Remember…to live, you must first die.
~Tula, Goddess of Life
1
Drayce Ladon
I’m going to kill him. The Empire isn’t allowed to kill him, because I’m going to kill him after I kiss him.
At least those were the thoughts set on repeat in Drayce’s brain as they all raced across the bay in the stealth boat borrowed from Prince Shey. They’d already acquired some New Rosanthe uniforms for this rescue mission. Now they just had to find their missing prince and maybe kill some Empire soldiers along the way.
Twenty hours ago, Caelan had kissed Drayce and told him to save Caelan right before he’d walked into Empire hands.
What the hell!
After what had felt like a lifetime of wanting to kiss the prince of Erya, he’d finally gotten his wish—only to have the man hand himself over to the enemy and potentially get himself killed. Oh, Drayce had questions. So many fucking questions, like: Why now? And, had he been wanting it as long as Drayce had? Was this just a crazy impulse? Would any hot guy have worked for Caelan? And seriously, what the hell?
But none of those were going to get answered until they rescued Caelan.
And even then, Drayce might strangle his best friend first.
Drayce gulped and fought to keep the contents of his stomach down. His hand tightened on the railing while he wished they would reach the flagship battle cruiser just a little bit faster. He hated boats, hated water. He had the power to get seasick from simply looking at the ocean.
Why couldn’t they have flown out to the sleek New Rosanthe cruiser? He would have happily ridden on a glider. Fuck, someone could have strapped his ass to a kite. Anything was better than being on the water.
Rayne quietly walked across the deck and sat on the bench Drayce was leaning against. His light-brown hair whipped in the wind, and specks of water glittered on his glasses. Out of all of them, Rayne looked the best in the boring black-and-gold New Rosanthe uniform, as if the man had been born to be a soldier. Eno’s huge shoulders and arms strained the material; the freaking seams were going to bust if he sneezed.
Of course, Drayce felt like a little kid playing dress-up in his dad’s uniform. They’d been unable to find a soldier his height when stripping corpses, so both the pants and jacket were way too long. He just prayed that no one paid close attention to him.
“How are you doing?” Rayne inquired.
“I want to die, but I can’t because I need to kill Cael when I see him. Then I can die,” he whined. He closed his eyes, but that only made the swaying in his stomach worse. They popped open and he focused on the ship they were heading toward. It appeared to be as solid as a rock in the waves while their boat was bouncing everywhere. Yep, it was going to be so nice to be on that ship, even with all the New Rosanthe seamen running around.
“We’re almost there. Eno wants you to climb the ladder first. Will you be able to?”
“Trust me, if it gets me off this boat, I’ll tap dance up the fucking hull.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll move quickly. Find Caelan and get off the ship during the attack.” Rayne repeated the bare bones of the plan. The recitation sounded like the prince’s advisor needed as much convincing as Drayce.
Twenty long, painful hours had passed since Caelan had turned himself over to the Empire. They had no idea if he was even still alive and what kind of shape he would be in when they managed to find him. And they would find him. Drayce was prepared to tear through every inch of that overgrown bath toy, killing every New Rosanthe soldier, to get to Caelan.
Those twenty hours had been pure torture for Drayce but completely necessary. It wasn’t as if he could have raced after Caelan on his own. He would have been killed before they’d even loaded Caelan onto the boat. He’d needed to find Eno and Rayne, who’d had their own brief temper tantrums over Caelan’s decision. From there, they’d raced to the royal palace to meet with Prince Shey and the rest of the kingdom’s military forces to organize a rescue for Caelan.
Twenty fucking hours of planning and then finally implementing that plan. That better have been plenty of time for Caelan to get the information he needed, because there was going to be no second shot at this.
Drayce scratched his arm, swallowing a new snarl. Stupid stolen uniform. It was just like the Empire to use cheap, itchy material.
“Did you and Eno steal this plan from a movie?” Drayce asked.
“No,” Rayne grumbled.
“I’m pretty sure Caelan and I saw this exact scene in a movie. The good guy steals the uniform from the invading army and boards this submarine—”