Page 78 of Eyes of Kings

“In Kelitu?” Anton asks.

“In the provinces.” Her crown takes on a faint glow. “A man absorbed my sword.”

Anton crouches, picking up a wilted branch that has blown onto his balcony. There is still a single berry attached to the bark.

“I thought he ate it.”

“Same thing.”

Anton tosses the branch over the railing, back onto the grass. The wind catches the throw, sweeping it farther inland. Talin’s eastern seaboard has always had a bad reputation. It is where fishermen get swept out beyond recovery if they let down their guard. It is where high tides beat their own records each year, and mothers must warn their children to stay in sight if they are playing anywhere within reach of the water.

“One day,” Anton says, “when we are not hunting for a way to win the war, when we have all the freedom in the world—I’d like to show you the sea.”

Calla gives him a wry look. “We are staring at the sea right now.”

“It’s not the same. You need the sand beneath your feet.”

You would survive it, Anton adds silently. Only a certain type of person can withstand Kelitu’s waves.

“One day, when we are satisfied with the state of the kingdom,” Calla says under her breath. She turns to him. “Have you found anything?”

Anton shakes his head. “Nothing.” He doesn’t want to sayI told you so, but it is looking more and more as though Galipei was mistaken. Or lying. “I’m not sure what I’m even looking for. A notebook? A photograph?”

“Perhaps therewassome record here, but it has been taken since,” Calla offers. “There must have been one or two brave souls in Kelitu who came through over the years.”

Anton doesn’t think so. He would sense it if someone had been rummagingabout. His memories may blur, but this house is more loyal than he is. It responds to him like a childhood pet, willing to tattle on the presence of strangers.

“We can’t linger long,” he reminds her. “We are expected in Actia. Venus Hailira will be arriving in Rincun soon.”

“Yes,” Calla says. Her eyes stay over the sea. Yellow eyes, steadily bright against the daylight. She is unmoving despite her response.

Then, suddenly, Calla turns and departs his room, striding down the hall.

Anton makes haste, shutting the balcony door and following after her. “Calla?”

There is something ugly about the way his heart falls whenever someone walks away from him. He has half a mind to accuse Calla of doing it on purpose. She likes to watch him scramble, to subject him to this misery of being left behind again, yet again.

But when he finds her in the atrium, she’s staring at his family’s mural. Utterly deep in thought, her head lolled back. She wasn’t waiting for his reaction.

“Calla?” he asks again.

“Tell me if I’m losing my mind,” she says, “but could this…thingbe a sigil?”

Anton’s gaze whips up to the ceiling. Despite how strange the imagery was, he never thought to question its depiction as anything but. His father said it was conventional rural art, and so it was conventional rural art.

He squints.

“Fuck,” he says.

CHAPTER 36

It was his light that steered her back to the mural.

Calla doesn’t say this, doesn’t divulge any further details. She watches Anton as he tips his head back, gazing upon the ceiling, and the glare behind his eyes responds to the picture. Bright, blazing, and Calla takes him in.

Takes his power in.

Stop. Stop. Stop—