Nesryn knew it wasn’t polite to squeeze a prince’s arms so hard the bone was likely to break. But she did so anyway as Kadara spread her shining golden wings and leaped out.
Leaped down.
Her stomach shot straight up her throat. Her eyes watered and blurred.
Wind tore at her, trying to rip her from that saddle, and she clenched with her thighs so tightly they ached, while she gripped Sartaq’s arms, holding the reins, so hard he chuckled in her ear.
But the pale buildings of Antica loomed up, near-blue in the early dawn, rushing to meet them as Kadara dove and dove, a star falling from the heavens—
Then flared those wings wide and shot upward.
Nesryn was glad she had forgone breakfast. For surely it would have come spewing out of her mouth at what the motion did to her stomach.
Within the span of a few beats, Kadara banked right—toward the horizon just turning pink.
The sprawl of Antica spread before them, smaller and smaller as they rose into the skies. Until it was no more than a cobblestoned road beneath them, spreading into every direction. Until she could spy the olive groves and wheat fields just outside the city. The country estates and small towns speckled about. The rippling dunes of the northern desert to her left. The sparkling, snaking band of rivers turning golden in the rising sun that crested over the mountains to her right.
Sartaq did not speak. Did not point out landmarks. Not even the pale line of the Sister-Road that ran toward the southern horizon.
No, in the rising light, he let Kadara have her head. The ruk took them floating higher still, the air turning crisp—the awakening blue sky brightening with each mighty flap of her wings.
Open. So open.
Not at all like the endless sea, the tedious waves and cramped ship.
This was … this was breath. This was …
She could not look fast enough, drink it all in. How small everything was, how lovely and pristine. A land claimed by a conquering nation, yet loved and nurtured.
Her land. Her home.
The sun and the scrub and the undulating grasslands that beckoned in the distance. The lush jungles and rice fields to the west; the pale sand dunes of the desert to the northeast. More than she could see in a lifetime—farther than Kadara could fly in a single day. An entire world, this land. The entire world contained here.
She could not understand why her father had left.
Why he had stayed, when such darkness had crept into Adarlan. Why he had kept them in that festering city where she so rarely looked up at the sky, or felt a breeze that did not reek of the briny Avery or the rubbish rotting in the streets.
“You are quiet,” the prince said, and it was more question than statement.
Nesryn admitted in Halha, “I don’t have words to describe it.”
She felt Sartaq smile near her shoulder. “That was what I felt—that first ride. And every ride since.”
“I understand why you stayed at the camp those years ago. Why you are eager to return.”
A beat of quiet. “Am I so easy to read?”
“How could you not wish to return?”
“Some consider my father’s palace to be the finest in the world.”
“It is.”
His silence was question enough.
“Rifthold’s palace was nothing so fine—so lovely and a part of the land.”
Sartaq hummed, the sound reverberating into her back. Then he said quietly, “The death of my sister has been hard upon my mother. It is for her that I remain.”
Nesryn winced a bit. “I’m so very sorry.”
Only the rushing wind spoke for a time.
Then Sartaq said, “You said was. Regarding Rifthold’s royal palace. Why?”
“You heard what befell it—the glass portions.”
“Ah.” Another beat of quiet. “Shattered by the Queen of Terrasen. Your … ally.”
“My friend.”
He craned his body around hers to peer at her face. “Is she truly?”
“She is a good woman,” Nesryn said, and meant it. “Difficult, yes, but … some might say the same of any royalty.”
“Apparently, she found the former King of Adarlan so difficult that she killed him.”
Careful words.
“The man was a monster—and a threat to all. His Second, Perrington, remains that way. She did Erilea a favor.”
Sartaq angled the reins as Kadara began a slow, steady descent toward a sparkling river valley. “She is truly that powerful?”
Nesryn debated the merits of the truth or downplaying Aelin’s might. “She and Dorian both possess considerable magic. But I would say it is their intelligence that is the stronger weapon. Brute power is useless without it.”
“It’s dangerous without it.”
“Yes,” Nesryn agreed, swallowing. “Are …” She had not been trained in the mazelike way of speaking at court. “Is there such a threat within your court that warranted us needing to speak in the skies?”
He could very well be the threat posed, she reminded herself.
“You have dined with my siblings. You see how they are. If I were to arrange a meeting with you, it would send a message to them. That I am willing to hear your suit—perhaps press it to our father. They would consider the risks and benefits of undermining me. Or whether it would make them look better to try to join … my side.”
“And are you? Willing to hear us out?”
Sartaq didn’t answer for a long moment, only the screaming wind filling the quiet.
“I would listen. To you and Lord Westfall. I would hear what you know, what has happened to you both. I do not hold as much sway with my father as others, but he knows the ruk riders are loyal to me.”
“I thought—”
“That I was his favorite?” A low, bitter laugh. “I perhaps stand a chance at being named Heir, but the khagan does not select his Heir based on whom he loves best. Even so, that particular honor goes to Duva and Kashin.”
Sweet-faced Duva, she could understand, but—“Kashin?”
“He is loyal to my father to a fault. He has never schemed, never backstabbed. I’ve done it—plotted and maneuvered against them all to get what I want. But Kashin … He may command the land armies and the horse-lords, he may be brutal when required, but with my father, he is guileless. There has never been a more loving or loyal son. When our father dies … I worry. What the others will do to Kashin if he does not submit, or worse: what his death will do to Kashin himself.”
She dared ask, “What would you do to him?” Destroy him, if he will not swear fealty?
“It remains to be seen what sort of threat or alliance he could pose. Only Duva and Arghun are married, and Arghun has yet to sire offspring. Though Kashin, if he has his way, would likely sweep that young healer off her feet.”
Yrene. “Strange that she has no interest in him.”
“A mark in her favor.
It is not easy to love a khagan’s offspring.”
The green grasses, still dewy beneath the fresh sun, rippled as Kadara swept toward a swift-moving river. With those enormous talons of hers, she could easily snatch up fistfuls of fish.
But it was not the prey Kadara sought as she flew over the river, seeking something—
“Someone broke into the Torre’s library last night,” Sartaq said as he monitored the ruk’s hunt over the dark blue waters. Mist off the surface kissed Nesryn’s face, but the chill at his words went far deeper. “They killed a healer—through some vile power that rendered her into a husk. We have never seen its like in Antica.”
Nesryn’s stomach turned over. With that description—“Who? Why?”
“Yrene Towers sounded the alarm. We searched for hours and found no trace, beyond missing books from where she had been studying, and where it stalked her. Yrene was rattled, but fine.”
Researching—Chaol had informed her last night that Yrene had planned to do some research regarding wounds from magic, from demons.
Sartaq asked casually, “Do you know what Yrene might have been looking into that posed such dark interest and theft of her books?”
Nesryn considered. It could be a trick—his revealing something personal from his family, his life, to lull her into telling him secrets. Nesryn and Chaol had not yielded any information of the keys, the Valg, or Erawan to the khagan or his children. They had been waiting to do so—to assess whom to trust. For if their enemies heard that they were hunting for the keys to seal the Wyrdgate …
“No,” she lied. “But perhaps they are unannounced enemies of ours who wish to scare her and the other healers out of helping the captain. I mean—Lord Westfall.”
Silence. She thought he’d push her on it, waited for it as Kadara skimmed closer to the river’s surface, as if closing in on some prey. “It must be strange, to bear a new title, with the former owner right beside you.”
“I was only captain for a few weeks before we left. I suppose I shall have to learn when I return.”
“If Yrene is successful. Among other possible victories.”
Like bringing that army with them.
“Yes,” was all she managed to say.