Blood Heir (Blood Heir Trilogy, #1)(105)

“As do I.” Ana snatched his left wrist, where she’d seen the tattoo of that curled stem, those three small flowers. Ramson flinched. Her gaze cut to his. “I know you were working with Kerlan. I know he sent you to kill my brother. So tell me why I shouldn’t throw you back into the river right now.” She was shaking, her limbs growing numb from the cold. She needed to move—but she also needed to know.

Despite the fact that he was shivering as well, Ramson managed a half smile. “Because I’d just swim back out again?” Ramson twisted his hand, trapping hers in his grip. His eyes flicked to hers, hesitant but hopeful, water clinging to his lashes. “I know I’ve made some terrible choices in my past, Ana. I fell in with the wrong people. I’ve been running in the wrong direction ever since.” He swallowed, his throat bobbing, and traced a thumb over the inside of her wrist. “But then I met a girl who told me that it is our choices that define us. And I…I want to make the right choice. If it’s not too late.”

She had no idea what to say to that. No idea whether she was falling for some new trap he’d planted for her. She thought she’d seen a glimpse of the boy Ramson had once been, standing there beneath the first snows of winter with her—but perhaps that had been a lie, too.

Ana snatched her hand back and pushed herself to her feet. The river had borne them quite a ways. In the distance, the torches of the Kateryanna Bridge shimmered like forgotten stars. She could barely make out people gathered on the bridge, smaller than the size of her fingernails. She was glad for the walls of the Palace, looming over them and obscuring them in shadow. “I need to go, Ramson.”



“Then I’ll go with you.”

“No,” Ana said, already moving forward one step at a time. The cold dragged at her. Her gown was weighed down with water that would soon become ice in these conditions.

“Ana. Kolst Pryntsessa,” Ramson corrected, and his hand caught hers. He stepped in front of her. All traces of mirth were gone from his face when he said, “I didn’t come back for a princess. I came for the girl I met in a high-security prison. Who jumped down a waterfall with me. Who fought by my side for the past few weeks.” He reached out, and she held as still as she could when he cupped a hand to her cheek. “The girl who’s not afraid to stand up to me. Who threatens to choke me with my own blood. The girl who’s so much stronger than most people I know, but hides both her smiles and tears for when no one else is around.”

“Then tell me this.” She lifted her gaze. “Would you have killed Luka if you’d had the chance?”

He hesitated. Water trickled from his hair, threading a path down his neck. “I don’t know.”

Ana pulled away. He’d saved her—she owed him her life. But did that make up for whatever crimes he’d committed before?

Your choices, Luka whispered, and she suddenly saw herself reflected in Ramson’s clouded hazel eyes. She had killed; she had tortured—and yet didn’t she still want another chance? Didn’t she still wish, resolutely, desperately, that above all the crimes she had committed and the people she had killed, her choices would define who she was?



Her mind was a whirl of emotions, of indecision. But the cold pressed at her, and time seeped through her fingers. The Coronation would start soon. She had to move. She had to make a choice.

“A friend told me that there is good and bad in everything,” Ana found herself saying. “It is the good that’s worth saving. I hope you have enough of that left in you, Ramson.”

She heard him exhale as she turned away. Ana tilted her head back, judging the distance from the Kateryanna Bridge to where they stood. Behind them, the Syvern Taiga rose, a dark outline blotting out the stars.

She knew where she was. “There’s a passageway to the dungeons up ahead,” Ana said quietly.

Ramson shook his head. “It’ll be locked. Trust me, I’ve studied the Salskoff Palace extensively.”

“Not this one.” Her breath frosted in the air as she waded through the snow. They were at the bottom of the riverbank, the Tiger’s Tail so close that one slip would send them back to the clutches of the terrifying waters. The bank sloped steeply upward to the edge of the Palace wall. Ana thanked the Deities that they were far enough to be hidden from view from the archers who would shoot anyone who approached the walls.

The cold weighed her down, robbed her of breath. Her hair, her gown, her skirts, and her shoes dripped water, and she was shivering so hard that talking felt impossible.

Ramson seemed to realize the danger they were in as well. Too long in the cold, drenched with icy river water, and their body temperatures could plummet below functional levels. His tone was devoid of its usual humor when he spoke next. “How far are we?”



“Almost,” she whispered. And—there. She spotted it, that thin crack along the Palace wall, large enough to be noticeable from this distance, but innocuous-looking. Someone had made it a long time ago.

Which meant…her passageway was…

Right here.

Ana crouched, running her fingers along the edge of the riverbank. And, surely enough, hovering just above the frothing waters was a hole, half-submerged in the Tiger’s Tail.

“Genius,” Ramson said. He was on his knees, peering at the tunnel entrance. “Whoever designed this escape route held the Imperial family’s swimming skills in high esteem.”