“It’s not funny!”
“I’m not laughing at you, Raina. It’s amusing how similar you and your father are. That’s all.”
He’s not wrong. I take after my father in a lot of ways.
“If you really have to go, I guess I can deal with it. Promise me you’ll call?”
“As often as I can.”
He’d gotten pretty adept at using the satellite phones. Signal remains spotty though. We rely on stolen walkie-talkies for short-distance communication because they’re more reliable.
I suck it up and say, “Since you’re leaving, um…Saskaya wants you to meet up with Lorcan.”
Anger flares within me. I’m so mad at him for not going straight to the castle.
“I could do that.”
Tovian tries to hide it, but I can see how much he likes that idea. He wants to get a read on Lorcan without me there to act as a buffer.
“Why don’t I go with you?” I blurt out. Something about the prospect of the two men together without me makes my anxiety spike.
“You’re safer here.” Tovian kisses my forehead. “You have important work to do. Leave the field of battle to those of us who are trained to fight.”
“I am trained! Lorcan trained me himself!”
“I know. But you’re still a princess on the cusp of queendom. You’re needed here.”
I hate that he’s right. I hate everything about this miserable war.
“I’ll set out tomorrow. Okay, Sunshine?”
“Fine.” I’m being totally ungracious about it. He’s right, though. I fling both arms around his waist, awkwardly since we were still sitting side-by-side, and bury my face in his shoulder. Breathing him in. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you, too.” He dropped a kiss on my head. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
A lie. It would be months before I saw him again.
January
Chapter 19
“You have a death wish, my friend.”
Lorcan chuckles mirthlessly.
I don’t know what to make of him. I’m trying really hard to go back to what we were before. Close friends, fighting on the same team—minus my idiotic crush. Maybe his memories will come back if I keep acting like nothing is wrong.
He’s reporting in after he blew up an entire village in Central Auralia that had been overrun by pirates. Male citizens who resisted were killed. Female resisters were either killed or taken captive.
The women who died got off easy. The captives were chained to beds and repeatedly raped, for months. I close my eyes, thinking of Orisa. She went through the same ordeal.
Still, burning people alive, even if they’re the worst people imaginable, isn’t the Lorcan I knew and loved. I’m trying to conceal my shock. He’s hardened. Talking to him is difficult. I keep trying to make him remember Zosia. He gets pissy the instant I start pushing.
So right now, I don’t.
“Where am I meeting your boyfriend?” Lorcan’s abrupt change of subject tells me I’d pressed a raw nerve again. He’s a walking exposed wound.
“Near Apara Bayne.” Bayne means village. Apara means peaceful in Auralian. There used to be a pretty temple to the Sun Goddess there, but it was ransacked and stripped of its gold. After terrorizing the inhabitants and stealing everything of value, they set it on fire and left. It’s the same story across all of Auralia. The invaders have overtaken a number of towns and villages, using them as bases from which they conduct raids. Only Canavale remains relatively independent.
