Chapter 16
The blood that soaked through their damp clothes drew many eyes as they returned to the crowded streets of Gierok.
Adara sucked in air through her gritted teeth, trying to focus on its refreshing feel in her lungs, but she felt suffocated between the masses of people jostling against her and Dominic as they painstakingly made their way toward the port.
Someone bumped into her. She blinked through the black stars that spurred across her vision, cradling her throbbing arm closer to her chest.
Dominic grunted as someone shoved past him.
Adara looped her left arm around him, pulling him close, using her body as a shield to the gashes on the right side of his abdomen and a bolster for his staggering gait.
Wary eyes tracked their every movement as the two of them tried—and failed—to hide the immense pain threatening to make them both collapse.
They desperately needed to find the others, to get back to the ship where they could tend to their wounds.
“Should we call out for them?” Adara asked.
Dominic shook his head, eyes squeezed shut as his steps faltered.
His arm wrapped around her waist, his hand clinging to her tunic to remain upright.
His fingers brushed the bare skin above her waistband, a soft caress that sent tingles through her.
“No,” he said. “We’ve already drawn enough attention to ourselves. They’ll find us.”
Adara didn’t know how much longer they could fight their way through the crowd, didn’t know how much longer they’d last before they’d faint from blood loss.
As doubt began to creep in, familiar sounds of joyful howls sounded from behind, somewhere further down the street.
Shouts rang out in a language Adara didn’t understand.
“Thieves! Stop them!” they repeated in Malrynese. The clanking of armor rattled through the city, telling Adara it was guards after the Andreilians. Citizens scurried out of the way as the cheerful shouts grew closer.
“Ash, catch!” Caleb’s voice rang through the air.
Asher emerged from the masses of people, jumping to catch a pouch, heavy with coins, flying above them.
His brown hair was mussed with the effort of running rampant through the alleys. Asher’s blue eyes met Adara’s, and his smile widened into a relieved grin. “You made it!” he exclaimed as he approached Adara and Dominic.
“What the Hel have you done?” Dominic chastised, his jaw clenched as he took another haggard step.
Adara suddenly felt dizzy beneath his weight she’d been supporting, feeling like she would be crushed beneath a boulder. She blinked through the haze of the spinning world, staggering away from Dominic. She took another step, stumbling blindly into someone’s arms.
Corded muscle strained beneath the olive skin Adara’s fingers clasped onto. She blinked again, tilting her head up to hazel irises curtained by dark, wavy hair.
Tobias’s eyes darted between her face and bloodied arm with concern. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got you.” He swept her into his arms with such ease.
“Caleb stole from a palace guard,” Asher responded through panting breaths.
“You’re supposed to keep him in line,” Dominic snapped. “I told you not to get caught!”
“Come on!” Caleb shouted.
Niran sprinted behind to catch up. “It’s only fun if you get caught!” He laughed as he ran by, the sound filled with immense glee.
Adara wanted to strangle him for putting them in danger yet again.
His head of blond curls disappeared into the crowd before she got the chance.
With the blood coating them, the guards pursuing them would assume Adara and Dominic had murdered someone and the Andreilians were a distraction.
They’d be thrown in the dungeons of a foreign country.
They’d be executed if the guards found out she and Dominic were Pherra.
“Does your boyfriend ever think things through?” Adara seethed as Tobias carried her.
“Never,” he replied with a laugh.
Ace was suddenly at their side, hooking Dominic’s arm around his shoulder and guiding him forward. “Did you get the eye?” he asked.
Dominic nodded with a grunt as their group hurried on.
The sea appeared on the horizon, white canvases flapping in the wind.
Adara rested her head against Tobias’s muscular chest, letting out a sigh of relief at the sight of the rest of the Andreilians already aboard The Lykren, sails unfurled and prepared to depart the second they arrived.
The docks creaked beneath their thundering footsteps as they ran, Adara’s body jostling in Tobias’s arms, Ace practically carrying Dominic, though he stubbornly insisted he was fine and could walk on his own.
“Let’s go!” Caleb shouted as they crossed the gangplank.
Adara and Dominic glared daggers at him.
A blur of white hair rushed past. “They’re here! Hoist the anchor!” Vesper shouted, rushing to help Tyson and Desmond with the windlass.
Zephyr stood at the port railing, his high-pitched voice shouting a warning. “Hurry, the guards are coming!”
Shouts and the clanking of armor drew closer.
Tobias set her down gently on the main deck and went to help the Andreilians make quick work of departing from the dock.
Ace refused to leave Dominic’s side, helping him walk to the quarterdeck.
Ace took hold of the helm as Dominic lifted a shaking hand.
A gust of wind whipped Adara’s hair, filling the sails.
She glanced toward Dominic, who gritted his teeth as he worked his magic for them to escape quickly.
The water churned beneath them, a strong current pushing them out to sea at an unnatural pace.
“Pherra!” one of the dockworkers shouted.
“Leave them to the Plagued Sea. It’s where their kind belongs,” another replied.
The string of profanities aimed at them faded as the distance between The Lykren and Gierok grew wider. Adara pressed two fingers to her wrist, her chest, her forehead, and prayed they’d survive another journey across this cursed ocean. “Itryla al rone yi mon taka.”
Asher’s nimble fingers worked diligently over the mutilated skin of Adara’s forearm as she told the others how they defeated the Whisperer.
Zephyr listened intently, the young boy’s eyes wide with fascination at the dramatic flare she added to her words as her story went on.
She had silently questioned the extent of how much Andreilia’s enchanted water affected them all, wondering if it was simply their bodies that didn’t age or if it was their minds as well.
Yes, it was clear some had gained wisdom through experience and the lifetimes they’d lived.
Considering that they all still acted the way they physically appeared, Adara assumed that their eternal youth was exactly that—never aging.
Silas and Niran sat in their circle as well, anxious to know how they barely escaped death, intrigued by the way Adara hardly winced as Asher stitched the lacerations on her arm.
Only thirteen and fourteen, they were still so young compared to the others, and Adara wondered how they’d survived the journey to Andreilia in the first place.
Silas shook his head, auburn hair swaying. His moss green eyes flickered between her and the small wood carving of a wolf he’d been adding finishing details to. The freckles across his face scrunched with his nose in concentration as he whittled.
A notebook sat open in Niran’s lap. His inky black hair matched the dark charcoal drawing he’d been creating of the Whisperer as Adara described what she saw once she finally tore off her blindfold.
Adara leaned over to inspect his creation, giving him a nod of approval, and his glacial eyes lit with gratification.
Caleb and Tobias approached with another kit of medical supplies, the latter handing bandages to Asher as he finished suturing Adara’s wound.
“So you fought that thing completely blind and only came out with a few scratches?” Caleb inquired as he joined them, sitting on the forecastle deck.
Adara flexed her fingers, wincing at the ache shooting through her arm as Asher finished wrapping the bandage around it.
She held up her arm, a thin layer of blood already staining the white dressing.
She would heal quicker than any human, thanks to the experiments in the Shadow Empire, but she still hated the inconvenience of her dominant hand being in so much pain.
“I’d hardly call this just a scratch,” Adara replied. The damned thing had sunken its fangs deep into her arm, tearing muscle and sinew. She was only glad it hadn’t shattered her bones.
“Hey, at least you’ll get a badass scar and a good story out of it,” Caleb said with a shrug.
“At least you’re not dead,” Silas said bluntly, the corners of his lips tilted up.
Adara breathed a laugh. “At least I’m not,” she said.
A grunt of pain drew her eyes to the quarterdeck, where Dominic stood, still commanding the wind and sea to bring them to Andreilia faster. His face was twisted in agony and anger at Ace, who appeared to be trying to reason with him.
She rolled her eyes. “But Dominic will be soon if he doesn’t let anyone help him.”