Page 38 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

Kazimir lifted his chin, a smile on his lips. “I hope you realize you’ve lost the war.”

I’d seen him a handful of times in Rivea. At the gate of Vranna when Kye and I entered the market. Leading Kye away in chains after he’d killed two of Captain Kriska’s pirates. Outside the Deadman’s House where Kye was sentenced to hang.

In each moment, I’d never been able to fully study him. His dark hair was cropped short over his neck, the strands just long enough to frame his eyes. He tilted his head, examining me.

“And to think I believed you to be a pirate,” he chuckled. “I’ve never been more wrong.”

Energy snapped around my open fist. “Funny. I thought you were a worm,” I said, stretching my fingers against the electric charge. “I’ve never been more right.”

Kazimir’s smirk deepened. I didn’t ask what he might want with me. It seemed a silly question. Puerile and childish. Rivea wouldn’t trade the heir of their enemy to let me dwell in lavish rooms with fatty meats and rich wine. If their blades didn’t strike me down immediately, my future involved something far more sinister.

Dusk sipped at the corners of Kazimir’s eyes as his gaze shifted to Kye, now standing over my shoulder. “This way, witch.”

I stepped toward the man. Kye blocked me with the length of his arm. “We’ll take your hostages first,” he said, his voice low and razor-sharp, a dog baring its teeth before it attacked.

Kazimir nocked his head, the motion so subtle it barely existed. One of his soldiers drew a knife from his belt, sinking to his knee to cut Diara’s binds, moving to release Hadrian next. She stood, shaking snow from her skirt, violence laced in her eyes as she stepped toward us. Kazimir blocked her the same way Kye had halted me.

“The witch.” Kazimir lowered his chin, eyes jeering as he held Kye’s gaze.

Don’t move, Kye ordered into my thoughts. His eyes darted around Kazimir, the Riveans, the mountainside, the growing dark.

Kazimir’s brow lifted impatiently.

My mouth thinned. You have to trust me. I stepped around him, and he wrapped his fingers around my wrist.

My Queen, Nori breathed into my thoughts.

The orange glow of the Riveans’ torches flickered in Kye’s narrowed eyes, the shadows deep between his brows. Water and salt and metal danced through the air, a thermal riptide washing over my cheeks. Wind was all that moved us, teasing through our hair, scratching at our clothes. Across the wet, cold rock, flames clicked and crackled against wood.

A line pulled taut between him and me. Not a cordae. That was broken, tossed out to the stars with the waste of the world. This line was something else, something bright and glittering, as lethal as the garrote a pirate had once pulled over Kye’s throat in the near-black bowels of a wooden ship.

Your brother stands across that line, I whispered into him.

Golden eyes closed—in shame or in anger, I couldn’t decide. Kye had always held both inside himself like a cage. I love my brother, Leihani, he whispered back. But there is nothing between my feet and the silver sand of the stars I wouldn’t sacrifice to keep you.

Electricity still sparkled in my veins, and I’d let myself harden against the howl of the mountain and the deathly orange of dusk, but I softened at that. My fingers found his, and I laced them smoothly together. Look to the skies and tell me I cannot win this fight.

Kye didn’t have to.

The wind had picked up, driving down my back, tossing my hair like a royal cape. The clouds rumbled a distant baritone, eager to send me a fractured white light and strike the earth in two. An ocean unfurled over our heads, sitting damp and heavy within the air. With the snap of my fingers, I could command it all.

Pain still lashed at my lungs, tight with each breath, and my body strained under the delay of sleep. But a slither crawled over my lips, stretching my mouth wide enough to flaunt my teeth. “Besides,” I said, “how many times now have we escaped death?”

“I’ve lost count.” Kye did not smile back. “But I know how many times we haven’t.”

I reached for him as the sun set, robbing the evening from the world. Tugged him down to me by the silver-tipped fur guarding his shoulders. “Come and steal me back then, lout.” I twisted my fingers into his fur. “Mock me with you’re welcome, by the way, then sentence me to a punishment between your sheets. Chastise me with your hand and reform me with your tongue. I will never fear an enemy while knowing I have you to chase me,” I said. And claimed his mouth with mine.

It was not a long kiss.

There was nothing final in it.

Nothing that might have balmed our lips with the taste of goodbye.

But I made sure to commit the smooth velvet of them to memory. The clean taste that swept my palate, the sweet, hard push of his jaw against mine. Just in case.

And then I turned to Kazimir.

Lightning flashed under my skin. My tattoos ignited, molten silver poured through etched stone, glowing in the dark.