Every part of Rayne ached. The wound on her stomach alternately itched and burned, even in sleep. The medic who had stitched it closed had assured her it was healing, but even now, days after the wielder prince had made the cut, she still found blood on her shirt when she woke. Then there were the bruises on her arms and shoulders and a particularly nasty one on the small of her back from where she had been beaten by falling boulders beneath the streets of Iblia. But maybe worst of all was the iron fist squeezing her chest. This had perplexed the medic; she had no injury there—none that could be seen, at least.
It was a familiar sensation, nearly identical to what she had felt years ago when Madlin had taken her last, gasping breath and Rayne had left her entire life behind. Now she thought of her friends lost in the fire. Of Merek buried beneath the rubble. Of her sister and the way that looking at her had been like looking into the past, revisiting everything Rayne had thought she had left behind, feeling every emotional connection to the Crowhearts that she was supposed to have banished. The band in her chest tightened with the memories, and Rayne knew what it was. It was heartache.
The cold water numbed every pain except for it. She floated on her back in the small offshoot of the Tor River that passed just behind the home she shared with Imeyna and Tamsin, Imeyna’s partner. Her shortened hair fanned out in a dark puff around her head. Tamsin had cut off the ends, which had been matted with blood and brambles from their mad ride home, and now the curls hung just to her shoulders, making her head look almost triangular. Rayne hated it but knew she should just be glad to be alive, so she had said nothing. Then Tamsin had rubbed Rayne's bruises with the salve the medic had left, her gentle fingers working in small, deep circles to break up the blood pooled beneath the skin. The next day, the bruises had been an angry purple color, but Rayne still didn't complain. Imeyna ignored her and Tamsin fussed, and Rayne sat in silent surrender.
When they received word from Torlan that Wido was coming, Rayne had escaped to the river, hoping to avoid his arrival and delay their meeting, if not somehow avoid it entirely. Wido Cliffbane, the leader of the Knights and the president of Shade, rarely left Shade's capital city of Torlan, also known as the Hidden City, where he held court in the caves and issued orders via black ravens and riders who could traverse the mountain paths. Hidden as it was in the arms of the Silver Hills, it was the safest place in the country. For him to leave, to come to her in person—well, she doubted it was to provide her comfort in the wake of so much loss. She wondered if he wasn't coming to finally kill her, as he had wanted to when he first saw her.
Rayne had left Dusk in the middle of the night after watching the palace slaves toss Madlin’s body into the Cobalt River. It was so small that it had barely made a sound. Rayne had also been small, and leaving was easy, but finding where she wanted to go after that was not. She knew only that there was a group of people that hated her father almost as much as she did, and she wanted to find them. She had gone on foot to Flagend, the slaver’s capital, and from there, caught a ride with a caravan to Alas on the Shade-Hail border. On the way, she worked as a serving girl and a stablehand. She tended the animals and the people, and in exchange, had a trouble-free passage. After hearing the gossip in Alas about a nearby faction of rebel Knights, she had wandered into the Silver Hills, hoping against hope that the Knights would find her.
And they had. Or more specifically, Imeyna had. Even at twelve, Rayne knew it was fate that had brought them together. It was her punishment, her way to atone for what her father—what all of them—had done. Madlin had been stolen from the Cliffbane family when she and Imeyna were visiting Alas to commission more weapons for the Knights. The girl had wandered too far, right into the hands of slavers, who made their living snatching lost or abandoned children off of city streets. The fact that her father perpetrated this kind of behavior was just another item in his list of crimes against Casuin, another reason he had to be stopped. Another reason that Rayne’s failure in Iblia stung sharply enough to draw Wido from his cave.
Rayne had met the leader of the Shadows just once, five years ago when Imeyna had presented her to her father for judgment. Wido's cold, deep voice still echoed in the halls of her mind.
“Death,” he had easily proclaimed. “A daughter for a daughter.”
It was Imeyna who had saved her, who had promised her father an assassin, someone who could break past the Crowheart enchantments and bring an end to the family that had both founded Casuin and then brought it to ruin. Her family.
Imeyna and Tamsin, who would never have children of their own, became her new family. Tamsin had always been kind to her, the one who held her in the middle of the night when the sounds of a cracking whip woke her. Imeyna was harder. She was the one who doled out punishments and dragged Rayne from bed at dawn to train. But she was also the one who’d brought Rayne a birthday cake from the Bricboro bakery on her thirteenth birthday, and the one who had cried silent tears when Rayne was inducted into the Knights. Imeyna hadn't spoken to her since they returned from Iblia. Rayne figured she was working through her own grief, and probably anger. Rayne was her responsibility, and Rayne's failure was her failure. And now she would have to own up to her father.
The band around her chest tightened and she let herself sink. It wasn't very deep here, maybe five feet, but when she landed on the bottom and the silt rose around her from the impact, it was easy for her to imagine she was somewhere else.
Through the murky water, she saw Merek's face—his big, brown eyes and close-cropped brown hair, a bowed mouth framed by his stubbly half-beard. She felt his lips on hers, stealing her breath. There were his hands on her hips, his legs trapping hers, pressing her down, holding her beneath the current. He was as he had always been, at once both gentle and demanding. Kind and fierce. Stoic and passionate.
Her air was running out but she knew that if she surfaced, he would be gone.
“Stay,” she said, the sound muffled in her ears, bubbles escaping her mouth and rising without her.
The apparition held a finger up to its lips, signaling her to be quiet, and then pointed to the surface.