He turned and moved to a wide mullioned window. Beneath it was a wooden chest topped with a blanket covered in a dusting of white feathers, and I wondered if the winter hawk belonged to him. It would make sense, given that they were both Netherborn. Thanavar removed the blanket and reached down to the chest’s latch, opening it with a click. Immediately, I hissedwith pain. My hands had sprung to life, dancing with unseen pattern and crackling with heat.
He turned to look at me, and my heart thudded in my chest.
“What is your name again, wretched woman?”
Suns, I hated him.
“Ensign Honor Renn,” I said.
“Remove your gloves.”
“You’re not my captain.”
“Please,” he said.
I wasn’t expecting that.
Slowly, carefully, I slid the gloves off, one finger at a time. My skin was alive with chimeric.
Thanavar reached into the chest, and I could see his hand moving within.
“Aro’elis theRhi’Ahrrune for ‘chase,’” he said. “I have just drawn it in the chimeric.”
“You have chimeric in there?” I asked.
“Show me your palm,” he said.
I did. There was a new, unfamiliar rune burned into my skin.
“Aro’el,”he said. It was like a song, a breath on the wind, a poem. Lyrical and lethal, just like him and all his people.
He closed the lid, and the rune faded into another flat scar. I slipped the gloves back on and tucked my hands around my ribs.
Fahr leaned forward.
“But what can an ensign bluemage do that we cannot?”
“Not any ensign bluemage, Mr. Fahr. Just this one.”
“Has theTouchstonechosen her?” asked Echo.
“Because of the chimeric, it seems so,” said Thanavar. “Despite my ardent counsel otherwise.”
“She has her own mind,” muttered Smoke.
“She does indeed.”
They didn’t know the half of it.
“It’s a bad idea,” said Fahr. “She doesn’t belong here.”
“You are the one who taught her theCarmenLumiere,” said Thanavar, jaw tightening.
Fahr shrugged. “One spell’s not a post.”
“For the moment, she is with us until there is a port at which to moor her,” said Thanavar, crossing his arms across his broad chest. “Besides…”
The captain turned his sea-deep eyes on me, and a shiver raced along my spine.
