Dez’s kisses. In the way Esteban saved my life. After a while, hope finally ignites, tiny and distant, but alive and buzzing like a firefly within my heart. I hold on to that tiny light. It comes and goes, but it’s something.
Four letters. Dez knew them. He would have had to memorize them.
I push and pull my covers, too hot, then too cold in the unsettling night.
The Gray gathers in my mind like storm clouds. My temples ache. I struggle to push them back. To think of anything else. The most recent memories of Dez help. His full mouth trailing kisses along my neck. His eyes like fire in the moonlight. A promise made in the dark. How I watched him sleep and struggle until I took Dez’s nightmares, with the grazing of my fingertips on his temple.
But they weren’t nightmares, only a string of memories, a tumble of images that didn’t make sense together. And yet, perhaps they do.
Four words.
Dez chasing the hound.
Dez eating the orange.
Dez watching the flag.
Dez searching for me.
My mind turns like metallic gears. Like the keys of a cylinder lock. Four letters.
Hound. Orange. Flag. Ren.
A mnemonic device for remembering a code: H. O. F. R.
I bolt upright, my head throbbing, my vision spinning. . . .
A mnemonic device that I now know, but that Dez no longer does. Because I took the memory as he slept.
Because I allowed myself to touch him. Because I truly thought in that moment that if I loved him, it meant I couldn’t hurt him.
Dez doesn’t have the code to set himself free.
I do.
I should have known better. My power only destroys, nothing else. I will always hurt those I love the most. Never love a Robári. You will lose yourself. That’s what they say, and they might be right.
I push aside the blankets, frantic. Around me, the camp is quiet with sleep.
Panic floods my veins—never have I felt like this. My muscles tremble so hard I have to stand still, so very still, in order not to shake. I temper my breaths. In. Out. Inoutinoutinout. I fight with my mind to rationalize what could be happening. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps the memories I pulled were meant for something else.
But another voice whispers inside me, curling its truth around my chest and squeezing so hard I can’t breathe.
If I ripped away Dez’s memory of the code, he won’t be able to break free. If Dez can’t break free from his cell, he won’t be able to find the weapon. And then? He’ll be in his cell the morning of the execution. In two days. We are a full day from the capital. That leaves so little time. I remember again the prince’s white grin as he sparred with Dez. The feline grace of his movements. His preference for blood and spectacle. The way he struck his own soldier when questioned. I don’t make promises to Moria.
I have to tell Illan what I’ve done. But as I scramble out of my bed, wincing at the lingering pain in my shoulder, I realize that if I tell Illan, he’ll have to call a meeting of elders to make a decision. There’ll be a debate, voting, procedures that take time. That’s time Dez doesn’t have.
I have to be the one to go to Dez—no matter what Illan or the elders decide.
No matter that I will never be welcomed back to the Whispers, because once again I’ve betrayed them. What have I done?
My hands shake as I strap my sword back onto my belt and hurry into my boots. The air already feels thinner, the night giving way to the coming day, as I sneak out to the horses, whispering softly to calm them. Dez will die the day after tomorrow, and it will be my fault. The thought is choking, blinding. I have to steady myself. I have to make it to him. I breathe in, breathe out, and mount.
I trust you, Ren. That was his mistake, wasn’t it?
Never trust a Robári.
I can’t think as the horse picks up speed. I can’t feel anything but a dark, pulsing shudder of truth. He will die, and I am the one who sentenced him.
Unless I get there first.
Chapter 9
The first time I tried to run away from a Whispers’ safe house in Citadela Salinas, I was thirteen. Much like now, I stole a horse. The beasts are precious to the Whispers, but I didn’t care. During training the other kids lobbed cruel names when they