fear. “You said it yourself: we have nothing here! No support, few supplies, nothing but each other, and we weren’t enough to keep Cam safe even with all your men alive to help us!” I’m pressing on an open wound and I know it, but I can’t seem to stop. “So why shouldn’t I try to save him now, when our chances are only going to get worse and worse the farther away he gets?”

Kai lets go of me. “Stick around for a few more minutes and find out.” His voice is as hard as the black rock of the Gate. “Or make me chase you down and don’t be surprised when I bind your wrists to your ankles to keep you from doing something rash.”

He’s not joking around. My back aches horribly, and I’m trembling like a hatchling. The way I am right now, Kai could handle me without breaking a sweat. “ Fuck ,” I swear, because it’s all I can do.

“That’s what I thought.” He turns away from me and heads for the nearest body—Rusen’s. He starts collecting the dead, and… Truly, it’s the least they deserve. I should help him. I want to, but there’s someone else I need to tend to first. I stumble toward Lu’s body, sprawled out across the trampled grass like a broken toy. Her feathers have gone from white to dark pink; it would almost be beautiful if it wasn’t so horrifying.

Lu. I worked with her when she was just a chick. I trained her for Cam for over five years. She died defending him, and I wish I could do her more honor for that than leaving her body to be consumed by creatures of the grass and sky while she desiccates in the sun.

I start to bend over right beside her head, then think better of it and get down on my knees instead. There are still some white feathers left, up here around the ridges protecting her once-radiant eyes. I stroke through those feathers with my fingertips, and the softness is almost enough to break me. A tear slides down my bruised and bloody cheek and lands on the ground next to her.

“You deserve so much better,” I whisper to her. “You did your duty and did it well. Rest now, darling.” Another tear threatens to fall. I swipe at it and turn away from Lulu for a moment. I can’t let myself fall apart, not now. Not when there’s so much left to do. Kai can make all the promises he wants, but until he comes up with more of a plan than “be a good boy and rest,” I’m not inclined to listen to—

Something shines in the grass a few feet away. It’s not a metallic shine, like the Kamoran corselets or one of my own arrowheads. This is a glistening glimmer, something that has no place on the plains or a battlefield. I crawl over to it and brush the stained, dirty grass off the silver setting as I hold it up to the sun, which it reflects so perfectly.

Cam’s black pearl. He must have lost it when Lulu attacked. I hate thinking of how he’ll feel once he realizes it’s gone, but at the same time, I’m grateful to have this piece of him. Embros would never have let him keep a prize like this once he noticed it.

I know I’m abusing the symbolism of it as I loop the chain around my neck—after all, I’m not betrothed to Cam—but I love him better than any husband ever could. I’ll keep this for him until we’re together again.

All of a sudden, a noise like thunder rends the air. Forgetting my pains, I spin around and watch with horror as Kai, kneeling with his head bowed and hands in a prayer position, is suddenly engulfed in bright red flames.

No, no, no! I can’t lose someone else!

I can’t help it.

I scream.