Page 47 of Winds of Destiny

I’m too furious to have time for shock.

“If I catch sight of you following us, what happens to the prince will be onyourheads,” Embros says. Then he and his fighters turn and walk out into the grass. Every step takes Cam farther away, until I suddenly lose sight of him altogether.

I can’t…

Ican’t!

I don’t realize I’m running after Embros until Kai forces me face-first into the dirt. Fear and emotions I can’t even name wage a war so fierce inside me that I don’t even feel the pain of impact. I can’t feel anything. I can’t think of anything. The second Kai’s weight is gone, I leap up and turn my sword toward him. He doesn’t blink, just knocks it from my hand with an ease I didn’t expect.

“Turo, stop,” he says with gentle sorrow. “He’s gone.”

“No.” I won’t hear it. If I do, I’ll be broken for good.

“He is.”

“No.” Kai’s touch on my shoulders is grounding, meant to stabilize my fracturing mind, and I can’t bear it, but I can’t deny the truth, either. Cam is gone. I let him go. Ilethim be taken from me by that fuckingsnake. I couldn’t even get him to his new home safely. I failed the person I love most in the entire world.

You’ve been failing him for years, you coward.

All of a sudden, it’s like the bones have been pulled right out of my body. I fall down to my knees and hiss as fresh agony shoots up my side from my hip. What the…

“You’re cut.” Kai is beside me again, untying my armor as quickly as he can. “Here, and here…but the worst one is…” He grimaces. “It needs to be sewn up.”

“There’s no time,” I say dazedly. “We have to go after Cam.”

“We can’t.” Kai shakes his head. “Not right now. Not like this.”

I can’t even fight him on it because I feel as weak as a sea slug. Kai helps me to my feet, throwing my arm across his oversize shoulders, and together we stagger back to the wagon and the many bodies left strewn around it. Kai carefully doesn’t look at any of his friends, just rummages for the medical supplies before rolling me onto my front so he can get to work disinfecting the wound. That’s too painful to think through, much less speak, but after he pours the last few drops from the bottle of refined spirits onto my wound, I have a moment to breathe while he prepares to stitch me up.

I have so many questions, many of them for Kai—Prince Eleas, apparently, and that’s some shit that will need to be dealt with—but I don’t want to distract him while he’s digging into my back with a fishbone needle. I curse under my breath and turn my hazy vision toward the horizon.

“Fucking idiot,” I snarl as Kai begins to sew. “All he had to do was run. Just take Lulu and run. What’s hard about that?”

“Leaving us behind, I expect,” Kai says. The stabbing pinch of the needle is steady—he knows what he’s doing.

“He’ssupposedto leave us behind. He’s a fuckingprince! Not a disguised one, either!”

The needle pauses for a moment.

Yeah, I heard that, you bastard.“What?What?You can’t tell me you didn’t want him to run. I know you care for him. I know you put his safety before everything else.”

This time the stab of the needle is almost reassuring. “I do.” Kai sounds bitter. “And I failed. I failed before we even got to the Gate.”

Ah. That’s what I thought. Someone on his side betrayed him, someone powerful enough to ensure that the Gate wouldn’t open for an arrival as important as their prince and his husband. Probably one of Huridell’s top generals, or maybe even a member of the royal family.

“Someone is definitely working against you. Who doesn’t want you to make an alliance with Zephyth?” Although who in their right fucking mind would prefer to ally with the snakes inKamor, I don’t even know.

“The only person who could launch an attack against the guards from inside has to be someone with complete authority over the Gate and its personnel. There are only two people with that kind of status in the whole city. One of them is Prince Eleas”—Kai levels a look at me as if gauging my reaction—“who you now know is me.”

And I’m pissed as fuck to be learning about the deceit, but this isn’t the time.

“The other is Anarx, the king of Huridell.” The needle pauses again. “My father. Which means he’s been planning this with Embros for some time.”

“Why leave Cam in the dark about all of this?” I feel ridiculously slow, like my mind is stuck underwater while the rest of me is flopping about on land trying to pick a direction to flail in. “Why didn’t you tell him who you are? That way he—we—could have prepared ourselves better.” Although I don’t know what we could have done against an attack of this size, even with more warning than we already had. The burnedwalls of Traveler’s Ease float across my memory.

We knew they were out there. We didn’t take it seriously enough.

“I was too worried about our damn security.” Kai sounds incensed with himself. “From the moment I made the decision to make an offer to Cam, I felt pressure on me from all sides, mostly from factions within my own city. Not all of it was from people who wanted me to move faster, either, especially with the Kamorans sniffing around a few months ago. I decided it was safest to move incognito. Maybe if I hadn’t, maybe if I’d come ready for a formal marriage to Cam, my father—”

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