Chapter 26
SPARKS OF A PLAN
Ziara
Sleep was a cold-hearted bitch who evaded all of my advances.
Outside the portholes, waves slapped against the hull in a rhythm that should have been soothing.
But how could I relax? Every time I closed my eyes, vertical, silver pupils stared back at me from the darkness.
My throat ached with the memory of my father’s hand squeezing the breath from it, or the searing agony of my aunt shanking me with the stone I risked my life to steal.
And no matter how I tried to distract my subconscious from reality, it wasn’t fooled. The dragon was here, stalking us.
Stalking me.
The ship swayed. The hammock swayed with it, and my stomach threatened mutiny.
The combination of bone-deep exhaustion and knee-buckling terror had me in a weird headspace.
I was safe in the sick bay and should be out cold.
The alpha had used Mackiel’s spear to wedge the door closed so nobody would have to keep watch and ordered us all to sleep with an air of authority I shouldn’t have been able to disobey.
But here I was once again, out here being a freak of nature.
Everyone else was blissfully asleep. On my left, Rust snored like a bear in hibernation, the sound so thunderous it vibrated the air.
Beside the far porthole, Dad slept in the silence of a man who could wake at a pin drop to stab a blade through whatever poor fool dropped it.
Mack’s hammock hung on my right. He’d turned his back to me hours ago, and the rigid set of his shoulders made it clear sleep hadn’t softened his anger.
I didn’t blame him. I was angry at me, too.
The bloodstone rested against my thigh, tucked into my dagger sheath where nobody would think to look.
Its warmth seeped through the leather, pulsing faintly with a rhythm that had synced with my heartbeat.
I pressed my palm against it, willing it to chill the fuck out and stop interrupting my mental breakdown, but the stone wasn’t considerate enough to comply.
Another wave rocked the hammock, and bile crept up my throat. That was it. I couldn’t go to sleep. If the dragon showed up in my dreams, he’d find me at my absolute worst, and I’d already given him enough ammunition. But I also couldn’t lie here one more second, marinating in guilt and seasickness.
Moving with the silence Rust had drilled into me since childhood, I slipped from the hammock, landed barefoot on the wooden floor, and paused to listen.
Rust’s snoring didn’t falter. Mack’s breathing remained even.
The alpha was harder to read, but his heartbeat held the slow, deep cadence of sleep.
Those damn dreams must have given me PTSD, because I instinctively checked for my daggers, breathing easier when I found them still sheathed at my thighs.
I crept around Mack to the nearest porthole. We’d slept with it wide open because there was only so much stink our sensitive wolf noses could tolerate, and the combination of brine, tar, alcohol, and centuries of dubious decisions exceeded that threshold.
With one last scan over the vitals of my packmates, I grabbed my backpack, sucked down a steadying breath, and did the stupidest thing ever. I gripped the iron ribcage protecting the hull and blatantly defied the alpha’s orders by climbing out of the porthole.
We were only two nights past the full moon, and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. Squeezing through the bars, I closed my eyes against the unfamiliar stars. Though absolutely stunning, they reminded me we were a long-ass way from home, and I needed a moment to accept that fact.
Because I was homesick.
Not so much for the place as for the time. I would give my left boob to go back to the day before I stole the bloodstone so I could do it all differently. I would stab that stupid dragon in the heart and lop off his head without hesitation.
Body plastered against the iron, I listened and sniffed the air. The ship creaked and groaned like an old wolf settling into a chair, every timber protesting the indignity of being afloat. Faint hints of the fishmen’s stink tickled my nose, but the trail was old. The coast was clear.
I scaled the iron cage to find the deck mercifully empty and immediately tugged off my backpack to spritz myself with Sereana’s scent-neutralizing concoction.
The fishmen had to be nose-blind to call such a putrid ship home, but I was being consciously idiotic, not careless, and there was a difference.
Above, three masts pierced the foreign sky.
Atop the mainmast, the crow’s nest was a small wooden platform with a waist-high railing that looked like it hadn’t been maintained since the ship was built.
Rope rigging hung from the mast in a crisscrossed pattern that was practically a ladder for anyone who’d spent their life climbing.
As if it were built for me.
Despite living underground, heights had always calmed me in a way nothing else could. Rust had accused me of being part squirrel more times than I could count, but up high, the world and all its problems shrank to a manageable size.
Thinking of my mentor made my chest ache, so I scaled the rigging as if I could outclimb the disappointment that had darkened his eyes.
The ropes were slick with sea spray, but my grip held.
By the time I swung a leg over the railing of the crow’s nest, my muscles burned in a way that felt more like relief than exertion.
I breathed in the crisp ocean air, and my heartbeat’s breakneck speed slowed for the first time in days.
The view nearly knocked the breath from my lungs.
Black waves stretched to the horizon in every direction, broken only by the faint, eerie green glow of the ship’s wake. What the hell was that, anyway? Bioluminescence? Magic? The souls of the slain waiting for a chance to attack? I wouldn’t put anything past the fishmen.
Scanning the bleak and watery world around me, I shuddered.
The ocean was too big. Too dark. Too full of things I couldn’t name and didn’t want to meet. I tore my gaze from the water and tilted my head back.
The sky was better. Bright, dense clusters of stars looked like diamonds flung across wet ink. There was no light pollution. No city glow. Just the raw, ancient dark of a world that didn’t care about wolves or dragons or bloodstones.
I leaned against the mast and breathed.
For a few precious minutes, I practiced box breathing, attempting to push reality away and relax my frenzied mind.
I was still a long way from the theoretical level of Zen I longed for when the sound of footsteps drifted up from below, shattering my progress with the reminder that I wasn’t supposed to be here.
Two fishmen marched toward me from opposite directions, their cerulean skin muted to gray in the moonlight.
Lakhmu carried a small cage. He met the captain at the base of the mainmast and spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, though “Americans” was spat like a curse.
Then Lakhmu mocked Dad’s tone when he puffed out his chest and said, “Alpha Chaz McCarthy of the Evergreen Wolf Pack.”
It didn’t surprise me they weren’t our biggest fans, but the sinister laughter that followed sprouted goosebumps across my skin.
Whatever these two were up to wasn’t good.
Lakhmu opened the crate, and the captain tugged a small, rolled parchment from his pocket.
He reached inside the cage, and when he withdrew, a small bird was in his hands, the paper now tied around its leg.
I’d read somewhere that pirates sailed with colorful parrots, but that must have been a wives’ tale because this bird was a basic pigeon.
The captain barked out a command, and the pigeon took flight.
I dropped low, flattening myself against the bottom plank of the crow’s nest as my fingers found my dagger hilts.
I didn’t know if the carrier pigeon would rat me out if it saw me, but I didn’t want to take the chance.
Wings flapped nearby long enough to make me wonder if I’d been spotted, but then the sound grew fainter as the pigeon flew away.
The fishmen shared a few more words before moving on.
I needed to get back to the sick bay and warn the others that something shady was going on, but I had no details or evidence, and the alpha wouldn’t accept my hunch. Besides, then I’d have to tell him how I overheard the conversation, sparking questions about why I’d disobeyed him yet again.
I needed to find out what the fishmen were up to. And possibly lay out an escape plan just in case.
Their voices faded toward the stern. I gave them to the count of a hundred before descending. Was I paranoid? Absolutely. But paranoia had kept me alive this long, and I wasn’t about to break the streak.
Halfway down the rigging, something on the port side caught my eye. A shape hung from the quarterdeck, half concealed by a cover that the wind kept tugging at, as if trying to show me what was underneath.
My feet hit the deck without a sound, and I slipped through the shadows to investigate.
I almost cheered when I found a dinghy hanging from iron davits beneath a weathered canvas tarp crusted with salt. It was small, looked barely seaworthy, and was secured by frayed ropes, but I’d found our escape plan.
Making a mental note of the dinghy’s location, I turned to head back to the sick bay and stopped dead when a feminine voice caught my attention.
Someone was singing.
Not the raucous shanties the crew belted out to power the ship, this was something else entirely. The high-pitched melody drifted through the air like smoke, brimming with so much sorrow and loneliness that I didn’t need to understand the words to be sucker-punched by her emotions.
Every word hit me in the feels.