Elena closed the kit and leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms. She was silent, and he could feel the weight of her gaze. When she finally spoke, her voice was resolute.
“When I took the crown, I swore an oath. To protect Ravence, no matter the cost.” The walls reverberated as the mines began drilling again, and Elena straightened. There was a resolve in her eyes that he had not seen before.
“I don’t expect you to agree with that cost. It’s mine. I’ll bear it. But.” She paused, looking out the window. “The war’s already begun, Yassen. And if I don’t do something now, we’ll lose it before we even had a fighting chance.”
Yassen stood, blood beating in his ears as he reached for his shirt. It was limp with dirt and sand from the desert.
“The closet,” he muttered and slid past Elena in the doorway, trying to ignore the heat of her gaze.
In the hallway closet, he found his father’s old shirts folded neatly into two stacks. He shook one out. The fabric was worn and soft and it smelled of iron and pine, just like Erwin.
As he donned it, Elena moved past him, to the kitchen. She was already brewing another pot of tea when he joined her.
“It fits perfectly,” she said.
He sank down in a seat at the table. Wisps of steam danced in the air as Elena drew her knees to her chest. She said nothing, and he knew she was waiting for an answer.
The holopod sat between them, like before. He could open the map. Show the routes, the holes, show how ridiculous and impossible the task was.
But when Yassen met her eyes, he could not bring himself to voice those thoughts. Because she was right.
If they did nothing now, Ravence would be lost. Gutted, ravished, the desert trampled underneath the feet of soldiers who did not understand the dunes in the way he did. The way Elena did.
“It’s just impossible,” he said finally.
“A few weeks before, I thought it would be impossible to wield fire.” She smiled ruefully. “But here we are.”
He shook his head. “The Arohassin will track us through the tunnels. They’ll find this cabin.”
“Yassen,” she said, taking his hand. “You know the tunnels better than anyone else. Better than them.”
No, he wanted to correct her. He didn’t know the tunnels better than anyone else. That had been his father.
Erwin Knight had been a man of few words. He was tall and strong, built like an ox with deep-set, colorless eyes. Yet, when he laughed, it was as if warmth suddenly filled the room, spreading across Yassen’s chest.
Yassen would count down the days until he returned to the cabin, but it had been different for his mother. She would lapse into long stretches of muted silence after their visits. In what would be their last trip to the Sona Range, she had stayed in bed with a headache while he and his father set off to hunt. When they had returned, she was still in bed. Wordless. It was as if she had known that his father had told him of his discovery.
A metal so fine it could cut through steel.
“You’re filling that boy’s head with fantasies, and yours too,” his mother had said later that night to Erwin.
“But if I tell the king about the ore, my rani, then we’ll be rewarded. Our boy won’t grow up poor. He won’t be like us.”
Yet, Yassen had become like his father. Erwin had taught him how to shoot, how to listen for the warning note in a morning lark’s song, how to slow his heartbeat to near stillness as they waited for a stag. Erwin had taught him how to survive.
I’m here, he wanted to say.Look at me for what I am.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said finally. “Even with my knowledge and with your fire, we could get caught. The Arohassin know you can control the flames. What would they think if a fire suddenly burned down a mine, days after the Ravani queen was spotted by the Jantari border?”
She sat back, as if considering this. Two mountain larks took to the sky in a burst of wings. Yassen watched them flutter by the window.
“Why did you join the Arohassin?” she asked suddenly. The directness of her question took him aback.
“You’ve read my holo.”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“I—” he began and looked around. He felt a sudden change in the room, a drop in temperature as the ghosts grew nearer.
