Rain pounded on the roof of the princess’s pavilion. A corner of the canvas flapped loose, letting in rhythmic bursts of louder downpour from the day outside. Alaan stared unblinking at the narrow triangle of gray light that flashed on the black canvas floor of the tent, there and then gone with every gust. Thunder rolled, sounding like distant storm waves crashing against a reef. The gray triangle of light flashed, faster, slower.

  Alaan jerked upright and shook off the hypnotic daze. He scrubbed his face roughly with both hands, then raked his fingers through his short sand-colored beard to straighten it.

  North of Siu Augine, the ground was still hard and frozen from the waning winter. The royal caravan moved with greater speed now, but longer empty stretches stood between the villages and holdings.

  This was either the fifth or the sixth day that Alaan had gone without sleep. The passage of time had become difficult to grasp. The dead frozen ground beneath his booths felt less real with each waking minute. His skin was always slightly feverish now, and his heart never seemed to slow, even when he held still.

  At times while riding in the carriage, his vision would go suddenly black, but the grafting and his distrust of the dirter king would wake him like a lightning bolt to the pit of his stomach.

  At other times, he saw things he knew were not there. Once he had seen his mother’s body lying on the Raen greatship, her veil torn away, her face exposed and cut to ribbons, though he knew his father had sent her on to paradise before the dirters could touch her. Another time, he had felt Mehet sitting beside him in the carriage and had looked over to find her holding the swordbreaker, her teal gem eyes contemplating its deep serrations.

  Which was to say nothing of the visions that he could not be certain were false.

  The door of the pavilion flapped, but no flash of rainy gray light appeared.

  Before his sluggish mind had considered the implications, the cutlass and swordbreaker whispered from their sheaths, their black steel gleaming dully in the light from the brazier. Sleeplessness made the blades simultaneously heavy and light enough to float.

  Izak poked his dripping head in the tent door.

  “Don’t stab me.” He held up his hands, his swordstaff gripped loosely in the left, as he slipped inside.

  The prince should have been taking advantage of this time to rest, but when he was not on guard and there were no women to indulge in, the prince had taken to assigning a watch leader and joining Alaan in the princess’s tent.

  Izak glanced at the slender shape asleep on the bed of furs and rugs and lowered his voice.

  “Pulling another all-day watch?”

  It was the third or fourth time the prince had made the joke during the journey. It became less amusing with each repetition.

  Alaan realized his cutlass arm was trembling. He sheathed his weapons and resumed his post.

  “Why are you here?” Even his tongue felt heavy.

  Izak found a cushion and made himself comfortable on it, resting his swordstaff across his thighs. “Because I’m sick of losing at dice. I swear Phriese weights his. Grab a cushion and sit down.”

  “No.” What he’d meant to ask was why Izak had returned after his previous visit had nearly ended in death.

  Alaan had sat down with his friend the day before. Suddenly the princess had appeared impaled on Izak’s swordstaff, a gout of blood bursting from between her lips as her pale fingers scrabbled at the etched silver blade embedded in her stomach. Alaan had been at Izak’s throat before he was fully awake, and only the princess’s screamed order had stopped him from sawing off his friend’s head in retribution.

  After the near miss, Alaan’s teeth had chattered for hours. He would not sit down again until he’d had enough sleep to know he would not kill anyone over a hallucination.

  “Still with me?” From his cushion, Izak studied Alaan’s face.

  Alaan nodded and took a drink of cold water. It helped, but not much.

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  Izak took a hard slice of apple from a bowl of dried fruit and nuts. “You were right about the king’s Thorns. I wheedled and bribed and threatened every man I could, but they won’t spell you.”

  The king’s Thorns had been Alaan’s only hope at rest, as their graftings would force them to protect their master’s offspring and preserve his bloodline. Izak had offered to stand guard, but even before the hallucination of the prince murdering his sister, the dirter enchantment wouldn’t allow Alaan to leave her in the care of an armed man grafted to her brother. She was not in the crown prince’s direct bloodline. Izak might never hurt her, but the fact that he could was something the grafting refused to ignore.

  “It was a waste of time,” Alaan said.

  “Hazerial must have forbidden them from helping,” Izak muttered.

  Alaan had said as much when Izak suggested enlisting the assistance of the king’s guard. The blood-drinker king had grafted Alaan alone to break him.

  He would not give the dirter the satisfaction.

  “Well, we’d better devise something soon,” Izak said as he picked through the bowl, taking out only the pieces of apple. “I’ve seen bloodslaves used for archery targets hold together better. We’ll reach Castle Sangmere morrow night. You should be able to get some sleep there—we’re staying for a few nights while His Majesty holds court and the train resupplies for the next leg of the journey.”

  Izak grimaced up at Alaan. “But after that, there’s nothing between Siu Rial and the border. Two weeks without an inn, tavern, or wide spot in the road.”

  Nausea swam up to meet Alaan at the thought. He swallowed and widened his stance. Refocused his attention on a single stationary point, the center of the universe, the bundled princess sleeping in her bed.

  She sat up, blood dripping from her chin, and grinned at him, her teeth bloody pearls.

  Beside him, Izak went on talking as if nothing had changed.

  Alaan gave himself a mental shake.

  The princess had not moved. She was still asleep. No sign or scent of blood. Another hallucination.

  “—when Kelena and her new husband galivant off into Helat territory.” Izak tossed back his handful of the apple pieces, frowning while he chewed. “That leaves you on guard alone, night and day, until after Summerlight. I don’t doubt you can persist a week or even two on sheer pirate stubbornness, but four months?” He shook his head. “That would kill anyone. And if for some reason Etian and I don’t get to the imperial city by the Night of Judgment, and you’re dead or cracked beyond use, then what? Who brings Kelena home?”

  Izak had told Alaan sometime in recent memory of the king’s plan to kill as many of the Helat as possible with this undisclosed weapon. Thinking of the danger to the princess made cold sweat trickle down Alaan’s spine. Recognizing the panic response as an effect of the grafting, he tried to push it aside to assess the problem.

  Worthless. He would get no true clarity without sleep.

  “I will not be killed by your dirter king’s petty schemes,” Alaan vowed, scrubbing at gritty, feverish eyes.

  “I imagine everybody who dies on the wrong end of a royal executioner’s ax says the same thing before that final blow.” Izak traced the etching of his swordstaff blade. “Likely the runt thought so as well.”

  A shift in alertness in the grafting. The princess had woken.

  The form on the pallet did not stir, but Alaan knew this was no false sensation. When the rest of his senses betrayed him, the feelings flowing through the grafting from the princess did not.

  ***

  Kelena lay awake in her warm dark cocoon of furs, listening to her brother and Alaan. Over the last several stops, she had grown accustomed to the back-and-forth rumble of their voices in the day. Izak’s musical tenor said so many clever or heartfelt things, and Alaan’s baritone responded with short, unadorned statements while the emotions roiled and thundered inside the pirate like summer storms.

  Her oldest brother’s presence had always comforted Kelena, even when Izak was purposely being annoying, but now she could feel that he was a comfort to her Thorn as well. And she knew Alaan needed every comfort he could get.

  Her Thorn was strong—at times frighteningly so—but Kelena could feel him fraying. She wanted to help, but beyond letting him and Izak talk uninterrupted, she didn’t know how. A few days before, she had offered to stay awake while Alaan slept, and to scream at the top of her lungs if anything happened, but the pirate had refused. He must have known that she was too stupid and timid to scream if she truly needed help.

  Mother had told Kelena such obscene things about the grafting that Kelena had been terrified of it at first. The longer she lived with one, however, the more wonderful it seemed to her. She had never had a friend before; listening in on the men was like experiencing the bond for herself.

  Kelena’s love for her brother was unconditional, but the pirate’s was not. Alaan’s was hard-won, driven by respect, and sometimes harsh in a way that offended Kelena on Izak’s behalf. But the pirate was loyal to Izak even when he disapproved of him, so Kelena forgave Alaan’s occasional lack of faith in Izak.

  The true world was so unlike the things she had dreamed in the darkness, so much brighter and sharper. People said and did things she could never have imagined—like Lord Clarencio the night she’d met him at the ball, who had been so kind when she deserved his scorn.

  A dark purple hair ribbon flashed through her mind, the ends hanging like strings of coagulated blood from between Clarencio’s long, slender fingers.

  Her breath locked in her chest, and horrified tears stung her eyes.

  Don’t think about that! Don’t remember it! Don’t think what you’ve done to a man who was only kind to you. You little idiot! You stupid nothing! Send that memory away and never let it come back.

  Too late. With the memory of Mother’s trap came the full knowledge of the hatred the strong gods had for her, and the realization of what would happen when Eketra, Teikru, and Josean finally turned their faces on her cursed nothingness.

  It was too much to bear. The pressure of it built and built in Kelena’s mind until, finally, it ruptured.

  And then there was blissful oblivion.