Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
Castona Bay vanished in the Entia’s crashing wake, the last curl of civilization swallowed by cloud-shrouded moonlight. Perean faded like the final flame of a bridge he’d burned himself.
A shiver ran along his spine, and Augustus chose to blame the water dripping from his freshly washed hair onto his shoulder.
Beside him, Oskar leaned forward on the railing, staring soberly across the sea. He was dressed, well, like a pirate in a pale tunic, dark breeches tucked into boots, and a bandolier of knives across his chest.
Augustus raised the parchment and read Dimitrios’s final words again. “Good luck.”
“I thought him a twat,” he said to the Master Blade. “I honestly thought he’d let me hang, the bastard.”
Oskar’s chin lowered. “We all thought the same until he showed up when he did. He couldn’t be seen helping, nor could there be any doubt of his innocence.” He rose to his full height. “I’m relieved to know we’ve left behind a decent man.”
Augustus studied Oskar, who’d always been a bit reserved, as if his mind and heart were somewhere else entirely. As if steered by honor alone. “You didn’t have to come. But I’m glad you did. Not many would risk it for me.”
“I’m here of my own free will.”
“What of your Guild? Who leads them in your absence?”
“They’re in good hands. And…I’ve left the Guild for good.” He pulled a chain from his tunic until a delicate ring swung out. It was too dark to see, but it was very clearly a woman’s band. “I have to see to Selene’s safety.”
Augustus didn’t know what to say. He’d always assumed Oskar was sewn into the fabric of his life as a Blade, much the same way Augustus couldn’t rip the threads between him and the sea.
“Selene wouldn’t have wanted you to walk away from your entire life for her,” Augustus said. “She’ll—”
“She knows well that I have nothing holding me in Perean. Not anymore.” Oskar met his eyes for the briefest of moments, then sighed. “I was already preparing to leave. This is only a side road to my final mission.”
When Oskar didn’t continue and stood there with his jaw muscles flaring, Augustus asked, “Is there something we can help you with? Selene and I owe you our lives.”
Oskar fingered his chained ring and shook his head. “It’s a debt I intend to pay alone.”
Augustus nodded pointedly at the ring. “She must have meant a lot to you.”
“They were my entire world.”
Augustus didn’t understand but sensed he shouldn’t pry. “Just as Selene is mine, but I’ve really fouled things up, haven’t I?”
“Have you?”
“She was going to stay in Perean,” he admitted. “We had a massive fight about it, and now… Either we stay together and she never goes home, or I let her go.”
Oskar tucked the ring back inside his tunic and faced Augustus. “That is a choice I would never have wished upon anyone.”
“Sometimes I wonder if the gods meant for us to stay together. After we fulfilled their plot, that is. They don’t need us anymore. I take. I burn. She builds. She bleeds for others. Together, we’re a disaster waiting to happen.” Augustus sighed. “But I love her. That’s the real problem.”
Oskar’s mouth twitched into a frown. “Love can be powerful, but when the gods want their way, it isn’t enough. Winter always comes back around.”
A dark laugh jumped from Augustus’s chest as his heart and soul plummeted toward the plank boards. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t raised on hope, or that would’ve made me really depressed.”
“For your sake and hers, I hope you get everything you want—what you deserve. Too many have paid the price for the fucking gods.”
Oskar must have lost many more friends than Augustus knew to the lovers’ prophecy. Four decades worth, at least—since he was younger than Augustus was now, beginning with Nikos Thanides.
Augustus had lost a ship, nearly an entire crew, and his mother. Who else would make that list ten, twenty, thirty, forty years from now?
A knock on the cabin door lured the men around.
Augustus strode for the door, calling to whoever stood outside. “Come.”
Lili entered with her hair windblown and eyes bloodshot. When had she last slept? Whatever the answer was, it didn’t stop her from slanting a grin. “Look at you, all shaved and smelling like a rose.”
His eyes strained with a heavy roll. “Where do we stand? With our abrupt departure, we couldn’t have been ready.”
Oskar sank into the corner settee and hooked a boot to the table. “I haven’t told him,” he said to Lili.
“Tell me what?”
Lili dropped beside the assassin with a gusting sigh. “We’ll need to stop for supplies. We’ve got a week. Two, if you like watered ale and half rations.”
Augustus swore under his breath. “Brilliant. We’re sailing with a hold full of air.”
“Repairs were made,” she offered. “And we’ve got what’s left of the crew.”
“Just how small is this crew?”
“The crew is… It’s not great,” she said.
Oskar stepped in to add more detail. “Omar lost a few of his people in the battle, either to death or injury. Some stayed in Perean with their loved ones who were still under a healer’s care.”
“We gained some, too,” Lili added helpfully. “He had a few family members who were still deciding. They heard how you fought during the battle and decided you were worth their time.”
“They understand we’re likely headed into a bloody war?” Augustus asked. Not that he wasn’t grateful, but he hadn’t done anything to earn loyalty like that.
Lili shrugged one shoulder. “Omar said they go where the gods lead—and he’ll be damned before breaking an oath to Cassia Rutiliana. Family isn’t always blood. Sometimes, it’s forged in fire and blood.”
Augustus understood little of that, but for one part. The gods had been yanking him around for the better part of a year.
“The rangers came aboard,” Oskar continued. “And half a dozen Blades. They’re not sailors, but it’s a battle we’re heading into, so I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Plus the original crew members who stuck around,” Lili finished, “All in all, we’re all right. I just hope we don’t meet any of Thorne’s fleet before we have a few dozen more men aboard.”
They likely wouldn’t, seeing as how they were already three to four days behind. That distance would only grow when they had to stop for supplies. Assuming Thorne was heading for Vrinis, they would be at sea for nearly a month.
A dull pain filled his chest. Selene was alone, and would remain alone, for at least that long.
His mother’s voice filled his head. “She knows how to survive.”
Augustus hoped she was right.
“Any thoughts on where we’re going?” Lili asked. “I need to chart a course once we’re supplied up.”
“Vrinis.”
Lili blinked in surprise. “You came up with that answer mighty fast.”
“The figureheads on the attack ships were Vrinis deities. Vrinis is near the Isle of Dikha.”
And five days east of Warian Bay.
“I’m not following, mate,” Lili said.
“Thorne took the Isle of Dikha nine months ago, and with it, an ioprese mine and several ships. It was one of the details I learned from Captain Cuza the day I took the Soris. I can only assume he’s picking off the entire region, adding ships to his fleet.”
Leaving one vital question—exactly how many ships had Thorne acquired, and did the fleet stand a chance?
The sun didn’t scorch so much as it peeled—slow, patient, deliberate.
Chained to the mast, back aching, alone with the strange echo of voices distorted by the wind, Selene counted the sunrises and released all hope of rescue.
Thorne wanted her isolated, and she was an island unto herself.
No one spoke to her by either order or intention.
The sun was rising on the fifth day when Thorne finally decided to give her his full attention. He knelt before her, an elbow propped on one knee as he held a smoking pipe to his mouth. “You’ve been very quiet, Selene. Makes a man wonder what you’re planning with all that silence.”
Her throat and mouth were dry, making her voice gravelly. “I came willingly. The least you could have done was give me a decent room. This one seems to have a few holes in it.”
His gaze swept across the open decks with a few dozen crewmen already at work. “I apologize.” His jaw muscles pulsed. “Baking someone in the sun does seem unreasonably cruel, doesn’t it?”
“I’ve been through worse.”
Thorne gripped her chin, forcing her head to the right, where he focused on her left cheek. It had been throbbing since his ring sliced her skin open. The ship’s surgeon had tended to the injury days ago, but not since then.
“That’s going to scar,” he said.
“And I shall wear it with pride.” She raised her chin just as she had the day she walked away with him. “Everyone will know how you struck me to the ground and kicked me with your clean, unblemished boots. And when you were done, I stood and met you in the eye.”
She would make him regret drawing her blood.
Thorne stood.
Selene turned her face toward the breeze, welcoming the sting of salt and wind. As she scanned the horizon, a question gnawed at her—she’d been wanting to ask Thorne for days.
“Where’s your pet?”
She had no idea what the bird was or why it had seemed so close to Thorne, but it had been frightening enough to star in a few of her nightmares. Every day, she expected it to land beside her and start plucking at her eyes.
Thorne lowered his pipe and scanned the sky. “Vorash don’t favor the sea,” he said. “It comes and goes as it pleases. Don’t worry…he’ll be back once we’re on dry land.”
“Can’t wait.”
Ignoring her comment, he motioned her nearest guard over—a small man named Alf with eyes too big for his face, and clothes two sizes too large.
“Remove her cuffs,” Thorne said.
Selene’s mind raced with what to do with this turn of events. Unlocking her would be a mistake; he had to know that.
The painful ache in her shoulders upon release provided a decent argument to the contrary. She could barely move.
“Can you stand?” Thorne asked.