Chapter Forty-Five

Voices drifted through my dreams like leaves caught on a current—whirling through the ebbs and eddies and spinning through the sediments.

“… move her here …”

“… will have to wait …”

“… letter sent …”

Though the words carried only a vague thrum of meaning, I let myself bob between the bumblings and babblings like a boat, falling between the slips and swells of—

“The ship arrives tomorrow.” The words cut sharp against my brain.

“About time.” A second speaker. Something creaked. “It would have been easier to use a merchant’s ship.”

I knew I should listen, knew this conversation was important, but the scent of sugar and strawberries burned hot against my throat and threatened to drag me down, down, down—

“Too risky,” the first speaker said.

I kicked toward the voices.

“We could have kept him quiet.” The second.

“Hmm maybe.” A scrape. A shuffle. “But King Wilhelm will be disappointed if something happens to his new weapon. Better to be safe. Are we sure he’ll show?”

“For her?” A warm hand brushed my cheek and looped a strand of hair behind my ear. “He’ll show.”

I tried to open my eyes, but it was like someone had glued my lashes shut.

“She’s waking.”

“We’re not ready. Dose her again. Stefan? Stefan!”

Another scrape. Another shuffle. And boots, heavy and measured across the floor.

Hands on my shoulder. Breath on my cheek. “Shh, Isy. It will be easier if you don’t fight.”

The glug of a bottle. My head lifted.

No, no, no. I tried to fight it, tried to wiggle free. Stefan.

Stefan!

The wet rag was shoved under my nose. Again, the scent of strawberries and sugar.

Darkness came quickly this time.

Water dripped, slow and rhythmic, pattered like paint on a page. My cheek pressed against something gritty and hard, my limbs heavy as if someone had pumped them full of salt.

Drip…drip…drip…

I went to pull my knees to my chest and stopped. If I moved, would they dose me with s?ven again? Maybe. Probably. I needed to stay as still as possible until the full effect of the drug wore off, then I could try to escape.

I let my head fall to the ground.

There was something…something… What was it? Something about a weapon, a rendezvous and—

“I know you’re awake.” The voice came from in front of me. “It’s fine. You can open your eyes. We’re not drugging you again.”

I cracked them, just enough to make out the rolling shape of the world, the barbed spike of rock, a roof of solid stone, and Stefan, crouched next to me, his face grim, cravat tied around his upper arm.

Not a cravat.

An armband.

A red armband.

Just like the one the bandits wore.

He offered a bowl of yogurt marbled with a deep purple jam. “Eat. And when you’re up for it, there’s a basin for washing. No baths, but we sponged you off. I had Katrina bring a change of clothes.”

Moonlight filtered in through the cave’s jagged entrance, leaching the color from the meadow and setting it in shades of silver. Cold air pushed through the opening, damp with dirt. A few men stood watch, their backs to us.

“Why are you doing this?” I said, letting my cheek fall against the grit. My mouth throbbed like someone had shoved cotton against my teeth.

“You’re still my friend,” Stefan said. “You’re just confused.”

“I stabbed you.”

“Eat.”

“Is it poison?”

“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. You’ve been asleep for almost three days.”

You’ve been asleep. The way he said it—so calm, so casual—like he hadn’t been the one to drug and kidnap me.

But he was talking, and maybe I could get answers.

I pushed myself up and swirled the spoon through the yogurt curdles. Grit stuck to my palms. My ear ached. “I know what you were doing,” I said. “To the king. Were you trying to kill him or just drive him mad?”

Stefan’s brow rose. “Christian made a good soldier but a bad king. We were doing you a favor.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“The goal was to kill him. Eventually. The Hyllestad Treaty prohibits us from interfering with the Sanokes’ independence, so an outright murder would look suspicious. Better to let Christian devolve into madness and wait for the ensuing succession crisis.” He must have read my expression because he added, “The Sanokes aren’t really equipped to govern themselves. Better to let us do it for you.”

“Us?”

“Larland.”

“So Larland was trying to retake the Sanokes?”

I took his silence as a yes.

“Why?” My lips stuck to my teeth.

He shrugged. “I don’t know, Isy. Why do kings like pretty things?” He got up and came back with his own bowl of yogurt, sat across from me, and swirled the spoon through the berry jam. “To tell you the truth, I don’t understand the fixation. But I can tell you that everyone wants these islands—Gormark, Nysklland…even little Forelsket, though I don’t know how they’d manage.”

Everyone wanted us? But why? We were—

I let my head tip back and stared at the ceiling, glittering mica, and suppressed a laugh.

Of course.

It’s what drew in the whalers and the wanderers, the same thing that caused us to be conquered and owned, passed like rubies in dowries. It’s why the sound looped backward when we screamed off the bluffs.

The islands had a pulse, a pull, a thrall of their own. Just like the Lover’s Boxes.

I set the yogurt aside—too thick and sour—and went to the washbasin, a ceramic bowl perched on a rock. A folded pair of clothes sat beside it, one of Katrina’s skirts and a pale pink sweater with a mock neck and sleeves that ballooned at the wrists like teardrops.

I let my fingers trace along the knitting of the sleeve. I’d always teased her about stealing this one because it had been my favorite. It was her favorite, too, and I wanted to hate her, should hate her. After all, she’d drugged me, betrayed me.

But…

Katrina.

Katrina, who snuck out, stole candies, who screamed off the bluffs. Katrina, who was all smiles and secrets and summer. And she’d brought me her favorite sweater.

A part of me—and not a small part—wanted to know where she’d gone after drugging me, but if I took the conversation in that direction, I might never get answers about the Sanokes.

I pulled my hair back, brushed my bangs aside, and dipped my fingers into the cold water.

“The string of disasters—the sick guards, the torched grain ships. That was your doing?”

Stefan’s lips pulled into a line. “Not mine, exactly.”

“But Larland’s?”

Another pause. Another yes.

“Because you wanted to rule us?”

More silence. He wasn’t going to feed me answers, but fine. He had a habit of correcting me when I was wrong, so I’d keep forging ahead until he stopped me.

“When Erik and I were traveling around the island,” I continued. “We were attacked by people wearing armbands like yours. Also Larland?”

Stefan sighed and set the bowl down with a clank . “When Volgaard showed up, we knew nothing about them except for their stated intent to wage war. We needed to learn who— what —they were, how they reacted under pressure. They were planning to attack us . We’re the victims.”

“Was Larland ever planning to send aid? Or were the letters just a farce?”

More silence. A farce, then.

“Are you going to explain that?”

He held up his hands. “What is there to explain? We needed help, and the letters were a way to get that.”

“You planted them?”

His lips pulled back from his teeth. “I…placed them where I thought you might find them.”

“With Hans’s things?”

No response. Of course.

My hands rippled beneath the water’s surface, sharp and clear. I took a breath. “Hans?”

“What about him?”

Wind whistled. A leaf floated across the water.

Drip…drip…drip…

The cave walls caught the light, fragmented it like veins or tangled roots, and I was rising, floating and I didn’t want to know.

I needed to know.

“You killed him.”

The fall of a knife.

I’d meant the ‘you’ generally. You, as in Larland, the others with the red armbands, not Stefan, but a slow smile spread across his face and I knew— knew —by the curve of his mouth, by the gleam in his eye, that it hadn’t been Larland in the vague sense of the term.

It had been him.

“You know,” he said, reclining. “You’re smarter than I thought. You’d make a good asset.”

That was it? That was all he was going to say? Skim past it like he had with the rest of the questions, act like he hadn’t shattered my world, torn my sky, like he hadn’t tried to comfort me .

“Tell me about Hans,” I said, the words were a clog, a choke.

The leaf spun, the edges curling in on itself, the center dissolving into a lattice of spider webs, dark as veins. Water continued to drip…drip…drip…

“It was his own fault,” Stefan said. “You know that, right?”

I pressed a palm to my forehead. “It can’t be.”

“Oh, Isabel, it could. And it very much was.” He got up. Crossed the room. Placed a hand on my elbow. His brows pinched. Mock pity, mock concern. “It didn’t have to end that way.”

I kept my hands plunged in the water, the freezing cold pricking my palms, reddening my knuckles, and maybe if I focused on the cold—

“Explain.”

“He liked to open letters. Bad habit. We tried to avoid sending messages through the regular post because of it. When the Volds showed up, the next information drop wasn’t scheduled for over a week. So, I sent a letter. Hans found it, confronted me, and… It was his own fault. If he hadn’t opened the letter, if he hadn’t threatened me, I wouldn’t have had to—”

My vision flashed and suddenly, I was on top of Stefan, clawing at his eyes, his throat.

His knee came up between us, trying to wedge me up and away.

“Isy,” he grunted. “I didn’t— It’s not—”

Tears blurred my vision. Metal tanged my mouth, and it didn’t matter because I’d kill him, I’d kill him.

Guards rushed inside. Hands on my waist and I was lifted away, shoved against the ground. A hand pinned my face. Fingers tangled my hair. Skin scraped stone. A bottle glugged .

“Leave her,” Stefan barked. He towered over me, an angel, a god. His shirt hung open, torn at the neck, exposing the column of his throat. His shoulders heaved. “We need her awake.”

Blood trickled from his nose. He swiped it with the back of his hand. “You should know he died like a coward. Begging for his life.”