Fairchild sneered and flicked a look at one of the guards. As his attention left her, she brought the pistol up from behind her, slamming it under Adrian’s chin.
It stopped in midair, smashing into something invisible standing between her and her captor, and there was no time to do more than thinkshitshitshitbefore invisible hands wrenched her arms behind her.
The two visible bodyguards had been decoys. His real guards were invisible—shielded with stolen dragon magic.
After that, he threw her back in the cells.
At least the guards didn’t chain her down this time; they shoved her in, turned the key, and left her sitting in the wet and cold.
She stared after them, barely seeing the cells or hearing the uneasyscrape-scrapeof metal feathers all around her. Fairchild’s words were still echoing in her mind.
It has already caused you enough pain.
How dare he? Howdarehe? Her shark had never hurt her. It had never caused heranypain. It had saved her life. And then it—it… went away. As far away as it could go without the Soul-Eater’s help, apparently.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
Okay. Fine. Ithurt, that her shark didn’t even want to be around her. That even having its features stamped on her human face didn’t bring it any closer within her soul. But she didn’t—it wasn’t—
She groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. It didn’tmatter. She wasn’t going to let anyone take her shark away from her. She was going to get out of here, and save herself and this whole ship full of poor idiots who’d been suckered into Fairchild’s scheme.
Before Moss got here.
Because Moss was coming. He had to be.
37
Kraken
In hundreds of years, this had never happened.
Long eons in the deep had sapped it of its strength. And now its vessel was injured, too. Broken and bleeding. Far, far sooner than they usually broke. And not in the embrace of the deep, but under the blinding sun. When it gave the human its own form, the pain and weakness was unbearable. And when it tried to take its own form, it was small. Exhausted. A tangled knot of nightmare and death, burning in the light.
It should not have broken its vow.
38
Moss
Darkness held him like a lover. And the moment he let himself fall into its embrace, it abandoned him.
Not a lover at all. No love. No warmth. He was alone. The blazing certainty of his duty was his only light, the hope that he would be called to fulfil it his only hope.
No. That wasn’t right. The idea of his duty didn’t warm him. It terrified the hell out of him. Killing the Soul-Eater would make him a murderer, even if the man he murdered was a monster.
He tried to open his eyes, but there was only blackness, and as he fought to free himself, something coiled dark tentacles around him and dragged him deeper down.
39
Carol
“You don’t understand. The Soul-Eater isn’t going tohelpyou. He’s a killer.”
The bird-woman looked at her strangely, one eyebrow raised. It was such a modern expression. Had she learned it from Fairchild and the other people who’d dug her people out of their enchanted sleep, or did people stare at people they thought were idiots in whatever era she came from, too?
It wasn’t helping, either way.
Carol pushed down her frustration. She was getting better at communicating with the Stymphalians, though it still felt like fumbling her way through a Braille text with kitchen mitts on her hands.
