“Clear the field!” Arrin shouts at the same time Garrick says the same over the radio.
Now we all recognize the danger, and some scramble in vain to move the fighters sitting on the ground, others running to evacuate the wounded. Garrick struggles to slow his plane down, to stay with Ollie’s rapidly dropping height. We watch in mute disbelief as the pilots in the sky lower. No time to react.
500 feet.
400 feet.
“Hang on to it!” Garrick yells. “Land straight!”
“I can’t even—”
The leaking fuel line finally explodes. A billow of flame. Ollie’s entire fighter disappears, choking, veering sharply somewhere just beyond the runway as Garrick’s fighter bounces down onto the grass, jolting to the wildest stop I’ve ever seen, nearly spinning over with the force of its left turn.
“Extinguisher!” Arrin shouts again.
No one moves.
But Garrick’s moving, like a bat out of hell, leaping from the cockpit and sprinting for the trees.
“No,” Arrin says, staring after him. “No! Stop him. Lieutenant!” He shoves me forward, in Garrick’s direction. “I’ll get the medic!”
I don’t understand at first, but I run. I run hard, chasing Garrick past the giant fig tree, following the black tombstone of smoke. Somewhere as we’re sprinting, I finally understand my order, and I try to overtake Garrick, almost tripping on a huge root.
I’m too late. He’s already there when I stagger to a stop beside him, both of us heaving in the oppressive heat. There’s no acknowledgment of my arrival. Ollie’s fighter sits blistering in a little clearing, flames licking from every side. The nose and propeller are smashed up, but the wings are intact because, somehow, he managed to land it in a near perfect line between the trees. A hopeless attempt at salvaging what was left. Veering away from the clearing to save us all.
Through the shattered cockpit glass, his hands are on fire, still reaching for the canopy in his last attempt to get out.
I touch Garrick’s shaking arm.
He doesn’t move.
He won’t stop staring at the damn cockpit, fixated on the blackened, roasted flesh, and I want to hit him over and over until he moves. The smell. The heat.
“He was scared of heights,” Garrick says suddenly.
The fire crackles, and I take the risk of pulling on his shoulder.
It finally works.
He steps away.
Enough.
27
AURELIA
Madelan
Dusk falls, and in the quiet of my room, I dare to open the photo album for the first time since I hid it away. If I’m going to the League, if I’m going to force them to see the truth, then I have to do the same. I have to know who I am when I stand before them.
Sitting on my bed, I search the photographed faces again. Slowly. Deliberately. I don’t look away. I let myself imagine the fire that might have brought my family to this point of sharp fury. I let myself see the world through their eyes—forced into exile, abandoned and vulnerable before a storm of steel.
Lia Lehzar, remembered forever.
How did she die? Why? Her forgotten gaze haunt me, and anger fevers my grief as I keep turning pages until I’m far past the point I looked the first time. My mother and Uncle Tanek standing on a cliff’s edge. My mother and the rugged dark-haired man—another uncle? A lover? I can’t tell, and I force myself not to feel distaste. To not judge. To simply look and see.
To learn.
And when I turn the last page, a lone photograph hangs there in sad abandon, no longer fully stuck to the page, as if someone started to remove it, then left it alone instead. I nudge it horizontal again. It’s a picture of Mother resting in a metal chair near a bleached home covered in sun-withered vines. Her boots are kicked up on the table. Across from her is a lanky man stretched in his own chair, both of them young, tired, smiling like the desolate world round them is a paradise. His angled features are too familiar. Tattoos on his arms, a happy dog at his feet.
General Dakar.
General Dakar.
I sit there, my heart pounding, struggling through this final twist, struggling to bring all the pieces together—my mother holding a Southern rifle, sitting with the General. The reason my mother has stayed far from this riotous mess. The reason Lark came to us, wanting her to intervene and redeem herself before Seath, the lingering debt that was owed.
And all at once, I realize there is a traitor to the Nahir cause.
It’s the Queen of Etania, a Southerner ruling in Northern splendour, and allied with Seath’s two greatest enemies—Landore and Savient.
V
INHERITANCE
Dear Athan,
I’m sitting here on this balcony, the highest one in the palace, and I’m thinking of you. You once said you thought of me when you looked at the night sky—the stars and the velvet and all of that—and in return, I’d like to give the early evening to you. With the sun setting, and the afternoon rains over, the city’s colours seem brighter and stronger, stirred to new heights. Leafy terraces pooled and shimmering. Ginger and caramel tiles gleaming.
You are that brightness, Athan. You can reflect the sun or the cloud, depending on the day, but in your heart, you’re all of these colours glittering before me.
You’re the dusk—beautiful and warm and layered.
A light I could capture in my palm.
As I sit here, facing the mountains to the north, I listen for the heartbeat in my veins. I’m listening for you, crossing those distant ridges and asking you to come to me, drawing you to me like a line in the currents, always finding you even though we share no bond of blood, nothing to hold tight except the beat of your breath from when we last danced—wonderful, alive.
Come to me.
Come to me.
I say it over and over and I hope you’ll hear it, that you’ll know I want you here and whole and with me again. I will always want you, Athan, but you have to promise that you will always want me too. I might not be easy to love, but I promise I will get better. I will fight to gather the pieces of myself together, to become who I am meant to be, because you and I, we’re stronger than any war. I know we are. I can sit here on this balcony and ask you to come to me and you will. Even without this letter, you’ll hear me.
I’m calling you now.
Can you feel it? Can you sense it in the beat of your breath? You’re going to come over those mountains soon, and I’m waiting.
I’ll always be waiting for you.
Ali
28
ATHAN
The Cauldron
The night of our gamble, Garrick’s still sequestered in the hut with Arrin. The entire day has ticked away, our looming mission hanging over us, but there’s no captain to actually deliver the logistics.
We’ve lost pilots over the past month and a half. Some injured, some dead. But never a first officer. Disbelief bruises every face in Moonstrike, even the new replacements. Most of them have had Garrick and Ollie since Karkev. Over two years of flying together. Hundreds of sorties. Of course they’re taking it hard. For me, it still feels strange and detached, not yet real. Ollie was always good to me. Garrick’s lackey, sure, but unafraid to talk to me and treat me like a real person. Like I was more than just my last name.
But there’s a strafing run planned for tonight, and it still has to happen.
Even without Ollie.
Arrin eventually waves for me to join them in his office. I try to rehearse my lines, the pathetic attempt at consolation that feels obligatory, but I’m not prepared for what I find inside. Garrick sits alone at the desk, nursing a contraband drink—from Arrin, no doubt. He’s a mess. Red-eyed.
Once we’re alone, he just shrugs at me forlornly. “You know I don’t drink?”
I stare at him. It’s looking quite the opposite at the moment.
“I don’t,” he persists, wobbling a bit on the words. “My father always did enough of it for me,
and I swore I’d never be like him. But on the Intrepid…”
He concentrates on the bottle again, and I think we’re both remembering him sick all over the deck on the way over here. Was that his first drink? Has he only ever been holding wine glasses all these years, trying to fit in? I don’t know what to do with the confession. It has nothing to do with the lines I rehearsed. And as bad as I feel for him, now simply isn’t the time.
I try to take his bottle away, but he makes a noise, gripping it tight. “No, listen, Athan. My brother’s always walking himself right into our father’s gunsight. He wants to quit the damn navy. Told me that right before we shipped out. God, I can’t protect him from everything. That’s why I worked so damn hard to make Top Flight, to be the best and distract our father from Folco’s harebrained ideas. I was never smart like you.” He looks up. “I made that score out of pure sweat and pride—and it killed me to see you overtake it without trying.”
I realize what this is finally.
It’s an apology.
“It’s fine, Garrick. Here, I’ll get you water and—”
“You could just die tomorrow, you know. I should say it.”
I don’t allow myself to be irritated by that, and he sits there, red hair plastered to his forehead, black smoke still coating his face in patches. “I miss him already.”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t.” He looks at me, empty. “But one day you will.”
Now I am angry at him for saying that. Like a threat. But I’m also determined to pull him back into himself, anything to get him ready to fly in an hour. “Look, I’ve got your plane armed. Everyone’s ready for the briefing and Arrin says we can take that regiment.” It sounds simplistic, even to my own ears, but I hit the table for extra emphasis, to encourage him. “We’re ready to go.”
“I’m not going.”
My mouth drops open and he gives a short, self-effacing laugh. “Your brother knows I can’t do it. Not like this. I’ve never sat one out, but I won’t be a liability.”
“But—”
“I can’t fly, Charm. And there’s only one pilot here in line for a squadron, so I think he’s going to have to lead this one.”
I shake my head. “The Moonstrike pilots won’t fly under me, Garrick.”
I also don’t want to tell him how hard it’s been in the air for me lately. Like it’s all slipping away, barely able to take care of myself. But Garrick’s gaze is firm.
“They’ve seen what you’re capable of, Athan. They’ll follow.”
I have nothing to say to that.
Maybe it’s true.
“I’ll do it then,” I concede reluctantly. “For you.” I stand, glancing at his slumped, sad self. “And by the way, I heard Folco just got promoted. My brother’s watching out for him, so you can give yourself a break on that front.”
Garrick sits back. There’s a sliver of relief in his grief, like I’ve offered something worthwhile at last. “That’s good. Real good.” Then a tiny warning frown crosses his lips. “But, Lieutenant—don’t you dare leave any of my squadron behind tonight.”
* * *
That’s how I end up taking over the briefing. I don’t think Arrin ever expected to be in this position, delivering his plan to me of all people. But here we are, sitting across the table from each other, his voice all business, perhaps to mask the pure absurdity of his next objective resting entirely on his littlest brother’s shoulders.
There are three heavy batteries hidden and waiting to fire on his division, he says, gesturing at the map between us. Unless those guns are eliminated, his soldiers will have a nightmare when they push to link up with the main line again. Evertal’s got an opportunity to finally pierce through to him in the east, and he’s going to use us to pierce the opposite side, back to Torhan and the rest of Army Group North. A double-edged sword. No more exposed flanks.
“How did you get the coordinates on those hidden guns?” I ask.
“Army intelligence,” he replies, too quick.
The coordinates definitely came from his local girl. A valuable source of information that no one else here could have scrounged up in the middle of an encirclement.
I have no idea if she can actually be trusted.
“There you have it,” Arrin announces. “Hidden batteries and a regiment. I need both softened up if I’m going to get my divisions out of this trap tonight. Got it?”
He’s all done, and now it’s my turn. He doesn’t know how I’m supposed to accomplish this mission with only ten planes—and he doesn’t care.
I just need to do it.
I nod, but forego any salute. He won’t squeeze that one out of me.
“Got it.”
When I reach the door, though, I stop.
He’s still staring at the map, unmoved.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, because honestly, I suspected a few more subtle insults thrown into this historic brotherly briefing.
Arrin hesitates before pulling a paper from the desk. It’s crumpled beyond recognition, like it’s been intimately acquainted with his angry fist. “Apparently,” he says, “our little pamphlet-writing friend thinks I’m a criminal and this should be my last war. And do you want to know the truth?”
I wait.
His tired face looks up. “I hope to God they’re right.”
It suddenly dawns on me what we’re about to do. All of these soldiers he’s about to march into either victory or death. There’s no easy way out of this cauldron. Even if we win tonight, people are going to die. Soldiers, pilots, civilians. They’re going to be churned up like cheap bones because of a decision he’s making here in this lonely room.
There’s a cost.
What if this is the last time I ever see my own brother?
Arrin’s expression changes. He gives me a crooked smile. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not a ghost yet.”
And then he’s up and out the door, the mission underway.
The airfield’s nearly on fire with the setting sun as I deliver my strategy to Cyar, Trigg, and the remaining Moonstrike pilots. All the replacements look about as skittish as Cyar and I did last summer. Ten planes. Ten pilots. It’s not nearly enough, but since no Resyan fighters came after Garrick and Ollie, it’s possible the Resyan Air Force is conserving their power for a better battle. I order the Moonstrike pilots to take the regiment, then volunteer myself, Cyar, and Trigg for the hidden guns. It’s the more dangerous piece of the mission, but it requires fewer pilots. One bomb on each of our planes. One for each heavy battery. And if we don’t eliminate those guns, then it will be an absolute slaughterhouse when Arrin marches his division north.
They have to be knocked out.
I can tell the older Moonstrike pilots are a bit wary as I talk, but appreciation hovers in their grudging nods when I don’t force the battery run on any of them. It’s on my shoulders. If it goes wrong, I’m the one who gets blamed—or ends up dead.
At least there are no headaches in graves.
We start our engines as shadows curve across the field, and Trigg shouts at me from his cockpit, over the roar of the prop. “Congratulations, Captain. This is getting more official!”
For once, his wild grin has the right effect on me. A bit mad. A bit cocky. I return it, letting it fill the emptiness in me with something concrete, then check my watch, determined to get this over with before nightfall. Arrin will be marching his soldiers in the dark, and we need to destroy those guns and as much of the Resyan encampment as we can before they venture out.
We can do this.
I can do this.
I think.
As we fly upwards I’m sure we’re all imagining Ollie’s plane peppered and smoking. Everyone hurtles for height with impressive speed. It’s a strange thing once we’re up to 8,000 feet, because there’s not actually much room in the cauldron. The sky feels small here, only fifteen minutes’ flying away from the frontlines of Army Group North and yet they might as well be on the other en
d of the horizon.
“Charm, ten o’clock,” Cyar calls.
It’s the first disaster in my strategy. The Resyan Air Force hasn’t given up. Perhaps we’ve surprised a few scouting crews, but either way they wheel out of the gathering dusk, machine guns blazing. I order the rest to keep on for the regiment, and Cyar and Trigg follow me, engaging our attackers and trying to draw them away.
The Resyans are relentless. There’s too many of them, and I fling myself around, struggling to shake two off my wings without abandoning Moonstrike.
Garrick’s only order.
It’s a hell of a lot harder to fly for yourself and also nine other pilots. Cyar and Trigg keep up, putting a few down in smoke, but we’re still overwhelmed. The Resyans have our battered squadron hopelessly outnumbered. It’s a jumble of voices over the radio. No one down, but everyone fighting hard. I realize they won’t make it for that regiment and I won’t make it for those batteries. The enemy will be fresh and waiting when Arrin storms out to break their line. He’s relying on me.
And I’m failing.
I slam the throttle and get in close to a Resyan fighter. Spray the fuselage with a burst, shattering his tail, then haul back before I can get lured into a chase.
“Uh, Captain?” Trigg says suddenly. “I think we have company.”
“Company?” I’m overwhelmed enough I feel furious rather than afraid.
“Five o’clock!”
I spin my head to the right, trying to peer into the hazy light. A swarm of black dots materializes below, charging upwards. Right for us.
“Thief, what make are those fighters?”
Trigg pauses for a long moment. “Round wing tips … Landorian, I think?”
“Landorian?” both Cyar and I say in unison.
“Did they just declare war on us?” Trigg’s shaky question can’t hide his panic.
I’m feeling the same. Have the Landorians finally decided to come rescue their losing ally, King Rahian? We’re the ones who broke their royal verdict and invaded Resya. This might be the moment where we pay the price.
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