Chapter 27
One month.
One month to master not one, but two powers. One month to become one with the other mooncasters.
One month to figure out how to break this damned curse under Verena’s nose.
I looked down at my fingertips. The darkness had spread rapidly since I joined the rebellion. Practicing my powers both alone and with Jax, the curse had marked my skin almost to my wrists.
I clenched my fist and then opened it again swiftly. The golden orb of light hovered over my hand, shining brightly in the darkness.
As I dropped my hand to wrap my arms around my knees, the orb vanished.
The night air was brisk, but I needed peace and solitude to process what I had to do next.
The gardens right outside the huts were empty at this time of night.
I enjoyed the lack of people at this moment.
The base was packed as everyone prepared for the attack.
With the rebels from the outskirts as well as the prisoners from Orken, Verena had more than doubled the number of able-bodied rebels at the base.
She must’ve been buzzing with glee when she had us counted.
The atmosphere during the day had made me antsy. Everywhere you looked, war preparations were in full swing. It was hard for me to think and not just follow our leader’s orders like the rest of the people here.
I grabbed one of my father’s notebooks from beside me and flicked through it. The jumbled letters had gotten easier to decode, but every time I looked through a notebook, I found new information.
It was mostly research about other things, but I had stumbled upon multiple notes about curse-breaking. Nothing so specific that I could use it to convince Verena to let me try, though.
As my eyes glided over the pages, I spotted something written in tiny letters along the margin. The ink was splattered as if my father had been in a hurry when he wrote it. It looked fresher than the other sentences on the paper, making me suspect it was written well after the rest.
The King and Queen performed spell together? Two suns must perform together. Wear crown. No enchantment or sp—
That was it. The sentence was abruptly cut off. The quill had dragged over the page like his hand had been torn from it. But it was enough. This is what I’d been looking for.
Perhaps I wouldn’t need Verena. My new truce with a certain sun-devil could be just the thing I needed. It would all come down to one thing.
Would he go against Verena’s orders to help me?
We sailed out the next day to practice the wave Verena imagined would give us an edge in the battle. As there were now over one hundred mooncasters, we had to take one of the Rebellion’s galleys.
The ship was long and slender, big enough to fit us all with plenty of room to spare.
Where the galleys in Erobred had oars and sails to move, this ship simply had tall seats spaced evenly near the railings.
I sat perched on one of them, hoping I did more good than damage as we propelled the ship forward.
Hannan and Verena sat at the front of each line, moving their hands back and forth in unison. Pull and push.
“Pull!… pull!… pull!” Verena shouted.
I looked down to witness the wonder firsthand. The ocean rushed underneath the boat as if we were caught in a current. Frothy white seafoam traced delicate patterns on the vividly blue surface, making it look like we were dragging the boat through liquid marble.
I willed my attention back to the task at hand. Push. Pull. Push. Pull.
I mimicked the people in front, focusing all my energy on feeling the phantom ebb and flow of the water between my fingers.
When Verena decided we were far enough away from the base to ensure we didn’t accidentally flood it, we halted.
Jax dropped the anchor, and Hannan, who acted as captain, made sure everything was secure before we began.
I held onto the railing tightly, feeling a surge in my stomach. This is what should make me feel free. Freer than a bird, I reminded myself. But I felt trapped. Surrounded by deadly, beautiful ocean, ready to pull me down if I tried to escape it. Then, I realized the true root of my anxiety.
If Lili had been with me, I’d probably feel free instead of keen on returning to the base as soon as possible.
“Some people believe that if you go far enough east, you’ll meet unexplored land,” Elvira said, startling me from my thoughts as she joined my mesmerized staring.
Her eyes looked longingly at the horizon in front of us. “We’re going to find it. Me and Archie. When all of this is over,” she said, smiling widely at me. Her light pink curls bounced around her face in symphony with the slight breeze that caressed my skin. “You’re welcome to join us.”
I gave an uncommitted nod, but I couldn’t help but smile at the thought: My two dreamers sailing the ocean together in search of a better land. I’d heard the rumors about the unexplored land, too. It was a well-known tale in Orken. A faraway dream.
“Line up!” Verena yelled, gesturing to the railing on either side of the boat.
We all shuffled around to take our place. “Focus on the horizon far out. We don’t want to flood our boat.”
A few people laughed, but I knew Verena well enough now to realize that she wasn’t kidding around.
“We need to collaborate to move the surface of the ocean in a circular motion. Counter-clockwise. Go!”
For hours, we managed only tiny waves that vanished abruptly along with someone’s concentration. It was clear that all of us needed to stay utterly focused and move in unison for Verena’s plan to work.
I wiped my sweaty forehead with the shirtsleeve of my thin button down, then positioned my hands in front of me to prepare for Verena’s next orders.
“Go!” She yelled for what seemed like the hundredth time. I moved my slightly curled hands from right to left.
“The still surface breaks as a colossal wave curls over the walls surrounding Erobred. I want you to imagine the pressure of the ocean breaking windows, destroying markets, drowning Defenders.” Verena’s voice was a powerful sneer.
I was surprised she didn’t conjure the wave herself from pure hatred.
My mind flooded with images of a wave mercilessly crashing over the little shed that Lili and I had called home for twelve years. Lili’s drawing supplies ruined. The small trinkets she loved to study whenever I brought home what Tudor wouldn’t buy. Everything washing away.
I’m definitely the problem, I thought, as the wave broke down once again. The outskirts of Erobred weren’t even close enough to the coast for my worries to be valid.
Verena let out a groan and slammed her hand on the railing so hard that the vibrations carried through the entire boat. “I need you all to focus.”
I forced the images from my mind and tried instead to imagine what Verena had described.
We tried again. And again.
At last, we managed a decently sized wave, crashing high over the surface in the far-out horizon.
I’d finally found something that worked for me—imagining Kenric teetering on the edge of the wall that surrounded Erobred, our powerful wave crashing down upon him.
Verena was satisfied with our progress. Tired, sunburnt, and sweaty, we turned the ship around and headed back to the base.
I could feel my energy dwindling with each push and pull when the shore finally came into view.
As the dock the rebels had built long ago grew clearer, so did something else. Something that hadn’t been there when we’d left that morning.
A huge ship, even bigger than the galley, painted as dark as the night sky, towered high above us. The sight churned my stomach. The Mooncasters around me looked equally worried, but Verena and Hannan’s expressions turned gleeful at the haunting ship in front of us.
“They made it,” Hannan whispered under his breath. “You knew they’d made it and didn’t tell me, you sly woman,” he laughed, and Verena clapped him on the back.
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
Up close, the ship was the night sky—the darkest blue, twinkling with hundreds of tiny stars.
“What is this?” Elvira mumbled beside me.
“No idea,” I whispered, unsure why the ship seemed to command our silence. As soon as we reached the dock, Verena almost sprinted off the ship to approach the newcomers.
“Verena, darling!” A man swung from the ship on a rope to land next to her, instantly embracing her.
If Verena was an incarnation of the moon, he was the night that accompanied her.
His dark skin was freckled with white tattoos, like the constellations decorating the night sky. His dark hair fell in neat rows of braids down his back, held away from his face by a piece of triangular black cloth bound around his head.
Together, they looked complete. Moon pulled night into a fiery kiss.
No one wanted to move and risk disturbing this beautiful reunion. After minutes, Hannan climbed the ladder down to the docks, coughing loudly.
Verena and the man broke apart, and Hannan grasped the man's hand before pulling him into a hug.
Slowly, we all filed down the ladder and past the man and Verena. Hannan had taken the lead back to base.
I jogged to catch up to him. “Hannan, who is that?”
“Otieno and his crew,” he said like that would clarify my confusion. “They’re seekers.”
“I’m sorry if I’m being daft, but I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I scratched my neck, too eager to know about these strange seekers to hide my enthusiasm. The name rang a bell. Otieno.
“Otieno assembled a crew years ago to search for unexplored land far away from here. They’re looking for a place where mooncasters can live peacefully without the torture of the King and his tyrants. So far, they haven’t been successful. It’s been well over a year since they left this time.”
Maybe my eyes deceived me, but Hannan looked slightly anxious that they were back.
Otieno’s crew was as marked by the curse as Verena was. They were like a parade of the midnight sky when they walked around the base.
For hours at a time, every single day, they used their magic to propel their ship forward, pursuing the unexplored lands that never seemed to come.
Hannan told me they never stayed at the base more than a few weeks at a time. Every quest they’d gone on, they’d come back without further clues, yet utterly determined.
Now, only a few days after they’d arrived, the entire crew helped with the preparations. Otieno and Verena hadn’t been outside of her house except for the few times I’d seen them in the strategy room.
My body ached for a break from the sun. As my feet dragged towards the little hut where I knew Lili was waiting, my thoughts wandered to a certain brown-haired suncaster.
I’d kissed Daegal. I could still feel the warmth of his hands on my waist, in my hair, traveling up my back. A sigh escaped me at the memory. We’d avoided each other since, perhaps both dreading the inevitable, embarrassing what happened?
“Prue!” Lili got up as I stepped inside the hut. It was mostly empty, as most people were out helping prepare for the attack. “You won’t believe what happened today.”
I willed my drooping eyelids to remain open as I held my sister’s expectant stare.
“Tell me,” I urged her, pulling her towards the mattress we shared now that the hut was so crowded with rebels. After the mission, the base didn’t have enough huts to house everyone, which meant everybody, safe for Verena and Otieno, had to share.
“Archie and I went to the armory today after you left, and I got to wield a sword,” she exclaimed proudly, grabbing an imaginary sword from the air and swinging her arms around like she was fighting. “Felix told me I was a natural.”
My stomach sank. Felix. I hadn’t talked to him since the bonfire party, where he’d expressed his disdain for me quite clearly. I couldn’t blame him. Yet, I wished I could say something, anything, that would make him forgive me.
“Archie even learned how to detonate a bomb!”
“What?” I snapped back to reality at her words. “Bombs?”
“Yes. Some guy named Cannon showed him how.”
I’d met Cannon only a handful of times during close combat training, but I knew he spent almost all of his free time developing bombs with Jax and the rest of the inventors. Verena was preparing to demolish Erobred.
“Felix told me to tell you that you should probably learn how to wield a sword, too,” she said cheerily, oblivious to his hatred for me.
I nodded, trying to muster the same excitement that my little sister felt. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she wasn’t actually going to wield any weapon in any fight if I had a say.