Page 196 of The Crown’s Temptation

"If that day ever comes," he said quietly, "the truth still stands." He held my eyes. "My ship is always open to you. Whether you are a princess or a pauper or a mother or a grandmother or a nameless woman in the street with a veil or a frightened girl dressed in boys’ clothes at a tavern."

I looked at him one more time.

"Goodbye, Lord Vaelor," I said.

I turned and walked away and did not look back.

The Vaultline

NOX

The Witchward had taken more than she expected.

It always did. That was the thing about memory stones. The making of them felt like nothing and cost everything. You walked away lighter than you arrived and did not understand why until hours later when the weight of it caught up with you.

She had made his first. An act of generosity she was already reconsidering.

The path back to Kelsey Castle ran along the ridge. She knew it well enough to walk without paying much attention, which was fortunate because she was thinking about Aviaryn. About whether the child had eaten. Or worn some fucking shoes.

The Slykar came from the left. She sensed it with her intunar. Admittedly, her intunar was the weakest of her abilities here in Morrath, but it was present enough.

Humans with gifts could rarely use them in Morrath, which meant that those powers of her that were human did not come as easily when here.

But she was a feeder and Umbrelai’s queen, thanks to Axar. Thus she could certainly defend herself.

Normally. In truth, she was weaker than usual.

She threw her power at the Slykar before she had fully processed what it was. The power came slower than it should have. The Witchward had cost her more than she had admitted, and she had considerably less strength than she had let on to Sevrin.

Two more came from the rocks above.

She fought them the way she fought everything, without wasted motion, without feeling. She was slower than usual and the ridge was narrow and when the third hit her from behind she went sideways and there was nothing to catch on.

She fell.

The slope was longer than it looked from above. She hit rock twice on the way down and stopped thinking about much of anything for a while.

When she opened her eyes it was dark.

Wonderful.

She lay still and counted what she could feel. Gash along her abdomen — deep, still bleeding. Shoulder cracked or bruised, she could not tell which and did not particularly want to find out. Her vision was unreliable.

She had been unconscious for hours.

Aviaryn.

She pushed herself upright before she had decided to, then sat still while the dizziness made its point and passed.

Aviaryn had Flagsar. She had the creatures. She had spent her entire life in Morrath and had survived it.

She usually had Axar, Nox thought, then set that aside. Worrying would not get her back any faster and she found worrying largely useless under most circumstances.

She looked at where she had landed.

The Vaultline.

A mountain with multiple vault entrances cut into its face, each sealed and guarded and accessible only to those whose purpose the Vaultkeeper deemed worthy. She had never had reason to come here before. She had never had anything worth locking away.