“I’ll go with you and help get Tannis to June,” Teo said, then turned to Aina. “Meet us there with Ryuu once you’re done with this?”

Aina nodded, then stepped between the guards and climbed the steps to meet Ryuu. His face had gone a little paler than usual, but his wound didn’t seem to be deep. He and Mariya Okubo spoke in a low voice.

He nodded at Aina over Okubo’s shoulder. “This is Aina. She’s also a victim of Bautix’s plans. But she and two of our friends helped expose him tonight, and she took down the assassin who was supposed to kill the princess.”

Okubo acknowledged Aina with a quick nod, then turned back to Ryuu and asked more questions about Bautix’s plans. As she spoke, Aina walked toward Ryuu, removed her scarf from her own wound, and tied it around his.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“No, thank you,” she said when Okubo left him to speak with the princess. “If you hadn’t pushed her out of the way, she would have died. I didn’t like that, watching you get shot. But you did what you had to do.”

Aina watched Okubo speak with the princess out of the corner of her eye. The conversation didn’t last long until the princess shook her head at something Okubo said, and the Linasian guards moved in front of her. They stepped off the stage and walked toward the ballroom exit without a glance back.

Aina didn’t know what would happen with the alliance between their countries, but she hardly cared when there was more to worry about now; what Bautix would do next, how Kohl would come after her, how many of the Jackals still lived and would work for Bautix.

As the room continued to empty out, she sat on the edge of the stage next to Ryuu. Giving her a soft smile, he pulled her into a hug and rested his chin on her head.

“I didn’t like it either, when Teo showed up in the ballroom without you. I was afraid for you. I thought something bad happened.”

She held back a smile as Okubo walked back over to them, presumably with more questions.

“Maybe we were both afraid,” she said, “but we didn’t let that stop us.”

47

Teo’s apartment was emptier than Aina had ever seen it. They’d spent the day packing, had bleached the floor to clean the bloodstains, and planned for someone to fill in the bullet holes near the window. Most of Teo’s belongings were lined up in boxes near the kitchen window, but there was still his mother’s room to be packed, which Aina, Ryuu, and Raurie had assured him they would take care of while he went to get more boxes.

Aina tore her eyes away from the simple paintings on the wall of Ynes’s bedroom. Some of the paintings were of the Linasian countryside and others were of their falcon god. Most were coated in dust since it had been more than a week since Ynes’s death. Ryuu admired the paintings too, in between folding handwoven blankets into a box. She tapped her fingers along the edge of the box in front of her, wondering what to say to him. When they’d spoken in his library before going to the Tower to stop Bautix, he’d said that once this was over, they shouldn’t see each other anymore.