“I certainly don’t want you to lie.”
“They don’t give a damn about the betrothal,” Amael told her. “Dyn and Sonamaire have been at odds for as long as anyone can remember. The Treaty of Kinds was only signed because both sides had taken heavy losses during the war, and they couldn’t afford to keep fighting. But that doesn’t make the bad blood disappear, and it’s likely that Caidem has been waiting for an opportunity to strike. When you didn’t appear in Dyn when you were called upon, that was his excuse to go to war.”
“Because I refused to marry his son?”
“Because your father went back on his word.”
Sol swayed on her feet. Amael gripped her elbow to hold her steady.
She turned to look over her shoulder. Fynn and Riel were several yards behind, likely to give Sol the opportunity to speak with Amael in private. “I have to tell him,” Sol whispered, dread coiling like a serpent in her stomach. “He has to take me back to Sonamire.”
Amael wrenched her around to face him. “No,” he said tersely. “You can’t do that.”
She tried and failed to tug her arm free. “I can’t let them go to war because of me, Amael. I can’t. If my brother dies over something so trivial as a marriage—”
“Keep your voice down,” Amael scolded. Sol felt as if she were a child again, Silas snapping at her to be quiet during their morning prayers in the temple. “If you want to tell Fynn who you are and why you ran away, fine. I won’t stop you. The Captain deserves to know, anyway. But what I’m not going to let you do is hand yourself over to Thane Grayclaw. Fynn would and will agree with me.”
“You don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t understand.” Amael’s eyes flashed. “I’ve met Thane, Sol. I was with Nero and my father when they delivered the dragons to Dyn all those years ago. How do you think I know so much about the war?”
The Princess stilled. Her Magic stilled. The sounds of the forest fell away. “You’ve met him?”
“Yes,” Amael said through his teeth. “And I saw him gut a servant for taking too long to fetch him a cup of tea.”
“He’s truly that bad?”
“He’s worse. Gutting that servant was doing him a kindness. The alternative would have been tying him to a whipping post on the battlefield and letting Sonamire’s army have their way with him.” Amael swung at a vine. “Which is why you can’t just give yourself up to him. I won’t let you.”
“But if I can stop a war—”
“You can’t,” Amael told her. “It’s too late for that. If you show up on Thane’s doorstep now, he’ll only have you killed for slighting him.”
Tears gathered at the ends of her lashes. “There has to be something I can do, Amael. This is my fault.”
Amael placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “There is,” he said softly. “You build a life for yourself in Nedros like your brother wanted. Even if he doesn’t realize that all of this is about more than just your marriage to Thane, Silas thought you were worth going to war over. You have to remember that.”
She rubbed at her eyes, wiping away the tears threatening to roll down her cheeks. Guilt and shame clawed at her, splintering her ribcage from the inside out like a dragon trapped inside her chest.
Her fault—if Silas died in this war, it was her fault.
“Did you fight in the war?” Sol asked, swallowing the quiver from her voice. “Did you see my brother on the battlefield?”
The boatswain’s eyes hardened to steel. “No,” he said. “I didn’t fight.”
“Then why were you there?” Sol stepped over a gnarled branch, using Amael’s offered hand as leverage. “Silas was young, but my father still made him fight.”
“It was training, of a sort. I was meant to observe the way my father and Nero negotiated with Caidem.” Amael hesitated, eyeing the trees as if the leaves were listening. “Before I was exiled, I was meant to someday be the island’s Elder. Nero had no children, no heir, and my father was his closest confidant. They always included me during political meetings, and this was no different.”
Her stomach hollowed out at that. “Oh.”
Someday, he was meant to be her enemy.
“We weren’t there for long,” Amael continued. “Dyn’s camp was in chaos. The King’s youngest son had just been killed by your brother, and Caidem was nearly inconsolable. Thane didn’t give a damn about his brother, but their father… I’ve never seen anyone in such a rage.”
Taken aback, Sol blinked against the canopy of trees, absently thankful for their shade. “That’s not true,” she said, scouring her mind for every fragmented detail that Silas had ever given her about the war. “Silas fought the King’s son, but he didn’t kill him. He was too injured, and just before the Prince dealt him his killing blow, he dropped his sword and ran.”
Amael frowned at her. “He told you that?”
Sol nodded. “Until Silas met him on the battlefield, he didn’t even know that the King had a second son. Neither did our father. They were both surprised that it wasn’t Thane he was fighting, and Silas was nothing if not disappointed.”
He cut through a dark green vine embedded with purposefully sharpened thorns. “Perhaps I was mistaken, and the Prince was felled by someone else.”
Or perhaps he’d eventually succumbed to the wounds that Silas had dealt him. Sol knew they had damn near butchered each other.
“Hey, explorers.” Riel’s voice shattered the budding confusion between them, washing away the fear that lapped at Sol’s insides and smothered every trace of her Magic. She hated being so far from the shore. “How much further? I haven’t walked this far in ages.”
Amael severed through an overgrown archway of twisting branches. “The village is just through here,” he said, gritting his teeth as the last branch refused to give way. “Would you mind?”
The Quartermaster waved her hand, and the branch snapped in two.
Ducking beneath the remaining limbs, Amael grunted his thanks. Sol noticed the grip on his sword, his fingers white-knuckled and trembling. Whatever threats this island contained—Nero, the dragons, his people—lay just beyond this jagged outcropping of trees.
Amael paused as he emerged from the shade, his gasp of air cleaving apart the sudden stillness of the forest. Even the leaves did not sway on the wind. Sunlight illuminated the stark lines of his face as he breathed, “This isn’t possible.”
Sol did not realize she’d reached for Fynn until the Captain was squeezing her fingers. “Amael,” she said, retreating into the safety of Fynn’s chest. “I thought you said that this was your village…”
He dropped his sword, and even Riel was silent as the blade clattered to the ground. “It is,” Amael said, his hands slack at his sides. “Was.”
The wide, unkempt valley that lay at the island’s center was empty, abandoned houses and charred firewood left to be reclaimed by nature.
“Maybe we took a wrong turn at the fallen tree?”
Amael’s shoulders shook with restraint as he turned to look at his friends, as he turned to meet Sol’s gaze. “They’re gone,” he said darkly, a tone that only Sol understood. “The Dryuans and the dragons are all gone.”