LITMIR.BIZ

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option was to fight back with all her skill. She watched his thoughts as best she could, seeing the flickers of coming movements, the patterns of attack. Her body didn’t have the speed it once had, but it still knew what to do, putting the blade where it was needed, beating and parrying, disengaging and pressuring.

      Kate took Lord Cranston’s blade and felt the slightest of weaknesses in the pressure as he presented it. She circled with the bind, applying more pressure, and his sword clattered to the ship’s deck. Her own sword swept up for his throat… and she managed to stop just a hair’s breadth short of his skin.

      He smiled at her. “Good, Kate. Excellent. You see, you don’t need some witch’s tricks. You are the one who has learned this, and you are the one who will cut the enemy to pieces.”

      He clasped Kate’s hand then, wrist to wrist, and Kate was surprised to hear clapping from below on the ship. She turned, seeing other members of the company there, looking on as if she and Lord Cranston were players there to entertain them. Will was there with them, looking relieved as well as happy. Kate ran down the steps from the command deck to him, kissing him as she got to him.

      Of course, that got a different sort of cheer from the others there, and Kate pulled away, red-faced.

      “That’s enough, you lazy dogs,” Lord Cranston yelled down. “If you have time to ogle, you have time to work!”

      The men around them groaned and got on with their preparations for the battle. Still, the moment had passed, and Kate didn’t want to risk kissing Will again in case any of them were still watching.

      “I was so worried about you,” Will said, with a nod up toward where Lord Cranston stood. “When the two of you were fighting, it looked as though he was really trying to kill you.”

      “It was what I needed,” Kate said with a shrug. She wasn’t sure that she could explain it to Will. He’d joined Lord Cranston’s company, but there always seemed to be a part of him that wanted to be back, working in his father’s forge. He’d joined up for the chance to see the world, the chance to go somewhere else.

      For Kate, it was different. She needed to push into the spaces where things didn’t feel safe, or she wasn’t sure that she felt alive. She didn’t feel like she could deal with the extremes of the world unless she went out and did it. Lord Cranston had understood that, and he’d pushed her into the place where she’d truly been able to test herself.

      “Even so,” Will said, “I thought that there would be blood on the deck before it was done.”

      “There wasn’t though,” Kate said. She hugged him, simply because she wanted to. She wished that there were enough privacy on the boat for more than that. “That’s the important thing.”

      “And you were amazing up there,” Will admitted. “Maybe we shouldn’t bother attacking tomorrow, just send you to fight them all one by one.”

      Kate smiled at that thought. “I think it might get a little tiring after the first few. Besides, would you want to miss out on the action?”

      She saw Will look away.

      “What is it?” she asked, resisting the urge to read his thoughts and find out.

      “Honestly? I’m scared,” he said. “No matter how many battles we fight in, it never seems to get easier. I’m scared for myself, for my friends, about whether my parents will be caught up in it all… and I’m scared for you.”

      “I think we just found out that you don’t need to be worried about me,” Kate said.

      “You’re better with a sword than anyone I know,” Will agreed, “but I still worry. What if there’s a sword you don’t see? What if there’s some random musket shot? War is chaos.”

      It was, but that was part of what Kate liked about it. There was something about being at the heart of a battle that just made sense in a way the rest of the world sometimes didn’t. She didn’t say that, though.

      “It will be all right,” she said, instead. “I’ll be fine. You’ll be working with the artillery, not at the heart of any charges. Sophia would never allow her people to loot, or to attack ordinary people, so your parents will be safe. It will be all right.”

      “Just… stay safe,” Will said. “There are so many things I want to have time to say to you, and do with you, and—”

      “We’ll have time for all of them,” Kate promised. “Now, you should go. You know Lord Cranston gets annoyed if I keep you from your duties too long.”

      Will nodded, looking as though he might kiss her again, but didn’t. Another thing that would have to wait until after the battle. Kate watched him go, stretching out what there was of her talent to take in the thoughts and feelings of the soldiers there.

      She could feel their fears and their worries. Every man there knew that the world would erupt in violence come the dawn, and most were wondering if they would come through that chaos in one piece. Some were thinking of friends, others of families. A few were going through possibility after possibility, as if thinking of the danger ahead would stop it from happening.

      Kate was looking forward to it. In battle, the world made a kind of sense.

      “Tomorrow, I will kill the people who hurt my family,” she promised. “I’ll cut through them, and I’ll take the throne for Sophia.”

      Tomorrow, they would go into Ashton, and they would take back everything that was supposed to be theirs.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      From the steps of the Masked Goddess’s temple, standing poised at their summit as he waited for the start of his mother’s funeral, Rupert watched the sunset. It spread in shades of red, hues that reminded him too much of the blood he’d shed. It shouldn’t bother him. He was stronger than that, better than that. Even so, every look down at his hands brought with it memories of the way his mother’s blood had stained them, every moment of silence brought back the memory of her gasps as he’d stabbed her.

      “You!” Rupert said, pointing to one of the augers and minor priests who crowded around the entrance. “What does this sunset portend?”

      “Blood, your highness. A sunset like this means blood.”

      Rupert took a half step forward, planning to strike the man for his insolence, but Angelica was there to catch him, her hand brushing across his skin in a promise he wished there was more time to make good on.

      “Ignore him,” she said. “He knows nothing. No one knows anything, unless you tell them.”

      “He said blood,” Rupert complained. His mother’s blood. The pain of that flickered through him. He’d lost his mother, the grief of it almost a surprise to him. He’d expected to feel nothing but relief at her death, or perhaps joy that the throne was finally his. Instead… Rupert felt broken inside, empty and guilty in a way he’d never felt before.

      “Of course he said blood,” Angelica replied. “There’s to be a battle tomorrow. Any fool could see blood in a sunset with enemy ships moored offshore.”

      “Plenty have,” Rupert said. He pointed at another man, an auger who seemed to be using some complex clockwork device to scrawl calculations on a scrap of parchment. “You, tell me how the battle will go tomorrow!”

      The man looked up, a wild look in his eyes. “The signs are not good for the kingdom, your majesty. The gears—”

      This time, Rupert did strike out, sending the man sprawling with a booted foot. If Angelica hadn’t been there to pull him back, he might have kept kicking until there was nothing left but a pile of broken bones.

      “Consider how it would look, doing that at the funeral,” Angelica said.

      It was enough to get Rupert to hold back, at least. “I don’t see why the priests even let the likes of those onto the steps of their temple. I thought they killed witches.”

      “Maybe it’s a sign that these have no talent,” Angelica suggested, “and

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