Hanne’s copper eyes glowed like topaz. Slowly she nodded. “Since the moment we met. Since you charged into that clearing like a girl I had dreamed into being.”

It had been too much tonight—learning what Joran had done, watching Hanne with the prince, knowing she’d set them on this path. Maybe this is my fate, she thought, to find love and lose it. But Nina made herself say the words. She wouldn’t rob Hanne of the chance to stay with her parents, to live among her people, not if it was what she truly wanted. “If you can love him, I’ll find a way to let you go.”

Hanne leaned forward and brushed a damp strand of hair from Nina’s cheek. Nina felt the strong curve of Hanne’s fingers against the nape of her neck, Hanne’s breath on her lips.

“Never let me go,” Hanne whispered.

“Never,” Nina said, and closed the distance between them, feeling the soft press of Hanne’s mouth, the thin silk of her dress, this moment like light on water, brief and startling, blinding in its beauty.

31

NIKOLAI

NIKOLAI WATCHED UNTIL ZOYA had clipped herself to the harness and been lifted into the Cormorant. He knew she would be fine. Of all of them, she was the least fragile, the least vulnerable. He wasn’t being logical, but she’d seemed shaken by their encounter with the Suli and her confession that shouldn’t have had to be a confession. When war came, he wouldn’t be able to protect her any more than he’d protected David. So, for a brief moment, he watched over her, logic be damned.

When the mists closed around the airship, he jogged down the tunnel in the cliffside to catch up to Kaz. The damp walls gleamed shiny and black in the light from Brekker’s lantern.

Their entry into the base was smooth, just a question of keeping quiet and waiting for the guards to pass through the rooms above the basement, then move on to the rest of their rounds. Nikolai and Kaz followed on silent feet, Kaz limping more heavily after their long journey down the tunnel. He wouldn’t have to repeat the trip. They would leave by air along with the stolen titanium.

Two picked locks later, they were waiting in a darkened doorway, peering through a small circular window. The base was built around a central yard full of building materials, which had once been open to the air. But now, most of the cargo was protected by the metal shell connected to the base walls, its roof humped like the back of a whale. There didn’t seem to be too many guards, and Nikolai was eager to move.

“The yard doesn’t look well protected.”

“It isn’t,” said Kaz. “They’re relying on their external defenses. They’ve gotten comfortable.”