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He gave me one sad nod. In guessing my deepest secret and telling my cousin, probably in some vain hope she could help, he had torn us apart. She had sent him away and never even told me. The betrayal twisted through me.

She might have needed to know where the other Annatalians’ loyalty was, but Aster’s was never in question. His hand reached out and pulled me onto the cot to lie next to him. I curled up and rested my head on his chest, letting his beating heart steady my racing thoughts.

I cupped his face with a delicate hand, careful not to cause him any more pain. His hair was matted with blood, so I reached out and ran a finger along his temple and pulled the locks free.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered again as my eyes filled. “Those Barren Riders will kill you for what you know and…” He had an oath, blood vows… so many blood vows that his heart would stop pumping before he could be forced to speak. “Show them the oath marks… maybe…”

“You know that’s not how this goes.”

And I did. There was always a chance that one of us would be caught and placed in the Northlands prison, so I had stolen a map of the prison from the library. We had studied it for months. I’d memorised every hidden door and tunnel. The only thing that I hadn’t expected was to be placed in the Rider holding cells. The ones where they held Riders who had lost their phoenixes and had gone mad. Perhaps it was because Kit and Torran were doing some sort of kindness to Aster in placing us together in a nicer cell. I really wished they hadn’t—it would make it harder to escape. And I had a way out if worst came to worst, but I didn’t know if I could get him out too.

My fingertips found the tattoo on his chest, the one he had been forced to take for his cover to hold. Had he taken the oath so that our displaced people had somewhere to land and regroup? No, that was too simple. If war were coming, we would have someone on the inside feeding information. Someone who had given their life over and over for our safety. Thorn was always sly and hyper-focused, but this was brilliant even for her. I wished I didn’t approve of her plan quite so much.

“Tell…” He coughed, but it was weak, and it drained him. Was he tired or really, truly hurt? “You tell them I’m sorry I didn’t get to see what you would all become.”

“No! Don’t you dare even think that. That’s not happening. I won’t allow it.”

His head fell back, and I froze until I made myself check for a pulse and found his heart was still beating. Was he acting? Or truly in bad shape?

With a finger on the pulse point on his wrist—as if I were checking it again—I drew a circle.

“Move up and you—” He tried to shift over and then gritted his teeth.

I shook my head at him and signed, “Sleep. I’ll wake you when…”

With my back to the bed, I faced the door. Waiting for them to come. The Barren Riders, perhaps even the Betrayer.

Somewhere down the corridor, someone screamed as if their heart were being ripped from their body, and I closed my eyes so the lump in my throat and the sting in my eyes were contained. Just as they had always been.

40

They came for us in the middle of the night.

Hushed, panicked voices echoed around the walls beyond the cell door. Metal scraped against metal. Orders were barked in the distance. This wasn’t the bored cruelty of guards changing shifts; this was fear.

What was happening?

Aster had been drifting in and out of sleep for hours, but the moment the footsteps reached our cell door, his good eye snapped open. It was an awareness beaten into a man who’d survived a violent place before.

One second he had been slumped half-conscious against the cot. The next, his hand had found the edge of the mattress, and his body tensed despite the brief pain that flashed across his face as he tried to move. I pushed upright from the floor, every muscle stiff and aching, and reached out to help him. With one heave, he was sitting up, but his brow creased.

He reached out and cupped my chin with his war-torn, calloused hand. “If you get…” He stopped and scanned the corners of the room, searching for runes. “Lex isn’t in this part of the prison. He’s higher up. You need to get to the roof and…”

The door started to open, and Aster flinched back. “I need you to know that in another life it would’ve always been you. It is always for you. Ever since Red was stitching me up on that table years ago and you stormed into that safe room, livid that she had left the boarding house without a cover story.” Small smiles touched both our lips. “You were all so different from the kids I had placed there… She followed your lead…”

What he meant was that a leader had to make difficult choices, and his Ruckus mission was that.

I leaned over and placed my lips to his and barely whispered, “I’ll get us out of this.”

The bolts on the cell door slid back before I could pull away.

Four guards entered first, dressed in white Northlands leathers banded with silver chains. Behind them came Torran. He was freshly changed and stood taller now, as if his homeland had washed away any personality. He was every inch the Betrayer. My stomach turned cold as his gaze darted between Aster and me.

He was now the man who had captured us a decade ago—beautiful in the way poisoned hairpins were beautiful. Dark hair pulled back from his face, black leather gloves covering elegant hands, and that terrible stillness all interrogators carried, all emotion carved out of them.

His gaze settled on me first, and then flicked to where Aster’s hand rested on me.

“Well,” he said with a smirk. “That’s helpful for them to know.” Not hiding his disapproval.