Page 45 of The Endless War

“Zarrah was a traitor!” Bermin roared.

The soldier took another backward step. “Then she deserved a traitor’s death, not the island. Now the cannibals have consumed her, and Zarrah’s spirit has come for us.”

Bermin lunged, reaching across Lara to grab the soldier by the front of her uniform, shaking her hard. “Zarrah isn’t dead,” he roared in her face. “The cannibals won’t eat her—they only eat their enemies. This witch is cursed with madness, not truth, and yet you tremble like a child. You are a soldier of Valcotta—behave like one!”

Cannibals.

Horror filled Keris’s guts, but Lara’s act had rattled the Valcottan prince enough that he was spewing information that he should not. Which begged the question of what else he might say.

Beneath the edge of his mask, Keris watched the wheels turning in his sister’s eyes, her lips parting to push Bermin, to see what else she might learn, despite the Prince seething with unchecked violence.

“The stars tell a different story,” Keris said before Lara could goad Bermin further. “They say the devils have consumed the rightful heir.”

Bermin’s whole body went stiff, the flush on his brown cheeks draining, everyone present seeming to hold their breath.

Then, in a burst of motion, Bermin released his soldier and whirled, his boot flying out. Keris could’ve dodged it, but instead he took the blow in the stomach. The impact slammed him backward against the wall. Bermin was on him a heartbeat later, the tip of his knife puncturing the blindfold over Keris’s right eye. “Perhaps it is better you see nothing at all, you pagan piece of shit,” Bermin whispered, his breath hot.

Stinging pain seared his eyelid, a trickle of blood running down to pool in the corner of his eye, but Keris kept still. Silent. For though he’d cursed his eyes most of his life, he had no interest in losing one of them.

“Apologies, Your Highness,” Aren said. “They are taught to speak of what they see with no regard for whether anyone cares to listen. Ignore their prattling and let us carry on with inspections of our hold and passenger berths.”

“I’ve no interest in your cursed hold, Cardiffian,” Bermin snarled. “Get your rudder fixed and remove yourself from these waters, else find you and yours beneath them.”

Without another word, Bermin strode toward the ladder, his soldiers following on his heels.

THEY MOVED RIGHTafter dusk, a small force of twelve split into groups of three. Zarrah was with Saam and Daria. Her only weapons were a spear with a sharpened wooden point and a knife formed of scrap metal that Daria had given her, but Zarrah felt no fear as they crawled on their bellies across the clear-cut at the top of the island, keeping low in the shadows as they slipped between gaps in the rocks that formed the border of the two tribes.

Silence was critical, for if the scouts spotted them and signaled, this would all be for nothing. But Zarrah had spent the last weeks hunting to sustain herself, honing her already practiced skills, and she made not a whisper of sound as she edged over the dead grass.

Daria’s hand brushed hers, and Zarrah caught sight of the first scout, nothing more than a shadow in a tree. They gave him a wide berth, not rising to their feet until they were well out of his line of sight, moving quietly down the treed slope in the direction of the beach and Kian’s camp.

If past behavior held, there’d be three sets of two guards walkingpatrol in the second layer, all heavily armed and strong fighters. And they needed to take them down without alerting any of the others that something was amiss. Possible with well-trained archers with well-crafted bows, but all they had was a bow made from the wrong sort of wood and hair from a woman in the tribe who kept it long specifically for this purpose. To go with it, there were only three arrows that had been shot at them by angry guards, which meant the majority of the kills would need to be made at close quarters.

Using her hands suited Zarrah just fine, which was why she’d only shrugged when one of the other groups had claimed the bow.

Her fingers curled and uncurled around the haft of her spear, her breath making clouds in the cold night air. Tiny flakes of snow fell, and at any other point in time, she’d have stopped to catch them on her tongue.

But not tonight.

A belch broke the silence, and Zarrah froze, Daria and Saam doing the same. Her eyes skipped from tree to tree, searching for movement in the shadows, triumph filling her as she spotted two forms moving down a narrow path.

She waited for them to pass, then began her stalk. Already they’d agreed that she and Daria would go for the kills, Saam assisting as required. Daria held the short sword she favored, and she gestured at the one to the left. Zarrah nodded, silently agreeing to take the one to the right.

Daria took three quick steps, then one heavy one.

The men heard and whirled, the one on the left exposing his throat to Daria’s already slashing blade. Blood sprayed. The man on the right stumbled back, opening his mouth to shout a warning, but Zarrah lunged, the point of her spear punching through his throat. He gurgled, grabbing hold of the haft and jerking it from her grip.

He wrenched it from his throat, turning it around to slash at her, but Zarrah only backed out of range, watching as he choked to death on his own blood.

“So far, so good,” Saam said. “Let’s get what we came for.”

While Saam kept a lookout, she and Daria stripped the men of swords and knives, as well as the rations of food they found in theirpockets. “I’m feeling the fool for not having tried this before,” Daria muttered. “But we were so focused on food that—”

A scream split the night. Whether it was one of their warriors or one of Kian’s mattered little, for moments later, horns blared.

“Shit,” Saam hissed. “Time for us to go.”

Weapons were shoved into belts and food into pockets, and then they were on the move, eyes peeled for the scouts who’d be retreating to join their fellows.

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