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“I'd say to return the baby to its mother, but I suppose we've missed the boat on that.” Kallus sounded disappointed. “I didn't mean to be needlessly cruel. I thought her death would serve a purpose.”
Ebba suddenly swung toward me. I stepped back into the shadows.
“We’re being listened to.” Ebba fell into a wave of shadows that flowed swiftly across the floor.
I leapt back. I needed shadows, now; I threw my hand out and aimed a spark of magic toward the nearest lamp. It exploded into a thousand pieces, and suddenly there were shadows falling across the room: the table and chair near me grew monstrously long shadows.
I leapt toward them.
But Ebba’s magic lashed my feet out from underneath me. I rolled to my knees, nothing mattering but falling into the shadows, and propelled myself toward them. But Ebba’s magic blazed, and the room was so blindly bright I had to squeeze my eyes shut. Kallus threw up his arm and cursed the light.
There were no shadows anywhere.
I threw my magic up, raising a shield. I’d always been overpowered, but now as my magic exploded against Ebba, it flowed away from me and didn’t return. I felt increasingly weak, and Ebba’s many hideous mouths were laughing.
“His magic is spent,” Ebba said. “He’s nothing now.”
The light in the room died. Kallus lowered his arm, looking sickened. But why?
“Bind him,” Kallus said to his guards as they entered. Kallus tilted his head to one side, studying me. “Bind him like the unworthy mortal he is, unable to help my niece.”
CHAPTER44
Honor
I foundmy dragon royals because they were raising havoc.
I woke in the early morning to a cold bed. Damyn was out of it, the fire in the grate smoking but dying; he must have tamped it out. He watched at the window.
He turned to me. “Kallus. We need to get out of here.”
I clutched Amily’s pendant—his tool—feeling like it was icy cold even through the bag. I was so ashamed I’d been manipulated to wear it because I wanted to be close to my mother. “Do you think he can track me by this?”
“It looked like it carried only the one enchantment when Branok used his potion,” Damyn said. “By now, Kallus might’ve realized he can’t control your powers, but given how everything changed…”
I scoffed, “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have any powers for him to take anymore.”
“We’re not sure of that.” Damyn watched through the window from one side of it, his body carefully hidden. I joined him on the other side.
Out on the green lawn that stretched between the houses, soldiers were gathering together a frantic crowd. Kallus’s general Caris sat on top of a prancing horse. They hadn’t had horses yesterday when they first left Kallus’s ships, and cold fear spread through my stomach as I realized they must have taken them from village stables. Had the villagers survived that theft?
“Get out here,” Caris called, his magic amplifying his voice so it resounded through the room and made me jump. His gaze swept around the houses, not focused on our particular hiding place. “We’ll burn your houses to the ground with you in them. There’s no point hiding.”
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Damyn left the room and came back a moment later. “I think we can go out the window on the back side of the house. Kallus’s soldiers are circling, but there aren’t that many of them, if we wait for the right moment—”
He reached out his hand, and I took it, ignoring the jolt of electricity I always felt when he touched me, no matter how bad the circumstances.
The two of us headed quietly into the hallway—downstairs, alarmed voices rose, then a hush—and into the other bedroom. He raised the sash, then stood to one side, both of us pressing ourselves against the cool white plastered walls as Kallus’s men moved past.
How many troops did he have? And how had they moved so silently into position, ready to take over our isle?
Joachim.Joachim had betrayed us to Kallus. Caldren and Jaik had been working on destroying all the tunnels, but it took time, and Joachim must have led Kallus to the others.
He was never fit to rule.
And now he was dead.
The memory of the shocked look on Joachim’s face as Kallus stabbed him would stay with me forever.
