Serin whispered the words, the feel of the man’s breath against Aren’s ear cutting through his exhaustion and sending waves of revulsion down his spine. For days, he’d been locked in the tiny, barren room and subjected to the spymaster’s questions, all of which he’d refused to answer.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Aren growled around the piece of wood they’d fixed between his teeth, lest he get any ideas about biting off his tongue. “It’s impenetrable.”
“What about up the cliffs?” The tone of Serin’s voice never changed, no matter what Aren said. No matter how hard he tried to bait him. “Could a single soldier make it inside the volcano crater undetected?”
“Why don’t you try?” Aren attempted to shift his head enough that he could see the spymaster, but the motion sent his whole body rotating on the chains he dangled from, his vision fuzzy from the blood pooling in his head. “Though I expect you already have. Did my sister use the shipbreakers to throw the corpses at your ships? Ahnna has very good aim.” If she were even there. If she were even still alive.
“Describe the interior of the crater to me.” Serin walked with Aren as he rotated. “What does it look like? What materials are the buildings made of?”
“Use your imagination,” Aren hissed, but he was having trouble keeping his focus, his consciousness blurring and fading.
Undeterred, Serin kept asking questions. “The gate . . . Is it the same design as the portcullis at Southwatch?”
“Kiss my ass.”
“How many soldiers are guarding it?”
Aren gritted his teeth, wishing he’d pass out but knowing they’d only wake him up with a bucket of water to the face. And then it would be more questions. Endless questions. That much Aren knew. After days of this torment, Aren knew.
“How many vessels do you keep inside that cavern?”
“How many civilians live on the island?”
“How many children are there?”
All Aren wanted to do was sleep. Anything, anything to sleep. But Serin wouldn’t allow him more than a few minutes before tearing him awake in the worst sorts of ways. Ways that made his heart want to explode out of his chest from the panic.
“What sort of supplies does the city have?”
“Where do you keep them?”
“What is their source of water?”
“Rain, obviously!” The words exploded from Aren’s lips, his whole body trembling and shaking. Hot and then cold. Why the hell was the man asking such stupid questions?
Abruptly, Aren was lowered to the damp floor of his chamber. Two guards caught him under the arms, then dragged him to his cot, where he was unceremoniously dumped, one of them unfastening the piece of wood from between his teeth and then handing him a cup of water. Aren guzzled it down, and the guard refilled it without comment.
Slumping onto the cot, Aren curled around his chained wrists.
There’s no harm in giving him answers to useless questions, he told himself, barely noticing as the guard tossed a blanket over him. But his anxiety followed him into sleep.
He dreamed of Midwatch.
Of the hot springs in the courtyard.
Of Lara.
Of teaching her to float on her back, her naked body suspended on his hands, her hair swirling on the eddies from the current. She arched her back, full breasts rising above the water, her nipples peaking as cold raindrops struck them. His eyes trailed down the flat plains of her stomach to linger where the froth from the waterfall revealed and then concealed the apex of her thighs, igniting a desire that never truly ebbed when he was in her presence. “Relax,” he murmured, not certain whether he was instructing her or himself. “Let the water carry you.”
“If you let go of me,” she answered, “I shall not be pleased.”
“It’s only waist-deep.”
She opened her eyes to regard him, steam beading on her lashes. “That’s not the point.”
Smiling, he bent and kissed her lips, tasting her thoroughly before whispering, “I’ll never let you go.”
But instead of answering, Lara screamed.
Aren’s eyes snapped open and he tried to sit, but he was bound to the cot beneath him. The room was cast in total blackness, and Lara was screaming, her voice full of pain and terror.
“Lara!” he shouted, fighting against his restraints. “Lara!”
Then the screams cut off, his ears filled instead by the patter of fleeing footsteps. A door opened and shut, then a lamp flared, burning his eyes and revealing Serin’s hooded face. “Good morning, Aren.”
It hadn’t been Lara screaming. Just another of Serin’s mind games. Marshaling his composure, Aren said, “I’ve had better mornings.”
The Magpie smiled. “Two more of your people were caught last night in the sewers beneath the palace—apparently they were unaware of our recently installed security. Care to join me while I give them a proper Maridrinian welcome?”
8
Lara
Lara shielded her eyes from the blinding glare of the mountain lake, carefully picking out the details of the town built among the trees on its western shore. Over the past week, she’d visited a dozen just like it, cautiously asking questions about a beautiful woman with black hair and ocean-blue eyes.
Sarhina. Her favorite sister. Her closest sister. The sister in whose pocket Lara had deposited her note of explanation moments before she’d poisoned her and the rest.
How certain she’d been in that moment that they’d understand her deception. That they’d wake from their near-dead stupor, find the note, and realize that she’d bought them a chance at life and freedom. That they might not thank her for it, precisely, but would at least realize that it had been the only way for them all to survive.
Marylyn’s fury had shaken that belief to the core.
She’d had the most cause to be angry. Marylyn was the chosen sister—the one intended to be the Queen of Ithicana—and Lara had robbed her of that honor. Or rather the rewards that their father had promised would come with it, she reminded herself, remembering the manic brightness in Marylyn’s eyes when she’d revealed her true motivations.
But perhaps her other sisters had equal cause to hate Lara for what she’d done. Their lives had been spent vying for one position—a position which Marylyn had earned and which Lara had stolen using subterfuge. She’d lied to them all. Poisoned them all. Left them to fight their way out of the Red Desert without camels or supplies. For all she knew, they would take one look at her and slit her throat as punishment.
Sarhina alone was the sister she was certain would forgive her actions.
The brightest of Lara’s sisters, Sarhina was a brutal fighter, grim strategist, and natural-born leader. Yet time and again, she’d score in the middle of the pack when by all rights she should’ve been on top. Average by design, Lara had come to believe, but if any of their masters had suspected her sister’s tactics, they’d never been able to prove it. Sarhina hadn’t been foolish enough to admit that she was sabotaging her own chances at becoming queen, but fears were revealing, as Lara had come to realize.
“They say Ithicana is shrouded in mists so thick one can’t see more than a dozen paces in either direction,” Sarhina had whispered to her in the dark nights in their shared bedroom. “That the jungles are so dense one must carve through them with a blade, and the unwary find themselves caught in branches like a fly in a spiderweb. That once you are on the islands, you never see the sky.”