3 Imogen
Imogen
The heat in the armory grew choking as I waited for Lachlan’s response.
He’d become pale and tense, fighting to keep his breaths steady. “Get to the ship and do what?” he finally asked. “I’ll say it again: Anthemoessa is inaccessible.”
“It’s not inaccessible for me.” Merely speaking sent a new jolt of pain through me. I paused and blew out a breath. “Eusia will permit me onto the inner island.”
Incredulity overlayed his grief, making his voice go harsh. “Eusia? Making bargains with monsters, are we?”
I met him with cool resolve. “For Agatha, yes.”
Luckily, he shucked his judgment and gave me the barest nod of approval.
He didn’t need to know that I’d made the bargain for myself as well.
I’d made it because there, alone in the middle of the sea, on my father’s ruined ship, creeping toward death, I’d felt that familiar spark of want.
A foolish, ruinous sort of want that had threaded itself through me and grown so strong, so quickly, that it had eclipsed all reason.
The right thing to do would have been to smother it. To tear it—and Eusia—from my body in one swift pull. Even so, I’d not been able to let myself die in order to defeat her.
Lachlan began pacing the flickering armory, chewing the inside of his cheek. Three steps there, three steps back. Pauldrons clanged against his breastplate; the torchlight flashed over the gold with every thoughtful turn he took.
“You can sneak me out of here and onto the ship,” I urged.
“We’ll kidnap Halla to force them to reroute it.
We’ll get to Anthemoessa. We’ll get Agatha back.
And once I’m there—where Eusia is—I’ll use Halla to help me unbind from her.
She can perform magic. The bond I share with Eusia won’t let me perform a spell that harms her. ”
“I don’t give a shit about Eusia right now, to be clear, but you really expect Halla will just perform this spell, willingly?”
I didn’t care about her willingness. Nevertheless, I clenched my jaw, fully aware her cooperation would be a hurdle, but my desperation didn’t mind my weak scheme, it simply wanted me to move. “We can work out the bumps while we’re making our way to the ship.”
“While I admire the cruel poetry in forcing Halla to kill her own saint, that’s not a viable plan.” When I opened my mouth, he held up a silencing finger. “Let me think.”
My head was going light from pain, so I lowered myself carefully onto a chair. “How long will this take? Isn’t it better to be enacting an imperfect plan, than waiting for inspiration that might not come?”
He still paced, breaths coming fast, and shot me a glare. “That is the best summation of your greatest flaw. And why you’re in the mess you’re in.”
I scowled. “I have greater flaws. And my impulsiveness is only partially the reason for my predicament.”
Lachlan only rolled his eyes. Some terrible tension built through him until his pacing came to a sudden stop.
There were too many emotions on his face for me to decipher.
He was a tapestry of feeling, and I could not follow the path of a single thread.
Lachlan understood the insanity and danger of my request, the near impossibility of its success even better than I did, but as I beheld him, one emotion began to pull forward, surfacing from his tumult.
Determination.
It was the determination of a guardsman, an officer’s steely resolve.
The irrational kind, the kind worn in the face of mortal threats.
He gave a resigned curse and made for an oaken cabinet in the corner of the armory to rifle through its contents.
Out came two dark and neatly folded military cloaks with leathered shoulders.
Next, he pulled out two glass vials of some draught.
He pocketed one, then set the other on the table with a clack.
I recognized the little N on its label. Nepenthe. I gave Lachlan a questioning glare. “Does this mean you have a plan? Tell me.”
He swiped a hand down his face. “Not so much a plan as the terrifying realization that you are the worst and only option I have if I hope to get to Agatha.” He pointed at the bottle.
“So drink up. You’re in pain and we need to hurry.
” His wary gaze dipped to my stomach, making me suddenly aware of how my spine curled forward, as if that were enough to protect my wound.
“We’ll fix whatever the hell is wrong with you when we’re on the ship. ”
Gratitude and relief flooded me. The chain between my wrists rattled as I took the vial in my fist and shot it back.
I didn’t expect it would do much for me.
How could a healer’s draught touch a Mage’s spell?
But I swilled it like it was liquid hope and prayed it would at least soften the ragged edges of my pain.
I met Lachlan’s eye. “How will we get out?”
Lachlan swung a cloak over his shoulders and clipped it at the neck. “I’m thinking… the palace is already in a state of upheaval after the port attack. So perhaps we can add to the madness.”
I gripped the table as I worked to stand. The floor swayed beneath me, but I fought to find my footing. “Was all this thinking what kept you from going after Agatha while she was away on Seraf for all those years?”
Lachlan folded his lips in between his teeth, clearly biting back his retort, as he shoved a small flail in his belt.
I hobbled toward the armory door and let out a raw squeak as I reached for the torch on the wall beside it.
“Imogen?” Lachlan sounded leery. He grabbed Nemea’s sword and shoved it into his belt too. He reached for Nemea’s crown and the spare cloak. “What are you doing?”
I threw open the door to a burst of light.
“Imogen.”
But I was already sneaking into the entry hall, toward a shadowed gap between the wall and the stairs. There were a few servants on the other side of the hall, but it was the handful of armed guards by the main door that would prove to be our greatest hindrance.
I reached—with great pain—toward the marble statue of the Great Goddess Diantan that stood upon a low plinth at the start of the risers. The flame hissed as I rested it against the deep green swath of fabric she’d been draped in.
The movement made my eyes tear up, made me drop the torch, but the flames had caught. They climbed rapidly, engulfing her effigy so completely, that I stood in the stairs’ shadow for a moment, awestruck.
The guards surged into motion, calling for help, as a cloak landed across my shoulders. The hood pulled over my head. Lachlan gripped my arm and started dragging me along the wall, toward a narrow servants’ hall.
He spoke through his clamped teeth. “Holy bleeding Gods, Imogen.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” I mumbled as we made our way down the hall and out into a side garden.
The sunlight shone in a golden swirl, and while my pain remained, I realized the nepenthe had begun warping and easing it.
I gave a little whimper of relief as my damp boots hit a gravel path.
I might be able to sleep like this, floating over the hurt like a spirit lingering above its body.
We stopped suddenly, caged in by a ring of trees and sun-dappled shadow. Lachlan glared down at me with clear fury, but even with my head spinning, I noted the touch of worry in his eyes. “You look like shit.”
I blew out an annoyed breath. My words ran together as if I were drunk. “It’s a wonder Agatha never took you back.” The world around me began to blur and tilt like I stood upon a rolling ship in a fog.
Lachlan gripped my arm tighter, holding me up. “There’s that nepenthe kicking in.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
We were moving again. Through a high garden path, down a tree-lined trail.
Time began to play strange. I caught a blurry glimpse of the stables.
The daylight felt like hot fingers moving across my skin.
There came the scent of horses and their whickering.
The stalls swayed, and I was being helped into the back of a hay-filled wagon.
My manacles gave a metallic clatter when Lachlan undid them, then I curled up in the hay like a trembling new foal.
As we lurched into motion, I soothed the frantic flutter in my chest by forcing my liquid thoughts toward Agatha.
They moved in a rushing current, and I swam through them, back and back, to when I had been young.
Agatha had been young too, but to me, a girl of six, she’d been a fully fledged woman.
Now the decade between us was nothing, but then, she’d been some perfect amalgam of a mother and sister.
The nepenthe let me see her in flashes, in moments of laughter, or reprimand.
Me, hunched over my desk, quill scratching, and Agatha, pacing before the tall windows as she rattled off the day’s lesson.
Agatha, braiding my hair before bed. Agatha, hissing her dismay over how I’d made a habit of sneaking through the fort in the dead of night.
As we jostled along, my memories branched.
Too wide, too deep. There was a white flash, bright like a strike of lightning, and all of my senses suddenly stretched thin as a veil.
I could no longer feel my pain, but I could taste blood.
I saw through someone else’s eyes. Uncomfortably warm water slipped around me and two familiar voices rang through my ears.
One, low and nasal; the other a lovely, melodic croon.
“Hold these words in your head, Nemea, Mortal King of the Isle of Seraf. For you will be this spell’s herald. You will carry it forth.”
The lines of his face began to come clear, though they wavered like I looked at him from just below the surface of a murky pool.
My consciousness was not wholly gone, for something in my chest tightened to see him again.
His narrow face and tight glare. So young, with his long dark hair unstreaked by white.
His fair olive skin was smooth. His gray eyes looked different, somehow.
Hungry and hopeful, as opposed to how I had known them to be, like weather-beaten stones. I wished to look away.
“What are the words?” he asked, gaze searching. Suddenly, as if the body I possessed had risen through the murky water, his visage came fully into focus. He yelped and reared back, tumbling to the slate floor beneath him. He stared on in horrified shock.
When Eusia spoke, I felt it in my own throat, felt it resonate through my very bones. “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me, cleanse the sea.”
Nemea remained on his backside and gave a frantic nod. He repeated, “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me, cleanse the sea.”
“Go,” Eusia said. “Forge your bonds, Nemea. And you will know my power and benevolence.”
A hard hand shook my shoulder. “Imogen.” Another shake. “Imogen?”
I cracked my eyes open to the sun’s harsh glare. My skin was feverish and clammy.
Lachlan stared down at me curled up tightly in the hay, gaze wide with alarm.
“What… what is it?” I slurred.
“Theo’s ship,” he said, grimly. “It’s left.”