Chapter Twenty-Two The Blacksmith’s Daughter #2
Every day, she’d gone to eavesdrop at the docks and talk with dealers and traders, and exhausted herself stalking the Port Authority for rare, confiscated goods.
There were ships docked there from all over the world but not even a whisper of Kraken blood anywhere in the harbor.
The most promising lead on a job she’d found had been under ten thousand golds, and it wouldn’t save Caelan’s life.
There were other more lucrative marks, but they all required more travel than she had time for.
She’d even broken into the harbormaster’s office to pour over his ship logs.
Nothing. Reya could have stolen half the cargo in the harbor and still not have enough coin to pay her debt.
She hadn’t spoken to Caelan since she’d left him in that alley, but she’d felt him and the twins hovering nearby every night when she’d gone to drink, dance, gamble, and thieve.
None of them bothered to hide that they were watching her in shifts.
Thance had even invited himself along for a drink and a game of dice the night before.
Omira had been right—her brother was a cheat.
Reya hadn’t forgotten about Omira’s suggestion to lock her up, and had made sure to flash her steel in front of the female more than once when she was on duty, daring her to try.
Omira had merely grinned, eager for that fight.
Though Reya would never admit it, she had a begrudging regard for the female.
It was clear Omira bent to the will of no one and was prepared to make hard choices.
They were both pragmatists; they saw the world as it was and they were flexible when they had to be.
If Omira wasn’t hell-bent on putting her in chains, Reya might even like her.
Unable to drown the memory of the feel of Caelan’s lips on hers with someone else, Reya had tried to drown it with alcohol, a feat that had been as much of a failure as she was. She couldn’t get his words out of her head.
I think Lennox Raulin taught you to feel small, and you let him, because it’s easier to be what he made you than who you really are.
Reya could see the Nightingale from her window where it bobbed in the harbor, preparing to embark.
The blackwood ship with its golden sails and colorful trading flags belonged to a merchant on his way to Edris, and it happened to have a cabin for rent and a hold large enough to stow a horse.
The captain had taken her deposit of stolen coin with a look that told her he knew she would be more trouble than she was worth.
You’re a coward running from your nightmares.
The knot in her stomach wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard she shoved her things into her bag.
The numen hadn’t come to her since that night in the Cleary. Where were the All-Gods when she needed them most? All those warnings, and to what end? Why were they silent only when she couldn’t see the way forward?
Reya scrubbed at her face. She was going home.
Back to her flat and her reading chaise and her books and her paintings.
Back to the life she knew. Back to the person she’d taught a kingdom to fear.
If she stayed here a second longer, she was going to do something foolish like offer to stay with Caelan until the end, or something even more reckless that might get her brothers killed.
How many days did Caelan even have left?
Reya collapsed onto her bed, clutching her head.
She thought of the magic-born penned like cattle for the king’s experiments in Bladestone Prison, and the letters she’d nearly sold back to the king proving it.
Of what the world might look like if Rothmire succeeded in creating a weapon that could destroy someone’s magic, and Caelan and a Delthian army weren’t there to stop it.
If she stared any harder at the floor, she would put a hole in it.
The Savant might have screwed her over, but that didn’t mean everything he’d told her was a lie. Once upon a time, she’d read about Kraken blood in Tales of the World herself. The question was, if not with Domwell St. Lucius, then where was the blood now?
She had gone over the Savant’s story a hundred times.
And each time she’d come to the same conclusion.
Reya addressed the wall, trying to work the logic out loud: “No man who loved his wife enough to sail into the world’s most treacherous stretch of ocean would sell the one thing that could save her.
” It was the part of his story that she hadn’t been able to make sense of from the start, the piece that didn’t fit.
The more she rationalized her suspicions to the wood paneling, the more it made sense.
“Eddar Bartholomew Foster would have kept what remained of the blood in case his wife ever got sick again, or in case the Faerie who cursed her came back to finish the job. Every time she felt the least bit poorly, he would have dosed her again just to be certain.” She knew because…
it’s what her father would have done. “Or maybe it’s all just a myth, and the authors are laughing at me from their graves. ”
Reya shook her head.
The Savant had woven her a tapestry of half-truths. And she couldn’t sense the lies, because like any historian, he’d been speculating.
Whoever had set her up to take Domwell St. Lucius off the board likely knew that he was a dead end; just because he was trying to make weapons to destroy the Fae didn’t mean he had the key ingredient.
What better way to get Kraken blood onto the black market than by sending a thief with a track record of obtaining impossible things?
Tricking her into killing St. Lucius could have simply been a convenient way to take the competition out of play and perhaps even throw a middle finger to the king…
or distract her long enough to close the door on her freedom.
Reya buried the thought to exhume some other time.
The surest way to deny them what they wanted was to turn around and go home. So why was she still sitting here?
Dawn spilled across the bay, washing her room in orange as bells pealed around the harbor, signaling that ships were making their way toward open water.
The Nightingale was still in its slip, but the captain had warned her they would weigh anchor at high tide with or without her.
Reya slid her thumbnail between her teeth.
If she didn’t get to the docks before the harbormaster got tired of calling for her, she would have to find another ship that could get her and Ash home or begin the long trek back through the Cleary alone.
Could she truly abandon Caelan, and all those depending on him, to die?
Reya didn’t believe in prophecy or fate.
The cards had been stacked against her all her life, and she’d made her own destiny.
But Reya couldn’t quiet the voice inside her that whispered these past few weeks, What if you’re wrong?
What if there was truly something greater at work here and she was in the center of it?
Didn’t she owe it to herself to find out? Didn’t she owe it to him?
What if she could still save them both?
Watch your own back, Lennox whispered in her ear. Taking on other people’s problems is a great way to get yourself killed.
Caelan hadn’t protected her simply by healing her wounds or watching her back—he’d tried to show her how to better protect herself and recognize the inherent strength she had to do it.
Not because he cared about her, she reminded herself, but because when he looked at her, he saw vengeance and salvation for those he did care about.
But it didn’t matter. This wasn’t about him—it was about who she was.
And if she left now, she would prove them all right ten times over, and she would regret it forever.
The last time she’d ignored Lennox’s advice, it had nearly cost her everything. Apparently, she was prepared to pay up.
“Damn you, Caelan.”
Reya dropped her pack back onto the bed just as there was a knock at the door.
She scrambled for her weapons, arming herself before checking the peephole. The male on the other side was too tall for her to see his face, but she knew by the armor it was Thance, likely come to talk her out of leaving. She opened the door wide.
“Thance, I was just on my way to—” Her words cut off as she beheld the panic on his face.
“I thought you would be halfway to Edris by now, thief,” Omira said when they entered the room. Reya closed the door behind them.
Caelan was shirtless, hunched over on a chair in the corner. The minute he caught her scent, his whole body stiffened. “I told you to let her go.”
“And I told you she had a right to know,” Thance said.
Brow furrowed, Reya stepped around Thance’s towering build—and froze.
“By the stars,” she breathed.
The curse mark nearly swallowed his middle, spidering toward his pectorals like it was clawing him open, inching ever closer to his heart.
Caelan always filled a room, the aura of his gifts a spark of heat and life and a wildness she would recognize if she were blind.
Reya felt the absence of that power now like a gaping wound.
She thought of the attack in the temple, all the times he’d held back.
How he always seemed to be so much weaker after they trained.
Moreover, his Ire was now a dim gold, even though he didn’t appear to be healing anyone.
Your flames will abandon you, your healing touch will betray you, and you will never grace the clouds again.
“The more you use your magic, the faster that thing kills you,” she realized aloud. The grief-stricken looks on the twins’ faces told her Caelan had conveniently left out that detail when he’d recounted the story to them, too. “What did you do, Caelan?”
The naked want in his expression, the concern, the way his shoulders relaxed as she finally closed three days of distance between them—it stoked the flames of her anger until it was another emotion entirely, until it was something like fear, blue and bright and burning.