“I am not keeping that thing on my ship,” Tarcquet said.

“We’ll deliver her before you depart, then.”

“And you can guarantee she won’t sink us into the ocean?”

“She can’t do anything as long as you give her regular doses of laudanum,” said Vaisra. “Post a guard. Keep her doped up and covered in wet blankets, and she’ll be tame as a kitten.”

“Too bad,” Tarcquet said. “She’s entertaining.”

Vaisra chuckled. “She is that.”

Tarcquet gave Rin a last, lingering glance. “The Consortium’s delegates will be here soon.”

Vaisra dipped his head. “And I would hate to keep the Consortium waiting.”

They turned their backs toward her and moved to the door.

Rin rushed forward, panicked.

“I did everything for you.” Her voice came out shrill, desperate. “I killed Feylen for you.”

“And history will remember you for it,” Vaisra said softly over his shoulder. “Just as history will praise me for the decisions I make now.

“Look at me!” she screamed. “Look at me! Fuck you! Look at me!”

He didn’t respond.

She still had one card left to play, and she hurled it wildly at him. “Are you going to let them take Nezha, too?”

That made him stop.

“What’s this?” Tarcquet asked.

“Nothing,” said Vaisra. “She’s drugged, she’s babbling—”

“I know everything,” Rin said. Fuck Nezha, fuck his secrets—if he was going to backstab her then she would do the same. “Your son is one of us, and if you’re going to kill us all then you’ll have to kill him, too.”

“Is this true?” Tarcquet asked sharply.

“Clearly not,” said Vaisra. “You’ve met the boy. Come, we’re wasting time—”

“Tarcquet saw,” Rin breathed. “Tarcquet was on the campaign. Remember how those waters moved? That wasn’t the Wind God, General. That was Nezha.”

Vaisra said nothing.

She knew she had him.

“You knew, didn’t you?” she demanded. “You’ve always known. Nezha went to that grotto because you let him.”

Because how else did two little boys escape the palace guard to explore a cave they were forbidden from entering? How, without the Dragon Warlord’s express permission?

“Were you hoping he’d die? Or—no.” Her voice shook. “You wanted a shaman, didn’t you? You knew what the dragon could do and you wanted a weapon of your own. But you wouldn’t take the chance on Jinzha. Not your firstborn. But your second son? Your third? They were expendable. You could experiment.”

“What is she talking about?” Tarcquet demanded.

“That’s why your wife hates me,” Rin said. “That’s why she hates all shamans. And that’s why your son hates you. And you can’t hide it. Petra already knows. Petra said she was going to fix him—”

Tarcquet raised an eyebrow. “Vaisra . . .”

“This is nothing,” Vaisra said. “She’s raving. Your men will have to put up with that on the ship.”

Tarcquet laughed. “They don’t speak the language.”

“Be glad. Her dialect is an ugly one.”

“Stop lying!” Rin tried to rush Vaisra. But the chains jerked painfully at her ankles and flung her back onto the floor.

Tarcquet gave a last chuckle as he left. Vaisra lingered for a moment in the doorway, watching her impassively.

Finally he sighed.

“The House of Yin has always done what it has needed to,” he said. “You know that.”

When she woke again she decided she wanted to die.

She considered dashing her head against the wall. But every time she knelt facing the window, hands braced against stone, she started shaking too badly to finish the job.

She wasn’t afraid to die; she was afraid she wouldn’t bash her head in hard enough. That she’d only shatter her skull but not lose consciousness, that she’d be subject to hours of crushing pain that didn’t kill her but left her to a life of unbearable agony and half of her original capacity to think.

In the end, she was too much a coward. She gave up and curled up miserably on the floor to await whatever came next.

After a few minutes she felt a sharp jabbing sensation in her left arm. She jerked her head up, eyes darting around the room to find what had bitten her. A spider? A rat? She saw nothing. She was alone.

The prickling intensified into a sharp lance of pain. She yelped out loud and scrambled to sit up.

She couldn’t find the cause of the pain. She squeezed her arm tight, rubbed frantically up and down, but the pain wouldn’t disappear. She felt it as acutely as if someone were carving deep gashes into her flesh, but she couldn’t see blood bubbling up on her skin or lines splitting the surface.

At last she realized that this wasn’t happening to her.

This was happening to Kitay.

Did they have him? Were they hurting him? Oh, gods. The only thing worse than being tortured was knowing that Kitay was being tortured—to feel it happening, to know that it was ten times worse on his end, and to be unable to stop it.

Thin, scratchy white lines that looked like scars from a long-healed wound materialized under her skin.

Rin squinted at their shape. They weren’t random cuts to inflict pain—the pattern was too deliberate. They looked like words.

Hope flared up in her chest. Was Kitay doing this to himself? Was he trying to write to her? She closed her fists, teeth clenched against the pain, while she watched the white lines form a single word.

Where?

She crawled to the window and peered outside, counting the windows that led up to hers. Third floor. First room in the center hallway, just above the courtyard dais.

Now she just had to write back. She cast her eyes around the room for a weapon but knew she’d find nothing. The walls were too smooth, and her cell had been stripped of furniture.

She examined her fingernails. They were untrimmed, sharp and jagged. That might do the trick. They were terribly dirty—that might cause infection—but she’d worry about that later.

She took a deep breath.

She could do this. She’d scarred herself before.

She managed just three characters before she couldn’t bring herself to scratch any more. Palace 1–3.

She watched her arm with bated breath. There was no response.

That wasn’t necessarily bad. Kitay had to have seen. Maybe he just had nothing else to say.

Quickly she smeared the blood over her arms to hide the cuts, just in case any guards ventured in to check on her. And if they saw, then she would simply pretend she had gone mad.

Chapter 37

Something clanged against the window.

Rin jerked her head up. She heard a second clang. She half ran, half crawled to the windowsill and saw a grappling hook lodged against the iron bars. She peeked over the edge. Kitay was scaling up the wall on a single rope. He grinned up at her, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “Hi there.”

She stared back, too relieved to speak, hoping desperately that she wasn’t hallucinating.