Chapter 42
Zanta rushed out on deck with the others hot on her heels in time to see a small island appear between two spires. It was the same pale stone, cliffs reaching up to the bruised sky, and crowned by windswept trees. The way was clear, as if the forest of rock had opened up the way just for them.
“Is that the one?” Henri asked at her side.
“I don’t know.” The journal had described an island like this, but she didn’t see a cove and a pebble beach, nor a dwelling carved into the cliffs.
If this wasn’t it, would they just keep searching?
The Sleeping Isles were an archipelago. Gods only knew how many of these islands were contained within the Storm Ring.
And what if she’d been wrong? What if Nia wasn’t going back to Seer’s Isle after all?
“I think it is.” Rowan gazed at the island, sans eyepatch. “There’s something…” He shook his head and squinted harder. “I think we should check it out.”
Upon his word, the Demon signaled to his crew, and they jumped to do his bidding, staying on course for the island and preparing landing boats, should they be required.
The Kraken maneuvered carefully between the rocks, spotters at every rail to call out pitfalls that might be lurking beneath the water to gouge out the ship’s guts.
As they neared the island, more and more wreckage bobbed in the waves, pieces of wood and rope, bodies.
Zanta worried her lip between her teeth, willing her searching gaze not to find any corpse with a face she knew.
The Kraken banked to port around the edge of the island, still too far away to pick out much detail on the shore.
As they rounded a jutting cliff, a small cove opened up before them, bracketed by tall spires, the water light and too shallow for the massive ship to approach any further.
Smashed upon the rocks, the corpse of another ship languished.
Its insides lay exposed to the waves, pale sails floating beneath the surface like giant white jellyfish.
Rope-tangled corpses bobbed in the surf.
Drowned. Or dashed on the rocks. Zanta caught her breath as she read the lettering on the smashed-up side.
Mar— The Marigold, dead in the water with its crew strewn about like any other flotsam.
“There! A survivor!” Logan pointed to a lone figure huddled in the corner of a torn open room at the stern.
They prepared a boat, and several crew members rowed out to rescue the last survivor of the Marigold. A woman. She shivered in her soaked uniform as she stepped aboard the Kraken.
“Baird,” Rowan growled. She squared her shoulders when she saw him, though the shivering undercut her show of defiance.
“Ghost Hawk,” she said.
“Are you the only survivor?”
Baird’s posture deflated a little. She pressed her pale lips into a line. “Yes.”
“Where is the Lonesome?”
She shook her head, and Rowan stepped toward her, all threat and menace. They stared at each other for a moment.
“Take her below,” he ordered Logan. “Give her dry clothes, food, water. Then throw her in the brig. We’ll see how ready she is to talk when she realizes her life is in our hands.”
“Zanta, is that…” Henri grabbed Zanta’s shoulder as their captive was led away.
Zanta’s gaze finally slipped past the wreckage to the interior of the cove.
A pebble beach ringed in cliffs and…Zanta frantically flipped to a page of sketches in the journal and held it up against the backdrop. Henri’s eyes widened.
The charcoal lines matched the stone exactly. An ornate little dwelling carved directly into the side of the cliff. They’d found it. The Seer’s Isle.
“I think I should go by myself.” Zanta stood at the rail of the Kraken, facing off against the other two captains and their crew.
They’d anchored as close to the entrance of the cove as depth would allow, far enough away from the wreckage of the Marigold that the floating bodies weren’t constantly bumping against the hull.
“You can’t go by yourself.” Rowan crossed his arms. He looked like he had a fierce headache coming on. Whether that was due to her stubbornness or whatever the magical eye was showing him, Zanta couldn’t say. “What if the Lonesome is lurking around somewhere? Or hostile Selkies?”
Fair. Zanta knew she was being irrational, but the tug in her gut told her this was something she had to do alone. If Nia was there, she might be frightened. If Nia wasn’t there…Zanta needed to be able to deal with it alone.
“If Nia’s there, I don’t want to scare her with a bunch of pirates she doesn’t know,” Zanta argued. Rowan grimaced and the Demon remained silent. He probably didn’t care one way or the other whether Zanta found Nia or got attacked by whomever might be lurking on the island.
“Here, then.” Logan handed her a pressed paper tube that smelled vaguely sulfuric. “Use this flare if you need us.” Zanta nodded and tucked it into the bag where she’d also stowed the journal and a set of clothes for Nia.
“Logan, you can’t just—” But Zanta didn’t hear the rest of Rowan’s scolding. She swung her leg over the rail and climbed down to the waiting rowboat.
Small, choppy waves slapped the sides of the boat as Zanta rowed through the cove.
Distant thunder rumbled behind her, and she inhaled the scent of salt through her nose, hoping the Storm Ring wouldn’t deign to reach this far into the interior of the Sleeping Isles again.
What manner of thing was the Storm Ring?
It couldn’t be a natural phenomenon. Had the Selkies created it somehow to protect themselves?
Zanta’s arms began to ache as the Kraken receded, and she was alone in the cove.
Small bits of debris bumped against the sides of the boat, and she hoped no bodies floated nearby.
She knew Rowan and the others would be watching her, and felt slightly guilty that she’d denied Henri the opportunity to come with her and search for his sister.
But this was something she had to do alone, so she put her head down and rowed.
She didn’t dare glance to shore till she was almost there.
Zanta twisted in her seat and scanned the pebbly beach, empty but for the waterlogged corpse of a mercenary and bits of the Marigold.
The little dwelling in the cliff hung higher than a person’s height, whatever stairs or ladder used to reach it now washed away or collapsed.
Had Nia come here and found a way up to her old home? Had she even made it here at all?
The waves grew choppier the closer Zanta rowed to shore, becoming white and foamy and coughing up all manner of flotsam to roll against the white pebbles. There, under an overhanging bit of rock, the barest flash of orange.
Zanta was out of the boat in a second, splashing down into waist high water and dragging the boat only far enough to beach it in the shallows.
She ran, heart in her throat, salt spray splashing around her legs as she scrambled up the beach, pebbles shifting beneath her water-filled boots. It had to be Nia, it had to. Please.
“Nia!” Zanta slipped and almost fell on the pebbles but kept going. Whatever was under the overhang didn’t move or respond to her call.
Salt air burned down Zanta’s throat, already tight with tears.
She neared the depression in the rock, and the orange smudge solidified into a spill of hair like a flame.
Nia lay on her side, facing away from the beach.
Naked but for the gray pelt which draped over her body and cast a shimmer like water on the rock above.
“Nia!” Gods, please let her be alive. Please let her not be drowned like all the others.
Nia stirred, and sat up just as Zanta skidded to her knees and threw her arms around Nia’s warm, bare shoulders. Nia yelped and shoved her away. Zanta sprawled on the pebbles.
“Z-Zanta?” Nia’s voice was tentative, green eyes so wide they seemed to contain the entirety of the restless sea. “Oh gods, it’s you!”
“It’s me.”
Nia grabbed her hand and held it to her cheek. “I…How did you find me?”
All Zanta wanted to do was drown in her warmth. She pressed her hand tighter to Nia’s cheek instead, savoring the real living person beneath her palm.
“I read Stroud’s journal. I’m sorry. It was the only way to find you.”
Nia’s lips parted around silence. Zanta’s other hand fisted in the cold pebbles beneath their knees. She wanted to kiss her, fill that wordless mouth with confessions. But she held back, unsure if she was wanted here.
Nia turned her face away, leaving Zanta’s palm cold. “You know everything, then.” She clutched the pelt tighter around herself like armor.
“I know enough, Nia—”
“I’m sorry,” Nia blurted, voice quavering.
Zanta’s heart sank. This was it. Nia was going to tell her she wasn’t going back.
“I should’ve told you earlier. I should’ve stopped you from sailing into the Storm Ring.
If I had, maybe Sabriye and the others would still be alive.
We’re being hunted because of me.” The last word came out roughened, as if she had to force it past her teeth.
“You could’ve told me.” Zanta’s voice was gentle, not accusing, but Nia shrank further into herself.
“I was afraid that…” Her voice broke.
“Why did you run? Once you had your pelt back, why did you leave?”
“I was finally free.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt you, Nia. I wouldn’t have kept you like Stroud did.” She must know that. She must understand how deeply Zanta cared for her. But how could she, when Zanta had kept her feelings so closely guarded all this time?
Nia bit her lip, still unable to meet Zanta’s eyes. “I didn’t know that at the beginning and then…we started sleeping together, so…” She trailed off and realization struck Zanta like lightning.
Besides, you have something I want. That’s what Nia had said to her that first day.
Zanta’s heart tossed in the waves, as cracked and broken as the wreckage. No. It couldn’t be. Zanta knew they’d agreed not to get feelings involved, but this…