Geneva placed a hand atop her friend’s knuckles, placating. “When we see his face, we’ll know.”
Once aboard the pirate ship—theMamau—Geneva was not introduced to the gawking crew, but rather marched directly to the captain’s quarters as Alasne barked orders to speed straight ahead for the rendezvous point. Alasne threatened the plank if the ship didn’t arrive by midday—and she would keep her promise—and then disappeared within with Geneva.
Once the door was tightly shut, the captain tossed her scarf onto a chaise, and then poured them both a measure of sagardoa—a ritual between them that dated to the cloistered rooms of Geneva’s familial chambers within the Aragonesti. When Geneva was a little sister with big dreams and too many competitors, and Alasne was the junior maid from Torrence with a knack for pilfering juice that was fermented just enough to make them flushed and giggly while piled within a cupboard brimming with linens and shadows.
“How is it that this happened, Gen?” Alasne sighed. “Beyond the wolf cub and the ridiculous sense of entitlement your niece must’ve worn like a second head?”
At the mention of Celia, Geneva took a long pull of the sagardoa, savoring the caustic burn as it spread like wildfire from her tongue to the pit of her empty stomach. “My children are ungrateful idealists, that’s how.”
“Is it true your daughter sits upon the Ardenian thronealone?”
Geneva’s mind spun to those fevered moments in the council room—privileged children casually dividing the kingdoms as if they were sections of an orange, sticky fingers delighted in acceptance of their piece. She took another hearty swallow and let it burn.
“Likely. There’s no one left to tell her no, and her brother vowed to step aside.”
“Oh, Ferdinand. That little fire-headed heartbreaker.” Alasne blinked into the middle distance, likely remembering the boy as she’d last seen him. He was ten then, still growing into himself, baby-faced yet strong enough to tip an ox cart. Different yet the same as the babe Geneva carried in a sling to the Warlord’s camp, hoping to locate the maid she’d released and instead finding her former charge leading it all behind a length of linen and rituals set in place by Talmage.
“He isn’t so little anymore, but he certainly has broken my heart, at least,” Geneva answered dryly, pouring herself three more fingers of Alasne’s sour cider. “Stared me down like the man he’s not and told me I’d ruined his childhood by lying to him from day one, stealing his chance to know his father and his birth mother, and making him complicit in my schemes.”
Alasne sucked her lips against her teeth. “Ouch—dramatic little bastard. Does he really believe he’s not also at fault? Or has righteousness blinded him to it?”
Geneva searched the brown liquid in her cup for answers it would not provide. Her forefinger ran across the lip. “He only believes in the truth now, though lies served him well. Perhaps my Ferdi is more like his father on the inside than I ever knew. Always believing he’s right and completely ignoring the times he’s been wrong—just cleaning it up and distracting the world with his scruples.”
“Scruples?” Alasne spat like a fly had landed in her drink. “It is a shame he has the Warrior King’s specific brand of righteousnessrunning through his veins. Quite inconvenient for someone like him to havescruples.”
“Yet he does.” Geneva abandoned her drink and settled back upon the divan, rubbing a hand down her face before staring at the shiplap ceiling. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
After a long moment, Alasne lifted her topaz eyes. Despite the differences in their blood and station, she never shied from telling Geneva what she did not want to hear. Not when they were ten, nor seventeen, nor now, muddling through their thirties. Every time they met, Alasne just continued from the same critical position, never flinching in any assessment. “You will have to face him.”
“I know.”
“And you will kill him if it comes to that?”
It wouldn’t.
There was no reason for Ferdinand to figure into this plan at all. He wouldn’t be with the wolf cub at the Hand. Never in danger. Never a decision she would have to make.
Geneva drew in a deep breath. “No.”
Alasne’s eyes narrowed to fierce points. “That is not a satisfactory answer when discussing your enemy, Geneva. That is soft. That is deadly. You kill him or I will.”
That was a line she’d be a fool to cross.
Alasne could have Talmage and revenge for the heart he’d long ago shattered to pieces. But Geneva’s heart was still hanging on by a thread and she would see to it that no one, not even Alasne, destroyed what was left.
When Geneva didn’t react, Alasne tilted her head to a dangerous angle. The sort of angle that would sink this ship if it were ever unfortunate enough to reach it in rough water. Geneva usually preferred this sort of fierceness but not necessarily on the subject of her son. “And your daughter, Gen? What of her?”
Geneva sat up and faced the maid who’d always been her friend but had become a mentor once they’d left their blood behind. In the balance, Alasne gave Geneva power she never could’ve had on her own in her previous life. Alasne knew Geneva could handle it and would with care. And she had. But her children—they were more complicated than managing the threads of fear and freedom that drove her life as Warlord.
“I did not kill her when I had the chance.”
Alasne did not move. “Another one for my blade, then?”
Geneva looked away but Alasne reached across the space, grabbing her wrist and forcing Geneva to look her in the eye. “Who will you kill, then? Innocent children? Screaming mothers? Or perhaps a particularly overconfident guard? Oh, my money is on the guard.”
It was a taunt. Meant to spark leaping, terrible fury within Geneva as easily as she’d set the firepits alight night after night. But Geneva knew exactly the next life she would take once the Otsakumea was dead and the Torrent was again hers.
“I will kill Koldo.”
