“Is that so?” I ask, propping myself up on my arm again to look down at him. “I don’t think you’ll be able to help yourself.”

His hand leaves my hair and trails down to my waist. “I think you’re underestimating the stench. They say you can smell it a quarter mile away.”

“Disgusting,” I tell him, wrinkling my nose.

He laughs and rolls us over so that he’s looming over me, shoulder-length gold hair tickling my cheeks as he presses another lazy, lingering kiss to my mouth. When he pulls back, I follow him a couple of inches before breaking the kiss.

“Another day, I’ll take you to Brakka and you can eat as much intu nakara as you like, but it’s almost time to get you home.”

I sit up and watch him walk back over to the helm, take the wheel, and turn the ship around, aiming us toward the shore. In the light of the full moon above, the hard lines of his face are softer, younger than they look in the day. He is not the same person to me that he was when we stepped onto this boat tonight, and I don’t think there’s any going back to how things were before.

I told my Shadows that I could kill him and start a civil war, and now I’m even more sure that the plan would work. There are already such high tensions between him and the Kaiser that I wouldn’t have to do much to stoke them. But I also doubt that I’m going to be able to kill Søren when the time comes. I meant what I said to him: he isn’t his father. And I don’t think I can go back to pretending he is.

The season is turning and the night has gotten surprisingly cold, so I pull the blanket with me as I stand up, draping it around my shoulders and walking around behind him. Goose bumps rise along his bare forearms, so I wrap the blanket around him, too. If I stand on the tips of my toes, I’m tall enough to rest my chin on his shoulder.

“Do you promise?” I ask him.

“Do I promise what?” he asks, turning his head slightly so that his breath touches my lips.

“To take me away from here?” As I say it, I’m not sure which part of me is asking.

Something hard flickers across the sharp angles of his face and I worry suddenly that I’ve misread him, that I don’t actually understand him at all. Speaking Astrean and this whole midnight sail might count as treasons, but they’re little ones. Forgivable ones, though not without their own costs. Yet running away—not just halfhearted plans but an actual promise—that is something else entirely. Søren’s smart enough to know that. He’s smart enough to know that I’m really asking if he would put me above his duty as Prinz.

He sighs and presses a kiss to my forehead. “One day,” he says.

It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

WE TRADE QUICK, DESPERATE KISSES the whole way back, barely making it within the two-hour time frame Blaise had set. Søren and I take the curfew seriously for different reasons—Søren’s worried my Shadow guard will tattle to the Kaiser, but I’m worried Blaise will think I’m in trouble and do something reckless. Even when Søren kisses me outside the doorway that leads to my wardrobe, I can’t help but think about Blaise’s kiss earlier. They blur together in my mind until I can’t quite keep straight who is who.

“I’ll see you when I come back,” Søren promises me. “I’ll bring you a token.”

A token from Vecturia, I remind myself. A token from a country not unlike mine that Søren and his men are going to conquer. Because that’s who they are. That’s who he is. I cannot let myself forget that.

I give him one last kiss before opening the passage door and crawling through, back into the wardrobe. My dress is still uncomfortably damp, but wearing it is preferable to what would happen if my dress was found on Søren’s boat, or his clothes in my room.

My room is silent when I emerge, apart from loud snores coming from Heron’s wall.

“I’ve got him,” I say to whoever is listening. “Or nearly. He’s half in love with me, and when he’s back from Vecturia, I can finish it.”

I don’t add that I think I’m falling for him, too.

“Is everything else moving along?” I ask instead.

Blaise clears his throat. “Art’s mother left tonight, and her ship is fast. She should get there a couple of days before they do. It won’t be a lot of time to prepare anything, but the Vecturians will at least be warned. They can gather their combined troops on the nearest island and head them off there. The Kalovaxians will still likely outnumber them, but the Vecturians have the defensive advantage and they should be able to keep them at bay. The Kalovaxians think it’ll be an easy siege; if it’s more trouble than it’s worth, they should turn around.”

I nod. “The others are asleep?”

“Yes, it’s nearly sunrise,” he points out.

My body is exhausted, but my mind is buzzing, full of thoughts of Dragonsbane and freedom and the sound of Søren’s rare laugh. I try not to think about Blaise and his kiss and the way he wouldn’t look at me.

A yawn overtakes me and I realize just how tired I am.

“I think I’ll join them,” I tell him, crawling into bed without bothering to change my dress. “You ought to do the same.”

“I’m not tired,” he says. “Besides, someone ought to keep watch.”

I’m about to protest, when I feel something hard beneath my pillow. I reach under and feel not one but two items, and pull them out. The first is a thin, sheathed blade of polished silver. I hold it up to the weak moonlight pouring through the window next to my bed to admire it. I’d forgotten how elegant Astrean swords were, with filigreed hilts and narrow blades, so different from the cragged iron swords the Kalovaxians favor.

The second item is a small glass vial filled with no more than a spoonful of opalescent liquid.

“I’m assuming this isn’t for my consumption?” I ask. Warmth seeps through the glass as I turn the vial over in my hands.

“Not unless you want to be turned to ash from the inside out,” Blaise replies.

I nearly drop the vial, which would have been catastrophic. Encatrio. Liquid Fire. I’d heard rumors about it, but the recipe is a closely guarded secret that only a few know. Even the Kaiser hasn’t managed to get his hands on it, though not for lack of trying.

“Something we thought you could pass on to your friend, and her charming father,” he continues, drawing out the word friend sarcastically. “Another way to weaken the Kalovaxians, to make them fear us. If we can kill their strongest warrior, they’ll think we can get to anyone and it’ll make the Kaiser look weak.”