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“Kill me, and you will never find her. Leave me alive, and I will never guide you to her. It is better for you to forfeit your crown, spare us all a bit of bloodshed and embarrassment.”
Gods, the way I would make him scream. I could practically taste his cries on my tongue. “I think it would be in our best interest, at least for your house, if you revealed this key you have to the isle where he is keeping her.”
Hesh’s brow arched. “So, you’ve learned a few things.”
“More than you know.” I spun my blade in my grip, stepping to the left when Hesh mimicked my motion. We circled each other, two beasts looking for the weakest place to strike.
Despise me as he did, my uncle had insisted I learn the blade with more skill than I knew to walk. I yanked the dagger strapped to my lower back free of its sheath and threw it across the chamber.
Hesh roared, one hand on the hilt protruding from his hip. Strategic. I did not want the bastard dead. Not yet. He made a desperate swipe of his blade. I blocked with the edge of my cutlass and twisted his grip free of his sword.
“You were the best choice my father had for the blade lord?” I let out a derisive sigh. “What a disappointment.”
The woman in his bed screamed when I fisted a handful of Hesh’s thick, sun-lightened hair and dragged his bleeding ass onto the deck.
“Drop your blades,” I shouted over the din. “Or you watch your lord meet the hells, then you next.”
Bound by blood, what was left of theFire Stormcrew hesitated. Blades dropped in heavy thuds. The men tortured by Jonas and Sander sobbed as the two princes lightened their eyes to moss green. Tait ignored my halt, slit the throat of the man he’d pinned, then returned a smug sort of grin in my direction.
Gavyn crouched in front of Lord Hesh, teeth bared. “I know everything you have done, traitor. I’ve found her. Freed her from that room.”
Hesh’s eyes went wide. “Not possible.”
“Perhaps you should not have tossed your lot in with an imposter king.” Gavyn patted Hesh’s cheek with condescension, then rose.
“You say you found her, yet you are here without her.” Hesh chortled but winced when the blade still lodged in his hip shifted. “Discovered there is no escaping that place for the little earth fae, did you?”
I slammed the hilt of my dagger against his head. “Speaking of earth fae, they heard rumor that you had some grand delusion you would claim their realms. I think you’ll find they have no plansto let you.”
Before he could shirk me away, I ripped the dagger from his hip and pinned his back to the deck. One knee on the blade lord’s chest, I forced his arm to stretch out, then rammed the point of my blade through his wrist until the tip dug through bone and flesh into the deck of the ship.
Hesh cried out his anguish.
I propped one boot on the hilt of the dagger. Hesh squirmed and hissed his pain. “Better for you to admit your defeat and spare everyone a bit of blood and embarrassment.”
“Go to the hells, Bloodsinger.”
I shrugged and pulled the dagger out of his wrist. “I wonder what the people of your house will think knowing you brought this upon their heads.”
Tait and Celine helped hoist Hesh up against the rail of his ship, facing him toward his own shores.
Behind me, one of my men whooped into the night. It didn’t take long, mere moments, before an ember spear boomed, blasting a cinder stone at the shoreline of the House of Blades.
“Hardly frightening, I know,” I muttered close to Hesh’s ear in a low snarl. “Don’t worry. That was only the signal.”
Along the shoreline, the night shimmered. It faded like sea mist and revealed the truth hidden behind Mira’s illusion. The Ever Crew battled the guards at the gates and forced frightened folk in their night clothes to the shoreline.
“Watch that man.” I pointed to the place where a figure knelt on the ground.
On the ship, I could not feel the force of what was happening, but the screams were a sweet clue. Walls shuddered. Soil fractured. Great pots of molten stone the House of Blades drew from their fiery pools in their cliffs spilled over the gates, swallowing some of Hesh’s patrols in a blaze.
I watched, dark delight alive in my chest, as the ground quaked and groaned. My gaze drifted to the peak directly behind Hesh’s fortress. Smoke billowed from the vent at the top. A firemountain. The longer the earth bender commanded the soil of the Ever to give, the more that mountain spluttered out bursts of ash and cinders.
Flames caught hold of sod roofs. Folk ran, their littles smashed to their bodies, desperate to escape the rainstorm of fire from their own hills.
I did not revel in the screams of children, but my crew was there to shuffle the innocent toward our skiffs in the surf. Sewell led the gathering, Aleksi at his side, shouting for littles and women.
Valen’s fury unleashed the fire beneath the soil of the House of Blades. If Hesh remained a stubborn ass, he’d watch his small part of the kingdom fall to the sea. The blade lord gaped at the chaos in a bit of horror.
