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A few of the Kegari shoved through the tear in the tent after them, shouting a warning to their fellows, but another explosion knocked them—and Quil—off their feet.
“Getup, Martial!” Sirsha roared, half dragging him. They could fade into the dark if they could just get out of sight.
“Where are your people?” he asked. “Did you—”
“We couldn’t bind it,” Sirsha said as they reached the hill and staggered up through the long coastal grasses. “And J’yan. He—he—”
Distantly, the ocean crashed against the rocks of the Thafwan coast. The first time Sirsha saw the sea, she was eight, J’yan was by her side, and they’d crashed into the waves for a whole day, delighted at a playmate that never tired of them.
Later, later, grieve him later.Right now, it was anger she needed—at R’zwana and Div and the bleeding Tel Ilessi. “J’yan’s dead,” Sirsha said. “I’ll tell you the rest as we go—the horses are west of us. We should head north, cut across the airfield.”
They half crawled, half climbed the path, silent and careful as stalking wolves. Slowly, any sign of pursuit began to fade—helped, no doubt by the explosions in the camp. For once, R’zwana had done something useful.
“All that for bleeding nothing,” Sirsha panted as they finally reached the horses. “Div is unbound. The Tel Ilessi is alive—and she’s…Ilar?”
“I’ll explain everything.” Quil took Sirsha’s waist and swung her up onto the saddle. “But before I do, there’s something you should know about me. Something I should have told you a while ago.”
All his emotions bled through their oath coin—love, relief, fury, worry. And something else, too.Magic!
“You—you—” Sheknewshe had felt something back when they’d ambushed the Kegari pilots! “Magic, prince? What in the hells? And you were accusingmeof keeping secrets?”
He sighed and swung up onto his horse. “Shout at me later,” he said. “For now, let’s get the bleeding hells out of here.”
40
Cero
Cero circled the cratered, smoking city of Serra thrice before landing. Even from the updrafts, the stench of death curdled the air.
He should have landed an hour before, but Aiz awaited him and Cero didn’t relish telling her that the Martial crown prince had escaped.
Quil Farrar had been nothing like Cero expected. Aiz had described a soft, gentle boy, docile and naive as a pampered pup.
She’d never excelled at reading people. The Quil Farrar who tore through the side of the Tel Ilessi’s tent with murder in his eyes was a man vibrating with wrath and starved for vengeance. Nothing gentle about him. The same went for his Jaduna companion.
Just as well. It would take a sharp blade and cunning mind to sunder Aiz from Mother Div.
It wasn’t a thought Cero expected to have. Especially about the girl he’d loved since he understood what love was. But then, nothing in the past year had gone the way he’d thought it would.
The day Aiz returned to the capital, Cero’s heart was riven in two: joy at seeing her, dismay that she’d returned to the wretchedness of Kegar. After the miracle of her victory over Tiral, Cero wondered if the stories she’d believed as a child had been true. Perhaps he was the fool for not having faith when everyone around him bled the Nine Sacred Tales.
But a few days after Tiral’s death, Noa had come to Cero’s quarters at the Aerie.
“There are four slaughtered children in Dafra slum,” she’d whispered, as if terrified that the murderer, whoever it was, would kill her, too. “And something is wrong with Aiz…”
Soon, there were more dead children. Their deaths always corresponded with an especially spectacular display of Aiz’s power. The windstorm she’d unleashed in Mehbahn. The highborn Hawk assassins she’d crushed a month after returning to Kegar.
For months, neither Cero nor Noa made the connection. And then, one day, they did.
It took them weeks to broach the subject with Aiz. They needn’t have tiptoed around it.
Mother Div honors the children by choosing them as sacrifices, she’d said.Do not diminish their martyrdom simply because you do not understand.
What tripe. Those poor children didn’t choose to die. Mother Div—or whatever it was that fed Aiz power—inflicted it on them.
As Cero landed at Serra’s central airfield—a former market square—he pondered leaving for good. He had Loha. He spoke fluent Ankanese. His magic could take him wherever he wished to go.
Then he caught sight of Aiz approaching and his chest twisted at her small shoulders held so rigidly, like she was a puppet with strings forever taut.That’s why you don’t go, he thought irritably.Because you’re stupidly still hoping you can save her from whatever she’s become.
