“It’s my honor,” I said, and Forge dammit if my chest didn’t ache at the irony. “Is that really why we’re going to theCloudgate? To bring her back?”
“There is no way back for her, Aro’el,” he said. “She is dying, and if she dies, so does the Dreadwall. None of us is prepared for what happens when it falls. But if she stays onLindurithain, however, she will live forever in the form of a ship. I have told her it is far better than losing her, but she does not want to be without me, and I do not wish to stay.”
I wanted to hear her voice, but she was silent as the deep.
“I never want to live that again,” he muttered. “Nor should anyone else be forced into it. No more horror, no more war. The chimeric must be kept safe from guilty kings and cruel emperors.”
He looked up.
“So, you see,” he said. “This is beyond you, beyond me, beyond Dev and Worley and the vile Court of Sand. I am mapping the fate of an entire world, and I must not slip, else all is lost. And if it is lost, then it is lost, and I have failed in the one thing in my sorry life I was tasked to do.”
Forge. How did one chart a course through these waters?
To my surprise, he lifted his palm to my cheek, caressed my runescars with his skilled fingers. I closed my eyes, warmed by his touch.
“But I still hope,” he said. “Because we have never had so much chimeric, and we have never had you.”
“I’ll do whatever you need,” I said quietly. “Whatever she needs.”
“These next days will be the most dangerous of your life,” he said. “I need you to hold fast and obey my orders to the letter. I say this not as a man but as captain now, captain of a dying ship and a mortal crew. The fate of the world is in our sails. We must not fail.”
“She can use me up and bleed me dry,” I said. “But so can you. Kier.”
And I laid my hand over his. A proper offer. Forge, what was I thinking?
“My course is not life. You know this.”
“Change your course,” I said. “You’re a Dreadmage. You can do anything.”
Fog these tears.
“Aro’el,” he said, but his eyes had found my mouth once again. Oh suns, I wanted to taste him. “Aro’el, I cannot…”
But he wanted to. I could tell. And I wanted him to. I pressed his hand against my cheek, kissed his palm. His eyes searched me, found me, asked me, yearned. He cupped my face and leaned closer, breathing me in like mulled wine in winter, and I lifted my chin, desperate for his mouth.
There was a rap on the door.
35. Race to the Edge of the Erthe
“Captain,” said Echo. “Captain, it’s time.”
The heartache in Kier’s eyes. The pain and the loss, the dying of hope.
“My course is not life,” he said softly. “But thank you for believing it could be.”
He kept one hand and rose to his feet, bringing me up along with him. I looked around at the cabin, the journals and the maps, the bottles and books. Thecyr stood in the corner, gleaming in the candlelight and casting shadows across the room.
I drew my hand away, already missing the warmth of his skin. I looked up at him.
“Whatever you need,” I said. “Remember that.”
He smiled sadly.
“I will never forget.”
My eyes stung as I turned to the door, not sparing a glance for Echo as I rushed through the companionway. I made it to my little berth in the galley, my small, dark corner of this remarkable ship, and stood for a long moment, just telling myself to breathe. The death and the grief, the fury and the pain. I missed Kit, and I missed Worley. I missed games of Able Whacks in the wardroom and deep conversations on deck under the stars. All those simple months when I didn’t know what lay ahead. My throat grew tight at the thought.
My course is not life.
