22. Zai
Zai
Istared at the space where the ice bubble had vanished around the river’s bend. The absurdity of what had just happened swept over me like a crushing wave.
The Dual Wielder had unleashed magic more powerful than anything I’d ever witnessed. Raw. Explosive. Completely uncontrolled. Then moon girl had engulfed him in ice and pulled them both into the river.
Frustration simmered in my chest. The Dual Wielder had been within my grasp, and I’d let him slip away like smoke through my fingers. If Father found out about this failure, he’d never accept me back.
My fists clenched. If I hadn’t saved moon girl, the Dual Wielder would already be mine.
Something unfamiliar swirled beneath the bitterness. Something about that woman.
The way she’d planted herself between me and my target, standing up to me without flinching. The raw determination in her eyes when she’d faced me, daring me to challenge her.
But her bravery wasn’t what gnawed at me.
It was how she’d saved me when she could’ve left me to die. She’d saved many of the pirates as well. Without hesitation, she’d thrown herself between them and the monsters, defending her enemies with the same fierceness as her allies.
She wasn’t driven by ruthlessness, but by a need to protect.
My throat tightened. Something uncomfortable prowled at the edges of my awareness. I shoved it away before it could take shape.
Around me, the crew finished off the last beasts. I counted eleven pirates still moving, many clutching wounds. Only three moon guards remained standing.
One of them collapsed, a large man, sputtering blood into his black beard. The dark-haired woman beside him dropped to her knees, catching him as he toppled. A soft blue glow emanated from her hands as she passed them over his wounds.
Healing magic. I’d heard the tales of how their gift was a blessing for everyone in the Moon Queendom, how people could just visit a moon wielder and be mended from any wound or broken bone.
But our bolster was likely why most pirates still walked around unharmed while the majority of moon guards bled out in the dirt. It certainly wasn’t skill. Most of the crew had only wielded fire alongside their bolster. A few had added heat or light, but not with the same ease Tera displayed.
While the blue glow pulsed beneath the woman’s palms, the third guard stood rigid beside them. Her eyes burned into me with fierce intensity, her copper hair matted with black monster ichor.
“We need to move out!” Tera’s shout cut through the clearing. “Gather our fallen!”
Pressing her wide-brimmed hat against her skull, she craned her neck toward the airship overhead. “Lark! Lower the ship!”
A figure on the ship waved in response, her gray-streaked inky bob vanishing out of sight.
Further toward the bow, Kestrel’s golden-brown hair jutted out, rumpled and windblown. I could imagine him already composing a cheerful song about the events unfolding beneath him.
Tera stalked across the clearing to my side. “Well, this all went down in a rather… interesting way.”
I grunted.
Scowling, she gestured across the glade. “We need to get out of here before more monsters pour through that rift-thing.”
The purple shimmer hung in the air a couple of stone’s throws away.
Unease twisted through me. Had the Dual Wielder caused it? But he’d seemed so weak. Hiding behind moon girl instead of speaking for himself. And he’d had no control over the monsters at all.
Maybe something about his wild powers was what caused the new rift to open. The Moon Queendom probably intended to send him deep into Sun Kingdom territory and unleash these smaller rifts wherever he went. Bleed us from within.
The thought sent prickling shivers crawling down my spine.
“What about those three?” Tera waved toward the moon guards. “What do you want to do with them?”
My fingers skimmed the familiar twists of my braided leather bracelet; the one Mother had gifted me a long time ago. But I let go, clenching my fists. If I wanted to succeed, I had to be ruthless. I had to think like my brother.
What would Val do?
The answer slithered through me, twisting in my chest.
“We need them to tell us where the Dual Wielder is heading.” I ground out the words. “By any means necessary.”
Tera nodded, satisfaction flickering across her scarred face. “Agreed.” She turned toward her crew. “Oy! Tie up those surviving guards. They’re coming with us.”
The kneeling woman desperately kept moving her glowing fingers over her companion’s wounds. But the copper-haired woman raised her hands, and water spiraled up from the river.
Brave. But foolish. They were completely outnumbered.
Tera sighed. With a flick of her fingers, she sent a bolt of fire through the air. The guard blocked with a shield of ice, but Tera hurled more flames, melting it.
Behind the guard, discarded metal rose from the ground with an orange glow. With a victorious grin, Tera wrenched one arm back, and the metal lurched at her command.
Clever. The fire was just a distraction.
The woman’s agonizing scream tore through the clearing as the metal struck her in the back.
I opened my mouth to point out that we needed them alive. But my jaw snapped shut as the metal wrapped around the guard’s torso like burning rope, pinning her arms to her sides. She writhed as her flesh sizzled beneath the scorching metal, her shrieks raw and jagged.
Her kneeling comrade flung her arms wide, pulling tendrils of water from the river. I raised my hands to deflect the attack, but she wasn’t aiming at us. She sent it straight at the copper-haired woman, drenching her in bucket-sized splashes.
Steam hissed where liquid met heat. The metal cooled and hardened. She’d saved her friend from searing agony, but not from the restraint.
The copper-haired woman dropped to her knees, jaw clenched in pain.
Tera’s gaze shifted to the dark-haired woman. “Fancy the same treatment, or are you coming willingly?”
The woman raised her hands in surrender.
While the ship descended, pirates tied her and the unconscious man with rope, then hauled all three guards aboard, along with six fallen crew members.
As the ship rose above the treetops, I glanced over the railing. Corpses sprawled across the ground in a black and crimson carnage, the twisted bodies of dead moon guards among dozens of slaughtered monsters.
So much death. And what had we accomplished? Nothing.
I pushed back against the hollow ache in my chest. If people had to die in my pursuit of the Dual Wielder, so be it.
Kestrel slid in beside me. “Phew.” He pretended to wipe sweat from his forehead.
“Quite the fight down there. It looked really bad for a moment. But I never doubted your skill.” Grinning, he leaned against the railing.
“Ashes and embers, Zai, you looked like the blazing sun itself had come down from heaven to give those foul beasts what they deserved.”
His ramblings scraped against my already sore nerves.
“And the way all of you teamed together the moment those monsters swarmed in—oh, you should have seen it! It was glorious to behold! You know what, I need to write a ballad about this.”
And there it was, just as I’d predicted. A disapproving growl rumbled in my throat.
He flung one arm skyward, fingers splayed wide.
“The ballad of how Sun and Moon teamed up against a common foe.” His hand dropped as he beamed at me.
“What do you think? Or—oh!” His eyes sparked with excitement as he raised his hand again.
“The ballad of Sun and Moon uniting against the Dusk! That has quite the ring to it, don’t you think? ”
With a grunt, I turned and stalked across the deck. Behind me, Kestrel’s voice droned on as he pestered some poor crew member with his half-formed ballad.
I swung up the ladder to the quarterdeck. Tera gripped the wheel while Lark stood by the navigation table, marking her map.
Jaw tight, I gestured over the railing. “We should follow the river downstream and look for traces of the Dual Wielder.”
Tera relayed the order to the crew and the ship banked hard, tilting the deck beneath our boots.
My fingers dug into the wood as I leaned out, scanning the ground below. The river cut through the forest like a deep-blue scar, winding between twisted trees and tangled undergrowth. My gaze traced every bend, every muddy bank, every suspicious shadow until my eyes stung and my head ached.
Nothing.
The moon girl and Dual Wielder might as well have turned into smoke. The forest had swallowed them whole.
The image of her surfaced in my mind. The feel of her back against my chest. Her scent filling my nostrils. That look she’d given me before sprinting off to fight more monsters, as if I were a riddle she couldn’t solve.
No woman had ever looked at me like that.
Back home, women only saw me as something to use or seduce—a valuable piece in their political schemes and social ambitions.
Tera appeared at my shoulder, peering over the side. “I don’t think we’ll find them like this. But the prisoners are waiting in the hull.”
I swallowed against the reluctance crawling through my chest.
As if sensing my unease, Tera smirked. “You should bring Flint. That man’s never backed down from anything I’ve asked of him. He could come in handy.”
A memory surfaced of Kestrel’s song from the first night we’d met the pirates. I raised a brow. “Flint the Furious?”
Chuckling, Tera moved to the quarterdeck’s front railing. “Flint!”
He glanced up from the deck below, looping rope over his arm. “Yeah?”
“You’re on interrogation duty with Zai in the hull.”
Flint grumbled something I couldn’t make out.
Revulsion twisted in my stomach as I descended the ladder and followed him to the hatch leading into the ship’s belly.
Torturing people for information wasn’t exactly how I’d hoped to spend my exile. But it was a necessary means to an end.
The only way to regain my honor was through ruthlessness.