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“It was the most I could ask for, and I was grateful for it. After Iresine died, Costin asked me to return. I stayed with him until his death. I made myself irreplaceable to Regus, then Genevieve, and eventually . . . your brother and you. Rosetta is my sister, but you . . . you have always been my true family.”
“Are you trying to say . . . you love me?” I asked with a gentle, goading nudge.
“If I’d meant to say that, I would have said it,” she snapped. “I’m still mad at you, Aurelia. What you did back there . . .”
“I made a split-second decision. It was a one-time mistake. I won’t do it again.”
“If it were the first time you’d made that mistake, I might believe it.”
I looked down, ashamed.
“The Founder was once like you,” she said. “A gifted blood mage. Probably wanted to do the right thing. But he, too, got into the habit of taking unwilling blood. And it destroyed him.”
“I am nothing like him,” I spat. “I’m not a monster.”
“No,” Onal said. “Not yet.”
* * *
Our fire petered out before dawn, but it wasn’t the cold that woke me. It was Onal, who was mumbling to herself as she stared out at nothing, glassy-eyed.
“Lily,” she muttered. “Where is my Lily?”
I touched her forehead; it was slick with sweat. She was burning up. Her bandages were saturated with blood, and the skin around them was hot and swelling. An infection had taken hold at the site of her gash; if I did not get help soon, she’d die.
I put her other arm over my shoulder and hoisted her to her feet, marveling at how light she was, as if she were made of paper and string instead of flesh and bone.
“Where are we going?” she asked. “Are you taking me to my Lily?”
“Lily is with the Empyrea,” I said gently, “but you’re not joining her, Onal. Not quite yet.”
I dragged Onal along with me through the trees. Castillion’s men must have given up the search, because they’d pulled back and were returning to their ships. The first two—the Piety and the Accountability—had already left shore. Only Castillion’s last, most ostentatious vessel, the Humility, remained in the fjord, and from the bustle of activity on board, it looked like it would not be there for long.
I hurried as fast as I could, yelling and waving my arms after I set Onal down on the rocky edge of the water. “Wait! Wait!” I called. “Don’t leave! I need to speak with Castillion! Let us aboard!”
A man came to the bow of the ship. His hair was a strange white blond, combed back from his brow in a swooping wave, his trim beard a dark brown in contrast. Despite the color of his hair, he couldn’t be much older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He was good-looking but not quite handsome, well-dressed but not pretentious, commanding but not intimidating. He regarded us with more curiosity than animosity.
He called, “What is your business with Castillion?”
“I seek to make a deal with him. My companion here is hurt. She needs a healer’s help.”
“And what will you provide in return?”
“A bargaining chip,” I called back. “With the Tribunal. Because they have King Valentin. And you”—I dropped the pretense that I did not know to whom I was speaking—“will need something of equal value to trade for him.”
Castillion’s lips quirked to the side, waiting.
I lifted my chin. “You need me. Aurelia Altenar, princess of Renalt.”
He smiled, just a little, before motioning to the men still on the ground to bring us aboard. He greeted us on the deck, his purple-black flag and its seven-legged spider waving high in the background.
“Princess,” he said with a genteel bow, “welcome aboard the Humility.”
Part Three
The men of Greythorne were men of honor. It was the trait by which they were best known and of which they were most proud. Since Saint Urso built his sanctorium and requested that King Theobald name the Greythorne family as its guardians and the protectors of the province in which it lay, they had lived every day by the motto Do your duty, and you’ll never have to go to sleep with regrets.
As he opened the manor doors to face the bobbing torches, Fredrick Greythorne hoped that in this, his final hour, he would do right by all the generations that had come before him.
