Page 105 of Fortune's Blade

He broke off with a gasp.

“Her father hoped to be the real king,” I said and he nodded.

“We hadn’t told anyone . . . how we felt . . . but it wouldn’t have mattered. He wouldn’t . . . have cared.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again, and he huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh.

“I think you mean that. Strange, how the only . . . one with me at the end . . . is my enemy.”

“I’m not your enemy.”

“No? Perhaps not.” He closed his eyes, and for a moment, I thought he was gone. But then he spoke again. “Her father craves power. So, I thought . . . if I became prominent in Vitharr . . . it might change things. If Tanet rejected her . . ..”

“You could be together?”

He nodded and labored on, despite the fact that each breath looked like it hurt. “Mother said . . . I could be a hero of Vitharr. She introduced me . . . to Steen. He promised—”

His eyes abruptly flew open and he leaned over, grasping my hand again, even though it was a loose grip now, his strength almost gone. “Fuck them. They just used me . . . didn’t they? They used . . . both of us.”

I nodded sadly.

“Fuck them,” he whispered again. “And now I’m dead and so is she, but you . . . you can still save your sister. But you have to hurry.”

“Where is she?” I asked, stunned, and grasped his hand with both of mine, as if I would hold him there with me.

“She’s the key,” he said, his eyes burning. “The one . . . they’ve been searching for. She can get through . . . was made to get through . . . the door—”

“What door?” I asked, somehow keeping my voice level when I wanted to scream.

“—Odin wants . . . it open, but the king does not . . . and he’s searching for her . . . to kill her, before his god finds out . . . he told Steen to be quick—”

“Antem. Please. Just tell me where to find her!”

But that had taken the last of his strength, and his head lolled to the side, his eyes fixed and lifeless, and I felt a scream building in my throat that I had to swallow back down because it wouldn’t have helped.

Only I didn’t know what would.

I looked up at Claire, but she just shook her head, her eyes full of tears for a man she didn’t even know, but whose story had touched her. I knew without asking that she’d done all she could. She wouldn’t let anyone die if she could save them.

But she was out of options.

And now, so was I.

I nodded, unable to speak, and stumbled out of the tent. The cold night air hit me hard enough to throw my head back, to leave me looking at a moon that wasn’t mine, the markings of which made no sense to my eyes. I stared at it anyway, as it shifted and blurred, and didn’t know who I was crying for: Antem, the misguided boy, Tamris, his dead lover, or Dorina, just as lost as she’d ever been and in more danger than I could name.

Or me, because any moment now, I was going to do it, I was going to start screaming and just not stop. And there would go any semblance of dignity or respect I had left. I headed blindly off to my tent, eager to get inside before anyone saw me, and almost immediately slammed into Louis-Cesare coming back this way.

But instead of grasping me, of asking if I was all right, he threw me aside and barreled back into the tent without a word, leaving me confused and staring after him. The guards looked confused, too, but since he’d been let in before, they didn’t try to stop him now. Or me, when I followed him back inside, to find Claire trying to pull him off of the dead man, while Louis-Cesare was—

I didn’t know what he was doing.

I grabbed his arm.

“Mircea,” he told me tersely.

“What?”

“Your father!” Blue eyes blazed into mine, while Louis-Cesare’s hand splayed on Antem’s unmoving chest. “He’s here.”

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