Thorne switched out her guards every few hours, but they were always the same rotation: Alf, Simen, Jesper. And Petrina, whose bruises were fading but not forgotten, spent her days below pumping out bilge water or scraping barnacles with a blade and a prayer.
At night, they were chained to the lower hold. Cold. Damp. Alone.
But before exhaustion took them, they whispered. Plans. Patterns. Weaknesses. Pieces of hope with sharp little edges.
Tonight, Selene had something good to share.
“We’ll be in the Paraneau Sea by tomorrow,” she whispered as she wiped at her blistered fingers. She’d swabbed the deck near the navigation table earlier that day, noted their current location, their speed, the direction of the wind.
“Finally,” Petrina murmured.
A moment later, her deep breathing turned rhythmic. Asleep.
Petrina never asked why this stretch of sea mattered so much to Selene. And Selene never offered the truth.
The Trayterre Isles were close—close enough to taste. She didn’t know what she’d find there. But if Blaze was right… If the blue-and-brown-eyed souls were there—if her people had truly been reborn on one of those islands—then every moment of silence, every wound, every choice had brought her exactly where she was meant to be.
She would make it off this ship.
And when she did, the gods willing, she would finally learn why they left her and Augustus behind.
“Icould be a rigger,” Petrina said to Selene, who’d just lied to anyone listening about how she’d never had a position aboard Augustus’s ship. It would be best if no one knew she had trained under the Sailing Master.
“I’d make an excellent rigger,” Petrina continued. “Better than these idiots.”
The ex-Eye was cross-legged atop a crate, mending a torn sail while Selene swabbed nearby. The winds were higher than usual, and Selene questioned the timing of their plan. But the storm clouds were still half a day out, at least.
“Petrina, it’s one of the most dangerous jobs on the ship.”
“So?”
Selene leaned on her handled brush and produced her most condescending smirk. The act immediately made her miss Augustus. “Maybe you’ve noticed, but you’ve never even lived on a ship before now.”
“True, but I’m anexcellentclimber.”
Petrina’s morning guard, a red-haired man named Finn, snorted a laugh. He was nearly as difficult to engage as Alf, but he was also a rigger.
Several feet away at the wheel, Thorne watched them chatter but appeared more engrossed in what his Sailing Master had to say. Likely worried about the storm they were heading into, just as she would be in their place.
She hoped it passed fast. Otherwise, it could ruin their plans.
After a few minutes, Petrina put aside her finished work and squinted at Finn. Her gaze raked him in a way that forced him to pay attention.
“Bored?” she asked him.
The entireshipwas bored, and the women counted on it for this to work.
Finn, who was perched on a crate sharpening one of his many knives, paused and waited for her to continue, brow raised.
“Let’s have a little fun before we head to the bilge,” she said. “Unless you’re eager to watch me pump piss-scented water for the next couple of hours.”
He wouldn’t be; he constantly tried negotiating ways out of that particular shift. “Wha’d’ya have in mind?” Finn had the sort of accent that blended a lot of words into one. He was hard to understand sometimes.
Petrina hopped off her crate and cast him a wicked grin. “A race to the crow’s nest.”
“You’ll’na beat me,” he said, standing. The tilt of his mouth said he was interested, however.
“Selenecould beat you,” she said, taunting. “That’s how confident I am.”
