Chapter 21
By daybreak, the bodies start washing up on shore.
The storm ceased soon after it capsized the ship, as if satisfied with its catch. Its belly full of dying men, it dissipated as if it had never been there at all.
Dawn arrives without the usual fanfare of blazing colors, but rather with the gradual lightening of a gray world.
Tristan sounded the alarm, gathering men from the town while I changed out of my wet clothes and warmed myself by the fire.
Even now, as feeling returns to my limbs, I can’t stop shaking.
I’ve seen death before. Many times, in fact, but I’ve never seen the sea take an entire ship in one swallow. One moment it was there, tossing violently among the waves. The next, it was gone.
Someone knocks on my open door. I turn to see Tristan, his face pale and gaunt from lack of sleep.
“You asked me to tell you when we’re going to shore.”
I nod, standing on tired legs. “I’ll follow you.”
Tristan leads the way down the steep path, down to the sea. In the hazy light of a cloudy dawn, I can see the shore is littered with what’s left of the ship. Splintered wood from the hull, casks, and crates speckle the coast.
And, of course, there are the bodies.
Tristan turns to me. “You don’t have to—”
“I’m coming.”
He nods, assuming my answer before giving me a way out. I’m a healer. I’ve seen bodies mangled and torn before. Drowning is a new one though, battlefields being mostly inland.
The first body we see is a man dressed in a waterlogged cloak.
There’s sand in his hair, his clothes, and his ears.
His skin is pale and puffy, with the disturbing pallor of the drowned.
His eyes stare up at the sky. I hope he doesn’t have to replay his last sight over and over again in the afterlife.
I place my hand over his eyes to close them forever.
A short distance away, Tristan kicks away tiny shoreline crabs who’ve already begun feasting on another dead man. The corpse’s mouth gapes open in a small pool of water.
“They’re from Llwyn,” Tristan says, breaking me out of my stupor.
My head shoots up. “How can you be sure?”
He points to the sword still strapped to the waist of a nearby body. “The hilt is bronze.”
I rise to my feet to get a closer look. True enough, the man’s weapon is a muted shade of copper and decorated with the face of a growling fox.
“Why would they be out at sea in Annwyn waters? In the middle of winter?” I turn to Tristan.
He shakes his head. “I have no idea. It’s a wonder they even made it this far north, this time of year.”
My head swirls with possibilities, each more terrifying than the last. Did my father send them on a suicide mission to capture more territory from the sea? Are more Fox Soldiers approaching from other directions, winter storms be damned?
The impossibilities are endless. And yet, here lie the bodies of his men, washed up on the Annwyn shore in the middle of winter. Sheets of ice slide gracefully over the smooth pebbles, between the bodies jostled by the waves.
Tristan turns to three old women who are assembling a pyre to burn the dead.
“That can wait,” he says, his voice laced with urgency. “Open the crates and casks. Look for anything that might give us a clue as to why Llwyn soldiers were so far north.”
The women drop swollen bodies and the shredded remnants of the ship’s sail.
One of the villagers produces an axe. Another has a pry bar.
They get to work opening anything that’s still sealed.
Ale spills, the scent mixing with salty seawater as it foams in the waves.
One of the casks holds animal feed, making me cringe.
More than people died on that ship. Horses, likely.
Depending on how long they were planning to stay in Annwyn, possibly farm animals as well.
Another crate cracks open with a soggy thump of an axe. From inside, copper-plated armor spills onto the rough sand. My family’s emblem stares back at me like a ghost from the past. The fox makes me shiver as if it were my father’s eyes watching me, plotting his next attempt at my life.
I can’t help but wonder what’s happened in Llwyn since I fled with Hunter and Tristan last autumn. Is my father’s new bride, Elena, still alive? And what of her son, my alleged brother? Has he survived his first few months in the care of a monstrous king?
I’ve been detached from my homeland over the past couple of months. With the Spires and the storms between us, Annwyn is uniquely cut off from the rest of the world.
More detritus washes up on the shore as the waves courier secrets from the wreckage. Waterlogged travel biscuits. A soggy boot. The torn remains of a sail. There must be something here that could tell us what’s happened in Llwyn.
A short distance away, one of the villagers turns over another body with his crutch. He pauses, staring down.
“This one’s alive!”
It takes me a moment to register his words.
The man starts to wave his free arm while leaning on his crutch. “This man’s still breathing!”
All around me, people run toward the body on the ground, but I’m frozen in place.
Not because of fear. Not because I’m worried what that man might say about my homeland or my father.
I’m paralyzed because I recognize that head of sopping blond hair.
That bulky, tall frame, and the cut of the man’s jaw.
I ought to, since I’ve trailed my fingers over it enough.
It’s Hunter.
My vision blurs. He didn’t die on that flaming battlefield in Ellyll.
He wasn’t mauled by corpse wolves or murdered by my father’s soldiers.
Finally, my feet catch up with my brain.
I sprint across the beach, then kneel beside him in the wet sand.
His face is unnaturally pale; his breath shallow.
When I touch his cheek, his skin is as cold as death.
“No.” I shake my head. “No, Hunter, this isn’t how you die.”
Not after what I’ve done to you, I think. This man is the purest soul I’ve ever known, and I treated him abysmally. Guilt makes my breath catch in my chest. This can’t be it. This can’t be how his life ends. Not after everything we’ve been through.
My brain whirs through the hundreds of medical procedures I’ve seen the non-noble healers use in the borderlands, from sewing sutures to herbal remedies for infection. But we never had patients who were half-drowned on the battlefields. I don’t know what to do.
My face scrunches up with a confusing mix of frustration and panic. I push Hunter full in the chest. He doesn’t respond.
“Wake up!” I yell. I push him again. “Hunter, wake up!”
There’s a small crowd forming around me, keeping a short distance. They watch me with pity in their eyes, but I refuse to be pitiful.
I bend forward and speak into Hunter’s ear.
“You have a long life of wooing pretty maids in seaside towns ahead of you, remember?” I wipe the wet hair away from his eyes.
“You’re going to marry one of them, and have a dozen babies, and grow old, and tell your grandchildren stories about being a great knight in the King’s Guard. ”
He doesn’t even flinch. His skin is beginning to take on an unmistakable blue tint. I growl in frustration and fight back the tears that are building behind my eyes. But I can’t cry now. If I start, I know I’ll never be able to stop.
If I am anything, I’m stubborn. And I refuse to watch my only friend die here, on a frozen shore, in a foreign land far from Llwyn.
I close my eyes and place my hands over his chest. His breathing is dangerously shallow, and his wet skin sends a shiver through my arms. From deep within my core, I try to reach for my power.
“Please,” I whisper to it. “Please.”
At first, all I sense is emptiness, that all too familiar hollowness in my chest. Then, I recognize a small spark in the darkness.
I focus on that small flame of hope, coaxing it, drawing it out of the depths of my core.
It eases into my chest, filling me slowly, then faster.
I gasp, unable to control it as it returns with an unexpected force.
Light power surges through my veins in a rush of heat. Golden power bursts through me, traveling up my chest and down the length of my arms. It doesn’t so much pool in my hands as it rushes like a waterfall, engulfing Hunter.
Only now do I realize how close to death he truly is. I can feel his heart beating, so painfully slowly, it’s as if it’s already giving up. His life force is still there, barely hanging on by a thread. One foot already into the abyss of death.
“Come back,” I beg.
Power laced with panic floods my mind. I think of nothing else, just Hunter. How much I’ve missed him. How he saved me from my father when we were children. How he rescued me when I was locked in the dungeon. How he crossed the entire Llwyn Kingdom for me.
How I need to save him. Desperately.
Even if I forget all else, I could never forget this: I love Hunter. I always have. And here, on the frozen coast of a forbidden land, I know that some part of me always will.
Under my palm, Hunter’s heartbeat begins to grow steadier, stronger. He takes in a shuddering breath.
“Please don’t leave me.” Even as I say it, I understand the irony of the words. I’m the woman who left him. Not once, but twice.
Suddenly, his hand shoots up to grab my arm. His eyes flutter open.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
He stares at me, his warm brown eyes not fully focused. “Sienna …”
“Yes, it’s me.”
His eyes flutter closed again, and his grip on my arm loosens, but he’s no longer on death’s door. I can feel his heartbeat growing stronger, his breaths growing deeper. He’s unconscious, and I know it’s for the best. His body desperately needs rest.
My power slowly eases back into me, sliding up my arms and returning to my core. Just as freely as it erupted, it slumbers again. But this time, I can feel it waiting there. The hollow emptiness in my chest is gone. My power has returned.
I finally sit back on my heels in the wet, grainy sand. When I look up, everyone is staring at me, their eyes wide with a mix of fear and awe.
“We need to get him to a fire,” I say, back in healer mode. I need them to stop staring at me. Heat flushes my cheeks. “Someone, make a sling to carry him back to the castle. The rest of you, check the other bodies. Make sure there are no other survivors.”
Wordlessly, they nod, taking direction as if they needed it.
Several of them watch me warily as they retreat.
I bring my attention back to Hunter as I breathe a sigh of relief.
That’s when I notice something odd. He’s wearing layers of wool, likely to keep the freezing ocean air at bay.
But there’s an odd lump under his jacket, near his heart.
I reach forward and unfasten the buttons.
When I lift the fabric from his chest, I see a pocket sewn into the inside lining. I fish out the hard rectangle inside.
It’s a small thin book. But not just any book. It’s the one the librarian, Merle, gave to me the night before my father locked me in the rat-infested dungeon. The silver moth on the green cover shines in my hands.
The Silver Moth Society. How did Hunter find it?
I blink in wonder several times before the skin on the back of my neck begins to prickle. My eyes search the shoreline. They fall on the Wolf, standing a short distance away. Behind messy strands of dark hair, his gray eyes are filled with pride … and the unmistakable glint of jealousy.
Somewhere in the distance, a seagull laughs.