Page 219 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

Yes, that was certainly ugly. He’d looked like he was already mostly dead.

“So Septimus only got a piece of what he wanted,” Raihn said, “in the form of the pendant. It worked enough, for now. But it means it’s unlikely he has what he really came here for.”

“Meaning that the god blood, if it exists,” I added, “is probably still out there.”

I curled my fingers and gazed down at my hand, shifting it beneath the firelight. The strokes of red shivered slightly, like moonlight through rippling leaves.

“This all sounds,” Vale said, “like a lot of conjecture.”

“It is,” Raihn replied. “But it’s also all we have.”

“I accept that sometimes we need to act based on what we don’t know,” Vale said. “But what Idoknow is that Simon and his armies will be coming for us at any moment, and if they meet us now, they will win. I know that they’re searching for you both, and this map takes you right by Sivrinaj. I know that if you go there, they’ll know, and they will come after you with far more power than you two could possibly fight off alone. So if we choose to make this our gamble, then it will need to be a big one.”

A wry smile tugged at the corner of Raihn’s mouth. “How big, exactly?”

Vale was silent. I could practically see him questioning all the life decisions that led him to this moment.

“We all converge there,” he said at last. “Whatever men we have left, ready to meet them one more time. We hold them off while Oraya... does whatever she needs to do. And we pray to the Mother that whatever she finds there is powerful enough to buy us a victory.”

I felt a little nauseous.

Raihn threw back his head and laughed.

“Oh,” he said. “Is that all?”

“I told you it was a big gamble,” Vale said, annoyed.

“What else can we do?” Mische asked, grabbing the mirror and tipping it toward her. “If Raihn and Oraya go by themselves, they get killed. If we wait for Simon to come for us, we get killed. If we attack Sivrinaj again, we get killed.” She threw her hands up. “It sounds like this is the only option that gives us atiny little chanceofmaybenot getting killed.”

“Other than surrender,” Jesmine pointed out, which earned a face of disgust from every single person in the conversation.

“If we surrender,” I said, “they kill us all, anyway. And that’s not how I want to go.”

At least this way, I’ll diedoingsomething.

No one disagreed.

We were all silent for a long, long moment.

It was outlandish. It was dangerous. It was downright foolish in its riskiness.

It was also all we had.

My eyes slipped to Raihn—and he was already looking at me, resolve firm in his gaze. I knew that look. Same one we would give each other before yet another impossible Kejari trial.

“So it’s decided,” he said. “We go down fighting in the name of blind fucking hope.”

None of us could argue with that.

At least if we were idiots, we were all idiots together. That counted for something, I supposed.

* * *

The gears were,once again, set in motion. Alya left not long after, citing errands, leaving Raihn and I alone at her worn kitchen table. We spent the rest of the day there, strategizing with frequent correspondence with Jesmine and Vale. The hours blurred together.

When Alya returned, some time later, she was not alone.

I was so focused—and so exhausted—that I didn’t even hear the door open, until I glanced up from my maps to see Raihn sitting rod-straight, looking at the door like he wasn’t sure whether to run or attack.

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