trees, the leaves rattling around him in the wind, their shadows scattering over him. The bright flame in his heart turned to stone that day, and when he went back to Jonah, he spoke quietly, with measured calculation. “Show me where the medicine is.”
They snuck out of their dorms that night, when the moon retreated behind the clouds.
The Naval Headquarters began at the western end of the Blue Fort, stretching across cliffs that plunged precariously into the ocean. It was a symbol of the Bregonian Navy’s dominance of the seas—and utterly off-limits to the public. Jonah had speculated that it held classified information, such as naval secrets and warfare strategies.
It was near pitch-black outside, the cool breeze briny and speckled with sand, the grass of the courtyard soft beneath their boots. They stole across like shadows, and within minutes, they were outside the headquarters.
A pair of patrols passed by; Jonah shoved Ramson behind a tree. Ramson had never felt like this: adrenaline pumping through his blood, his heart pounding as though it wished to tear from his chest. And then, a beat later, Jonah was rounding to the back of the building. Ramson watched in awe and fascination as he pushed and a door appeared in the stone wall.
“An escape tunnel,” Jonah whispered. “I studied structural maps of castles. They all have these. So I found the Headquarters’.”
It was dark and silent inside, and it smelled of salt. The flooring was uneven, and Ramson stayed close to Jonah. After a while, the tunnel opened up. They stumbled through an iron door, and then they were inside the Bregonian Naval Headquarters.
This section of the Headquarters was dark—but from several hallways down came the faint light of torches. They passed corridor after corridor of seemingly endless doors, the marble floor sleek beneath their velvet steps, until at last, Jonah paused in front of an iron door that looked exactly like the rest.
“In here,” Jonah whispered, and pushed.
A shrill peal blasted through the silence; Ramson clapped his hands over his ears, but the sound seemed to set off a reactionary chain. He heard the muffled sound of distant bells beginning to ring, the high-pitched alarms blending into a cacophony of screams. Jonah was shouting at him, tugging at his arms, but his knees had buckled and he sat on the floor, dizzy and paralyzed with fear.
Footsteps rang, echoing through the corridors, and torchlight blazed behind them.
“Ramson!” Jonah shouted, and with a final tug, Ramson was on his feet and they were running in the opposite direction, back to the escape tunnel—
Light blazed before them as a patrol rounded the corner; he gave a shout, and a second patrol followed him. At the sight of Ramson and Jonah, he strung an arrow onto his bow and aimed. “Halt!”
Ramson was shaking so hard that his knees knocked together.
“Hands up!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jonah comply. “Please, we’re recruits from the Blue Fort,” Jonah said. “We got lost—”
“And ended up in a secure facility?” A voice sounded behind them, one that raised the hairs on Ramson’s neck. With dreadful premonition, he turned.
Roran Farrald stood behind them, dressed in a plain gray tunic. His face was as placid as the surface of a still lake. But Ramson had never seen such fury in his father’s eyes—dark, the color of storm clouds and midnight waters. They seemed to tremble as they settled on Ramson.
“Admiral Farrald.” The patrols bowed their heads in respect, but the archer kept his arrow trained on Ramson and Jonah.
“What in the devil do you think you’re doing?” Roran Farrald’s voice cracked over Ramson like a whip.
Before Ramson could reply, steps sounded; four to five men rounded the corner, and Ramson recognized all of them as high-ranking officers in the Navy. Among them, he spotted Commander Dallon.
“What the hell’s going on here?” a silver-haired officer asked.
Roran Farrald’s eyes blazed as he took a step forward. He looked between Ramson and Jonah, and finally, his gaze settled on his son. “You are guilty of trespassing in a top secret government facility. You are aware this is punishable by death?”
Ramson thought he would throw up. Death. He’d studied Bregonian law, but he hadn’t thought the laws would apply to them. Surely they applied to ordinary citizens, yes, but…not to recruits at the Blue Fort Academy.
His father’s coal-black gaze was still focused on him. “Was this your idea, boy?”
Ramson tried to speak, but fear had sewn his throat shut. He opened and closed his