Kingdom of Sea and Stone (Crown of Coral and Pearl #2) - Mara Rutherford Page 0,111

to Talin, assuming he was still willing to risk everything for me.

But it was more important that I stopped Ceren from reaching his troops. There were thousands of them, far more than Talia had, lined up like statues before New Castle, and I suspected Ceren had more elsewhere. Talia might manage to win this war, but not without losing hundreds of lives in the process.

And if Ceren wasn’t leaving New Castle through the main doors, that meant he had found another way out.

I turned and ran back inside, calling out to the nearest guard. “Where did the king go?”

He raised an arm and pointed, deeper into the castle.

Cursing my stupid gown and slippers, I broke into a run, following the outstretched arms of guards as I passed, all pointing in the same direction. It was a strange feeling to have complete control over them, coming so easily it would have disturbed me had I stopped long enough to think about it. A part of me could understand why Ceren enjoyed this so much; he was that broken child again, surrounded by toys. Only now, no one could refuse to play with him.

It wasn’t until I was lower in the castle that the guards began to seem more alert. Ceren must be attempting to control them as he passed. At least that meant I was getting closer.

“No one goes down to the mine,” one man said, stepping in front of me.

The bloodstone on his neck was pulsating in time to my heartbeat.

Let me pass.

Wordlessly, he stepped aside.

Exhilaration coursed through me. A man who could have taken me down with one blow had moved out of my way without argument. I hurried past him and down the dark, dank corridors. I could smell the underground lake before I neared it. The lunar moss torches were glowing fairly brightly, but as I approached the entrance of the cave, I could feel my breaths starting to come more rapidly. My body would always remember everything that had happened here: the first time Ceren had nearly caught me spying and had brutally killed the salamander; the fight with the giant monster, Salandrin, that had nearly cost me my life; and my desperate escape after Ceren impaled himself on my knife. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my heart rate.

As I entered the cavern, I saw someone emerge from the water on the other side in the glow of the torches. Ceren was taking the route I had used to escape, which led to an exit on the side of Mount Ayris.

I stopped, unsure what to do. I had promised not to leave this mountain without Father. If something happened to me out there, would anyone be able to get back into New Castle to rescue him? Would they forget he was there, suffering? But the farther Ceren got, the greater the likelihood of him attacking, and the smaller the chance of my plan working.

With a silent prayer that Father would understand, I shed the red gown like a creature emerging from a shell that no longer fit. I took a deep breath and dove into the lake. This time, I was the one in pursuit of Ceren. I saw him turn as I rose for my first breath, and I was glad he knew I was coming. Let him experience being the prey for a change.

By the time I reached the small opening leading outside, my shift was partially dried. I stumbled into the sunlight just in time to see Ceren mounting his black horse. As I had suspected, there were thousands more troops waiting, though these weren’t wearing the black armor of his trained soldiers. They were villagers, I realized, like Jerem had been before he was conscripted. They carried everything from rakes to shovels to scythes, and every one of them wore a bloodstone at their throat.

“Please work,” I whispered as I removed one of the golden pins from my hair. It was in the shape of a swallow. I knew Ceren well enough to know that he had given me bird-shaped hairpins for a reason. He had called me a little bird in the dungeon, when he caught me in his arms and told me I was trapped.

I understood why Talin’s arms had felt like a cage these past weeks, why the idea of being constrained by a person, a place, or even a corset, was so intolerable. They were all a reminder of the powerlessness I’d felt as Ceren’s