So, with most of the besieging army staged on the northern shore, we’ll be proceeding on foot, shedding our Nithyrian gear and passing as Selaran refugees returning to the city.
“I told Adria to secure these shores,” mutters Seth as he fights off Larus’s attempt to help him change into a Selaran linen shirt. “She’s always discounted the importance of cutting off supply lines.”
“The southern lands are heavily patrolled,” Taran counters. “I don’t blame her for wanting to keep her forces concentrated on our weaker points. It’s not like we’re able to move enough through these smuggling routes to make a difference.”
Seth’s eyes flare in offense. “You’re about to move one of Nithyria’s top generals through a smuggling route. I’d say that’s going to make quite a difference.”
“Are you going to cooperate with us? Or do I need to restrain you?” asks Larus, holding out the linen shirt and eyeing a coiled rope of thePegasus’s rigging on the deck.
“What you need to do is listen to me. What’s the point of disguising me when I can travel freely through my own people?”
“But not into Faros,” I say. “We’re as likely to encounter a Selaran patrol out there as a Nithyrian one.”
Seth glares. “We are nowhere near as likely to encounter a Selaran patrol. And if we do, he can just flash his stupid face at them, and they’ll obey,” he says, looking at Ronan.
“He has a point,” says Taran.
“Good. I’m glad one of you has some sense. I’ll tie him up first,” says Seth, and Taran has to turn away as his pale cheeks flush scarlet.
“I amnotletting you tie me up again,” I say. “Or any of them.” Seth may have treated me better the past few days than I had expected, but I’m not foolish enough to trust him completely. “I’m not certain we should keep him conscious at all. What if hespots one of the Nithyrian patrols and orders them to attack us and free him? They’ll follow his commands.”
Seth rounds on me. “I’ve been out here all night while you were off doingwhateverit was that you were doing. If I wanted to signal a Nithyrian vessel, I could have.” I highly doubt Larus, Taran, or Octavia would have allowed that, but I know better than to interrupt him during one of his tirades. “If I wanted to betray you, I could have done so as we left the camp. If you want to risk everything that they’ve fought for because you’re not willing to trust me, fine. Carry me into that damned palace if you must.”
I look at Ronan, but he shakes his head. “Your call. You know him better than any of us.”
I’m not certain that’s true. I still haven’t managed to wrap my head around this version of Seth. A part of me is still clinging to my childhood fear of him, even while another part of me is forced to remember some of the kindnesses he showed me in our youth. The way he heated my food at dinner once his magic settled. The secret passages he showed me in the castle when I was hiding from my lessons. The times he shielded me from Adria’s wrath, turning her ire towards him.
A thousand little actions that went unnoticed until very recently.
I know what I have to do.
“Seth, if I were willing to trust you after so little, you’d lose all respect for me.” I turn to Larus. “Knock him out, and then you can change his clothes. We’re carrying him.”
Seth seethes and protests with a string of curses against all of us and our mothers, which is somewhat ironic considering I’m the one who restrains him with my shadows. At least he’s too fascinated by that unique magic to fight me as I use a large amount of the ship’s sleep elixir on him, being unwilling to risk him waking before we arrive.
“Would you take him?” Ronan asks Taran, his voice falsely innocent, and the look that passes between them lets me know that although they haven’t discussed the situation, Taran is fully aware that Ronan knows of his…crush.
“Of course, sir,” says Taran as he lifts Seth with some effort over his shoulder without complaint, the picture of professionalism.
“You’re terrible,” I whisper to Ronan as Larus and Octavia help Prima and Taran onto the gangplank. “You shouldn’t encourage him. You should warn him to run for the hills.”
“What, like he warned me off of you?” says Ronan with a grin. “The heart wants what it wants, Sylvie. Who am I to fight it?”
“I’m blaming you when this ends in tears. Or bloodshed.”
“Or marriage.”
I throw up a little in my mouth. “Don’t put that evil into the world.”
Ronan laughs, and the sound of it fills me with joy in spite of the reason for it. “War makes strange bedfellows. We’re not the only ones who deserve happiness, you know.”
In the end, we split our disguises so that some of us—myself, Ronan, Seth, and Prima—wear Selaran plainclothes while the rest—Octavia, Larus, and Taran—wear Nithyrian leathers. We bring as much of the rope as we can carry, changing who’s bound depending on which patrol we spot.
It’s only a couple of miles into Faros, but the journey is made slow by the circuitous route we’re forced to take to avoid the worst of the troop movements and constructed barricades. At least we don’t encounter much in the way of fighting. The clashes of steel on chain and shield intensify as we approach, but most of the fighting is concentrated near the Gap, the space between the Faros’s walls where the Mara flows into the city. Our route will take us far from there to a small, unassuming shack near the wall between the Minar and South gates.
I chat with Prima along the way. She’s a sweet girl of sixteen, a water-born who found herself separated from her family during their flight from Dalven, a village on the outskirts of Faros near Seth’s second encampment. She recognizes me from the Festival of Sport. She was there the night I shot my arrow into the royal box, saving Ronan from an assassin.
“We thought it was your fault at first,” she recalls, braiding and unbraiding her long brown hair as she talks, talking about me committing murder in the sort of unaffected way that only the young can. “It was hard to see from where we were. Someone a few rows down from us in the stands said you must have paid the woman to kill that man so you could win. I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, her brown eyes widening as she realizes her offense. “I didn’t think that. It’s just…a lot of us hate Nithyria.”
