Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
The Indomnitus is eerily quiet. The proud masts cast spears of dark shadow against the rising sun, the familiar bow rocking lazily in the calm waters.
I focus on the gentle motion and try to remember what it felt like beneath my feet—the comfort of the soft lilt, the possibility of the endless movement.
I use the memory to ground myself in something aside from the wave after wave of fear inundating me.
My magic sweeps over the dozens of children that lie asleep around me, soothing their terror.
Some of it is electric green and zaps against my skin like a frayed wire, while others are deep blacks that feel like brackish water in my lungs each time I try to breathe.
All of it at once has left me gasping for air, mired beneath the onslaught.
Beside me, Tiernan shifts on his feet, eyeing me in concern. “It’s been too long, Sam,” he says for the hundredth time since he returned from bargaining with the sirens.
I don’t know whether he means Willa has been gone too long, or I’ve been using my magic too long.
I don’t have the energy to ask. I merely grunt in acknowledgement, as another nightmare wracks the nearest child, a little girl I recognize from the Grove.
Her parents had been ecstatic to welcome her home after the Strayed were banished last year.
Now, they weep at the edges of the gathered crowd, their worry the color of a bruise.
“You can’t keep this up much longer.” Tiernan fingers the hilt of his sword. “I’m going in after her.”
Though ancient by mainland standards, Tiernan is nearly a century younger than me. I am reminded of the age difference on nights like tonight, when his frayed nerves betray a distinctly youthful lack of patience.
I have grown accustomed to waiting. For hours. For years. For centuries. It is as natural as breathing.
“Have some faith,” I manage to reply, lowering myself to sit between two children before I collapse and accidentally crush them. Anxiety peppers the inside of my throat, hot and stinging. I work to swallow it down, to remember it isn’t mine, no matter that my body reacts as if it is.
“I have faith.” Tiernan crumples with an ungraceful grunt to sit beside me, his shoulder bumping into mine.
“I also have bloodlust. A lot of it.” He sets me with an imploring gaze.
“Are we really going to sit here and do nothing while the Everlasting gallivants around our king’s ship like he has any right to it?
We should be raising his head up the masts. ”
His words vibrate with a rage Tiernan rarely allows to escape the prison he locks it in.
Buried far beneath his irreverent humor and kind soul, an anger borne of a life of too little food and too much violence.
As one of the youngest Strayed, nothing was given to him.
He’d had to kill and steal for the little he had, and though he’s adept at keeping the worst of his inclinations hidden, I always feel them simmering beneath his surface.
“Sounds rather messy,” I reply dryly.
“Doesn’t sound messy enough,” Tiernan snaps back with a feral grin that fades quickly into concern. “You should take a break.”
“Can’t.”
It’s the only word I can manage as I lose focus of the rhythm of the sea. The children’s fear that had been prickling at my skin slips beneath the surface. It tightens around my throat like a noose, and for a terrifying moment, it feels like I won’t ever be able to breathe again.
But then Tiernan’s hand is curling around my shoulder, his other guiding my palm gently to his chest. “Breathe,” he commands, his gaze as steady as the feel of his heartbeat beneath my fingers. “In.” His chest rises. “And out.”
I lock onto his gaze like it is an anchor at sea, and slow my breathing to match his.
“In. And out.”
He repeats the mantra softly, over and over, until the panic ricocheting through me ebbs. A few more breaths, and the tightness in my chest eases.
Tiernan gives me a goofy grin. “Better, yeah?”
“Yeah.” I remove my palm from his chest to rub my own. The children’s fear is now only an echo, prickling once more at the surface of my skin. “Thank you.”
Tiernan waves me off like his gesture was nothing, and it makes me feel like crying. To Tiernan, the empathy that spills from him is normal. I wish I had the words to explain how rare it actually is, or how it feels to have someone else carry the emotional burden, even for the smallest moment.
“I’m giving Willa ten more minutes, and then I’m boarding that ship,” he growls out, anger radiating from him. “You can’t keep this up much longer, and star only knows what’s happening in there.”
His fury sounds like frenetic heartbeats, feels like the heated pulse of adrenaline through veins. It tastes of bile, bitter on my tongue. The warm tendrils of my magic unfurl from their place behind my heart, drawn instinctively to the boy.
Gritting my teeth, I work to keep from absorbing Tiernan’s anger beneath my skin.
“Our queen is not some delicate flower that will crumple at the first threat,” I reply in a strained tone. “And neither am I. I’ll keep it up as long as I have to.”
Tiernan whistles a breath through his teeth, and leans back on his heels. “I won’t let either of you ruin yourselves for someone else’s nightmare. Ten minutes, Sam. And if you don’t listen, I swear to the star above, I’ll go get Adira if I have to.”
“Adira?” I repeat faintly. “What does she have to do with anything?”
Tiernan raises a knowing brow. “Are we going to pretend I don’t know you snuck out of the Lunaedon to go see her the night the Aeternalis returned?”
When I don’t answer, Tiernan laughs. “Come on, Sammy…the island is healing. I’ve been waiting for the day you move into the Grove permanently.”
At this, I glance at him sidelong. “Men don’t ‘move into the Grove’, Tiernan,” I retort, my neck feeling strangely too large. Like the collar of my shirt has somehow climbed up my neck to strangle me like a python. “And even if they did, Adira’s made her feelings on the matter perfectly clear.”
Tiernan hums noncommittally, watching me yank at my shirt. “For someone who can sense others’ emotions, you’re a daft bastard. It doesn’t take magic to see the way Adira feels about you. My tongue may be mutilated, but my eyeballs work just fine.”
There are a million things I could say to Tiernan—that Adira may care for me, but her feelings aren’t strong enough to change the way of things.
The wild eats the weak, Sam. And you make me weak.
The world shattered the night Niko had slain the Everlasting, but mine—mine was obliterated a month later when Adira spoke those words to me on the balcony of her treehouse.
I can’t even claim to have been blindsided, as I’d always been expecting them in some way.
In the way one expects a storm to upend a calm day, I never truly trusted the Princess of the Wild’s affection for me.
I was an orphan who cried too often, overcome by the simplest of emotions I had no claim to, with nothing but a few rusty swords to my name. And she…she was everything. Beautiful. Clever. Powerful.
I’d seen enough during my life on the mainland to know that women like Adira did not stay with men like me for long.
The memories simmer to the surface, mingling with the fear and angst of the children’s nightmares.
My ribs constrict and my heartbeat pounds erratically against them, and for a terrible moment, I think I’ll lose hold of my magic; that I’ll slip between the barrier I keep between my own emotions and others’, flimsy as it is, and disappear entirely.
For once one feels as another does, it is near impossible to remember what thoughts first belonged there.
“Tiernan—” I gasp, lurching sideways to fist my fingers in the front of his shirt. To hold onto something familiar, something of home, before I’m lost.
Before I can explain, a shockwave reverberates through the city.
The docks sway beneath us with such violence, I nearly topple into the raging waves.
I’m spared only by Tiernan’s quick reaction of barreling into me so hard we both hit the planks with a painful thud.
The buildings of Caelum groan as the earth shakes beneath us, a deep sound that reverberates through my bones.
I scramble upward, following Tiernan’s horrified gaze across the waves.
Only moments before, the masts of the Indomnitus stood proud.
Now, they have been swallowed by a roiling void.
An abiding shadow, deeper black than even Niko’s ribbons.
It blots out the ship and the sun rising behind it, casting Letum in sudden night.
The sea rages, brutal waves swelling and crashing hard against the docks.
Seawater slicks the wood, and the sharp crack of docked vessels colliding rents through the harbor.
“What the fuck!” Tiernan shouts, his voice lost in the roar of the earth and sea.
Panic squeezes my throat, and I don’t have time to determine whether it is mine. Pure instinct has me launching myself at the sleeping children beside us, shielding as many of them as I can with my body.
The dark shadows where the Indomnitus should be tighten and spin, until they appear as a solid wall. The air sparks, a pause of a moment that seems to last an eternity as the children cry beneath me, their fear seeping into my skin like icy droplets of rain.
The void explodes.
Tendrils of darkness race over the waves, and the world is swallowed whole. There is no air, no light—nothing but an angry noise hissing in my ear, and unimaginable emptiness smothering my magic.
I open my mouth to shout, but the shadows tear my voice from my throat, dragging it into the gaping void. My fingers dig into the slick wooden planks, the little bodies tucked snugly beneath mine the only thing keeping me anchored to which way is up.
As quickly as it began, the storm settles. The shadows dissipate like wisps of smoke, the sea shimmers calmly once more in the midday sun. I roll off the children, blinking stupidly at where the Indomnitus floats unharmed in the distance.
Tiernan scrabbles to his feet, blowing tendrils of auburn hair out of his face. “What the fuck was that?” he demands, pointing his sword wildly toward the ship.
Letum is so calm, it is like the past few minutes have been some sort of fever dream. Anxiety edges through me, an unsettled, electric green of an emotion. With a start, I realize it belongs to me.
“Sam…” The line between Tiernan’s brows deepens in concern, his eyes trailing over the sleeping children. “Do you think…do you think that was Willa’s magic?” He frowns, his gaze flickering back to the Indomnitus. “The children—they look…peaceful again.”
And indeed, despite the horror of it, the storm of shadows seems to have eased their nightmares.
Their bodies are relaxed and peaceful, no longer straining against my hold or fighting against unseen specters.
Their whimpers have quieted, their breathing slow and deep.
My magic unfurls in warm tendrils, sweeping toward them.
It finds no fears to soothe, no terrors to ease. Only slow and steady heartbeats.
“She did it,” I whisper. “Willa ended their nightmares.”