Idalie walked up to me. “Do you know anything?” she asked, furrowing her brow.
“No. I was just told to be here,” I said.
“Me too.”
“Everyone shut up!” Eryx’s voice cut across the room. “Jorek’s coming.”
The room fell still.
Jorek was taller than most of us, broad-shouldered with a thick neck and a scar cut across his jaw, pale against tanned skin. His dark blond hair was tied back in a rough knot, and his deep-set eyes scanned the room like he was already sorting us into useful or not.
Eryx’s brother. I think five years older. The kind of man who could snap your neck with one hand. His presence alone demanded respect, and he got it.
”You’re here because we trust you. Not just to fight, but to keep your mouth shut. That when it comes down to it, you’ll stand on the right side of this war,” Jorek said.
This war? What war?
”The Wardens need our help. They need men. I’ve met the man in charge myself. The Kraken. I’m sure you’ve heard of him by now. Well, they’ve got a plan that ends with those Vultures in the fucking ground,” he growled.
”Who are the Wardens?” Someone asked.
Jorek’s lip curled.
”They’re the ones still fighting. Men like us, who are not going to stand for these new laws, this regime. Who’s not gonna sit back and watch our sisters get dragged off in the middle of the night, or our brothers bleed out in the streets.”
Selma crossed her arms. “If you need men, why are we here? Do I look like a man to you?”
He glanced at her.
“You don’t need balls to fight,” he said. “You need guts. A spine. And even if you’re not on the front lines, we need you. The Wardens want to keep Vestance as it always were. Free and safe. No man should rule in the name of some god. And we’re not gonna stand by and let them tear this country apart.”
People cheered. I didn’t. What he was talking about was treason. High treason. Punished by death. And they wanted our boys? Or men, to go fight a war? Village boys, who’d never as much as touched a sword or a rifle, except for maybe on a hunting trip once in a while. Some of the people in the room sounded panicked. Breathless. Others… almost thrilled. Like it was the start of some grand adventure. But it wasn’t a hero’s call. There wouldn’t be songs about us. No legends or statues raised. It was death staring us right in the face, and people werecheering.
I don’t know where I went, but I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, so my mind must have wandered, and when Will nudged my arm, and everyone was staring at me.
Jorek cleared his throat, “Kera, right?”
I nodded.What?
”You work at the bakery?” he asked. “Think you could stash a few loaves? Maybe bake extra?”
“We’re already baking at capacity.”
“So make more,” someone muttered.
“We’re going to war for you. Least you can do is bake some bread,” another added from the shadows, his voice dripping with resentment.
I swallowed it down. “I’ll see what I can do. But Mrs. Holt won’t like it.”
“You can’t tell her,” Jorek said, his voice iron. “No one outside this room can know about this. No siblings. No parents. No one who wasn’t here can know.”
“Why not?” Idalie shot back.
“Yeah,” Nora added. “What if they want to help?”
“Would they let you go?” he asked. He didn’t need to say more, I understood exactly what he meant. I already knew my answer. My parents would never let me. And Einar? He’d try to stop me. Tell me it was reckless. That I didn’t understand what I was walking into. And he’d be right.
Jorek reached into his coat, pulled out a folded sheet of paper, and slapped it flat on a table. It was a map of North Vestance, creased and stained at the edges. He slapped his hand down, pointing at the map. “This is where they’ll be.” I didn’t see what he pointed at, but I wasn’t going, so it didn’t really matter. What mattered to me was that he was going to bring people I knew and cared for. Eryx, Aran, and…Will.
