“We’ll know more when we get there.”
She turned around, leaning back on the railing with her arms folded over herself. Something was weighing on her mind. I watched her stare into the night, deep in thought, and then reached out and touched her arm.
“Do not withhold your thoughts from me,” I said. “We are sisters, in this together.”
She sucked in a deep breath before she turned her white eyes toward mine.
“Do you think it is right? Seeking Akareth?”
“I don’t know what’s right or wrong. All I know is thatsomethingis the root of this madness. This madness that has infected our people.” I stepped in closer to her. “What I feel for Vidar has lifted a veil from my vision. I see things more clearly now and it is more than clear to me that we do not need to be fighting this war. Against humans. Against each other.”
“One crew cannot change the minds of all. Even if we find these roots and pull up the weeds, the soil is still rotten.”
“Soil can heal over time. But cutting out the disease is a start.”
“He is a god,” Meridan whispered. “I know you question that fact, but we grew up thinking it.Knowingit. To go against him isn’t just blasphemy. It’s suicide. It’s eternal damnation if we are wrong.”
“You fear him.”
“Of course I fear him. I was raised to fear him. And now we sail in search of him. Not to surrender to his power but to challenge it.”
I pulled my hand away from her and swallowed, grounding myself.
“Do you wish we’d left you behind?”
“No,” she answered quickly. “Never.” Turning her body fully toward me, she said, “Because I am more loyal to you than I will ever be to the hatred and violence our people wrought in the name of Akareth. And after all of our efforts, all of our sacrifice, now he’s sent his sons to slaughter and devour us. It was a great gift to have been cast out by my people. It lifted a veil from my eyes as well to be banished by them and taken in by you. I will follow you to the depths if I must. I will drive my bone dagger into Akareth’s eye if it means freeing you of his chains.”
My heart swelled at her words. “You are braver and fiercer than the Naros ever gave you credit for,” I said, gently placing my hand against her cool cheek. “And you are more my sister than any Kroan ever was.”
Meridan’s face didn’t change color like a human’s might. Her cheeks didn’t turn pink and her eyes didn’t get red. It was hard to know she was feeling anything at all at times, but I knew at that moment that she was feeling quite a lot. The tiny freckles of shimmering bioluminescence on her cheeks and along her collarbones rippled under the moonlight for a split second and then dimmed again. It was the only sign I would ever get that she was processing her emotions because the woman also did not have the ability to shed tears.
A pair of booted footsteps strode up behind me. I turned my head to see Vidar standing there, his coat on and his thumbs hanging on his leather belts.
“We’re getting close,” he said.
“How do you know?” Meridan asked, noting the darkness and the thin fog that had rolled in. “Even I cannot see anything.”
Vidar quirked a brow and pointed a finger up toward the sky. For a second or two, we saw nothing, but then a white bird squawked, flying overhead.
Birds. They stayed close to land which meant we were closing in on a shore. Not only that, but flying birds meant morning wascoming. Meridan and I exchanged a look—a silent commitment—to do what needed to be done. To challenge whoever we needed tochallenge. Together.
Control is a lie minds tell
to keep us from shattering
~Nina Jacobs
The sound of the anchor crashing into the water was brash in the thick silence. The waters around Dornwich seemed darker. More still. The waves were subtle as if the ocean herself had abandoned the shores of the now haunted town.
I had never spent much time in the surrounding waters. It was too populated. Too loud. But the way it looked that day was not how I remembered it.
I could see the buildings from the water where the Weaver was anchored off the coast. They looked… dead. In any other instance, I would have been overjoyed to see a large town like Dornwich losing its vivacity, but things had changed.
The boat was lowered into the water with a splash, drawing my eyes from the shore to the group of men manning the ropes. There was a chill in the air that had nothing to do with the weather and it sent a shiver creeping down the length of my spine. I was wearingone of Vidar’s shirts and a pair of cotton britches that drew tight at my waist with a belt that held my bone knife sheathed against my hip. I didn’t feel a need to conceal my hair beneath a leather hat, so I braided it tightly down my back and tied it off with a leather cord.
Whatever awaited in Dornwich, I doubted my gender would change anything.
Part of me was screaming not to go ashore at all, but those days, I didn’t know which voices to trust and which to dismiss. I barely knew which ones were mine.
