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Chapter 38
The Guardian catches Odessa following him into the forest and lets her come along to a tarkin den found by scouting parties.
Inside, they find three newborn pups dead from starvation, their mother having been killed in the Treow attack. A fourth is barely alive. When the Guardian moves to kill it as a mercy, Odessa stops him and picks it up. He warns that it could have Lyssa. She tells him to test it when it’s stronger and promises to kill it herself if it’s infected. He nicks its leg. The blood runs red.
The Guardian asks whether Odessa would really kill the pup if necessary. She says yes. Then he asks the same question about himself, whether she’d kill him if he lost control. She understands what he’s asking and swears she would.
He tells her his name is Ransom.
Chapter 39
Four days after the tarkin den, Ransom tells Odessa a lionwick with Lyssa was killed in a nearby village. He’s going to investigate, and when she asks to come, he doesn’t say no. She straps Faze to her chest in a makeshift carrier, and they ride out.
During the ride, Odessa asks who else has sworn to kill Ransom if he loses control. He names Tillia, Halston, the rangers, and Zavier, whom he says he’d want to be the one to do it. He speaks about his death as a certainty.
Odessa suggests talking to pony riders for information since they travel the kingdom and carry as much news as they deliver. Ransom admits it’s a good idea and says they’ll stop at the outpost past Ravalli.
Chapter 40
Odessa and Ransom arrive in Ravalli. At the blacksmith, Ransom introduces Odessa by her full Turan title, and she realizes he plans to use her novelty as the Sparrow to draw people out. The smith says it took six men to bring down the infected lionwick and that a local paperman was injured in the fight, adding that the man has been printing suspicious pieces about Ramsey’s militia.
At the paperman’s office, he and his son Jonas describe the attack and confirm the lionwick had cloudy eyes, green blood, and an unusual smell. Then he introduces himself as Samuel Hay. Odessa recognizes him as the author of the book accusing her father of murdering her mother and introduces herself pointedly as Odessa Cross from Quentis. He flinches.
Jonas spots Faze and immediately delights in the baby tarkin. Ransom heads out to gather information while Odessa stays behind, intending to confront Samuel about his book and what he knows about Ramsey’s militia.
Chapter 41
Samuel tells Odessa about his wife’s murder in Roslo and admits his book was written in grief, built on an unverified rumor he now regrets.
He reveals that a woman in Ravalli has actually been to Allesaria and that the only way through its gates is a blood oath to keep the city’s location secret. Maps of Turah are forbidden on pain of death. The capital houses the kingdom’s scholars, alchemists, and healers, who keep their knowledge to themselves. He also mentions that soldiers who join Ramsey’s militia seem to disappear entirely.
When Ransom returns, he reports more monster attacks nearby. Odessa raises the idea that someone in Allesaria could be the source, given its concentration of alchemists. He shuts her down immediately.
Back at the inn, Ransom tells Odessa that Ramsey is rumored to be arriving the next day and that they’ll leave at dawn, then goes to his room without saying whatever was on his mind.
Chapter 42
Odessa and Ransom try to leave at dawn, but Ramsey’s soldiers surround the inn before they can go. Ramsey rides in and faces off with Ransom, then notices Odessa and says she should be in Allesaria. Ransom tells him she can’t be trusted yet. It stings, but Odessa realizes in that moment that she couldn’t betray the Turans even if she wanted to.
As they ride out, smoke rises above the rooftops. Samuel’s home is burning, and Jonas is outside screaming for his father. Ransom goes in and emerges with an armful of salvaged belongings. When soldiers try to take what he’s carrying, he warns them off, and they back down.
Odessa turns on Ramsey and calls him a coward. He taunts her, saying he was told she was weak, then tells Ransom he has one month before riding off. Odessa turns to ask what the deadline means, but Ransom is already gone.
Chapter 43
Ransom and Odessa spend a somber day escorting Samuel and Jonas to Ellder. During the ride, Ransom tells Odessa how he got his name. He tracked a missing girl to a man in a port town who had been kidnapping children and killed him, and the girl’s mother called him a guardian. When Odessa asks about Banner’s brother, Ransom confirms that he killed him and reveals that Banner’s brother was that man. The revelation reframes everything she thought she knew.
Ransom tells Odessa that Ramsey wants him in Allesaria by the autumnal equinox to serve as his general. He has no intention of going.
Odessa studies the markings on Ransom’s cuff more carefully and wonders whether they form a map rather than a simple tally, possibly with Allesaria marked on it.
The group arrives after dark. Ransom gets the Hays settled, then grabs Odessa’s hand before she leaves, seeming like he wants to say something, but lets her go.
Odessa rounds the corner to the servants’ quarters and stops. Zavier is stepping out of Jocelyn’s apartment alongside another man. He sees her. The color drains from his face.
Chapter 44
Odessa storms upstairs, and Ransom blocks her door. She’s in tears and admits they aren’t really about Zavier and Jocelyn. They’re from relief. If Zavier has someone else, she can stop punishing herself for her feelings toward Ransom.
Ransom tells Odessa that he saw her on the cliffside in Roslo before she dyed her hair, when he came to investigate why her father had hired his people to kill the marroweels. Seeing her changed everything. Odessa pushes back, pointing out that she’s doubly bound, not free. He asks who she actually exchanged vows with at the ceremony.
Odessa starts to remember. Zavier never spoke. It was Ransom’s voice that gave the oath. And the blood in the vial wasn’t red.
Ransom shows Odessa the scar on his palm, matching hers. He signed the treaty. He spoke the vow. He’s the crown prince. Zavier was the decoy. Ransom’s plan was always that when Lyssa took him, the treaty would dissolve and she’d be free.
Odessa tells Ransom that she hates him. He tucks a curl behind her ear and leaves.
Chapter 45
Jocelyn comes to apologize. Odessa skips the apologies and asks for the truth. Jocelyn explains she met a man in Treow, and Zavier eventually joined them. It was only physical, an escape from loneliness.
Odessa tells Jocelyn that she’ll send her home, then asks her to deliver a carefully edited message to her father, telling him she has failed to find Allesaria, that the Turans are too suspicious to trust her with that information, and that he should be cautious because Turah is building a militia. She says nothing about Lyssa, Ransom’s true identity, or the possible map on his cuff.
She uses the affair as a convenient reason to send Jocelyn away, knowing no one will question it. Then she closes the door, having decided she’s no longer working for her father. She’s working for herself and for her freedom, and the person best positioned to help her is Ransom.
Chapter 46
At the training center, Odessa asks Zavier for his real name. He tells her it’s Dray and that he’s been playing Ransom’s double for eleven years. Ransom sends him away.
Knives drawn, Odessa goes after Ransom with everything she has. While she attacks, he explains that the practice of royal doubles has been in place for a century. He admits he chose a different Sparrow because he knew her father had been training Mae as a spy for years and planned to invade Turah.
In the heat of the exchange, Odessa realizes she can’t actually hurt Ransom. The treaty magic stops her, and she figures out it was likely part of his calculation all along.
Odessa asks why Ransom told her the truth if he expects to die from Lyssa. He says she’s his and frames it as worth fighting for. She pushes at him, exhausted and in tears, until she sags against his chest. They kiss, but she pulls away, not ready to trust him, and leaves.
Chapter 47
A week after the kiss, Ransom and Zavier have been away. Odessa has been visiting Samuel Hay and shows him her hidden map of Turah, asking for his help filling in the gaps. He agrees.
Ransom returns looking pale and exhausted from having Lyssa siphoned. He takes Odessa’s hand on their walk, and the second time, she stops fighting it. He explains that the infection has become bound to him the way blood magic works and that removing it all at once would kill him.
Odessa tells Ransom that she suspects the Voster may have created Lyssa, since no other magical beings exist in Calandra. He dismisses it, saying he trusts the High Priest. She drops it.
She asks about Evie. Ransom tells her Evie is his sister and that Ramsey doesn’t know she exists because he tried to kill their mother.
Chapter 48
Ransom tells Odessa about his parents. His mother never loved Ramsey, and years of unrequited devotion hardened him. When she took a lover, Ramsey caught them, beat the man to death, and began strangling her. Ransom happened to be home and knocked his father unconscious before he could finish it.
His mother recovered in hiding while pregnant with Evie. Ransom took her to Ozarth for the birth, then brought her back to Turah at her request. When Ramsey later told Ransom directly that he needed to finish what Ransom had interrupted, Ransom left Allesaria that day and hasn’t returned in four years. Zavier has raised Evie as his own. Since Evie is Ramsey’s daughter, she’s next in line after Ransom, and Zavier has kept her hidden to protect her.
The conversation turns to Odessa’s father, whom Ransom believes has found a way to break the Shield of Sparrows by killing the Voster, since destroying the brotherhood would collapse the treaties.
Chapter 49
Ransom explains that Odessa’s father wants to eliminate any obstacle to his expanding power, and his silence confirms that the Voster reside in Allesaria. He also explains that all five kingdoms are militarizing ahead of the crux migration, with Ramsey drawing people into fortified cities even at the cost of smaller settlements. Odessa pushes back, but Ransom points out her own kingdom faces the same impossible choices.
He kisses her, softer this time, but a scream cuts it short.
Bariwolves flood through the still-open gates. Odessa drags a wounded soldier to safety, then sees a small boy kneeling beside his dead mother and runs toward him. The one-eyed bariwolf beats her there. It’s the same monster that bit Ransom four years ago. It kills the boy, then turns on Odessa, and every monster in the courtyard locks onto her at once.
Odessa runs. The High Priest steps in front of her and cuts down the bariwolves with shards of ice, killing most of them. The one-eyed bariwolf flees with a handful of others.
Ransom finds Odessa and pulls her into his arms. Then Zavier appears, and Ransom lets her go, picks up a sword, and orders the gates opened to go after the one-eyed bariwolf.