Page 84 of Winds of Destiny

“Without killing yourself.”

Cam gasps. “So little faith! I’ll do it without killing anyone!”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Turo says, but he smiles as we head out after Rhianan.

So will I.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Cam

It’s dark by the time we get to Zephyth. Well, dark compared to the day, at least—the moons are both full tonight, bright and luminous like a pair of glowing eyes. Their light makes us plainly visible as we walk—stagger, nearly—up to the main gate, where guards are waiting for us with their halberds at the ready. The man with the sharpest eyesight recognizes us from twenty paces out.

“Prince Camrael!” He drops his weapon and comes running over, hands extended like he wants to grab on but isn’t sure he’s allowed.

I smile at him. “I’m back. Well,we’reback.” I gesture to Kai and Turo, who flank me like a pair of bookends.

Rhianan is gone—she ran off as soon as we set foot on solid ground again. Turo isn’t worried, so neither am I…much.

“I’m sure we’re not expected, but—”

“But we thought you weredead!” The guard’s voice carries and summons even more guards to see what’s going on, and then someone sounds the trumpet call specifically meant for the king, which—Shit. I was really hoping I could get to Ophiucas’s cove and do what needs to be done before interacting with my father. Now I’m going to be stuck in a lecture for the next three or four hours.

“Sorry,” I murmur to my lovers. “This is going to get uncomfortable.”

“Can’t be as uncomfortable as meeting with a father who tried to kill you,” Kai points out, and yes, I suppose that’s true, but—

“I don’t think it’s going to go like you think it is,” Turo says, his stare roving over the guards and the people slowly converging beyond them. “Look at their hair.”

It takes me a second to recognize what Turo saw right away, but when I do… “Mourning blue.” The dark shade of blue-black is so expensive to produce that wearers usually choose to indicate mourning with only a single band of it wrapped around a wrist or used to hold their hair back. Wealthy people might get a whole belt made from it, and—

“Camrael!” And there’s my father, breaking into a run on the far side of Zephyth’s grand entrance courtyard the second he sees me. He’s wearing an entire robe of mourning blue, and his face looks haggard. I hardly even realize I’m running to meet him until we crash together, nearly falling. His arms are tight around me, but the rest of his body is shuddering.

“He told me you were dead,” my father whispers, and I don’t need to ask who “he” is. There’s only one man who would know that we were killed—or kidnapped, which to Kai’s awful father was no doubt as good as a death. “The messengers just reached us a few days ago. I—”

He pulls back and cups my face in his hands, eyes searching hungrily for assurance that I’m really his son.

“It was an ambush,” I say gently. He’s actually hurting my face a bit, but I don’t pry his hands off. I grip his wrists instead, another way of reassuring him, of grounding him. “Set up by Anarx and carried out by Embros. Only I, Kai, and Turo survived.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. I glance back at Kai and notice the tension riding his shoulders as he looks around at the crowd. I don’t expect Jeric to be back here yet—one wagon loaded down with children isn’t exactly fast.

“Father, there’s a caravan with survivors from a village. We need to send an escort for them tomorrow morning. The man leading the group is the last of Kai’s soldiers.”

My father glances beyond me, and his expression becomes conflicted. Propriety dictates he should go greet our official guest—and my “proxy” husband—but he doesn’t want to let go of me. I understand. I don’t really want to be let go of, but it’s decided for us when I hear my sister’s shriek. I turn just in time to embrace her, and this time the tears are more than I can withstand. My father leaves us to cry in each other’s arms.

“Cam,” she whispers, before leaning up and kissing my cheek. She’s smiling through her tears. “I knew you’d come back.”

“You seem like the only one who did,” I joke, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Ophiucas gave me dreams of you. I saw you in a chariot, and sleeping beside lions, and then in a glorious temple.” Her voice is fervent, eyes alight with knowledge gifted directly from our god. “I saw you bring the everwinds back, Cam.” She beams at me. “I’m soproudof you!”

Damn it, Ijustwiped my eyes…

“And I know what you have to do next,” Gilraen goes on.

“Is it sleep?” I ask. “Because I think I could really use some sleep.” I’m exhausted right down to the bone. I can’t remember when I last ate, and while the water of the inner sea isn’t salty like the ocean, it’s not particularly potable, either.

The walk from the edge of the marshy sea to Zephyth was only three hours, but in wet shoes after the longest day in the world, it felt likea lotlonger.

---