Chapter Forty-Nine

We dragged the rowboat ashore, water sucking at our ankles like a hungry mouth, our faces slick with spray and rain.

My legs wobbled from four days on a ship—three sailing along the coast of Larland and one sailing upriver. Before this, the longest I’d ever been on a boat had been the few hours sailing with Hans and Katrina.

I twisted my hair out of my face and pressed my forehead against the pebble beach. It was cool and grainy, the sweet musk of salt and leaves. I’d stood on riverbanks thousands of times. How had I never noticed that smell?

But that wasn’t the strangest thing.

My body felt wrong, felt empty, like someone had torn a hole from the center of my chest and left me bare. In its place, a throb in the direction of the Sanokes, a vein leading to a heart.

Ba-dum, ba-dum.

Come home, come home.

A pair of boots entered my vision. “When I said I’d make you want to kiss land again, I didn’t mean you actually had to kiss it,” Kaspar said.

I groaned. “You couldn’t pay me to get on another boat.” Except I did want to get on another boat, because I wanted to get back. It wasn’t the frantic want of the Lover’s Box, but a warm want, a gilded want, all gold and satin, like the gentle hand of a mother.

“I have bad news for you about the trip home…” There was a note of humor in his voice. “Here. Let me help you up.”

He pulled me to standing.

The rolling shapes of trees cut through the landscape. Hundreds of them, rough and spiked, barbed like brushes. Pine, maybe? I’d never been so close to them. In the distance, a city twinkled, the lights ribboning the river, set off against the steady browns and hardened grays.

Lillefjord.

The capital of Larland.

Come home, come home, come—

Salborg Castle sat a little higher than the city, bright white and glimmering, a monument. Turrets turned on high spindles, balconies and balustrades swooped over the city, and a domed atrium occupied an entire level. It glowed.

I’d always known Karlsborn Castle had been based on the Salborg one, that the architects had drawn inspiration from its white stone and clock towers. Hans had once said the gold-leaf gilding in the dining hall was a direct replica. But seeing it here, seeing it now, it was like trying to compare a candle to the sun.

Signey lifted my bag out of the boat and tossed it to me. “You said you’d tell us your plan when we got here. Spill.”

Home, home.

I pushed the thought away.

Signey wouldn’t like my plan, so I’d delayed telling her as long as I could. Now, I reached into my bag and pulled out the two laundry smocks—each a pale pink and white poplin that could be cinched at the knees. I tossed one to Signey. “Put this on.”

She stared at the smock, her mouth falling slack. “I’m not putting that on. I’ll look like…like one of you!”

“That’s the point.”

“It’s a dress.”

“So?”

“A short dress.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see you handing dresses to Bo and Kaspar.” A muscle in her jaw ticked. Her eyes went hard as chips. “I’ll look ridiculous.”

“You know what’s more ridiculous? Heading into Salborg Castle dressed like that .” I gestured at her cotton pants and tunic. “And relax. You won’t be wearing it long, anyway.”

A pale brow rose. “Oh?”

“We need guard uniforms, but Karlsborn’s are blue and Salborg’s are different. Probably red. The only way I could think to get guard uniforms is to steal them. Pretending to be with laundry makes the perfect cover for that.”

Hopefully that was enough reason to convince her to cooperate. The alternative was to leave Signey with the men and get the guard uniforms myself, but it would be safer to bring someone who could fight.

Signey stared at the smock. Her brow furrowed. Maybe she wouldn’t do it? Then—

“Alright,” she said.

She stepped behind the boulder and began tugging off her pants and tunic. “What are we going to do with guard uniforms?”

I ducked behind the same boulder and tugged off my sweater. The cool air nipped my skin, made gooseflesh pebble. “Like Sanok, Larland’s prisons are designed to be inescapable. They can only be opened from the inside, and someone has to hold the crank for the portcullis to stay open. We’ll pose as replacement guards, smuggle Erik out, then two of us will stay behind and wait for the next set of guards, who will let us out.”

“You’re going to have Larland’s guards hold the door for their inescapable prison. Clever, Isabel. But you forgot something.”

“What?”

She tossed the soft pink fabric back at me, naked from the waist up. “We don’t need uniforms. I can hold for twenty-eight men.”

I tossed the shift back. “They have syn rót. We can’t rely on reykr.”

She frowned and tugged the shift over her head. “Then what are we supposed to rely on? Kaspar’s swordsmanship?”

Kaspar popped his head over the rock. “I am an excellent swordsman.”

Signey whirled. “It’s a good thing I’m dressed.”

Kaspar grinned. “It’s a good thing I’m in a relationship.”

Bo popped his head over the rock, too. “Really? With who?”

“With you, idiot.”

Signey ground her teeth. “Go away.”

“Can I fix your hair?” I asked, reaching for Signey.

She glared.

“It’s the style,” I continued. “It’s not popular in Larland. You wouldn’t see that on a laundry girl.”

She didn’t move.

“Or a guard.”

“Fine.” She sighed and leaned forward, offering me her head.

I loosened the row of tight braids, let them fall in soft locks across her shoulders, and wiped the kohl from her lids with the back of my sleeve.

When I was finished, I took a step back. She no longer looked like a Vold, hard-edged and stiff. She looked like Katrina, Sofia, or any of the other girls from laundry, younger than her age of twenty-one, blonde hair framing her face, her pale pink smock hitting a few inches above her knee. Her legs glinted in the moonlight.

Her question from earlier still hung in the air: Then what are we supposed to rely on?

I probably looked the same as she did—kind and quiet, a little young. But for a moment, I felt bigger, taller, powerful as one of the pines that stood by the river’s shore.

What are we supposed to rely on?

I straightened.

“Me.”

Salborg castle was a maze of courtyards and clock towers. Gardens spilled roses and peonies, hyacinths as big as my hand. Doors opened to rooms filled with canopied beds and domed ceilings. Chandeliers dazzled and candles burned, perfuming the halls with the faint scents of beeswax, lemon, and thyme.

It took a half hour of creeping around before we found the guardhouse.

There were a couple of places uniforms could be kept, laundry being one. But if laundry girls in Salborg were half as close as laundry girls at Karlsborn, we’d be outed as impostors immediately. The guard house was the other place that might have a surplus of uniforms.

“Signey and I will poke around until we find them,” I told Bo and Kaspar before heading up the moon-beamed steps.

The snores of men echoed down the hallway, plaster walls set with dark wood trim. Wrought-iron sconces threw light over doors.

“Follow my lead and don’t say anything,” I said, skirting around the corner.

“Why can’t I say anything?”

“It’s your accent. It gives you away.”

Signey snorted. “My accent’s fine.”

I pulled open the first door. Guards. Snoring. I shut it. “I didn’t say it wasn’t. It’s just… It’s not Larland.”

“And you can do an accent from Larland?”

I pulled open a second door, this one a closet filled with brooms and buckets and cobweb-encrusted feather dusters. A few daddy long legs scurried away. “Larland’s accent is my accent. It’s the same.”

A third door. A uniform closet. “Help me grab what we need.”

I began shoving the items into my bag: red jackets, white gloves, belts filigreed with Larland’s flayed rose. Footsteps clicked down the hall.

Signey froze.

“Relax,” I said, reaching for another jacket. “We’re dressed like laundry. Laundry would be in here all the time. They shouldn’t question it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

A voice rose through the footsteps, low and male and—

Familiar.

“Never mind,” I said, dropping the guard uniform. “We have to get out of here, we have to—”

It was too late to run. The hall was too long, and he’d see us when he rounded the corner. Instead, I grabbed Signey’s arm and pulled her into the closet.

The latch clicked and the light disappeared, plunging us into the dark. The round lip of a shelf dug into my back.

“What the—”

I clamped a hand over her mouth. “Shh.”

“You said no one would know.”

“ That someone would know.” My words were only a whisper.

Because that voice? Those footsteps.

They belonged to Stefan.