Page 170 of A Promise so Bold and Broken

He’d let her go through with this because he would never take her choice away.

Not like Rioner.

Not like Meyah.

Not like Loche…

Lessia pulled Merrick down again, hiding her scrunched-up face in his neck.

Telling him wouldn’t change what would happen.

So she didn’t.

Instead, she whispered, “You’re mine,” and clung to him with every nerve inside her aching and only one sentence echoing in her mind:

Please don’t be the last time.

Please don’t be the last time.

ChapterForty-Two

The ship rocked back and forth as one of Loche’s guards—the only one he’d decided to bring—steered it between the narrow dark cliffs on the outskirts of Asker, and Lessia clasped the railing harder, savoring the cool drops peppering her face from the wind whipping around the ship.

They hadn’t dared take one of the larger ships in the harbor—not with Loche and her traveling together, at the risk of people seeing them—so they’d taken one of the older warships that Loche kept for missions he needed to undertake without the townsfolk’s knowledge, one he kept hidden an hour’s ride from the capital.

But Lessia didn’t mind.

While old, it was beautiful, carved from the oaks that used to stand proud on every isle in Ellow but which now had only started to regrow, as so many of the trees had been destroyed in the latest war.

The sail was plain buff, not the usual Ellow sails—the white with an embroidered crest, either that of the large circle and the thousand smaller ones around it, the symbol of Ellow, or the crest of one of the noble families, as they typically funded the creation of the ships to protect their islands.

Should someone spot them, they’d probably assume it was a merchant ship, as that’s what most of the old warships were used as nowadays.

As long as they didn’t travel too close, that was, of course.

The Fae warriors hadn’t bothered with their glamours out here at sea.

Lessia tried not to wonder whether those ships would soon have to be put to their old use, forced to brave the storming seas where waves would once again be tainted red from the blood spilled on either side.

Hopefully, it wouldn’t get to that.

Hopefully, they could quell the rebellion and come up with a plan to stop the Oakgards’ Fae invasion.

Hopefully, no more innocent blood would be spilled.

After all, the curse had mentioned a new world.

A world she’d dreamed of.

A world she’d wept for.

A world she’d fought for.

Lessia looked down at the wild sea.

It would be worth it.

Even if she wouldn’t be there to see it, it would be worth it.

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