Rogue Wave (Waterfire Saga #2)(31)

A few minutes passed. And then a few more. When half an hour had elapsed, Sera finally allowed herself to believe that she’d escaped her pursuers. Her muscles were trembling. Painful cramps knotted her tail. She stretched out and closed her eyes.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please let Cira and Kallista have made it to the safe house. Please let Mahdi be okay.”

She remembered the trust in the little merl’s eyes. And the desperate relief in her mother’s. What if the death riders had split up and searched both forks? What if Cira and Kallista had led them right to the Market Street safe house? Had she endangered scores of people for the sake of two?

A good ruler will never sacrifice the many for the few, her uncle once told her.

She’d tried to argue with him. But Uncle, the few are no less…

Important, she was going to say. Valuable. Beloved.

But Vallerio had cut her off. The few are fewer, Serafina. And in war, numbers are all that matter.

She couldn’t understand that. Not then. Not now. Kallista mattered. And the tiny baby she was carrying. Little Cira mattered. The many and the few.

She’d made the right choice. She’d done the right thing.

As sleep stole over her, Serafina held on to that.

And tried her best to believe it.





“THERE YOU GO, PRIYā,” Suma said, helping Neela into a soft sea-silk robe. “A nice scrub makes everything better.”

Neela did not reply. She simply sat down by a window, in the same place she’d been sitting for the better part of three days, and stared out of it.

She had just scrubbed her body with soft white sand. Then she’d rubbed driftnut oil into her hair and brushed it until it gleamed. Suma had brought a tray of her favorite foods for dinner, and a plate of sweets for dessert. Soon she would lie down in her soft bed and sleep. She was safe. She was warm and well fed.

She was furious.

“Is there anything else you require?” asked Suma.

Neela shook her head.

“May I take the nasty black clothing away?”

“You may not.”

“You know what the medica magus said, Princess,” Suma reminded. “The sooner you admit you need help, the sooner he can help you. Promise to behave yourself and get rid of those awful things, and Kiraat will allow you to leave your room. Give them to me. I’ll put them in the incinerator. The lava will make short work of them.”

“Leave them, Suma. And me.”

“And the mirrors? What about the mirrors?” Suma asked.

Neela had draped every single mirror in her room with saris. “Leave those, too,” she said.

Suma shook her head mournfully. She dabbed at her eyes. “Covering your mirrors! Oh, Princess, it’s worse than any of us thought. You have lost your mind! I thought that when you started eating bing-bangs again you were making progress, but I was wrong.”

She bade Neela a tearful good night and left her.

Neela mindlessly unwrapped a sweet and ate it. Boredom and anxiety had driven her back to them. She glanced at the offending garments—her black lace top and skirt, her jacket, her messenger bag. They were draped over a chair. Kiraat had demanded she get rid of them, and she’d refused. He’d declared her dangerously deranged and advised she be confined to her room so she couldn’t do damage to herself or to anyone else. Kiraat and her parents thought they were protecting her. They thought they were helping her come back to her senses, but all they were doing was killing her spirit, bit by bit.

How could she explain to them what her swashbuckler clothes meant to her? When she looked at them, she didn’t see frays and tears, she saw Sera and Ling eating stew in Lena’s kitchen after Ling had almost been captured by Rafe Mfeme. She saw Becca and Ava in the River Olt, fighting off the rusalka. She saw fierce Astrid battling Abbadon in the Incantarium with only her sword.

And she saw herself—being braver and stronger than she’d ever thought she could be.

And now they wanted her to go back. Back to pink. Back to smiling until her face hurt. Back to chatting about the tides. Back to never doing anything important, or saying anything honest. Back to the eternal beauty contest.

Neela had tried to get out. She’d tried to pick the lock on her door, just as she’d picked the locks on the iron collars that she, Sera, and Thalassa had been forced to wear when they were Traho’s prisoners. But this lock had been enchanted. It could only be opened by the key Suma carried. Neela’s entire bedchamber had been spellproofed. She couldn’t get the windows open. Or blow them out. She couldn’t cast the tiniest vortex, or throw a weak frag. Even the convoca she’d tried to cast, to inform the others of her predicament, failed. She’d thought about escaping through one of her mirrors, but fear of meeting up with Rorrim had stopped her. In fact, she’d covered all her mirrors to keep him from spying on her.

So Neela sat, staring listlessly out of the window, watching the Matali flags flap in the current. She unwrapped another sweet, wondering who was going to break first. Kiraat? Her parents?

Or her.





SERAFINA WOKE WITH A GASP. For a moment, she panicked. She didn’t know where she was. Then she remembered—the Ostrokon. She’d swum under a table to hide, and passed out from exhaustion. Now she rolled over onto her back and opened her eyes. How long had she been here? She felt as if she’d slept for three days. Her body was numb from the hard floor. Her mind was numb, too—from all the questions still plaguing her, the ones that had no answers.