Incendiary (Hollow Crown #1)(130)

He says nothing, doesn’t even try to scream through his gag. He just watches me. I don’t want him to. But I know that if I want answers about Illan and Dez and the weapon, I need to free him.

I cut Castian from the chair with trembling fingers. He rubs his wrists and stares at me with impossibly startled eyes as he rises to his feet. A muscle in his jaw jumps, and I see the moment he searches for the words to thank me but can’t.

“You saved me,” he says skeptically. “Why?”

“You saved me first, I suppose.”

His eyes find me. The furrow returns to his forehead. “You remember?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We have to go.” Castian grabs his knife back, marches across the room, and opens the window. He’s got one foot out, and his hand is extended to me, a lifeline I never thought I’d ever want, or need.

I hesitate, my hatred wrestling with my need to know the truth. He sees it in my face. “Live one more day with me, or stay and die at their hands. Your choice.”

“That’s not much of a choice,” I mutter.

Choose the option that brings you back to me. Could it?

Then I follow him out.

This prince whose friendship made the palace a little less lonely for a Moria girl. The prince whom I’ve spent half my life hating.

I’m halfway out the window when I hear her whimper my name. I’d recognize her voice anywhere.

“Ren,” she says, and I can’t help but look back as I continue my escape. What I see I know I’ll never forget: Sayida’s face as I choose betrayal.





Chapter 33


We run in the desolate, rainy streets until we lose the trail. Margo is the best tracker, but we have two advantages: It’s raining, and there’s a surge of patrol guards searching for the Robári and the kidnapped prince.

For now, I follow Castian at a distance. I want him to answer my questions. I want to know how he did all this. How did I get here?

Every time I’ve tried to prove my loyalty to the Whispers, I’ve failed. To them, I will always be a treacherous Robári. Fine. Let them think that. In my heart, I know who I am. The only thing I don’t know is who this person is walking beside me.

“Stop,” I say. I yank on the back of Castian’s bloodied tunic, and he turns around with an angry ridge on his forehead. How could I not remember? “I can’t keep walking behind you like a lost dog. Where are we going?”

“It’s only a little bit farther.”

“What is only a little bit farther?”

He steps closer, his hands on his hips. There’s still blood caked along his hairline that he tried to wash away by cupping salt water from the sea. He looks like the picture of the Bloodied Prince I’ve heard so many stories about. But is he?

“A hidden place,” he says.

I am tired of hidden places and jumping out of windows. I am tired of running. I take a deep breath and keep my anger on the surface. “I want a weapon.”

The prince hands over his only dagger without a word. He hops off the boardwalk and onto the sand, where the coast becomes rocky, and leads us to tall, dark caves. The citadela is barely visible on the horizon. For the first time the dread of what I have done ebbs into panic. I am alone with Prince Castian. I have chosen him.

When the tide moves out, it reveals a path of shells, broken coral, and stones packed into the rock, leading to the mouth of a cave.

I shouldn’t follow him in there. This might be his insidious plan. Recapture me. Make a new magic-stealing Robári. Another weapon. A Ripper. I quickly remind myself I’ve already lost everything there is to lose and follow him inside.

“Who are you?” I ask the moment we’re inside. “You’ve had half the day to think about something to say, and I swear if it isn’t the truth—”

“You’ll slit my throat?” His stare dares me.

“Yes.” But even I can hear how my voice wavers.

He sighs, and it is so weary that my own abused body does the same. He reaches up above, along the cave wall, and retrieves a dark piece of stone. He takes his knife back from my belt. Before I can protest, he strikes flint and steel until the sparks catch on a torch hooked into a steel loop embedded in the rock. For once, the sudden spring of fire doesn’t make me jump. He hands the knife back, and then walks deeper into the cave without waiting for me.

We keep wading into the tunnel in silence, accompanied only by the trickle of water rising at our heels and the snap of the fire in his hand.

When we arrive at the place Castian promised, I breathe a little easier. The cave widens all around. There’s a small iridescent pool of water surrounded by sharp rock formations, like we’re inside the mouth of a giant shark.

Castian finally comes to a stop at a smooth groove in the cave where there’s a cot, weapons, and crates of food. I don’t know what’s worse, my hunger or my exhaustion.

“Sit,” he says. “I’ll take the floor.”

I don’t argue. I pull off the stolen doublet, and even the smallest movement hurts. I sit on the cot with my back against the wall. Castian slides to the floor beside me. This is worse than the Gray. Worse than remembrance, because it isn’t like I’m in someone else’s life. I am very much here and very much not.

He tosses an apple and a waterskin to me. I drink from it hungrily, and I’m glad he has one for himself because I don’t know how I would tear myself away from this.