“Yes.”
Lorcan produced a pair of binoculars and laid stomach-down on the cliff, glasses pointed at the largest rocky outcropping in the shoals off the shore of Auralia. Keryn and I crouched down. I placed my small day pack aside.
Tovian pointed to the opposite rise.
“I’ll go first. We’re close enough to the water that they could hit us with a machine gun. Watch what I do.”
Tovian slid down the rock face in a scuff of dust. No reaction from the pirates. Lorcan scanned the atoll below with a pair of binoculars. Keryn had theirs out, too.
“Raina will never forgive us if she’s widowed,” I muttered, eyeing the tiny figures moving around on the island below.
“He knows what he’s doing,” Lorcan said. A second later, he dropped his binoculars and made the same birdlike whistle. Tovian stopped—and disappeared.
I blinked. There was nothing on the dark rocks except a bleached skull and the carcass of a long-dead animal. Bits of hair, scattered bones.
Lorcan whistled again. Tovian moved. Like magic, he became visible again.
“Amazing,” I said breathlessly. “The handprints break up his outline. The dark parts blend with the rocks so all you see is the lighter markings.”
“When the Ansi don’t want to be seen, they’re impossible to spot.” Lorcan tucked his binoculars away and said to Keryn, “Ready, Leader?”
“Aye, I’ll show you how it’s done.” They scrambled down the ravine, kicking rocks everywhere. A whistle from the other side. Keryn froze. Again, I blinked, trying to pick out their form. Again, I failed.
Lorcan rubbed my arm. “Enjoying this?”
“I know this is serious work, but it’s also so much fun. I never got to go on adventures. Only that one summer trip to Mount Astra with you.” I prodded his chest with one finger. “You’ve been running around Auralia like this since you were twelve?”
He shrugged. “When I wasn’t training, which was a lot of the time.”
“Not fair. Not remotely fair.”
Lifting my hand, he kissed the back and said, “It’s past time you got out of your castle and saw the country you’re meant to rule, Princess.”
Which I can do, for a while, thanks to him. Could continue to do, if I kept him around after our agreed-upon end date.
Not so much agreed, as decreed. We’ve come a long way toward reconciling, since then.
Releasing me, he made a different whistle. “Your turn. Go slow. Freeze if you hear the signal.”
Even at full health, I wouldn’t have been as strong or as fast as the others. I got signaled twice. Once I was across the exposed section, I kicked and pulled my body up over the steep rise on the other side of the pass, panting hard. Tovian dropped his binoculars and hauled me up over the lip, then tucked me behind an outcropping. Keryn was pulling long metal tubes out of their pack and screwing them together. Lorcan began his journey across the gap. When Tovian whistled, he went still.
Lorcan moved gracefully upon the second signal. Tovian glanced over at me. “Now you know our secrets. Where we live, our alarm dragons, how we move around without being seen.”
“I’ll guard the Ansi people’s secrets with my life.”
Tovian smiled faintly, the only indication he heard me.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Lorcan braced his hands on the edge and hauled himself up easily. Every corded muscle flexed. If my mouth weren’t so dry, I’d be drooling. He caught me openly ogling him and smirked.
I bit my lower lip and dropped my gaze to the ground. Then I made a show of uncapping my water skin and drinking. I offered it to him, thinking about where that mouth had been yesterday afternoon. Wondering when he might do that again.
“Thanks.”
Sparks skittered along my nerves. Lorcan passed it back to me and rummaged in his pack, removing a black drawstring bag.
“What’s this?”
