Page 102 of Kingmakers, Year Four

She can’t take her eyes off my father’s face.

I know she has pictures of him hidden upstairs. But she’s looking at this one like she’s seeing my father in the flesh, standing before her now.

“There’s no one else for me, and there never could be,” she says quietly.

“I know, Mom.”

She looks up, startled, like she forgot I was there.

“Thank you,” she says. “I’ll keep this safe for him. It’s his favorite.”

My stomach twists. Maybe Freya should have left the picture in the desk. Taking something out of my father’s office feels like a bad omen—like we don’t think he’ll return.

Reading my face, my mother says, “Don’t worry—I have good news for you.”

I swallow hard. “You do?”

“Yes,” she breathes, her excitement barely contained in the slight tremor of her shoulders. “I think I found him.”

“How?”

“I had it narrowed down to six —”

“I remember,” I say, mentally running through the maps she showed me in the archive.

“When he spoke to Dominik last week, he said he saw snow. It only snowed in one place out of the six that day.”

Grabbing my arm, she pulls me toward her desk, shoving aside a pile of unsourced books and unfurling a long, crumbling scroll.

“Look!” She points to the blueprint, to the spider-fine script in the corner bearing the name.

Irkolasan Uranium Mine, it says.

The powder on the soldier’s boot—yellowcake. Uranium concentrate.

I have to lick my lips before I can speak.

“Where is it?” I murmur.

“Kazakhstan.”

My heart is thudding hard against my chest. I can hardly believe it’s true. After all this time . . . we could actually go to him.

“What do we do now?”

“We scout the location and plan our attack,” my mother says. “We have to be meticulous. If we make a single mistake, if they know what we’re doing . . .”

She doesn’t have to finish that sentence. We have to break in unheard and unseen—or the first shot fired will be directly into my father’s skull.

I let out a shaky breath.

“We won’t need Nix, then,” I say.

My mother turns to look at me, her gaze sharp and unyielding.

“Nix is coming with us. As insurance.”

Now my heart drops down to my toes.

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