Aan couldn’t eat. He couldn’t drink. He could barely force himself to breathe past the hatred constricting his throat.

  He stared at the back of the dirter king’s head while the students and masters of Thornfield gorged themselves on the celebratory feast. Aan’s hands shook. His ears whined like they had for weeks after his swim across the Deep Chasm, when he’d dived down too far into the aan darkness and felt the pressure like an awl in his ears. His skin buzzed.

  That st sensation wasn’t his. Neither was the constant undercurrent of fear. He felt no fear anymore. The worst had already happened. There was no room left in him for fear.

  The foreign feelings came from the princess seated before him. Her pale hand shook as she plucked at her goblet and picked at the food set before her, moving it around without eating.

  Aan felt the pulse of terror rise when her father looked her way. The buzz in her skin grew almost loud enough to hear when the crown prince came close to her.

  By contrast, when Izak was around the princess, Aan felt warmth and happiness swell within her. She felt safe with Izak near.

  And one or both of them, Aan and the princess, felt confused. The emotions surrounding Izak tangled like loose lines in a storm. Betrayal, esteem, fury, dedication, frustration, gratitude. Neither Aan nor the princess could wrestle their portion free of the other’s.

  Izak had saved his life. Izak had imprisoned him. Izak had taken Lathe out of the dirter pit and given her honorably to the ocean. Izak had made redeeming the blood debt impossible.

  No, not impossible. He was Aan, the shadow in the night-bck depths of the sea, the fear of every dirter who dared to sail Ocean Rover waters. He would find a way, no matter what it required of him, no matter how long it took, no matter that he was chained to protect this frightened, cringing princess and every filthy dirter in her direct bloodline. Even the king.

  While Aan lived, there was hope of protecting his people and bringing justice to the blood drinker king.

  And beneath the seething, choking fury, Aan knew he had Izak to thank for it.

  ***

  Thornfield’s royal suite was broken up into the sitting room, bedchamber, and a bathing chamber from which the basin had been removed and a cot brought in.

  As day fell, the royal household retired. The king, with his full complement of newly grafted seniors, took the bedchamber. The new Royal Thorns rifled through the room thoroughly, searching out every potential entrance and exit and making certain no corner or crevice concealed deadly treachery.

  While this was going on, the crown prince and princess attempted to work out their sleeping arrangements.

  “You can have the sitting chamber,” Etian told Kelena. “I don’t mind a cot. It’s nicer than some of the pces I slept up north.”

  While Izak appreciated his brother’s galntry, he’d also seen the royal bathing chamber. With Etian on the cot and eight Thorns crammed around the edges of the room, it would be a long, cramped day. If an assassin crept in, they would massacre each other just trying to draw their weapons. The soul of a Thorn whose master died under his protection shattered along with his broken grafting; Izak hated to see what might happen to a Thorn who accidentally disemboweled his master.

  Kelena stumbled over a reply that Izak could barely hear, something about “no trouble” and “hardly comfortable.”

  “One man can hold the smaller chamber better than eight,” Aan intervened. “She will sleep there.”

  “Thank the strong gods someone sees reason.” Izak cpped his friend on the shoulder. “I was trying to think of a delicate way to tell Kelen I didn’t care about her comfort as much as I do mine.”

  His sister thought that was funny, but the pirate shrugged off Izak’s hand. Without another word, he took the princess by the arm and directed her to the bathing chamber.

  Right. The shock of the night’s events must have passed and left the anger to set in.

  As commander of the crown prince’s Thorns, Izak organized Hare, Sketcher, and another pair to search the sitting room for dangers. Izak knew the pair’s numbers—Sixteen and Ninety-one—but he was still learning their chosen names. Two more he posted at the sitting room door with orders to trade off with himself and the st man, Seventy-eight, in a few hours.

  Just as Izak was about to suggest everyone who wasn’t currently guarding the entrances and exits lie down and try to sleep until their watch, Etian announced that he was going to bathe. Nothing Izak said could change his brother’s mind.

  The organization and assignment of duties began all over again at the bathhouse. Six Thorns inside, Izak and Seventy-eight outside.

  Seventy-eight’s new name was Wraith or Rake or something like it, but Izak was worn too thin to bother asking again. He wouldn’t remember anyway, and the longer the day stretched on, the less he cared. There would be time to put names to faces between Thornfield and Shamasa Redoubt, and then time to put those names on graves when Etian’s insane plot to murder Hazerial killed them all.

  Assuming any of them survived the campaign into Het territory to come back to the Kingdom of Night and partake in such a mad conspiracy. Maybe Etian would push them all the way to the Het’s northern coastline. Maybe a year from now, Izak would be sending more bodies of dead friends out to sea.

  Light, he needed some rest. Better yet, a trip to the vilge to drown all thought in a bottle of wine and Casia or Danasi’s company. As long as he was wishing, make that Casia and Danasi.

  It was customary for the procession to stop at Sandshells when the new graftings left Thornfield. A secondary celebration paid for by the older Royal Thorns to welcome them into the guard and mark the end of their Thornfield-imposed celibacy. Izak tried to look forward to it, tried to enjoy the thought of pretending to have just id eyes on the public house girls for the first time, tried to savor the fantasy of gathering the beauties into his arms and leading them up the stairs while a roomful of envious Thorns gred daggers at his back.

  But it was all hollow. It felt as if the girls would crumble like ash on his fingers, turn to ash on his tongue.

  The runt was dead. That was what he would be telling Casia and Danasi when they stopped in Sandshells—that their favorite low street brat had suffered and breathed her st the night before, and that he had done nothing to stop it, nothing to save her. If he had argued harder, if he’d locked up the energies in her blood and hidden her away, if he’d just done something… Instead, he’d held her in pce for the sughter.

  The feeling of Lathe writhing as she died came back, that scrape of thornknife on bone as it pulled out of her chest. He heard her pained sob.

  Izak closed burning eyes and leaned his head back against the wall of the bathhouse.

  Prince of Loss, Eketra had said. There was his scepter to prove it, ebony staff worked with silver clutched in his fist, bde shining in the afternoon light.

  “Sleeping on the job, Commander?” Seventy-eight asked.

  Izak ughed. “Just enjoying some happy memories of dying.” He scratched the thornknife scar on his chest. “The part where the strong gods weigh and evaluate you and find you worthless was a bit defting, wasn’t it? Why do you think no one ever mentions that when they talk about the grafting?”

  Seventy-eight smiled as if a joke had just gone over his head. “The part where what?”

  Thanks so much for reading, peeps! I appreciate you! Final chapter of Book 1 coming at you tomorrow!e