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From above, a woman on deck shouts, “Captain! I think he’s down there now.”
I glance at Rocco. “Have I kept them waiting?”
He inhales to answer, but before he can, Captain Blakemore all but slides down the gangway, springing agilely off the end to land right in front of us.
“Your Highness,” he says a bit breathlessly. “The ship is ready to depart.” The ship’s sails snap in the wind, and he glances at the sky. “If you’d still like to outrun this storm, we shouldn’t wait much longer.”
“Do forgive us for the delay,” I say, but I’m pretty sure my eyes say,I’m about to push you off the dock.
That spark of challenge lights in his gaze. “Forgiven, Your Highness.”
His eyes say,Go ahead and try.
But he glances at Rocco, then steps back and extends a hand. “Shall we?”
My feet almost refuse to move. I don’t want to.
But of course I’m being foolish. I force myself to step onto the gangway. My heart gives a jolt when my foot meets the wood, the world seeming to tilt. I have to take a deep breath to clear my head.I’m leaving my brother.
Captain Blakemore steps onto the gangway just behind me. Rocco will follow us both. Somewhere at the top of this ramp is Tessa, whose presence fills me with warmth—but also Lochlan, whowill surely be a problem at some point. We only have a small handful of guards, all of whom are outnumbered by the shadowed workers on the ship deck.
Harristan’s voice breaks through the sound of raindrops slamming the deck. “Captain.”
Captain Blakemore turns in surprise. So do I. A ripple of alarm runs through the guards waiting on the dock, and many of them shift to flank the king.
Harristan ignores them all and steps onto the gangway. Rocco quickly steps aside to yield passage. My brother strides right up to Rian, and there’s fire in his eyes.
“I expect Prince Corrick to return unharmed,” he says, and there’s a note in his voice I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. The promise of vengeance hangs in every syllable.
Captain Blakemore doesn’t back down, but he matches Harristan’s intensity when he says, “Understood, Your Majesty.”
The rain pours down among us, but my brother doesn’t move.
Harristan needs to see confidence in my expression, so I clap him on the shoulder. “I have no doubt Captain Blakemore and I will be old friends by the time we return.”
Rian smiles slyly. “I’msoglad to hear it, Your Highness.”
I cut him a glance. “Do you want him to let me get on the boat or not?”
Harristan sighs as if he’s tired of us both, but then he stifles a cough.
I frown. “Your carriage is waiting,” I say, as if this was entirely planned, and there’s no surprise to my brother being out on the docks. “Get out of the rain. We shouldn’t delay.”
My brother nods, then takes a step back. “Farewell, Cory.”
Somehow this is harder than it was in the carriage.
Without warning, a dozen random memories flash in my thoughts. The time he spilled tea down the front of his jacket just before a meeting with the consuls, so I shrugged out of mine before anyone would catch him in a state of disarray. The time we snuck into the Wilds and a fortune-teller tried to trick me out of the few coins I carried, but Harristan saw through his ruse and snatched my money back out of the man’s palm. The time when he couldn’t catch his breath in the training arena, and his opponent, Allisander himself, took advantage of the moment to chase my brother into the dirt. I was only ten or eleven, but I climbed the fence and tackled Allisander myself. The weapons master had to haul me off him.
The moment Harristan dove to cover me when our parents were assassinated.
My throat threatens to tighten, so I blink the memories away.
“Farewell,” I say, and my brother steps onto the dock.
“Follow me, Your Highness,” Captain Blakemore says, before my heart can start pounding at the thought thatthis is it. He doesn’t even wait to see if I follow; he simply heads toward the top of the ramp. “Miss Cade insisted on allowing you to select your choice of quarters first.”
If anything could send a bolt of warmth to the center of my chest, it’s the mention of Tessa. I’m not alone here. Not really.
