Rayne’s father and his brother, Wynn, had grown up with the Malstrom sisters, and though he never spoke of them, she knew enough to know that Carys had been the middle sister and that she—like the others—had died in the Malstrom Massacre on the steps of the palace. All but one, the youngest, the one that their father the king had named as his descendant. For a long time, Innis had searched for her on Casuin, following false leads and hanging those thought to be in cahoots with her. The bodies of dock workers and ladies' maids decorated the palace walls for years. Now it was believed that she had been whisked away on a boat in the middle of the night before the massacre had even begun.
“Jamisen would have been a magnificent queen,” Wido said, naming the oldest sister, the one who had stabbed Rayne's uncle and started the whole thing. “She would have saved Hail and Shade. All of Casuin, in fact. Innis would have cowered beneath her rule. But Darcey—” He paused, letting the name sink in between them. No one had seen the mysterious Darcey Malstrom since the night before the massacre. Her father had sent countless ships loaded with assassins across the Impassable Strait, and none had returned, lost either to storms, the sea monsters that patrolled the waters, or to the savages that lived in the Fields.
“Well,” Wido continued, “if she ever returns, I will be waiting, with her country in my hands.”
Wido sat up then and reached inside his high-necked cloak. “I nearly forgot,” he said, handing her a small, familiar book. “I saved this for you. I thought it might serve you better than a dead man.”
The feel of the book was familiar in her hands, and when she looked down at it, she saw that it was Merek's map book, the one that he had treasured and studied constantly. Without thinking, she held it to her nose and breathed in the smell of the crinkled pages. They still held the scent of freshly-cut wood that had always followed Merek.
“Thank you,” Rayne whispered to Wido, not able to look up at him.
Wido stood, gave her a mock salute, and then leaped from the roof before Rayne could make a sound. She gasped, scrambling to look over the edge. He was gone, the book in her hand the only evidence that he had even been there at all.
Rayne hugged it to her chest, letting her eyes drift past the pyres, over the walls of Bricboro, to the river that passed nearby. There was a boat drifting down the river, a hulking black mass in the night. Lost in her thoughts, it took her too long to realize how wrong that was. No boats would travel down this leg of the Tor River at night unless they were approaching in secret. Then another light moved, this one in the trees along the riverbank. Slowly, she pulled herself into a crouch, the roof groaning beneath her. The longer she stared into the darkness, the more obvious the movement in the shadows became. Finally, a flag on the mast of the ship turned with a change in the breeze and she saw it, black on white, the outline of a crow in flight.
She leaped down as Wido had done, the ground jarring her knees and sending her stumbling and crashing into a tall woman in black robes. Imeyna.
“They're coming!” Rayne yelled before she had even fully regained her feet. “They're coming!” Others were turning to look at her.
Imeyna was the first to react, drawing her sword. “Who?” she asked.
Rayne tried to swallow her panic, to bite back the tremble in her voice. “My father.” Her father was coming, but was he coming for her or the rebel assassin that had tried to kill his daughter? And did he realize yet that they were one and the same?
? ? ?
It didn't take long for the enemy soldiers to crest the hill and for the watchmen in the towers to sound the alarm, but by then, it was too late. The Knights were woefully unprepared, reeling from a failure, grieving their dead. Any other day, the Shaddern fighting force would have risen to the occasion, but when Rayne looked around, she saw only stunned, confused faces. Rayne watched from Imeyna's side, saw how the moonlight made her father's men seem like haunts, creatures of the night. In the midst of the chaos, Wido stood completely still, his eyes reflecting the distant moonlight, his face impassive.
“Princess,” Imeyna said, her hand suddenly heavy on Rayne's shoulder. “You must hide.”
There was a crawlspace beneath the wooden floors of one of the storehouses, and it was there that Imeyna led her at a hurried walk. Though the face she displayed to the Knights around her was the very portrait of calm, the too-tight grip she kept on Rayne's arm betrayed her nerves. Shouts behind them signaled the first wave of the attack. Arrows, Rayne thought, hearing the thunk of metal on wood, the gargled cry of a man down.
Before she descended into the hiding spot, Imeyna bound Rayne's hands with rope to better give the appearance of being a captive in case they discovered her. Rayne paused at the door, her eyes finding Imeyna's.
“Did I do this?” Rayne asked.
“Did you do what?” Imeyna asked, impatience lacing her voice. She was eager to go, to always be in motion. It probably killed her to be here with Rayne instead of in the action.
“Bring them here. What if—”
“There is no what if,” Imeyna said quickly. “There is only now, this moment. Soon, we will know.”
The descent was difficult but manageable, and before she shut the hatch, Imeyna looked in on her and said, “Know that you are not alone in this. Never alone.” And before Rayne could reply, the hatch dropped closed with a thud. There was the scraping of heavy bags of grain and barrels of mead as Imeyna rolled them back into place over the trap door, and then she was left with only the pounding of her heart in her ears, drowning out the distant sounds of clashing swords.
Every now and then, someone would run past her hiding place, but no one stopped, not even as the night dragged on. She should be out there. Not cowering in fear like a rat in the dark. Like Imeyna said, one way or another, tonight they would know, and Rayne needed to find out what was happening. She began to work on the ropes. Imeyna was good at many things, but a strong knot was not one of them.
With her efforts entirely focused on working her wrists through the widening gap, she didn't notice the sounds of anyone above her until it was too late. There was the clank of the iron ring and then the creak of the hinges, and suddenly she was squinting against the light, looking up at a large figure without even time to extract her daggers. At first, she assumed it was Imeyna, but then the figure shifted and light fell across its face and she saw that it was a man, not much older than she was. His long, brown hair had come out of its bun and his face and armor were smeared with crimson streaks of blood. There were others with him, but Rayne kept her gaze fixed on him. Smoke wafted around him, creeping down into her hiding place, giving the illusion that he was on fire.
The soldier grunted in surprise. “He told us you were here,” the man said, standing and putting his gauntleted hands on his hips, his eyes never leaving Rayne's. “But damned if I believed him.”
CHAPTER TEN
Rayne