Chapter 46
CHAPTER
Dread swamped me as Steeler and I exchanged panicked glances.
You wouldn’t care about all the other traitors he grew up with in Hallow’s Perch? Lexington had asked me back at the Element Wielder ball. I’d thought he’d been talking about Terrin, Garvis, and the twins, but now I knew deep in my gut…
The Good Council must be behind the attacks on their own people, and Lexington was about to destroy Steeler’s entire home village.
Just to see if I’d come running.
Just to see if I truly cared.
“How did you find us?” I asked the spiders as a trembling rage blossomed beneath the lids of my eyes. “Have you known about the lighthouse the whole time?”
“No,” the spiders said in that scraping discordance. “When Kitterfol Lexington was last in your mind, he caught you thinking about this place and had a Wild Whisperer send us here.”
Shit. I hadn’t kept control over my thoughts at the Element Wielder ball after all. I’d let them slip, and now this meeting place, this safe haven… it was compromised.
“Leave us,” I snapped with tears blurring my vision. Steeler had gone completely still behind me, and I half-thought I’d have to stomp on the spiders by myself to get rid of them.
To my surprise, they all scuttled back toward the door immediately, disappearing beneath the cracks—to get inside the walls of the lighthouse or to return to the storm outside, I didn’t know.
I lurched toward my bag and threw on one of my spare dresses as quickly as I could, clipping my sheath back around my thigh. When I straightened, Steeler was still stuck in the same position as before, still naked, still staring at where the spiders had disappeared.
“Steeler,” I said, “you have to get dressed. We can’t stay here anymore—the Good Council knows about this place.”
I bit back a sob at the sight of those still-flickering candles Felicity had made, at the mess in the kitchen and the home she had finally felt like she could be herself in. The monkey would be devastated when we woke her up to tell her the news, but it was better that we move her somewhere safe.
“Steeler?”
His head jerked up, and I saw that his eyes… they had gone wholly dark. Darker than their usual smoky quartz.
He cleared his throat. “You’re right. Do you think you and Felicity would be safe if I brought you back to the Institute?”
“Me and Felicity?” I stepped toward him. “No, Steeler. You’re not running to Hallow’s Perch all by yourself.”
He blinked at me.
“They’re going to attack the Esholians who raised me for four years of my life, Rayna. The closest thing to parents I’ve ever had.”
“I know.”
In my mind’s eye, I could still see that older man who had held young Steeler back as his childhood friend was whipped to death in front of the entire village, and I knew I had to tread carefully. Steeler looked like he was on the brink of flight, but if he went to try to stop that attack alone…
“Think about it—Sasha and Sylvie have loved ones from Hallow’s Perch, too, right?
And so do Garvis and Terrin?” I asked urgently, grabbing him by the arms. Maybe if we recruited others to help us, we’d have a shot at defeating whatever monsters the Good Council was about to release on his home village.
“They’ll want to fight with us to protect their own families.
So let’s go get them, and then we’ll fight. ”
Steeler’s muscles tensed beneath my fingers at the mention of we.
“And before you try to convince me not to come with you,” I added sharply, “I’m calling in my bet.
I get to have whatever I want for winning it, and what I want is for you to continue treating me like a true equal.
I know that you would help me save Alderwick and my parents, so let me help you save Hallow’s Perch and yours. ”
Lightning flashed in repetitive streaks as Steeler’s eyes drank me in. The candlelight stuttered, sending jittery shadows over the floor.
I held my breath.
“Okay,” he let out. “I wouldn’t want you anywhere except for right by my side anyway.” He looked out the window, toward the raging sea, before hooking back onto me. “Let’s go get the others and fight.”
Ten minutes later, my feet touched down somewhere outside the island of Eshol for the first time in my nineteen years of life.
I landed with a gasp on a platform of rocking wood, my head swooning at this strange new world that tilted to and fro.
It was a good thing we’d dropped Felicity off at the Institute before we’d come here—with instructions on what to do and who to seek out, of course—because I was pretty sure the monkey would be tipping over sideways right about now.
I had to drop my bag to plant my palms on the deck and breathe through the swoop in my stomach.
“Get up,” came a gentle, insistent voice in my ear.
Strong hands lifted me by the elbows, planting me on my feet just as a great commotion of shouting and curse words barreled toward us. Steeler steadied me, his fingers locked firmly around my waist.
“What is this?”
I blinked to find that same four-fingered female from Steeler’s memories leering at me. It was still nighttime, but only a single dark cloud hung overhead. The storm was a thrashing beast at our backs, the faint bruises of oncoming dawn illuminating the ship around us:
A sun-spotted wooden deck stretching from rail to rail. Towering masts that flapped with too many sails to count. Ropes and nets and ladders and hatches. A glass-faced cabin on the opposite end of the deck. And beyond all that… water.
More and more and more water.
“This,” Steeler growled, “is Rayna Drey Reeve, daughter of the lost Princess Chrysanthia, and she is as welcome on this ship as I am.”
Gasps burst throughout the crowd that had formed behind the captain. Through my dizziness, my focus finally landed on the monsters every Esholian had always been taught to fear.
They were lithe and tall and beautiful, all with sharpened ears and fangs that somehow made them look superior. But there was a certain unkept savagery that roughened each of their appearances.
Wind-chapped skin riddled with scars. Bandanas tied crudely over their heads.
Tattered clothes with rolled-up sleeves that exposed the tattoos swirling along most of their arms. One female faerie blinked back at me with solid blue orbs for eyes.
A shirtless male had a gaping hole in the middle of his chest—whether because he’d been cursed or because the hole was somehow part of his innate magic, I wasn’t quite sure.
These weren’t faeries who’d seen the glitter of a glamorous realm recently. No, these people had grown accustomed to the rock of the sea, the great sails above their heads swishing violently against endless wind and sky.
“Get the sword,” spat the captain. My eyes settled on her face. The way her entire jaw clenched, her eyes reduced to sharp slits at the sight of me.
“Do you doubt my word, Captain?”
Steeler had tightened his grip on my waist, just as I caught sight of a few familiar faces in the small crowd that had climbed up from a deck below: Terrin and…
Oh thank goodness, Dazmine was alright.
I tried to smile at her. She mouthed a question at me, but I just shook my head. There was no way I could explain about Hallow’s Perch right now with the captain digging into me with that daggered stare. It was all I could do to maintain my mental blockade around me.
“I would doubt the word of anyone who suggests the lost princess Chrysanthia is alive,” the captain spat. Someone guffawed behind her, and another said, “I second that! It’s blasphemy!”
I wanted to curl inward and shrink away from all the accusing gazes. Maybe these faeries weren’t the same pirates I’d been warned about growing up, maybe they wouldn’t chain me up and suck out my magic or sell me to whatever waited on the other side of the sea, but…
They didn’t seem to want to have a tea party, either, that was for sure.
The flash of a jade-encrusted sword stifled every thought in my head. Each glorious inch of it glittered and reflected its surroundings like molten starlight as it was passed delicately to the captain.
As soon as the pommel touched her hand, a silver hook shot out from the socket of flesh where her fifth finger would have been, beckoning me.
“Let the girl come forward on her own.”
Cold, dark tension leaked from Steeler at those words. Without looking at him, I pried his fingers off my waist, stepped over my bag, and stalked forward.
“Kneel,” the captain said.
My heart began to bounce around my chest as I lowered myself to my knees, trying to find my balance against this surface that wouldn’t quit moving.
The cold swish of glinting steel arced toward my neck—
And hovered just above my collarbone.
I squeezed my eyes, suddenly hoping that Barberro’s eyesight was as good as he claimed. Would the sword actually talk? Or would it just transfer its knowledge to the captain in silence? What if Barberro had been wrong? What if it claimed differently?
“Well?” someone from the crowd asked after several stomach-clenching moments had passed.
The captain sucked in a breath—and let it out again in a voice that sounded shocked beyond belief.
“She is cleared.”
Her hook sunk back into her flesh. The steel vanished from my neck.
Exclamations and mutters broke out as dozens of pairs of eyes pinned me to the spot, ranging from awed to confused to suspicious.
That same voice called out, “What’s that supposed to mean?
She’s really the lost princess’s daughter? ”
The captain didn’t answer. After a moment of heavy breathing where she continued to stare at me in shock, she rounded on Steeler with a snarl, “Why did you bring her? We’re not a charity house, boy.”
“I know that,” Steeler said.
“The amount of refugees you’ve brought on board in the last twenty-four hours alone would indicate otherwise.”