Chapter 28
J A N E
F or a fleeting moment, there’s peace.
Then, my body aches, my head pounds, and I’m aware of the rhythmic sway beneath me. A rocking motion. Gentle, almost soothing—if it weren’t for the stench of sweat mingling with the salt in the air.
When I crack open my eyes further, the peace shatters.
The ocean. Sea Wolf. Skull’s Row. Dad. Soren . My breath quickens as I glance around, taking in faces I’ve never seen before. My racing pulse makes my head pound. Anya is on the other end of the boat with a gag still in her mouth, her eyes squinting against the glare of the sun.
I press my lips together; no gag. I jiggle my wrists, but they’re bound. I swear to the gods if—my movement stops when I spot the blue tattoos on my wrists. Gods . Magic . Is mine actually out there, somewhere? Does it even matter? I don’t remember the goddess’s name.
And how useful is a healing deity in times like this?
“Where are we?” I croak out, struggling to focus.
I’m so tired of waking up parched. Just because I didn’t want to live in a pacifist’s village, doesn’t mean I wanted this .
Blackwell leans over me, smug as always, his scruff thicker than when I last saw him. “Your man isn’t here for your salvation,” he sneers before leaning back to pivot on his bench seat to face Anya, who glares at him with a burning defiance. “Nor is he here for you,” he taunts. “Don’t even know why he has you. You’re quite easy to overpower.”
Anya lunges at him, although it goes nowhere with how bound she is, her ropes tied to hooks in this longboat. Blackwell backhands her, the boat rocking with the action as Anya bleeds from a busted lip, staining the gag.
For one, terrible second, my mind flashes to wondering if that’s how I looked when Soren first took me. What the hells am I going to do with Anya? She wasn’t supposed to be here. This plan required that I go by myself , so I didn’t have to worry about others.
I try to see if we are far from land—a small part of me hoping we only just left. That maybe we can still be saved.
Blackwell sighs as he reaches into a pouch, pulling out a small, opaque vial and shakes it lightly, meeting my gaze. “Misery wants you knocked out until we land, but with this .” He leans over to dangle it in my face. “Open up, you need to consume it.”
I barely manage the smallest struggle before my shoulders are held down by someone behind me, Blackwell pinching my nose until I take a breath, draining a liquid into my mouth as I choke on it.
Within a few more moments, I’m out again.
I wake up to being chucked onto hard sand. Pain radiates from every bruise and cut that covers my body. After a few gritty bites, I decide that I prefer dirt in my mouth. Hands yank me to my feet. My legs tremble beneath me, barely able to hold my weight. A shove sends me stumbling forward.
My head must have been hit hard the first time they knocked me out, because I seem to forget about my plan and throw a kick as hard as I can behind me in a moment of lucid movement; a real nice donkey kick. My foot collides hard with someone—Blackwell—and he falls square on his ass. Anya moans through her gag as she’s shoved onto land, as if to tell me to quit.
The men around laugh.
I spit on the ground to get the sand out of my mouth. “Stop fucking being rough with me. I’m clearly not fighting you.”
Blackwell’s eyes flare as he stands, his jaw tightening, wiping the sand off of his body as he glares at me like he did when he ordered Maryanne to be burned—cold, calculated, and cruel.
The transition from him trying to collect himself to beating the shit out of me occurs within seconds.
The agony is a blur as adrenaline kicks in like an old friend to numb the rest of the assault, hitting, slapping, punching, or shoving me into the sand. Without my hands, I can only do so much to defend myself. What hurts the worst is when his knee collides with my stomach just right, dropping me to my knees as I struggle to breathe.
“ Enough ,” Misery commands.
Pain morphs into delirium as I slump over, adrenaline not strong enough of a drug. It aches so much deeper than the skin, my heart hurting just to beat. I’m hauled up and carried like dead weight for a long time while fading in and out of consciousness, the world darkening around me.
Eventually, I’m thrown onto the ground again; this time, it’s dirt. There seem to be more people, and some horses, but that’s all I can register.
Someone’s boot presses into my shoulder to turn me onto my back. The sky above looks like it might beckon the night soon. The bindings around my wrist are cut, and I inhale sharply, my hands held out like I’m not sure what to do with them. I can’t think, and all I taste is blood and dirt. Blackwell’s ugly face enters my line of vision, leaning down over me. “Not able to handle the pain? You want to be a part of Skull’s Row so badly, ” he says, spitting on my chest. “Disappointing, really. Your father must be so disappointed with how weak you are.” My eyes widen, and I try to focus on Blackwell, but he continues to blur, my head still spinning. “His daughter is so disappointing.”
The pain in my soul is fleeting when I can’t even remember why I’m here, breathing heavily as I just lie there.
“Heal yourself before we move further.”
I struggle to move my neck, but force myself so I can locate Anya. I don’t know what happened, but she looks worse than when she was on the boat.
Things blend and fade together, and the next thing I am aware of is a woman hovering over me with tattoos on her forehead and chin, one hand on either side of my skull until clarity returns. I almost regret this because I’m more aware of the pain, everything aching like I fell over the Sea Wolf and smacked right into the water’s surface.
The more I feel, the more I groan.
I move my head so I can find—there she is; Anya lies there with labored breathing, all by herself. I feel an immense sense of gratitude that I’m not alone, all the while being wracked with guilt that she’s enduring whatever the hells is happening to us.
As soon as I'm able to move to my knees, I push the healer off of me to crawl over to Anya, leaning down next to her. Glancing around, I try to understand where I’m at—we’re in some wooded area again, and this reminds me a little more of what Coalfell looked like.
Not helpful at all.
Focusing back down on Anya, her nose, lips, and chin are stained in blood, and her usual stoic eyes are enraged and swollen, her gag now out and dangling around her neck. “Heal yourself .”
“You need some, too,” I breathlessly say, squinting from the splitting headache.
I want to ask Anya so many questions that she’d probably bite me to get me to shut up. I know that we’re being watched, but what the hells is she doing here? A quick glance tells me that Misery stares at us through the impending darkness that dusk brings, the flickering glow of his eyes emanating like a wick of a candle that picks up steam.
Gods I can’t wait to kill him.
And I’m really fucking happy he can’t feel that from me.
Anya’s breathing evens out as I focus on healing her chest, her ribs giving off the sensation of being broken; I can feel a fractured energy in my palms. Well what the fuck do I do with her here? Where is my plan in all of this? I know I came here for a reason, but honestly, I had to see the lay of the land before concocting a real strategy.Something that is much harder to do when I’m constantly drugged to sleep.
According to Cypress, I have to free the sirens, and I don’t even know what that means.
And what will Soren think when he realizes Anya is missing, too? Will he blame me? I can’t lose Anya, not on my watch.
The rough bark of the tree digs into my back as I sit against it, bound once more. I tilt my head back, staring up at the night sky through the dense web of branches; my body is a mess, and the humidity just makes it all worse with how sticky I am. Anya sits next to me, our shoulders pressed together—a small anchor in this oppressive darkness.
Beyond us, a campfire crackles and pops, twisting smoke coiling into the air. Its amber glow is like an island of camaraderie we’re deliberately being kept away from, the men’s shadow stretching and elongating on the jungle floor.
Around the camp, totems stand tall, their crude carvings casting jagged silhouettes against the trees. Misery can apparently creep on the energies around us with it, like Cypress can with her rubies.
So far, I’ve been rather quiet and compliant, observing. Misery doesn’t move much, like a hawk perching and watching . Blackwell commands the space when the miserable god is stagnant, and it’s clear that man enjoys his title; always laughing at his own jokes, telling people he’ll consider their words like he’s granted them a gift, and orders people around as if it’s obvious he wouldn’t lift a finger.
My focus veers to watching the man that is on guard duty for the two of us. I’ve overheard that we’re a day’s ride away from Ashfire, the castle for the Order of Ash, which means Anya and I sit here like prisoners.
An idea begins to bloom as I try to think of a way to be alone with Anya, even for a moment. I’ve been watching this man closely, noting his every movement, every nervous tick. He’s squeamish—I can use that.
My heart races, hoping this will work—just as I’m about to enact my plan, the guard rises. “I’m going to get Benny. You both smell like shit.”
Well, I was about to piss myself, but apparently our stench already does the job. So far, I’ve taken to soiling what I wear rather than letting anyone near me. The more feral, the better.
And there’s no way I’m undressing regularly in front of them.
I lean closer to Anya, and she acts like she might scoot away. “No, stop. I need to talk to you,” I say, knowing that at any moment, someone else will be out here. “Why are you here? What happened?”
Anya sighs with annoyance and leans in quickly, as if admitting that yes, this is an opportune moment to speak. She’s so close to my ear it feels moist. “First, you stink. Secondly, I have a piece of Soren’s mask embedded in my skin. He can track me. Same with Bones. He got the idea when he learned of your father’s ring,” she whispers, her voice so low it’s almost drowned out by the jungle sounds. “I mean, honestly, I don’t know if it works or not. We haven’t tried it before. But I thought it was worth it, rather than have you be taken without a single tracing effect.”
My eyes widen with understanding. “He sent you?”
“No. I came on my own. Would have yelled for help, but they would have been gone by then with Misery. Thought it was worth the risk. They always need prisoners when looking for collateral.” There’s a pause before she adds, “You need to leave at any chance you get.”
I begin to shake my head but stop when I realize I might smack into her face with how close we are. “Not without you.”
She pulls back slightly, the faint warmth of her breath replaced by the cooler, damp air of the jungle. “You idiot, I’m doing this for Soren,” she says sharply, her words cutting like a knife through the dense night. “Don’t waste my efforts on some noble gesture.”
“I’m not just running away and leaving you,” I assert, my body stiffening when I see someone look our way.
In the distance, I hear a shout, “Leave ‘em and let’s eat! Just keep an eye on ‘em. What’s the worst they can do?”
She leans back in, still speaking quietly. “I’m capable , Jane. I can escape when I need to. You know that.” I get the tone that she’s trying to say things without explicitly saying them.
Skin shifter.
“What are your plans if you’re not rescued for a few months ?” she asks.
I examine her face. In the dim light, her skin is pale and drawn, a sharp contrast to the dark swelling around her left eye. The bloodshot whites brutalize her injury further.
“Cypress told me it will only be a few weeks. She gave me a task , and I’m going to do it.” My voice falters for a moment before I continue, quieter this time. “I don’t want to sit and hope. I didn’t come to be rescued.”
“Then spend this time plotting.”
The camp near us is alive with the sound of laughter and coarse jokes as the men feast, ripping chunks of meat from the spits. The grease drips onto the fire, hissing and spitting with each drop, sending curls of black smoke into the humid air. In the shadows, Misery sits apart from the others, those spying candle eyes locked onto us.
“I will. I’m observing as much as I can,” I say.
“Well, do it quickly, before Soren burns these people down. I want to ensure they’re ruined .”
How badly I want that.
It might be for the best if he does that, and not just for me. How long can Anya’s beating heart be useful to them? Other than function as blackmail against me? Killing her would be extremely standard practice, once she becomes just another mouth to feed.
“You don’t think I’m stupid for walking into this?” I ask.
Her sighs carry a lot of unspoken opinions. “Not with what I overheard. Not if Misery is Soren’s god. He would have died, I’m certain of it.”
I look back up at the stars once more, the anxiety that I chose poorly greatly easing.
How does Soren do any of this? Manage the weight of everyone’s lives against his decisions? One wrong move, and poof —everyone is dead.
He’s relying on me, though. They all are, whether they realize it or not.
I just wish I got to say a proper goodbye.