the guard, and he fumbles on the ground, dizzy and disoriented. I replay the memory over and over again. I have ten minutes before the hour rings from the bell tower above. I need to get to the courtyard, but I’m frozen in shock by a detail of the memory that meant nothing to the guard and everything to me.
There, on the deck of that ship catching the morning glare, with carnation petals drifting in the breeze, stood a man I’d know anywhere.
Dez.
Looking just as I left him. Handsome and fierce as ever, with one thing changed. His left ear was missing.
It’s impossible.
It must be an old memory, from when he was still alive.
Because I watched him die—I saw his head roll and come to a stop right in front of me. I saw the blood drip from Castian’s blade. Castian’s angry blue eyes as he paraded across the stage. So different from the day he cut into the dance during the Sun Festival. The memory of his murderous hands on me sends angry flashes all over my body.
But still, seeing Dez’s face, so recent, in a memory, feels like a dagger to the chest. A fresh wave of grief washes over me. In all this time, I’ve hardly been able to stop and feel the loss of him. Not truly. Not deeply. The feeling that I will never have him again, never hold him or kiss him or tell him how I feel. My defender, my partner in crime, my best friend.
No, I can’t do this. Not yet. Not now.
With the minutes counting down, I shake myself out of my stupor and drag the guard around a corner. I tie him down, then gag him, but continue reliving his footsteps along the port of Sól y Perla, where the rest of the Whispers are now, hopefully escaping to Luzou. I can’t stop the questions racing through me. When was the last time Dez went on a mission that required a ship? There was an excursion to Dauphinique where he was gone for four months. He’d come back with a scraggly beard, his first real facial hair. He’d tried to kiss me but it looked itchy, so I waited. That was three years ago.
I see the face of the man in the memory over and over. Honey-brown eyes and a full dark beard. It could be anyone. But when he tightened the ropes on the starboard side, I could see him so clearly, see the scars on his bare arms. I know those scars, I’ve traced my fingers all over them. But Dez looked different in the memory. His ear was missing. How could that be unless it happened recently?
I slap myself. Sayida’s magics must be having a lingering effect on me. Altering the things I see. Making me dredge up feelings that I need to control.
I won’t fail you.
Make sure that you don’t.
The clock marks five minutes to the hour, and I race across the side of the building, guided by moonlight and faint gas lamps. A wail comes from the courtyard of the prison. My heart thunders as I run, and I worry that something has happened to Margo or the others.
Once I make it to the courtyard, I quickly discover it’s not a wail or a scream, it’s the whistle of the wind. All at once I know why they named this place Soledad. It has a way of making you feel like you’re all alone with nothing but an expanse of hills on one side and the cold, dark sea on the other.
I give a quick whistle. Dez used to signal by whistling a sparrow call, and it stuck with us. It made Esteban furious because he couldn’t roll his tongue or get his lips to make the softer sound.
Stop it, I tell myself. Focus. Focus on here and now.
As I stand alone, I wonder if the scream I heard wasn’t the wind at all. I wonder if it was Margo or maybe Amina, who is untested and new to missions like this. At the very least, Tomás is in the carriage, ready to take us away when we’ve secured the Robári.
When the clock marks the hour, I know something is wrong. They should be here. There’s a shrill whistle, sharp like the kind made between fingers, not our familiar sparrow tune. I turn to find the source of the noise, and suddenly I’m not alone.
I’m surrounded by a dozen guards.
Alarm bells go off along with