“You healed me,” I said. My voice came out in a ragged croak.
“I did my best. It’s not my strength.”
“It helps. Thank you.”
I crawled towards the fire and settled beside it, wincing as all of my muscles protested in their own individual ways. My head was pounding. And my heart — my heart hurt.
Ishqa did not look at me. He pulled the rabbit off the fire and began to cut the meat with his knife, offering me pieces. I shook my head.
“If you don’t eat anything,” he said, “you are not going to be able to travel anywhere effectively.”
He was right. I begrudgingly took some, though I had to force it down.
“Where did you go?” I asked, and Ishqa shot me a look I couldn’t read.
“I woke up a few times,” I added, “and you were gone.”
He turned back to the rabbit, very focused on his task. “I flew north.”
“Why?”
“I needed to see what happened to the treaty.”
That got my attention. I discarded my attempts at even trying to have an appetite. “And?”
“Your war general spoke the truth. Your father turned on the Wyshraj that were living within Sidnee walls.”
I felt as if all of the blood had left my body at once.
Still, Ishqa did not look at me. “Most of our army was killed. Sidnee soldiers even marched on the House of Wayward Winds.”
My fingernails were digging into my palms. “Your sister?”
“She’s injured, but she will live.”
“And your son?”
“Safe.” Then he muttered beneath his breath, as if he had not intended to speak aloud, “And the Sidnee should thank the gods for it.”
Yet he did not look terribly relieved. I didn’t feel it, either. Instead, I thought of my father — my powerful, ambitious, selfish father.
For the first time, I thought of him and I was disgusted by him.
He looked at what had happened to Caduan’s home, and he had seen it as an opportunity to craft his own king and invite his enemy into his homestead, waiting to drive a dagger into their back.
“Never again,” I said. “My father’s time is over. It is my blood that belongs on that throne. And when I claim my position as Teirness, you have my word that you’ll have the alliance of the Sidnee. As long as I rule, it will be yours.”
Ishqa gave me a strange look, one that I could not decipher.
My eyes were burning. “And I grieve with you, Ishqa, for the lives that you have lost.”
Ishqa finished cutting the meat off of the rabbit, looking down at the food in front of him and showing no interest in eating it. I could relate. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought of what my people had done.
Ishqa stood and turned to me.
“I came back because our mission is not done,” he said. “Despite what has happened, Queen Shadya still believes that the humans pose an imminent threat. And I agree with her.”
I nodded. This was unequivocally true. “How long was I asleep? How much time do we have before—”
“The meeting is only four days away. It is a long way for us to travel.”
“We’ll make it,” I said, and willed it into truth, already standing. I was injured, but more powerfully than that, I was angry. I was tired of giving people chances. I was tired of letting them kill without consequences.
“We strike the leaders,” I said. “I have had enough of half-measures.”
Ishqa’s mouth thinned. “As have I.”
I forced my mind through the cloud of anger and grief, forced myself to be the methodical, calm-headed Blade that Siobhan had always hoped I could become.
There was only two of us. And we knew little about who would be attending this meeting, other than that it would include the humans’ highest-ranked commanders. We could be walking into a slaughter.
But I didn’t even care if I was killed, as long as I got to return the favor.
“Do you have Wyshraj soldiers to spare?” I asked. “Anyone who would be able to fly fast enough to meet us there?”
“Not many,” Ishqa said. “But enough.”
It would have to be.
My muscles clenched so hard they shook.
“Then let’s end one war,” I spat. “And then we will end another.”
I was so furious that I didn’t even notice that Ishqa turned away without answering, his face tilted to the sky.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Tisaanah
I thought, perhaps, I had dreamed the knock.
My eyelids fluttered open to see nothing but the silent sway of the flowers beneath the moonlight through the window.
I rolled over. Max was already sitting up, face tilted towards the door. His body had taken on a certain rigid stance that I had come to know well — the stance of a soldier.
Max murmured, “No one ever knocks.”
So it hadn’t been a dream.
We slipped out of bed. Both of us took our weapons before we left the room. It felt ridiculous to be padding down the hall barefoot, in nothing but an oversized nightshirt, holding a weapon like Il’Sahaj.
Max peered out the window and shook his head. Then he opened the door.
There was no one there. Nothing except for a wooden chest, sitting on the doorstep. It was plain, but finely made of polished wood and brass hardware. There was an inscription burned into the top of it, barely visible beneath the moonlight, written in flourishing script:
Tisaanah Vytezic
I placed Il’Sahaj on the ground beside me, kneeling in front of the box. I felt Max’s hand on my shoulder, felt the uncertainty that it communicated.
I opened it.
Max uttered a curse. I did not hear him. I could not move. My blood was rushing in my ears, pounding, burning.
I reached into the box and pulled out a hand.
It was wan and calloused, the fingernails torn and bloody. It had once
