Abandoning the vessel, she navigated the moonlit jungle on foot, steadily retracing her steps back to her wasp. Occasionally she would hear the drone of aether hearts overhead and duck beneath the tree cover to avoid being spotted by what were most certainly search patrols. Part of her desperately wanted to return to the garrison and demand more answers from the Dominion prince, but another part was . . .
Afraid. It took a few more minutes of stumbling through the undergrowth for her to figure out that she was afraid. What if there was a thorough investigation and it revealed that she wasn’t of Elagbi’s blood, that her resemblance to that woman—Hanan Ivralis—was pure coincidence? After all, the whole thing was too outlandish to believe. She was a bottom-dweller; she was a soldier; she was no one. She was definitely not a long-lost princess.
Was princess even the right term? Elagbi had called her something else. He had called her the Lachis’ka.
The heir to the throne.
Talasyn shivered in the humid breeze. If she was Alunsina Ivralis, that seemed more ominous, somehow.
If they find out, you will be hunted.
Who had told her that? Was she simply mixing up Vela’s warnings about the Lightweave with this startling new revelation? Or had it been the Nenavarene who brought her to Sardovia? Why had they brought her to Sardovia, to Hornbill’s Head, of all places, instead of her mother’s homeland?
So many questions, and not a single answer in sight.
Talasyn found Alaric’s wolf coracle first, at the edge of the jungle, black and sleek against the moss and the leaves. Aside from giving the hull a petulant kick as she passed by, she left well enough alone. Let there be proof that the Night Empire had trespassed on Dominion territory.
Another hour of hiking brought with it the faint beginnings of sunrise and led her to the cave where she’d stashed her wasp, which was now playing host to a gaggle of alarmingly large fruit bats that darted away shrieking at her approach. Once inside her own airship, Talasyn stared at nothing for a good long while as she went over the events and weighed her options. But there really was no question as to what she was supposed to do, was there?
“I have to go,” she said out loud, testing the words on her tongue. She balked at the prospect of leaving without a resolution to the mystery of her past, but the Sardovian Allfold needed her. She had to tell them that there was a traitor in their midst and that the Night Empire was planning . . . something. There was the family she’d wanted to find and there was the family she’d found along the way, and she knew where she had to be right now. She dreaded having to admit her failure to commune with the Light Sever to Vela, but there was no point in returning to the shrine. The Nenavarene were already on high alert.
As the wasp sailed out of the cave and into the dawning skies, Talasyn thought of Elagbi and the unceremonious way that their reunion, if that was what it was, had ended. She wondered if he could see her at this very moment, if she was a comet trailing emerald fumes away from where he stood on the Belian mountain range.
I’ll come back, she vowed. Someday, when the Hurricane Wars were over and she owed nothing more to the bonds that it had formed. I promise.
Day bled into evening and then day again as Talasyn sailed northwest over the Eversea and made landfall in Sardovia. The wintry air was a shock to her system after Nenavar’s muggy tropical heat.
There was more activity in the Wildermarch than was usual for such an early hour. Shipwrights were running checks on the carracks and the large-caliber siege weapons were being oiled and restocked. The distant horizon behind a cluster of outlying buildings glowed a nebula of various colors, which meant that the Enchanters were inspecting the stormship hearts. The air swam with the rustle of feathers as messenger pigeons carried important missives to and fro.
“Tal!” Khaede strode up to her just as she was about to head into the building that housed the offices of the Sardovian War Council. “You’re alive!”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised.”
“It’s far too easy to get a rise out of you, you know,” Khaede remarked with a smirk. It was nice to see her playful, even if it was at Talasyn’s expense. “How was your little trip? See any dragons?”
“No.”
“See anyone, then?” Khaede pressed.
Talasyn lowered her gaze.
“What’s that expression? What’s wrong? It’s all right if you weren’t able to commune with the Light Sever. Honestly, it was a fool’s errand—I always thought that. What matters is that you made it back safely and now you can go on more fool’s errands—”
“It’s not that.” Talasyn stopped walking and Khaede followed suit. “I mean, I wasn’t able to commune with the Light Sever, but that’s only part of it.”
“Well, go on, tell me everything,” Khaede ordered. “But make it quick. The whole base is in an uproar. Not long after you left, we started getting reports of significant Kesathese movement, ironclads amassing on the border and all that. To top it off, Coxswain Darius has vanished; there’s no sign of him anywhere in this entire blasted canyon—”
Talasyn blanched as realization set in. “It’s him,” she blurted out, seeing in her mind’s eye the abject defeat on Darius’s weathered, bearded face. Remembering how his voice had cracked when he spoke of how they were all going to die. “He’s the traitor.”
She told Khaede the whole story as quickly as she could, barely pausing for breath between sentences, not particularly caring that she would have to repeat herself to the Amirante in a few minutes. She wanted her friend to be the first to know everything. At first, Khaede listened stone-faced, nodding in all the right places, but the more that was recounted to her, the further her jaw dropped, until she was outright gaping at Talasyn.
“You’re a princess?”
“Not so loud!” Talasyn hissed. She glanced around to check if anyone had overheard, but the few people that were also outside the officers’ building seemed to be too preoccupied with their own tasks to care about a conversation between two helmsmen. “We don’t know that for sure. And this is very sensitive information, don’t go around shouting it—”
“Well, can you blame me? That was a lot of unexpected news to get in such a short amount of time,” Khaede grumbled. She set off at a brisk pace, past the entryway and down the narrow brick corridors, Talasyn falling into step beside her. “Incidentally, I hope that Darius dies a slow and painful death. May Enlal’s griffins feast on his liver until the Unmaking.”
“I could tell something was wrong with him,” Talasyn muttered over the hollow ache in her chest. “Before I left.”
“Guess that makes you smarter than Vela.” Khaede rapped sharply on the door of the Amirante’s office, flinging it open without waiting for permission to enter. “Darius has defected—again—and Talasyn’s a princess,” she announced as she strode into the room.
“Khaede!” Talasyn scurried over the threshold as Vela blinked at her. “I told you, keep your voice down—”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Your Majesty—”
“Don’t call me that!”