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“That’th uth,” a girl murmured. “That’th uth, Tally.”

I smiled at her, her lisp reminding me so much of my own little sister, my heart ached. I nodded to Tally. “It is you. Ta-Laren means you come from his line.”

“I’m not big enough to become an Alpha,” he muttered, looking down at his hands in confusion.

“I was a street rat in a cage, Ta-Laren. And now I’m the world’s best thief.” I reached behind my back and produced the sword, making him gasp and the others laugh. Then I reached behind the ear of the closest girl and did one of the first magic tricks I’d learned, only this time I pulled a small scallop shell out.

Laughter filled the air again.

“Now, who wants to learn how to use a sword? Stay in the shadow of the longhouse,” I reminded them, though they all did that instinctively.

At first, the other children watched as I coaxed him through the patterns again. After a moment, one or two of them picked up pieces of driftwood and copied us. Eventually, more joined in until almost all of them were working on their swords.

The older one, Godla, was the only one who didn’t pick up a stick, though her little sister had a small piece of driftwood in her mouth, gnawing on it. “Tally, you know you’re going to get a beating for this. And the rest of us may as well.”

“I’ll protect you,” I said quietly. “And Ta-Laren will too, right?”

He stared at the toddler on Godla’s hip and nodded. He lifted his sword again, though his thin arm trembled with fatigue. “I will. No matter what, I’ll protect every one of you.”

GORAN

Their voices were far too quiet to make out their words, but I could see what was happening on the beach perfectly well. My mate was teaching a group of children to fight. “Does she not believe the selkies will come to rescue them? That we will not come?” I mused aloud. “Only one of them has a sword. What is her plan?”

In the distance, she took the blade and ran through one of the old familiar patterns, then handed it back to a young lad who was at least two inches shorter than she was.

I’d lost my own sword fleeing the servants of the Alldyns Vug. All I had, in fact, were the borrowed trousers I wore, and the belt I’d taken off to sling under Alexios’s arms to keep him afloat.

“She’s arming them with hope.” Next to me, Alexios clung to the piece of driftwood we’d found, his gaze as fixed on Rada as mine had been, though his face was etched with new lines. I felt sorry for the Beta. He’d loved her without any hope for so long and been content to live as her friend, but when he’d revealed his allegiance to the Goddess, he’d lost her completely.

Or so he thought. If I’d been able to find my way back into her heart, I believed he could, too.

“Hope?” I murmured, ducking down behind the driftwood when her head swung our way. “You said she had a plan, one that Dustin and the selkies were putting into motion.” I tried not to grind my teeth, as I had ever since she’d given me the order to spy on the camps, not to fight.

Alexios nodded to the beach. “There’s only one way off Pict: by boat. But any boat close enough to spot would be destroyed.”

I grimaced. We’d both almost been hit by lava bombs on our swim around the island. It wasn’t until we’d allowed the hot currents on the other side of Pict to push us well away from land, then waited until the sensation of baleful, invisible eyes on us faded, that we’d been able to swim around the eastern side.

Alexios continued. “She’ll find a way to get those children off the island and into the water. My guess is she’ll use the selkies to swim them out to a boat far away enough to be safe from the volcano.”

“You believe Dustin will come through with the boat?”

“He’s a great sailor. A good lad. He’ll come through or die trying.”

I grunted. For a moment, I wondered if throwing Dustin out of my army had made him a better Alpha, or if he’d always had this much potential. Or perhaps Rada had made him a better man. She had that effect. “And us?”

“We need to go ashore. Rada will let us know when it’s time. But if the guards that I assume are housed in those other buildings see the Omegas and children swimming away, they’ll need someone who knows how to fight to watch their backs.”

“When they see them,” I corrected. There was no way for almost a dozen kids and who knew how many Omegas, all of them half-starved, to make it this far out to sea without being spotted by anyone standing on the ridge. Not even with a piece of driftwood twice the size of ours to hide them.

Finding the driftwood on the eastern side had been all that saved me from drowning. Alexios was in even worse shape; Rada had knocked him unconscious and thrown him off the boat we’d taken to Pict, and the blood from his ears had worried me. Though no sharks had come to investigate. Perhaps Lusca was watching over us somehow.

It had taken us a full day of swimming without stopping to circle the island at a distance. As soon as we were far enough from this beach to avoid being seen, I’d need to get us ashore and find fresh water and food.

I licked my parched lips and kicked listlessly to our right, against the current and toward the area outside the iron fence that circled the buildings on this side. Alexios was muttering something, and I worried that he’d caught a fever and was raving, until he said clearly, “Thank you, Goddess of All, for hearing and answering my prayer.”

“What?” I murmured, as we rounded a small spit of land and found a small lagoon just beyond a reef. Coral scraped my legs through my trousers more than once while I kicked across to the placid water. When we were close enough, Alexios managed to stand and helped me haul the large piece of wood ashore. We had no boat, but the driftwood had done a decent job obscuring us from the sentries watching from the hillside, and we might need it again.

The island was peculiar. Not many birds, and not even small mammals that I could tell, as if even the ground squirrels had all been hunted to extinction. The air and water on this side were clear, though, and we found a small freshwater stream only a few steps past the beach.