Chapter 12

Soren peered over the top of the parapet at the shimmer of moonlight on the Celestine Lake's black waters. The pier in the distance was marked by lit lanterns interspersed along its length. Gas lamps that had been destroyed during the attack last summer had been replaced, as had the pier that acted as the main dock for the Warden's Island. Submersibles had sunk the steamboat used to ferry wardens and tithes across the poisonous waters. The wardens didn't have a functioning dry dock to begin a rebuild, but the Tovan Isles had sent a replacement at the tail end of winter, along with their yearly tithe quota.

The new steamboat was anchored on the opposite shore, manned by a full crew of wardens and automatons. Soren had wanted to board that steamboat every day since its arrival, but he hadn't stepped foot off the Warden's Island since his return, bound by Delani's order to remain. Presently, he'd found no way off the island save one. Caris' offer was a chance for Soren to leave the place that had made him into the man he was to become someone he'd left by the wayside in some other life.

All he had to do was give up everything he was.

"You're not on wall duty this month," Delani said from behind him, drawing Soren out of his thoughts.

"I wanted to clear my head. Am I allowed to do that?"

Delani came to stand next to him, resting her hands against the stone wall. The breeze blowing down the Eastern Spine was cool but not freezing, a hint of summer yet to come. "You aren't a prisoner."

"You haven't let me off the island in months."

"I have my reasons."

"Yes, one in particular won't leave me alone."

Caris had tried to meet with him every day for the past week, politely persistent in a way he'd never known royalty to be. She was doggedly determined to change his mind, believing he was the answer to whatever prayers she'd given up to the star gods. He didn't know how to tell her that he didn't—couldn't—want what she was offering but that some part of him wanted to take the way out just to see someplace that wasn't here.

He missed the Southern Plains and the desert.

He missed Vanya.

"You haven't been by to speak with me," Delani said after a long moment where the only sound between them was that of a passing automaton below on the outside of the fort's wall.

"I needed to think."

"About Caris' offer?" Soren pressed his lips together, refusing to look at her. Delani drummed her fingers against the stone. "She thinks you're her brother."

He grimaced. "I am aware."

"I think she's right."

Soren jerked, staring at Delani, but the governor wasn't looking at him. Her head was tipped back, one good eye on the stars that burned clarion crystal bright high above in the clear night sky. "Why?"

"Besides the obvious physical similarities?"

"I'm sure if you looked hard enough, you could find someone else who has the same eyes as she does."

"You're the right age to be the lost prince. You look like her more than you do Eimarille, though I'm sure if the three of you ever stood in the same room, an argument could be made for family."

"I'm not Ashionen. I'm not Rourke. I'm a warden."

"Yes, we made you that way. And as Ksenia has seen fit to remind me, we can't unmake you."

He'd spent years and years in and out of the laboratories buried beneath the fort, taking potions and being injected with chemicals, learning to tolerate poisons and toxins bit by bit until they couldn't kill him. He'd trained in weapons and alchemy, learning the science to keep records on the poison fields, all while being taught how to fight against revenants and survive a horde. He had scars from a life lived on the road, guarding his assigned borders, existing in places few others trekked, the rest of society preferring the safety found behind city walls to the wide-open spaces of Maricol.

He was a warden. He didn't know how to be anything else.

And yet.

"You don't need to unmake me," he said quietly.

"I wouldn't even if we had the ability to do so." Delani tipped her head back down, turning to face him full-on so she could see him with her good eye. "You haven't earned a banishment."

Others had, over the centuries. Wardens who'd used their skills to torment the living, dealt with by their brethren accordingly, had lost the right to be a warden when they'd lost their lives at the end of a judgment issued by whoever held the rank of governor.

Only one warden in recent memory had been banished, though for a time, everyone had assumed Olet was dead. But with the knowledge that rionetkas were warden-made—that it was one of their own's work destabilizing governments on Eimarille's orders—it meant they could not ignore the fallout. Not forever. And Olet had a kill order out on him now for the crimes he had committed as the Klovod.

Wardens were meant to be neutral, to favor no country above another. Even though they'd pulled out of Daijal and Urova, Soren knew he wasn't the only one who regretted the unmanned poison fields. Most citizens weren't responsible for their rulers' decisions, but they suffered from it just the same.

"You want to leave. You want a border again," Delanie said.

Soren licked his dry lips. "I do."

"You guarded Solaria for all the years you've been an active warden. After everything that happened there, I can't send you back."

His heart sank, that sliver of hope he'd been clinging to slipping away. "Then where would you send me?"

He knew before she even spoke, steeling himself for a road away from where his heart lay. "Ashion."

"As a warden or as a prince?" The question came out tight, the words like poison in his mouth.

Delani leaned her weight against the wall, never looking away from his face. "There are no records of where you came from. Whether you were royalty or not, if you becoming a prince could help stop this war, would you do it?"

"Ashion isn't my country."

"Our duty is to all of Maricol's countries."

"Caris wants me to be her heir. To put Ashion first above all others. That's not our way."

"Let it be, for now. If Ashion falls, we'll have Daijal at our shore, and for all our expertise in the poison fields, we are not soldiers. We do not have the capacity to stand against an army."

"And what about after, if they win? If everyone knows or believes I'm this person? How does that reflect on us wardens?"

"Badly," Delani said with an honesty that ached. "The missing records won't help our arguments that we governors and archivists didn't know what you were when you were delivered as a tithe. But you can help set things right."

"By giving up my road."

"We have enough problems with Olet's actions where the rionetkas are concerned, and we've lost nearly an entire generation of tithes from the attack last summer. The coming years won't be easy for wardens in the poison fields, and that's if Daijal doesn't win the war. If Eimarille succeeds, I fear we face a subjugation far worse than the debt slaves they hold."

Soren stared at Delani for a moment before turning to look back at the shadowed waters of the Celestine Lake and the moonlight reflected there. The quiet of the land around them was broken by the night noises of the fort and the automatons on guard duty. He closed his eyes and remembered what it had been like in that quarry, with its death-defying machine and imprisoned debt slaves, freedom taken from him. He could so easily see his fellow wardens in the same or worse predicament.

He opened his eyes, wondering if this was the road Callisto had wanted him to walk—a broken, empty life where he belonged nowhere, nameless and starless no matter where he stood. "If I go north to pretend to be this prince, would you take me back when this is all over?"

Delani's silence was answer enough, her single eye unblinking as she stared at him. Soren laughed raggedly, dragging a hand through his hair. He would have turned away if she hadn't gripped his shoulder, keeping him close. "We can't unmake you, but to claim you as a warden puts us all at risk."

"That sounds like banishment to me," he bit out. "A warden in all but name."

She smiled a crooked little smile that wasn't meant to comfort. "We must abide by the Poison Accords. Doing so keeps the peace."

"There is no peace in Maricol right now."

"If Ashion wins the war, there will be." Delani let him go, taking a step back. "Do you have any desire to take the starfire throne?"

He recoiled at the question. "No."

She nodded. "Good. Keep that mindset. Wardens aren't meant to rule."

"You would call me anything but a warden."

"I can't fix the mistakes of my predecessors, but I can guard our future. That is what we do as wardens. That is what I am asking you to do. You wanted a border. This is the one I'm giving you."

A future for wardens that had no place for him but where they would still exist, free from the control of any country. Soren didn't know how to be a prince, didn't know how to be anything but a warden, and wardens had been created with one goal in mind: to guard a border, a country, a world against the threat of revenants and the spread of poison fields.

They had a duty, and Delani must have known he would abide by it.

Soren's chest tightened with the desire to scream, but it would change nothing. "I'll see to it."

Delani nodded slowly. "I'll let Caris know. Pack your things for a morning departure."

He walked away from her, and she didn't try to hold him back, his anger and grief a weight on his shoulders that made him want to drag his feet all the way back to the barracks. Soren shut himself away in that small room, staring blankly at the walls of a building he knew he'd never see again after this, not as he had been. Delani wanted him to guard the wardens by becoming someone else, but the only way he'd ever known how to guard anything was as a warden.

"Is this what you wanted from me, Callisto?" Soren asked into the quiet.

It wasn't a prayer, wasn't a cry for help, and maybe if it was, the Dawn Star might have answered. But the star god who had led him to the Warden's Island so very long ago wasn't there to guide him off it when the sun rose. While Caris and Delani would have him act the prince, in the morning, when he boarded the E'ridian airship, he did so as the man he'd always been, wearing the uniform of a people he could no longer claim but who he'd do anything to keep safe.

"I'll be your heir, but I won't be your dead prince," he said on the decking as crew members bustled around them for the launch. "My name is Soren."

Caris held out her hand, chin tilted up, a stubborn look in her gray eyes. "Whatever name you go by, you'll still be my brother."

He didn't know about that, but for the wardens, Soren would try.