Chapter 3

The coast guard hoisted the red banner before dawn.

A storm. The worst they'd seen in a hundred years. Bearing down on Castellammare within twenty-four hours.

And under cover of the storm, Tide Kingdom's fleet had been spotted off the western shore.

The largest raiding force in a century. Coming to crack open the Sun Kingdom's eastern coast like an egg.

The whole harbor went to first-level war footing.

Lorenzo took command from the war room in the keep. Every banner of the Knight Commander's office spread across the long oak table.

Couriers running in and out at full sprint.

The whole apparatus of the realm under his hand.

I had my own war.

The clinic by the harbor was the only one for forty miles.

I cleared the cots. I pulled down every shelf. I had two apprentices boiling linen at the hearth and counting tinctures by the lamp.

Matteo's company had drawn the worst post on the line.

The eastern bulwark. B Outpost.

The breakwater that ran straight into the teeth of the storm. The most likely point where the Tide raiders would try to land.

If it fell, the eastern shore went with it.

Before Matteo marched out, he sent a folded note up through a stable boy.

I unfolded it on the clinic counter.

Three lines, in his sloppy careful hand.

> Sera. Don't worry. I'm fine. When the storm passes I'll come and stay with you.

Love you, Sis. — Teo

I read it twice. Then I folded it small. Tucked it inside the leather pouch at my breast, against the skin.

Then I went back to boiling linen.

......

The storm came in at midnight.

Black wind. Walls of rain. The whole keep shook on its foundation.

Slate tiles ripped from the roofs and went sailing through the dark like knives.

And under that cover — exactly as the scouts had warned — the Tide ships came in.

Low, dark hulls riding the swells. Sails reefed. Bowmen at the rails.

They threaded the breakers in the dark and beached on the eastern shingle while the storm pinned every coastal patrol in their barracks.

By the time anyone on the cliffs saw them, they were already coming up the rocks.

The wounded came in one after another.

Some were soldiers.

Most were villagers — fishermen pulled half-drowned from collapsed roofs, an old woman with her arm split open by flying tin, a child with a scalp wound that wouldn't stop bleeding.

I stitched. I poured. I bandaged.

I didn't have time to drink water.

At three in the morning, the first messenger bird struck the war room shutter.

I was passing through with an armful of linen when I heard the clerk read it aloud.

The hand belonged to Giorgio. Captain of the Seventh.

> Knight Commander. Enemy on the eastern shore. They came in under the storm. We're holding the wall but they keep landing. We need reinforcement. Now.

The ink had run with the rain. Giorgio's neat hand had gone ragged.

You could almost hear him over the wind.

Lorenzo's voice was steady as stone.

"Hold the line. Reinforcements are coming."

Then a second bird hit the shutter.

The clerk pulled it inside. Read the scrap of vellum. Ran for the war room.

He read it out loud.

> Renzo. The rehearsal hall in the choir wing collapsed. Bianca tried to save the ceremonial regalia. A roof beam fell on her. She's bleeding. We can't dig her out. Please send someone. She cannot die here.

Lorenzo's breath caught. I heard it from three steps away.

"Is she alive?"

"They don't know, my lord. They can't reach her."

The clerk's voice was shaking.

In my hand, the iron clamp I'd been holding hit the floor with a clean bright sound.

A third bird from the Seventh slammed into the shutter.

The clerk barely got it inside before it tore loose. Giorgio again. His handwriting was extremely messy. Like it had been scrawled in the middle of dying.

> Knight Commander. The wall is going. The men are buying every breath with their bodies. They've landed three ships and another four are coming in behind. I beg you. Send the two reserve companies. Let us hold long enough to evacuate the villagers. Knight Commander —

> Matteo's bleeding. He's your wife's brother. He's Sera's brother. Please.

The war room went still.

Every man around that oak table understood the math.

The Knight Commander had two reserve companies under his personal seal. Two. The only forces he could move on the spot, without sending up the chain.

Send them one place, the other place was being told to die.

I stared at Lorenzo. I didn't run forward. I didn't drop to my knees.

I just stood in the doorway, holding a roll of bloody linen, and I waited for him to do the right thing.

For a moment — just a moment — I thought he would.

His eyes flicked to me. They flicked back to the war table.

He closed his eyes. And then he opened them.

His voice was a stranger's. Cold as a sword laid in snow.

"First reserve, full ride to the choir wing. Get Lady Bianca out alive. That is the order."

A pause.

"B Outpost holds. That's an order."