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I was on the outside. I’d known, hadn’t I? For all his flowery words, Arin’s heart belonged to another. He’d said we were nothing, he’d said the moments we’d shared in his bed had been nothing. But somehow, in all this madness, I’d mistaken his touch, his words, for more.
Had he always been in love with Draven?
It didn’t matter. It was good, in fact. He’d live, they both would. They even looked like the perfect couple. Draven, the large, dark-haired, grumbly, slightly dimwitted one. And Arin, all bright smiles, glowing hair, and fierce righteousness. They were destined to be heroes. Heroes didn’t die in the best stories. Only villains did.
“All right, let’s go,” Draven said.
I didn’t see Arin’s face. I couldn’t stand the pity there. Since he’d learned who I was, he’d looked at me differently. Softer. Perhaps assuming I was weaker for all I’d been through, when he should have known the opposite was true.
We hurried toward Justice’s guest chambers, but when we arrived, the rooms were empty, their traveling chests gone. Noemi had gone too.
“We’re too late,” Arin mumbled.
“Not yet…” I spun and raced down the corridor. There was one place left, one gap in the battlements everyone had to pass through. The main gate.
We hurried outside and down onto the main entrance plaza. The giant gates hung open, and a small crowd had gathered to watch War’s machines clear sand from the road.
“Quickly…” Arin jogged down the steps.
Members of Justice climbed into their carriages. And there was the blue-painted prison wagon. Every side was boarded and barred, with just one slit of a window in the back door. I couldn’t see Razak inside, but he’d be there.
“Wait!” Arin fought through the crowd, but the carriages were already in motion, trailing out of the gates. Outside, the huge sand-moving machines growled at a wall of swirling sand. The sandstorm was here. That wind and its churning sands would burn everything it touched.
Strange, how Noemi traveled atop an open carriage, open to the elements.
The wind whipped her red hair and blue gown around her. Arin called for Justice to stop, and she looked back, wide-eyed.
A strip of blue cloth gagged her.
She was their prisoner? No, that couldn’t be right…
“Noemi?” I ran down the steps through the crowd, but slowed, thoughts whirring like that storm. She’d been silenced. She’d been accused too. Why? It didn’t make any sense. Unless she’d been accused of helping Razak, helping me… and Arin.
I skidded to a halt near the front of the crowd. Red sand sloshed like water around my boots, pushed in by the winds through the open gates.
Arin still marched ahead like a prince in command of his court. He didn’t see War’s warriors emerge from behind the huge palms behind us, didn’t see the crowd withdraw and the warriors close. This wasn’t a leaving party, it was an ambush. And we’d walked straight into it.
Draven backed up alongside me and freed his daggers. “Fuck,” he growled.
Indeed, we were about to be.
I raised my hands, and turned, to show the warriors I was no threat. “Arin?” I called, searching over my shoulder for him.
The wind tore through the gates, blasting us with sand. Arin hadn’t heard me, and he pushed on, gaining on Justice’s caravan. They had to be mad, leaving in this storm, or perhaps they thought they could get ahead of the worst of the winds. It was true, Razak was too much of a risk to be left in War’s hands.
“Stop!” Arin called. He passed through the gated archway. “Just stop, he can’t leave!” He slowed, then yelled,“Razak!”
My brother’s face appeared at the prison wagon’s small window. The sand roared now, the storm barreling around Justice’s carriages. I couldn’t see Razak’s smile on his lips, but it was in his eyes, wicked and full of satisfaction.
He’d won this game, just like he’d won the Court of Love too. Somehow, he had War’s crown. Somehow… But there was no way he could have removed the crown from the palace. He didn’t have it with him now. Regardless, he knew it was safe, knew it was his, and that was enough.
“Arrest them,” Ogden ordered, arriving now to see his own plan to ambush us slam into place. The king pointed his axe, directing a wave of warriors toward us.
I turned my back on War and its warriors.
The enormous gates began to rumble closed. Once they were sealed shut, there would be no escape. Razak had known that.
He’d told me to leave.
