Krokan is portrayed with an almost humanlike face. He has a flat, elongated chin and a jawline that stretches up to his temples, shrinking at the eyes before flaring out like the spiked mantle of an armored beetle. Four eyes are set in two diagonals, opposite each other. His beaked mouth grips the porthole we entered through. The rest of his body is impossible to discern. It is lost behind all the tentacles. Perhaps completely unknown.
I stare at the figure in awe. In horror. The markings on my skin become ropes upon me. My whole body feels tight in a constricting, wrenching way. I almost want to claw my skeleton out of my flesh. Carve my mind from the skull to escape the whispering song that’s humming in my marrow.
Look away, Victoria, I command myself. But I can’t. I’m stuck. Staring. I am going into the trench that connects to his Abyss. Where his emissaries lie in wait. Will Krokan feel me there? He knows I’m marked for him. He’s calling me.Calling…
…Victoria…
“Victoria?” Ilryth jolts me from my thoughts. I whirl. The room spins until I lay eyes on him. Then everything comes into focus. “Are you all right?”
I glance around him, at Lucia and Sheel down below. They’ve all collected around a ghostly tree at the far back of the room, wrapped in a nest of sculpted roots.
“I am,” I say just for Ilryth.
He nods and swims away. I glance back at the statue and the same creeping feeling is there…but I don’t let it overtake me again. I cannot worry about the things beyond my control. The what ifs. The beast will have me when it is his time. I will relinquish myself for my family, my friends…even for the Eversea.
“Are you sure this is the right course of action?” Sheel asks as we swim over. At the center of the ghostly tree in the far back of the room is a spear. It’s not different in shape or material than the dozen others skewered into the floor of this room, but the wood seems paler. It has an aura of importance.
“It won’t be long enough for the magics holding back the rot to be disrupted,” Ilryth reassures him.
“How can you be so confident?” Sheel is less than convinced.
“I will lead a group in the songs of protection here. Fenny in the amphitheater,” Lucia says.
“And you will be at the ready with men. Take the spears you need from the armory. But I do not think you will have to use them.” Ilryth motions to the sand around them. Then he reaches for the spear at the center of the ghostly tree.
Sheel grabs his wrist. Ilryth gives him a look that conveys offense at the boldness—at the challenge. Sheel slowly unfurls his fingers and drifts back.
Without another moment of hesitation, Ilryth lifts the spear from its spot on the floor. The shift in the waters happens immediately as the anamnesis fades. Everything stills. Shadows are longer. Colors duller. It’s colder.
“If something happens to you, and subsequently Dawnpoint, the rot will claim the duchy. That is one of five great spears, there is no replacement.” Sheel drifts forward slightly as his torso pitches. He’s pleading.
“Do we need to take Dawnpoint?” I eye the spear. This must be the one his mother was carrying in the memory. The infamous weapon that Ilryth left behind the first time I saw him go into the trench because it was protecting the duchy.
“It will be safest, and fastest, this way.”
“I don’t want to leave the Duchy of Spears at risk because of me.” I’m supposed to be helping people, not hindering them. Iwon’thinder them. I can’t prove Charles right and be a burden…though I suppose I already have by demanding this trip to begin with. My stomach knots. What is worth more, my family? Or the whole of the Eversea? I know what the answer was, for me, and what it should be. But what it is now, I’m no longer sure.
“Yes, Your Grace, please. Reconsider this risk,” Sheel encourages.
“It’ll be all right.” Ilryth speaks mostly to me. “I’m taking Dawnpoint because it improves our chances for success. If I didn’t, we’d risk more because we’d risk your life.”
I go, and I risk dying to the wraiths or monstrous emissaries of Krokan or rot or whatever other horrors are down there. It would leave the Eversea in turmoil. They’d have no other sacrifice and only a few months left before the summer solstice. Given how much time they’ve already spent anointing me—and I’m not even halfway through the process—I doubt they could find someone else in time. And if I died…the Eversea, maybe the world, would be at risk.
I don’t go, and my family will go to a debtors’ prison. Charles will demand Em’s hand. She will be his lighthouse attendant and suffer the fate I escaped.
I love my sister more than anything. I owe my parents everything. I can’t let them down. I won’t. But I also won’t fail and leave the Eversea struggling. I can accomplish both.
“I won’t let you all down,” I say with conviction. Everyone’s eyes are on me. But I’m focused solely on Ilryth. I match the intensity of his dark eyes, trying to show that I understand how serious this is. “We can keep each other safe. We will do what must be done, as we have until now.”
“What do you think you can do?” Sheel asks plainly. It doesn’t come off as intentionally rude, but the words still sting. He must realize it, because he backtracks slightly. “I am grateful for your help with Yenni, but cleansing rot and fighting a wraith are two very different things.” He’s not wrong.
“Ilryth has been teaching me how to use our duet and harness the magic within me. We’ve been preparing for this.”
“For just how long?” Sheel side-eyes Ilryth, who ignores him, focusing on Lucia instead.
“She might actually be able to help a great deal,” Lucia chimes in, as if on cue. I suspect Ilryth had been consulting her on our plans long before now. “As an anointed, she’s been given unique immunities from the call of the Veil and the Beyond. It might offer her similar protections—better, even, since it’s imprinted on her soul—as the armor from the Lifetree. In fact, it could be possible that she is like a tree spear just by the virtue of her existence.”
“I did see her power against the rot,” Sheel says thoughtfully. “But the wraith targeted her specifically.”
