“What are you doing here?” she asked Coup.
He wore gloves and unzipped riding leathers over a gray shirt, as if they’d been thrown on in haste. His dark hair was a tangled nest and his eyes were puffy.
Coup’s hands roamed her arms. “You’re not hurt?”
Kel shook her head, ignoring the aches shooting through her. “No—what happened?”
Coup rubbed his neck. “I couldn’t sleep, so I threw on my gear to check on Savita. But she wasn’t in her aviary. I was worried they’d done something to her—then I came to check onyou, but the fucking hospital receptionist wouldn’t let me inside. Even in the middle of the night, he’d never stopped me from visiting before. Iknewsomething was wrong. So, I shoved past him and saw your empty bed. The receptionist called security, and I ran.”
Coup wrung his hands and glanced behind Kel to the white door. “I was on my way to wake up the rest of the team when two of Cristo’s goons grabbed me and threw me in here.”
“Did they hurt you?” Kel demanded.
She was caught in a flurry—thoughts scattered, taking one step forward for every two back. If they hurt Coup…
Coup reached forward and tucked a strand of matted hair behind her ear. “I’m all right, tamer. Are you?” He gestured around the pearly, windowless cell. “Why the hell are we locked in here?”
Kel looked back at the door; there was no sound from the other side.
She let out a shaky breath. “You might want to sit down.”
Huddled together in Cristo’s prison, Kel told Coup everything she’d discovered. About Cristo trying to induce Savita’s rebirth, about his failed—and successful—experiments, and what he was planning on doing to Savita…
Coup frowned. “What could he possibly want with a phoenix’s magic? Immortality, rebirths, fire—that kind of power doesn’t belong to us. What could be worth…”
Coup shook his head. Kel knew what he hadn’t been able to voice.
There wasnothingworth killing phoenixes for. No one knew how Saltan creatures tended the land, but if the Alchemists’ teachings had made one thing clear, it was that the creatures and islands shared a skeleton. You couldn’t destroy one without destroying the other.
Kel wanted to move, to break things, to blaze. She couldn’t lose Savita. Shecouldn’t.
Coup huffed. “How long are they going to keep us here?”
Kel wrapped her arms around her knees. “Cristo made it clear that he didn’t want to risk me interfering with Savita’s rebirth. He won’t let us out until she’s…”
Coup removed his gloves and placed a hand on Kel’s jittering knee. “We need a distraction,” he said, because he couldn’t offer any reassurances.
She needed to think of something—anything—but Savita. “Like what?”
Coup shifted to trace the valleys of her knuckles, the scars across her hands. Identical to his own. “How do I convince Bekn to leave this damn island?”
Kel’s brows rose. “That’s your distraction? You want to trade one unsolvable task for another?”
Coup slid his other arm around Kel, and she leaned into his warmth. “Well, I doubt that guessing about the weather will provide much of a distraction.”
His hand traced circles on her knee. It did little to soothe the vibrating in her bones, begging tomove. She tried to focus on the heat building beneath his touch. “Why do you want Bekn to leave?”
Coup gave her a pointed look. “You know as well as I do that Bekn isn’t built for Cendor. He could thrive somewhere like Ascira. I know he still wants to leave, too. Buy him three shots of bloodgin at The Ferret and it’s all he talks about. It’s the reason none of his relationships ever last longer than a few months. But he’s too stubborn.”
Kel placed her shaking hand over his. “He’s not going anywhere, Coup. Whether he’s on Cendor, or the furthest reaches of Salta—he’s going to be okay.”
She couldn’t tell him that he was overreacting—not when AB had stolen his mother away. Nobody was safe from AB—not Coup, or Bekn, or any of the Howlers. Loss didn’t follow any maps; it wove through joy and pain and years as easily as lightning through a storm. No one knew where it was going to strike—only that it would.
“If—when—Bekn leaves,” Kel continued, “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me.”
Coup twined their fingers together. “That’s a funny coincidence, because you’re stuck with me, too.”
Despite everything, despiteSavita, Kel’s lips hitched up. “Even if we’re trapped in here for the next fifty years?”
