After all, even dead men could have lives they didn’t want to lose.

TWO

This was not Azmir.

Safiya fon Hasstrel might have been a poor geography student, but even she knew this crescent-moon bay was not the capital of Marstok. Though weasels piss on her, she wished it were.

Anything would be more interesting than staring at the same turquoise waves she’d been staring at for the past week, so at odds with the dark, dense jungle beyond. For here, on the easternmost edge of the Contested Lands—a long peninsula of no-man’s-land that didn’t quite belong to the pirate factions in Saldonica and didn’t quite belong to the empires either—there was absolutely nothing of interest to do.

Paper whispered behind Safi, almost in time to the sea’s swell, and overtop it sang the infinitely calm voice of the Empress of Marstok. All day long, she worked through missives and messages on a low table at the center of her cabin, stopping only to update Safi on some complicated political alliance or recent shift in her empire’s southern borders.

It was excruciatingly dull, and the simple truth was, at least in Safi’s opinion, that pretty people should not be allowed to lecture. Nothing negated beauty faster than boredom.

“Are you listening, Domna?”

“Of course I am, Your Majesty!” Safi twirled around, her white gown billowing. She batted her eyelashes for an extra dose of innocence.

Vaness wasn’t buying it. Her heart-shaped face had hardened, and Safi didn’t think she was imagining how the empress’s iron belt rippled and grooved like two snakes sliding past each other.

Vaness was, according to scholars, the youngest, most powerful empress in all of the Witchlands history. She was also, according to legend, the strongest, most vicious Ironwitch who had ever lived, having felled an entire mountain when she was only seven years old. And, of course, according to Safi, Vaness was the most beautiful, most elegant woman who had ever graced the world with her presence.

Yet none of that mattered because gods below, Vaness was tedious.

No card games, no jokes, no exciting stories by Firewitch flame—nothing at all to make this wait more bearable. They’d dropped anchor here a week before, hiding first from a Cartorran cutter. Then from a Cartorran armada. Everyone had been braced for a naval battle …

That had never come. And while Safi knew this to be a good thing—war was senseless, as Habim always said—she’d also learned that waiting all day long was her own form of private hell.

Especially since her entire life had been upended two and a half weeks ago. A surprise betrothal to the Emperor of Cartorra had pulled her into a cyclone of conspiracy and escape. She’d learned her uncle, a man she’d spent her whole life loathing, was behind some massive, wide-scale plan to bring peace to the Witchlands.

Then, because Safi’s life wasn’t complicated enough already, she’d discovered that she and her Threadsister Iseult might be the mythical Cahr Awen, whose duty it was to heal magic across the Witchlands.

The empress cleared her throat emphatically, snapping Safi’s mind back to the present.

“My treaty with the Baedyed Pirates is incredibly important for Marstok.” Vaness lifted her eyebrows sternly. “It took years to come to an agreement with them, and thousands of lives will be saved because of it—you are not even listening now, Domna!”

This was not entirely untrue, yet Safi took offense at the empress’s tone. After all, she’d been wearing her best I-am-a-perfect-student face, and Vaness really ought to appreciate that. It wasn’t as if Safi ever bothered to school her features with her mentors, Mathew and Habim. Nor even with Iseult.

Safi’s throat tightened. Instinctively, she grabbed for the Threadstone resting against her collarbone. Every few minutes, she’d haul out the uncut ruby and stare into its flickering depths.

It was supposed to light up if Iseult was in danger. Yet not a flash so far. Not a peep. This had soothed Safi at first—it was all she’d had to cling to, really. Her only connection to her Threadsister. Her better half. Her logical get-Safi-out-of-trouble half. The person who never would have let Safi agree to join the empress.

In hindsight, Safi could see what a fool’s bargain she’d made, offering up her Truthwitchery so the empress could root out corruption in her Marstoki court. Safi had thought herself oh so noble and oh so self-sacrificing, for by joining Vaness, Safi was helping the dying nation of Nubrevna win trade.

The truth was, though, that she was stuck. On a ship. In the middle of nowhere. With only the Empress of Insipid for company.

“Sit with me,” Vaness ordered, cutting through Safi’s self-inflicted misery. “Since you clearly do not care for Baedyed politics, perhaps this message will interest you.”

Safi’s interest perked up. A message. Already this afternoon had turned more enticing than yesterday’s.

Resting her hands on her own iron belt, she crossed the lolling cabin to an empty bench opposite the empress. Vaness rifled through a stack of mismatched papers, the slightest scowl knitting her brow.

It brought to mind a different face often pinched with a frown. A different leader who, like the Empress of Marstok, put his people’s lives forever above his own.

Merik.

Safi’s lungs expanded. Her traitorous cheeks warmed. It was only one kiss they’d shared, so really, this blush could stop now.

As if answering her thoughts, Safi glimpsed a single name atop the page Vaness now withdrew: Prince of Nubrevna. Her pulse quickened. Maybe this was it—maybe, finally, she would have news of the world and the people she’d left behind.