The Alcazar (The Cerulean Duology #2) - Amy Ewing Page 0,71
her lips. “Of course you wouldn’t know, your hateful father and his hateful ways. The queens rarely leave Banrissa, usually only for ceremonies or the occasional holiday. But she has taken her warships. She is coming after me.”
Leo felt that the news of being hunted down personally by a queen should not have been said with such eager anticipation.
“The Triumvirate is fracturing even as we sit here sipping our coffee,” Ambrosine said. “Oh, it is better than I could have ever hoped. I should have sunk Rahel’s ridiculous pleasure ship years ago.” Then she frowned. “No, I was right to wait. Agnes is coming.” She looked up at Leo like she’d forgotten him. “And you are here too! And Sera. No, my patience has paid off.”
“Great,” Leo said, though inside he felt queasy. Ambrosine had not been entirely able to hide her disappointment that Leo was not Agnes—he knew she’d rather have his sister here than him. For all her talk of the importance of family, it was the women who really mattered, not the men. Every night at dinner they had been treated to a new story about some Byrne matriarch or other, of brutal punishments meted out to enemies or heroic deeds of exploration and advancement. “I’ll leave you to dress. We are nearly at Culinnon.”
“We are?” For the past two days there had been nothing except sky and sea stretching out around them. In the beginning of the journey they had seen the coastlines of other islands, the waters dotted with ships. But the farther north they went, the colder it got and the emptier the ocean became.
Ambrosine gazed out his porthole. “I can always feel when it’s close,” she murmured. “It calls to me.”
Leo shuddered. Without another word, Ambrosine strode out of his cabin. Meetings with his grandmother left him with the feeling of being doused in cold water. He munched on a cinnamon roll as he picked out clothes for the day. No more billowing silk shirts and sashes. In the north, they wore thick cable-knit sweaters and heavy woolen pants.
He found Sera standing at the rail, gazing out over the whitecapped waves. Gray clouds blanketed the sky, heavy with impending rain. Leo shivered despite his sweater. Sera wore a fur-lined cloak with the hood down, her blue hair flowing in a river down her back.
“Agnes and Vada made it to Ithilia,” he said as he approached her. “My grandmother just got a message.”
“They did?” she exclaimed. “Oh, Leo, how wonderful.”
“Ambrosine says they have a boat, so they should be heading to Culinnon.” He told her about the declaration of war and the Renalt’s decision to pursue Ambrosine herself. Sera’s excited expression faded.
“War,” she muttered. “Why must humans fight against each other? Kill each other. For what?” She looked out across the sea again.
“I guess it’s just in our nature,” Leo said.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think sometimes you forget who you are, or what is truly important in this world. . . .”
He felt like she was talking about something else, as if he’d interrupted her during a moment of deep contemplation.
“The moonstone?” he asked. He knew she’d been consumed with it, hoping to see more of her City. She’d had visions here and there—one of the gardens that surrounded the temple at night, one of the houses where all the purple mothers were waiting to get pregnant, and one in that spooky underground place but with no Leela this time. The visions felt scrambled, she’d told him, blurry. Leo thought the moonstone was acting like a radio with a busted antenna. It was trying to connect Sera and her City to the same frequency but static kept getting in the way.
“No,” she said, her hand moving to caress the pendant. “The moonstone is the same. I do wish I could speak to Leela again, though.” She turned her eyes toward the clouds. “I hope she’s all right.”
Leo did too, but Leela’s dangers were far away and theirs were very much real and, apparently, chasing after them. He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if the Renalt and her warships caught up with Ambrosine’s galleon. Even if they made it to Culinnon, was the island’s magic strong enough to protect them? Leo still wasn’t even entirely sure what magic Culinnon possessed. It just sounded like a very pretty place so far, and that wouldn’t help withstand cannons or gunfire.