11 Imogen #3
I wondered what step I’d performed incorrectly when the launch’s bow began to list to the starboard side.
I tried to right it with a current, but to no avail.
I nearly tried again when I realized—the boat was turning.
Its first revolution was sluggish, the second more sure, and on its third turn a deep, familiar pain began to spread slowly through me.
The spell seeking its due.
I fell to the bench, then slipped to the hull, the motion only igniting the ache of my wound, as the boat’s revolutions began to come faster.
The sky and clouds became a blue-gray swirl.
My body arched. My eyes began to sear with oil-hot pain, and as I squeezed them shut, I thought of Theodore.
I tried to push him from my mind, but I could picture him as if he stood before me.
I could almost feel his firm flesh and a sticky wet heat between my fingers as I tore through it.
That same bone-deep hunger I’d felt after performing my first spell ripped through me.
That wonderful, terrible want. Sweet longing and pain.
My scalp burned like it had been set aflame, my whole body stung like it was being lashed with blades, and still I could not ignore how inexplicably intoxicating it felt.
I wanted more and more and more.
I opened my eyes to the sky, but there was only a sickening blur above me.
Despite my clamped jaw, a shattering scream filled my chest. Then, as if a hand reached down from above and grabbed the whirling vessel, the boat stopped.
My head rammed into the bench’s support.
Agonized, I clambered onto my knees, searching for the compass.
The Eleuthios had drifted ahead, its bow pointing toward the north, toward Obelia. It bobbed atop the waves, as all sea vessels did, but my boat was so still that had I not known better, I would have sworn it had snagged itself on a sandbar.
My gaze locked on the compass’s needle. I knew the contours and lines of Leucosia’s maps.
I’d studied the shading and angles of the waters and mountains and rivers.
I’d traced them with my quill for lessons, and again with longing strokes of my finger while I’d huddled in the corner of Nemea’s dark study, whereby the glow of a single candle, I’d imagined the wonders of each of Leucosia’s islands.
The compass told me what I already knew. The bow of my boat pointed west.
Toward Anthemoessa.
Toward the empress and Agatha and Eusia.
I squinted toward the ship’s windows, where Markis and Eftan now took turns staring at me down the length of a telescope.
The dregs of the spell swelled through my chest, through the water around the boat, and then in an instant its pressure released. The boat rolled over the sea’s peaks and troughs again; the point of the bow no longer stuck in one direction.
Even as my scalp nettled and my body thumped from exhaustion, I sent a current that sped the boat back to the Eleuthios. I had been squeezed dry and filled up at once; I had never known pain so terrible and satisfying, but none of it mattered.
That spell should be enough to give Theodore’s council the proof they needed to respect his sovereignty.
It should be enough to prove that the empress was not to be trusted, and by proxy, neither was her daughter.
It should be enough to rally the support of the Eleuthios’s might and help me save the person who meant the most to me in the world.
Finally, my boat was near enough to the rope ladder for me to reach, but I hardly had the strength to hold on, let alone climb it as it swayed.
I pressed my forehead into the rung, gathering my strength before I fought my way up.
The effects of spell work were like nothing I’d ever known.
It was a drink as it took you from elation to illness.
It was a rich feast dragging you from satisfaction to engorgement.
It was a lover, attentive to the point of inducing pain.
I fought my way over the ship’s rail, cold sweat beading over my face, and planted my feet on the deck.
Theodore still stood at the bow with his retinue and Lachlan, as I’d requested.
The wild impulse to rush toward him—to bury my face against his neck, to pinch his skin between my teeth—overwhelmed me.
The gusting wind pulled at Theodore’s hair and I took an unthinking step toward him, but Eftan’s strong body cut me off.
The smell of his sweat and the wine on his breath filled my nose.
His brown eyes were webbed with red veins, his brows steep and pinched.
He said not a word as he drew his arm across his chest. Something in his fist shone as he slashed it toward my throat in a wide horizontal arc.
It was a vicious but sluggish move, and even dazed by pain, I managed to grab his wrist. I pushed it down, keeping the silver blade he clutched in his fist away from my throat.
Theodore’s shout boomed across the deck. “Imogen!”
My head snapped toward his call, and that was my error.
I’d not seen the second, smaller blade that Eftan clutched in his other fist. I’d not seen him rear that blade back or drive it toward me, but I felt its burning edge as it drove into my stomach, right through the spelled kelp and sand that kept me alive.