Page 45 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

It’s nothing, I tossed back, waving an arm as I turned away. The heat of Cebrinne’s gaze seared into my shoulders, but I ignored it, almost bumping into the person behind me—Hadrian.

I let out a sigh of relief. “You’re safe.” Though glancing him over, he hadn’t been safe for very long. Bruises lay across his temple in green and blue blotches, a shiny black ring encircling his right eye.

“From Rivea, yes,” he mused, taking Kye’s proffered hand in a warm shake. “Luckily, the Riveans were less dangerous than the other thing I was traveling with.”

“The other thing?” Kye raised a brow.

Hadrian peered over his shoulder at the young woman walking along the Venusian line. The Naiads eyed her in silence as she stood nearby, glaring down the long shaft of a Rivean arrow, six more shoved into the lacing of her corset.

“Diara,” I murmured, giving Kye’s hand a squeeze as I left his side. She didn’t look up, her attention claimed by the fletching of the arrow in her hands, until the very last moment. By then I had all but fallen into her, my arms wrapping her back as my face buried in her dusky goldenrod hair.

She clapped over me just as fiercely. “Stars above,” she gasped out, pulling away far enough to sweep hair from my face and cup the sides of my jaw. Her arrow lay beside us in the thin snow, and she sniffled from the cold. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, walking into the midst of Rivea while I was sent the opposite way.”

“Sorry,” I burst. Her skin wasn’t as peppered with color as Hadrian’s was, though a violet haze loomed under her cheekbone, a small cut in the corner of her mouth. I rolled my finger around her braid, bringing it to rest over her shoulder. “How did you end up with Rivea?”

“We got out of our carriage when the road turned to snow. Our driver was pulling the wheels off to convert it into a sleigh, and I decided to take a walk while I waited.”

“And Hadrian went with you?”

Peridot eyes slashed a line through the air in the crown prince’s direction. “That’s one way of putting it.”

I bit back a smile. Something to needle out of her later. “How long ago was this?”

“Two days. We were walking under the trees and suddenly we ran into an army.” She clicked her tongue. “What I get for bringing home a man I don’t even like.”

I finally stepped back. “I’m sorry, Diara. I never would have sent you had I known.”

“No, no.” She waved my apology away. “I’d been aching for the chance to see my mother, to come home. She’s not well, and we’re not sure if she’ll survive the winter. But Aren told us Winterlight was evacuated, so I’m assuming Pirou was as well.”

I nodded. “Evacuees were moved west to Merriam. Are you going to try to find your family?”

“No,” Diara sighed, her attention veering a second time to the deep voices behind me. “If anything, they would have traveled south to Ochire. My cousin lives there.” She hesitated. “I’m worried that if she dies, my family will lose Pirounesse. I haven’t told anyone she’s sick.”

I glanced at the heir to the throne, standing beside his brother under heavy ash trees. “You weren’t worried Hadrian might notice?”

Diara scowled at the man in question. “I was hoping to keep him busy. Distract him.”

I released a short bark of laughter. “Distract him how, Diara?

“My mother isn’t bedridden. She’s just… frail. Weak. Someone who doesn’t know her well might never realize she’s sick.”

I opened my mouth and then bit back any words I might have said. They squirmed in my belly instead like small fish, rippling and wriggling. Diara had grown up believing the worst about the royal family, but I couldn’t help but feel that like Kye, Hadrian would be willing to shield secrets from the King, if she only asked him.

But her secrets were hers, not mine, and she’d invited Hadrian to join her in Pirou only because I’d asked her to. So I clamped my mouth shut. Perhaps she sensed my reluctance to comment further, because she asked, “Will you be heading back to the City of Towers?”

The answer should have been a fast and ready yes. My colony was south. My island home; the father I hadn’t spoken to in months. Thaan—not that I believed with any ounce of confidence that Thaan lay in wait within Calder City. Though wherever he was, he wasn’t here along the fringe of a mountain. On its own, my gaze slowly scraped the snow-capped tree-tops in search of a flash of feathers, a cruel twist in my belly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose it depends on—”

Shouting pulsed through the numb dark, anger punctuating through the cold like an axe hefted against the trees. Mute surprise flashed across Diara’s face before her brows gathered low over her eyes. I turned toward the sound as a man was thrown at my feet.

Dark hair like red ink, mussed with mud. Or blood. The absent moon left the distinction ambiguous. The strands slicked flat and matted against a browbone as he lifted his head and spat toward my boots.

Kye blazed across the divide between us, violent thoughts flying like arrows in his mind. But Sindri, who had tossed the man down, grabbed a fistful of his dark hair and hauled him to his knees. Aegir watched calmly at Sindri’s side. “Apologize,” the Videre murmured calmly.

One arm hung strangely from the man’s side. He hurled a single word in Rivean, staring hard into my eyes.

I straightened, gazing down at him, my chin lifting. “Interesting way to lose a war, isn’t it, Kazimir?”