“It does,” I tell him quietly. I do my best to keep the pain from my voice. “We need you here, you know that.”

The corner of his mouth twitches, but not to smile. “And that matters to me?”

I want to beat some sense into him, but Cal is not Kilorn. He’d take my fist with a smile and keep on walking. The prince must be reasoned with, convinced. Manipulated.

“You said yourself, every newblood we save is another strike against Maven. That’s still true, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t argue either. He’s listening, at least.

“You know what I can do, what Shade can do. And Nix might be even stronger, better, than both of us. Right?”

More silence.

“I know you want him dead.”

Despite the darkness, a strange light glimmers in Cal’s eyes.

“I want that too,” I tell him. “I want to feel my hands around his throat. I want to see him bleed for what he’s done, for every person he’s killed.” It feels so good to say it out loud, to admit what scares me most of all, to the only person who understands. I want to hurt him in the worst way. I want to make his bones sing with lightning, until he can’t even scream. I want to destroy the monster that Maven is now.

But when I think about killing him, part of my mind wanders back to the boy I believed him to be. I keep telling myself he wasn’t real. The Maven I knew and cared for was a fantasy, tailored specifically for me. Elara twisted her son into a person I would love, and she did her job so well. Somehow, the person who never existed haunts me, worse than the rest of my ghosts.

“He’s beyond our reach,” I say, both for Cal and for my own benefit. “If we go after him now, he’ll bury us both. You know this.”

Once a general and still a great warrior, Cal understands battle. And despite his rage, despite every fiber of him begging for revenge, he knows this isn’t a battle he can win. Yet.

“I’m not part of your revolution,” he whispers, his voice almost lost in the night. “I’m not Scarlet Guard. I’m not part of this.”

I almost expect him to stamp his foot in exasperation.

“Then what are you, Cal?”

He opens his mouth, expecting an answer to tumble out. Nothing does.

I understand his confusion, even if I don’t like it. Cal was raised to be everything I’m fighting against. He doesn’t know how to be anything else, even now, alongside Reds, hunted by his own, betrayed by his blood.

After a long, terrible moment, he turns around, retreating into the jet. He casts off his pack and his guns and his resolve. I exhale quietly, relieved by his decision. He’ll stay.

But for how much longer, I don’t know.

ELEVEN

According to the map, Coraunt is four miles northeast, sitting at the intersection of Regent’s River and the extensive Port Road. It doesn’t look like more than a trading outpost, and one of the last villages before the Port Road turns inland, weaving around the flooded, impassable marshlands on its journey to the northern border. Of the four great byways of Norta, the Port Road is the most traveled, connecting Delphie, Archeon, and Harbor Bay. That makes it the most dangerous, even this far north. Any number of Silvers, military or otherwise, could be passing through—and even if they aren’t actively hunting us, there isn’t a Silver in the kingdom who wouldn’t recognize Cal. Most would try to arrest him; some would certainly try to kill him on sight.

And they could, I tell myself. It should frighten me to know this, but instead I feel invigorated. Maven, Elara, Evangeline and Ptolemus Samos—despite all their power and abilities, all of them are vulnerable. They can be defeated. We only need the proper weapons.

The thought makes it easy to ignore the pain of the last few days. My shoulder doesn’t ache so badly, and in the quiet of the forest, I realize the ringing in my head has lessened. A few more days and I won’t remember the banshee’s scream at all. Even my knuckles, bruised from striking Kilorn’s cheekbone today, barely hurt anymore.

Shade jumps among the trees, his form flickering in and out of being like starlight through clouds. He keeps close, never appearing out of eyesight, and is careful to pace his teleporting. Once or twice he whispers, pointing out a twist in the deer trail or a hidden ravine, mostly for Cal’s benefit. While Kilorn, Shade, and I were raised in the woods, he grew up in palaces and military barracks. Neither prepared him for traversing a forest at night, as evidenced by the loud snapping of branches and his occasional stumbling. He’s used to burning a path, forcing his way through obstacles and enemies with strength and strength alone.

Kilorn’s teeth gleam every time the prince trips, forming a pointed smile.

“Careful there,” he says, yanking Cal away from a boulder hidden in shadow. Cal easily wrenches out of the fish boy’s grip, but that’s all he does, thankfully. Until we reach the stream.

Branches arc overhead from the trees on either bank, their leaves brushing against one another across the gap of water. Starlight winks through, illuminating the stream as it winds through the forest to join the Regent. It’s narrow, but there’s no telling how deep it might be. At least the current looks gentle.

Kilorn is probably more comfortable on water than land, and jumps nimbly into the shallows. He tosses a single stone into the middle of the stream, listening to the plop of rock on water. “Six feet, maybe seven,” he says after a moment. Well over my head. “Should we make you a raft?” he adds, grinning my way.

I first swam the Capital, a true river more than three times as deep and ten times as wide, when I was fourteen. So it’s nothing to plunge right into the stream, dipping my head beneath the dark, cold water. This close to the ocean, it tastes faintly of salt.

Kilorn follows without question, his long-practiced strokes taking him across the stream in seconds. I’m surprised he doesn’t show off more, turning flips or holding his breath for minutes at a time. When I reach the opposite shore, I realize why.

Shade and Farley perch on the distant bank, eyeing the water below. Both their faces twitch, fighting smirks or smiles as they watch the prince in the shallows. The stream breaks neatly around Cal’s ankles, gentle as a mother’s touch, but his face goes pale in the moonlight. He rapidly crosses his arms, trying to hide his shaking hands.

“Cal?” I ask aloud, careful to keep my voice low. “What’s wrong?”

Already lounging against a tree trunk, Kilorn snorts in the darkness. He zips off his jacket, ringing out the waterlogged material with practiced efficiency. “Come on, Calore, you can fly a jet but you can’t swim?” he says.

“I can swim,” Cal replies hotly. He forces another step into the stream, now up to his knees. “I just don’t care for it.”

Of course he wouldn’t. Cal is a burner, a controller of flame, and nothing weakens him more than water. It makes him helpless, powerless, everything he’s been taught to hate, fear, and fight. I remember him in the arena, how he almost died. Trapped by Lord Osanos, surrounded by a floating orb of water even he could not burn away. It must have felt like a coffin, a watery grave.

I wonder if he thinks of it too, if the memory makes the quiet stream look more like a churning, endless ocean.

My first instinct is to swim back, to help him across with my own two hands, but that would send Kilorn into a laughing fit even Cal wouldn’t be able to stomach. And a brawl in the middle of the woods is the last thing we need.