“But what if that good king is still there? What if we can save him?” Isla asked desperately.
Kai sighed. There it was. The truth: Isla wanted to play the savior.
Before she could open her mouth to respond, Isla gasped sharply and jerked her head down the hall. Kai jumped at the outburst, her heart pounding loudly in her ears. A second later, Isla shoved past her to sprint for the main deck.
What in the world…
Kai rushed to follow her, calling for her as they ran. Isla flung herself at the railing and stared out into the dark sea from the port side of the ship.
“Isla! What are you doing? Be careful!” Fear spiked through Kai, thinking Isla was going to go flying off the edge.
“Do you not feel that?” Isla asked breathlessly.
“Yes, I feel like my heart’s about to beat out of my chest! You scared me half to death. What are youdoing?”
She saw Isla’s eyes searching the waters frantically. “I feel something. I—I can hear it, Kai.”
Urgency laced her every word, making Kai’s pulse race. “Hear what?”
“I think it’s the Dagger of Volnus. It’s here.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Kai
“Thedagger?Here? How do you know?”
“I don’t know, it’s just this—this feeling,” Isla gripped her head in her hands. “It’s like a pounding and a buzzing at the same time, like my whole body is being pulled in this direction. Those diary entries—they talked about my ancestors feeling a call to it, right? What if this is what they felt?”
Kai hesitated. They had all assumed the dagger would be somewhere on Iona, where the Vasileia must have kept it. But if it had left with them on their mass exodus a thousand years ago, was it possible it could have been lost at sea?
Isla’s gaze stayed locked on some point in the distance, determination and urgency lining her features. Kai opened her senses to the water, searching for anything out of the ordinary, anything that would signal where the weapon could be found. She let the lull of the sea flow through her, speak to her, fill her mind with what lay beneath its glassy surface.
After a moment, she felt the signatures of two very large vessels. Passenger or cargo ships, more than likely. One was located beneath them on a rather shallow shelf, a shipwrecked monstrosity that held no trace of life for at least several centuries. The other…
The other was very much in working condition and heading straight for them.
“The Dagger of Volnus isn’t the only thing that’s here,” she said to Isla grimly.
“What are you talking about?” the girl replied, still not taking her eyes off the water.
“There’s a ship coming, probably the king’s. It’s too far out to see in the dark, but it’s close.”
Isla snapped her head to face Kai. “How much time do we have?”
Kai ran her tongue over her teeth and stared across the bottomless sea as if she could see the enemy through the fog and shadows. “A few hours. Are you absolutely sure that—”
Isla groaned, tapping her forehead against the railing. “The dagger ishere, Kai! Somewhere down there. I’ve already told you, it must have something to do with my blood. If Sebastian is that close, what do we do?”
“I have an idea,” Kai said slowly, cracking her neck. “But you’re not going to like it. You go get Bri. I’ll talk to the boys. We have to hurry.”
Fifteen minutes later, Kai hauled Aidan and Rynn to the main deck to meet the others. August had men getting ready to lower the storm anchor at Kai’s command so she and Isla had time to search for the dagger.
“Why are we stopping?” Rynn asked. He, Aidan, Jade, Isla, and Bri surrounded Kai under a faint lantern close to the railing.
Kai shot him a glare. “First, I’m still pissed at you, but we’ll talk about that later. Second, there have been a few…developments.” She quickly told their small group how Isla sensed the Dagger of Volnus somewhere in the area, and that Sebastian’s ship was only hours from catching them.
“But why would the dagger be here, in the middle of the ocean?” Jade asked.
