City of Spells (Into the Crooked Place #2) - Alexandra Christo Page 0,20

thought the opposite.

Everyone was innocent in war, doing whatever they thought was best, even if it was convoluted and evil to everyone else. No soldier set out to be the bad guy. Every villain was the hero of their own story. War was built on innocence corrupted and lost. That was the thing battle stole from people, before it took their souls.

“I’m going to figure out a way,” Saxony said. “But we need a real army before we talk about how to storm the gates of Creije.”

“You mean save Creije,” Tavia said. “You have to make sure that the other Lieges you contact know that’s the plan. They can’t just be out for blood and revenge.We need to save the city.”

Karam knew that by city, Tavia also meant Wesley, since the two had always been very much one and the same. Karam couldn’t help but agree with her, because it was Wesley who had seen the promise in a young Wrenyi runaway and offered her the means to become the warrior she needed to be. She owed him so much—too much—and abandoning him now, after he’d saved them all in one way or another, was not the way forward.

“We must find out if Wesley is still himself,” Karam said. “If the Kingpin is inside his mind, then—”

“Zekia’s mind is the one we should be worried about,” Tavia said. “Since she’s clearly lost it.”

Karam agreed, but she could also never forget that Zekia was Saxony’s little sister, and in Karam’s mind that afforded her a certain unfair immunity for her crimes.

“She is just a child,” Karam said.

Tavia’s eyes turned severe. “That stops being an excuse when you become a mass murderer.”

Karam supposed she had a point, but she had to wonder where they drew this invisible line of morality. They had all killed someone at some point, or played a part in the deaths of strangers and foes alike.

None of them were free from sin, with clean hands unstained by blood. They were soldiers and warriors, and Karam couldn’t quite work out how they had made the distinction between fighter and killer.

She wasn’t sure what side of the line she fell on. For Zekia and the Crafters who believed in the Kingpin’s new world, weren’t Karam and the others just villains who were trying to steal it from them?

“Wesley has killed people too,” Saxony said. “He handed Zekia over to Ashwood once before. Maybe my sister is too far gone, but you need to think about the possibility that Wesley might also be beyond saving.”

“I have,” Tavia said, but there was no change in her eyes.

She had been threatening to give up on Wesley for years, but her inaction spoke volumes that her vows could not. Threats were nothing if they didn’t carry weight, and Tavia’s words were as light as air, flying from her lips and across the wind into nothing.

She couldn’t give up on Wesley, even if she tried. Karam could see that. Just like Karam would never give up on Saxony, or choose a side that didn’t have her on it.

If the years of Wesley being a crook and a total bastard hadn’t changed Tavia’s heart, then Ashwood’s influence wouldn’t. This war wouldn’t. She’d try to save him until the end, even if that put her on the opposite side from her friends.

Karam clutched her pehta’s pendant, threaded around her neck and falling perfectly beside her thumping heart. She wondered what side he would be on, or if he would counsel the absence of such a choice, trying to bring their armies together instead of preparing for them to fall apart. Or perhaps he would still have preached peace and given them a solution that offered no bloodshed or trampled loyalties.

Karam wished he were still alive to ask, but it was useless to hope for such things, because her father was gone, as so many others soon would be.

Life and loyalty were constantly in flux and Karam knew that sooner or later every bond on this side of the Onnela Sea would be tested.

She and Saxony and Tavia would fight this war on whatever side it took to save the people closest to them. Karam could only hope that those sides stayed the same for as long as possible.

ASEES LOOKED between Karam and Saxony, as though she were trying to decide who was more senseless. She finally settled on Saxony.

“You want me to go against the leader of your Kin? The woman who is allowing us safe stay