Eridine dabbed at the blood. “That should do it,” she said. “I doubt even your own mother would know you now. Just be sure to keep that chest covered.”
With the frigid weather, there wasn’t much chance of me going shirtless, but her point was made. The tattoo on my chest was a dead Ballenger giveaway. She also instructed me to avoid washing my face or the dye would fade faster. If I was lucky, it would last for two weeks. Hopefully I wouldn’t need it that long.
Jurga held up a small mirror. Half of my face swirled with dark black-blue ink, the other half broken by a single swirl around my eye. I barely recognized myself. I practiced my halting Kbaaki accent. “Gets out of my ways, you lowlanders. Gives me rooms to breathe.”
Eridine and Hélder chuckled.
“It might work,” Caemus conceded.
I was about to try out another line when the door of the shed flew open. Kerry slammed it behind him and leaned over, gasping for breath. “Riders!” he croaked. “Hurry!”
I may have had some of my disguise in place, but finding a Kbaaki hunter in a Vendan settlement would be suspicious, not to mention that my chest, with the Ballenger crest, was exposed. I jumped up from the bench, and Hélder hurried to slide aside the plank that led to the root cellar. Before I could reach it, the door flew open again, crashing back against the wall. I turned and stared at the armed intruders. They looked as shocked to see me as I was to see them.
“You lying devil! What the hell have you done? Where is she?”
Wren flew at me, slamming me up against the wall, her ziethe circling my neck. “I told you to watch her back or I’d come after yours!”
“Give him a chance to speak, Wren!” Synové reasoned, then looked at me, her blue eyes blazing. “Talk, you snake, and make it good!”
“I don’t know where she is,” I said. “We were attacked. I’m going after her, so either kill me or get out of my way.”
By now everyone was talking, trying to calm Wren and Synové down. They had come across the ruin in the forest where Mije and Tigone were hidden. They saw the blood staining Mije’s saddle and assumed it was Kazi’s.
“They were ambushed, girl! Put your weapon down!” Caemus ordered.
Wren’s eyes glistened, glaring into mine. Her hand shook with the strain. She finally lowered her ziethe and turned away.
Synové burst into tears. “I know where she is. She’s chained in a cell.”
And then, between sobs, she told us about her dream.
Hold on to to each other because that is what will save you.
Out of many you are one now. You are family.
I look at our put-together family.
None want to be here any more than I do.
We are all different. We argue. We wave our fists.
But we hold each other too.
We grow together, strong like the circle of trees in the valley.
—Greyson, 16
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
KAZI
Tor’s Watch hadn’t been my home. Not yet. Not truly. When I had been here before, I had only been an interloper, an imposter wheedling my way past defenses. I’d been a soldier with an agenda, hiding beneath a false premise. I only saw a fortress that overflowed with secrets, and viewed every room as a potential hiding place. But still, even then, though I tried hard not to, I had seen the beauty of it, that it was a living testament to the devotion that had made the Ballengers who they were. It was like a perfectly cut jewel, and I had wondered in reckless moments what it would be like to be a part of it, sometimes settling into a chair in the empty dining room when I was sure no one was looking, imagining that it was always saved for me, the chair next to Jase.
When I had crept down hallways, my hands sweeping the walls, I had felt the centuries in every block of stone and wondered which generation had cut it and set it into place. I had seen the hard-won history that was recorded on Jase’s bookshelves. On the vault walls I saw the scrawling desperation of the original patchwork family, children who were sewn together by dire circumstance and somehow made it work, children who had, against all odds, survived. I felt an unexpected kinship with them.
This was the home and history that Jase had loved and made a vow to protect. This was what made the destruction before me all the more devastating. A dizzy wave of nausea struck me when I saw the fallen spires in the glaring bright of day. The hideous gaping hole that—
There’s a room on the third floor. It has a view that reaches to the horizon—and it’s away from everyone else. I think it should be ours. You can decide.