Only two weeks remained until the full moon—the night I was to meet Finn beneath the archway of Archon Agorá and journey to the Kingdom of Thálassa in search of the prophecy.
And for that, I needed to be ready. I needed to be trained.
Thinking about Finn created a boil of rage in my throat. The last time I’d seen him, he’d told me that I was his moon, that he couldn’t breathe without me. But that was before, before...
I slammed my stick toward Aranare’s chest, but he caught the blow with his oak sword, holding it inches from his body. The wood groaned between us as our arms tensed, eyes locking, neither willing to yield.
“Good.” He nodded in approval and stepped back, allowing me to catch my breath.
“Let’s go again,” I said between sharp inhales.
Aranare chuckled as he swung his sword around and lunged, but I sidestepped, morning mist swirling around me like a cloak. Our wooden weapons clashed, and for a moment, he pressed me back.
No.With a twist of my wrist, I hooked my stick under his.
Aranare tried to wrench it back, but I dropped low, sweeping his legs out from under him with a kick. As he stumbled, I struck, knocking the wooden blade from his hand and spinning it down to the grass.
Aranare blinked up at me from one knee, a flicker of surprise crossing his face. I straightened, stick in hand, breathing hard, a satisfied smile curving my lips.
“Wow, great, Morgana,” he said breathlessly. “I think that’s enough for today. I’ll see you here again tomorrow.”
I groaned in response, rubbing my shoulder muscles with stiff, cold fingers as I trudged back across the cliff face and down past the bay to the bookstore.
I hadn’t seen Finn since I returned to Ruadán’s Port. I’d avoided his glassy-eyed clifftop mansion, half expecting to run into him somewhere around town, but he never appeared.
It had been two weeks since I’d burst into the bookstore, telling Aranare and Louisa the Neptunus family had murdered my grandmother. Louisa had been my grandmother’s only friend in this town, so I knew I could trust her. After everything I’d been through, I needed people I could trust. I didn’t say what I suspected—that Finn had carried out the killing on his father’s orders. I couldn’t bring myself to voice it.
Since then, I’d studied daily with Louisa and met Aranare for combat on the cliffs. Rain or shine, we’d trained—even when sleet lashed our faces and I was frozen to the bone. And most nights, I was so exhausted when I fell into bed that I didn’t have time to think about Finn and what he might have done.
2
Morgana
Louisa waited in the dimly lit back room of the bookstore, her expression unreadable. My chest tightened. I might have been progressing in combat, but my struggle with mind mastery was holding me back, and without that, I couldn’t move on to magic-wielding.
“Looks like you had a good lesson.” Louisa’s thin mouth transformed into a smile as she took in my messy hair and dirty clothes.
I nodded.
“Are you ready for today’s session?”
“Sure.” I tried to act nonchalant. Still, anxiety clanged through me as I thought about the number of times I had attempted to quiet my mind in this room and instead found myself plagued by thoughts or distracted by Louisa’s emotions—usually something between frustration and pity.
“You know what to do.” Louisa gestured to the bohemian-style cushion in the corner of the room, which reminded me of something my grandmother would have picked up during her travels. The thought sent a stab of anger through me as I sat down cross-legged on the pillow.
Louisa hit play on the meditation music. I was to sit here for thirty extremely long minutes and focus on clearing my mind. Easier said than done.
I had started to dread this cushion, because every time I sat down, exhaled, and focused on clearing my mind, the thoughts came rushing in. Finn, and the darkness inside of him, that darkness moving within me, the pirates who’d attempted to rape me, the war that was coming, and my father, whom I still hadn’t found. I tried to notice these thoughts, release them, and replace them with stillness, but they would tear through my body and rumble up my throat until they consumed me. Then, I would find myself sobbing.
“It’s okay,” Louisa said each time as she patted my back. “With time, the tears will fade, and the stillness will come as you begin to master your mind.”
Today was no different. I closed my eyes and focused on the music. It was beautiful music, Indian in origin, and it wrapped around me with a powerful magic akin to that of the Mer’s song. I focused on my breathing as Louisa had taught me, on the patterns of light before my eyelids, but then the first thought made its way in: Finn and what I suspected he’d done. I clenched my fists but dispelled the thought.
What came next wasn’t a thought but a feeling. Fear coiled in my gut as I turned inward—I didn’t want to be in there. It was too dark, too raw. I needed a distraction. The dread welled up and broke free in a trembling sob.
Louisa walked over with understanding in her eyes. “That’s enough for today. Although it doesn’t feel like it, you’re improving. When you first started, you didn’t even make it one minute.” She looked at her watch. “Today, you made it twenty.”
“I think I prefer combat training,” I grumbled.
