The skull faded, and she was my mother once more. She carried the bowl to the mortar, added five drops, carried it solemnly back. When I finished the mixture, she reached in and gathered the paste in her palm. Made a fist and closed her eyes. I watched her lips move as she recited the incantation. It was theFerous Venomdonai. She made me memorize it when I was five. Then she poisoned my soup to see if I remembered.
When she opened her hand, the paste was sizzling with pattern.
The only way to join them is to kill one and take their place, Thanavar had said.
I wondered whom she had killed, and how.
It was then that the floor boomed beneath our feet, and her medicines rattled on the shelves. I spun to look at Echo. My heart stopped there and then.
He was kneeling over the First Mate, both hands wrapped over Fahr’s one. I bolted to his side and dropped to my knees beside them both. He looked up at me, his eyes rimmed and red.
The floor boomed again, and this time, fine dust rained down from the ceiling.
I reached across him to search for Fahr’s pulse. I searched his wrist and his throat, waiting for that flutter that saidlife, that saidhere, that saidme.
But there was nothing. I was searching in vain, and mystomach began to sink like an anchor in the sea.
“I failed him,” said Echo. “I didn’t see the poison. I’m a clearseer, and I didn’t see…”
“You gave him time,” I said, my throat tightening. I laid my hands across his. “You gave him almost four days.”
Faun tears, splashing on my wrists.
“I didn’t think of poison…”
I had no words for him, this kind, good, lovely man. So, I squeezed his hands and leaned my head against his shoulder, feeling the tips of his horn in my hair. My own tears brimmed my lashes, and I fought to keep them contained.
I barely heard my mother as she knelt beside us, her teal-and-red robes spreading across the stone floor like a pool. She raised her hand over Fahr’s chest once more, and I hated her for posturing. I hated her for being too late. She drummed her fingers in the air, spinning pattern and raining sparks across his body. I could almost read the runes coming from them. Wylde magik had been our own language, once upon a time.
The floor boomed again, and I knew it was the captain. Just like Bilgetown, he would bring it all down on our heads. We would die under his grief.
“Chimeric,” said my mother, and she looked at my gloved hands. “Gavriel said you had chimeric. How?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
She reached over to take my hand, then snatched hers away as the patterns burned her skin.
“Chimeric is power,” she said. “It gives life, and it takes life away.”
“What do you want?” I snapped.
“Do you want to save him?”
“He’s dead,” I barked. “What I want means nothing.”
“Never underestimate the power of ‘want,’ daughter.”
Suddenly, I understood Thanavar. After all, I’d made a bargain,too.
I removed my gloves and gave her my hands.
“These runes…” She turned my hands over as the patterns danced and sang. “They speak.”
“Are you going to heal him or not?”
Her eyes flashed at me.Insolent. Arrogant. Wayward. All her words came back like ghosts.
“Here.” She placed my hand on his forehead. “And here.” On his chest, beside his heart.
