Bloodkin by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

“Isn’t it?” Vance verbally reviewed what he had observed. “The serpiente already thought of the Obsidian guild as traitors and criminals, and now the avians and the Shantel and I’m sure others do as well. Malachi rescued his sister, but don’t you see how much he hates himself for that? Farrell says Malachi’s prophecy is why we’re doing all this, but have you noticed that he and Malachi don’t even look each other in the eye anymore? And you … if you weren’t ashamed of it, you would have mentioned it before now. How many nights have we stayed up talking? You never told me about Naga Elise, or—”
    “We didn’t kill her!” I snapped.
    I wasn’t even born when Naga Elise, the serpiente queen and the mother of Julian Cobriana’s only daughter, Hara, died in a fire. During my time in the palace, I had heard servants say the fire had probably been an accident, but Hara insisted that someone had started it. Some of the servants thought that the child might have caused the fire herself. An accident, surely, but children weren’t always able to admit to accidents.
    “True or not,” Vance said, “what reason have we given
anyone
to doubt our guilt?” He took a deep, shuddering breath, closing his eyes.
    I reached instinctively for his hand. His fingertips brushed mine, but then he pulled away.
    The accusing tone dropped from his voice as he confessed, “If it hadn’t been for the Shantel magic against Midnight, I would still be there, blithely believing everything the trainers told me. Believing order is needed, a few to rule, and many naturally meant to be ruled over. Believing the blood and pain and all the ways they use to ‘teach’ their subjects obedience are necessary. Sometimes I look at us, lost in the forest, and I want that order back. I want it so badly, I have to put all my energy into running the other direction.” He wrapped his arms around himself as if he was cold. “I had almost convinced myself that I had gone far enough. I could even stand to face the market, because Midnight didn’t have any power over me anymore.”
    He didn’t have to complete the thought aloud:
I was wrong
.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “We should have told you about Alasdair.” Vance hadn’t asked, and none of us had wanted to share the moment of our lives of which we were all most ashamed. We would all say that we had only done what we needed to do, maybe even that we had done the right thing, but that didn’t mean we were proud of it. We had stalked the hawk for weeks, learning her movements. We had learned who she was and who she cared about so we could use that against her in order to capture her.
    “I should have guessed,” Vance sighed. “I saw the way she responded to Malachi in Midnight.”
    “You don’t have to come with me,” I blurted out. “You don’t owe the Shantel anything. You shouldn’t risk yourself for them.”
    “I’m not doing it for
them
,” Vance asserted sharply. He drew a breath, and his voice was gentle again when he said, “When I went back to Midnight this winter, you came with me. I was still practically a stranger to you then, but you didn’t make me go alone.”
    “I should be safe,” I said. “I have—”
    “An open invitation,” Vance interrupted. “I know. Have you ever gone?”
    I shook my head.
    “I don’t know the whole story,” Vance said, “but if youdidn’t dread this place, you would have visited at some point.”
    “The forest might not even let you in,” I admitted. “Will you be able to find your way back to camp if we get separated?”
    Vance nodded. Not long ago, the quetzal hadn’t been able to find his way out of a tree without help, but he seemed to have an innate sense of direction that had quickly developed once he had been exposed to the wider world. Maybe it was a bird thing. Personally, I missed city streets and town markets, like the ones that haunted my dreams and my faintest memories. I loved the forest, but