Carefully lifting my hand off the side of the wooden boat, I shifted my arm to let the blade I’d hidden beneath my sleeve slide down into my palm.
If he called out for someone to take me, I’d defend myself to my dying breath.
“Bond, and your magic will get better,” he said.
My spine jolted at his casual mention of magic. “What do you mean, get better?”
“That’s why you’re here, right?”
“Yes.” Relief edged my voice despite my effort to sound calm. At least he wasn’t calling for guards.
I settled on the hard wooden bench, sliding my knife back up into my sleeve and returning my hand to the side of the boat.
I’d hidden three more blades on my body, one in my boot, another sewn into the undergarment against my ribs, beneath my simple brown tunic. I’d tucked the third into the back of my pants.
“You mentioned a bond?” I asked.
“If you’re not here to enter the trials, I’ll turn the boat around and take you back to shore,” he growled.
“No,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I’m here for the trials.”
“It’ll be amazing.” The ferryman studied me with dark eyes that seemed to see through flesh to my bones. He shifted the leg he’d propped on the bench in front of him, his black pants riding up enough to show off a hairy ankle.
“I’m sure it will be.”
Rite of Bonds? I’d come here to infiltrate this court, deliver death, then leave. But if I had to enter some sort of trial to be allowed to stay, then I would. It might take time to find out who’d murdered Addie.
“Are there children here?” I asked, trying to sound casual while my heart bruised itself against my ribs. Reaching beneath my tunic, I cupped my sister’s pendant I wore all the time. “Groups of them. New ones.”
“Of course there are children here.”
“Where are they?”
“Where else but in the village homes?”
“And where are these villages?” After crossing long stretches of swampland, I’d only come across scraggly farms and once, a “town” that consisted of ten homes and an inn, plunked in the middle of the intersection of two dirt roads.
His stare stretched on long enough that I fought to remain still. Mae’s son was somewhere in this cursed wasteland, if he was still alive. I’d find him before I left this wretched place. Find them all and bring them home.
“The villages are far from here,” he said, flipping his long gray ponytail over his shoulder.
His owl flapped its wings before settling back on the man’s deep blue tunic.
I dropped the subject. The less I revealed my ignorance, the better.
A long, sinuous creature broke the water’s surface near the boat. Then another. Inky shapes slithered through the depths, too large to be ordinary snakes. One rose close enough that I yanked my hand away from the side of the boat, pressing it against my chest.
The ferryman shot to the side, making the boat rock and me grab onto the bench. Was I actually safer with the scaled water creatures or him?
He sent a glare at the beasts churning across the surface. “Behave!”
One flicked its tail, sending a spray of water across the boat. The ferryman lifted his hand and shot a tiny bolt of lightning from his fingertip, striking close to one of the creatures.
They sank fast and bubbles erupted from the water before it went still.
“Did you hurt them?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure why I cared.
He huffed. “They like it.”
