A pinprick of energy. A tiny wrinkle in the atmosphere. The source of the storm.
The ward.
My heart jolts in my chest. It’s been so long since I’ve witnessed the magic of the wards—the infinite possibility contained in the most miniscule of space—it leaves me just as breathless as it did three hundred years ago.
Wendy closes her eyes again, and the ward pulses in response. She coaxes it wider, and it takes everything in me to keep from crying out in relief.
So close. Everything that’s mine, everything I lost—it’s allsoclose.
Something catches my eye beyond the rage of the storm. Something moving through it, directly toward us.
A cold heaviness settles in my veins, and though I can’t determine the exact source, I’ve been alive long enough to trust it. “Keep working,” I whisper to Wendy, drawing my sword slowly from the scabbard at my waist. “We have company.”
Wendy’s eyes fly to mine, wide and panic-laced, as four boats—no,ships—slice through the tempest.
“Niko!” Wendy cries. The ward snaps shut with the loss of her focus, the possibility of the worlds beyond winking out like the snuffed wick of a candle. She leaps toward me, her sweaty fingers balling distastefully in the fabric of my shirt.
I brush her off with an irritable sigh, ignoring her look of hurt. The ships draw closer, and the death in my heart—the death I was born with—burgeons. The wards between worlds have been closed for over two hundred years, and the stories have been dead for nearly as long. There aren’t many people alive who would know where to find one, and even less who would come to thisparticularward.
Unless they’d been watching me for months, biding their time.
The largest vessel slices through the water, a lone figure poised at the helm.
My brother.
My heartbeat ratchets higher in my chest, a deep, dark rhythm fueled by hatred as black as my blood. I haven’t seen Dawson since that horrible first day on the mainland when I’d been mad with grief and weak without my magic. I learned later he’d been in the Crocodile, waiting for the moment Willa found me dead.
I’d known the folly in allowing my brother to learn of my affection; I hadn’t understood the danger in him realizinghers.He’d used it to manipulate her into going against the universe to bring me back, and in turn, had brought back the person most important to him: the Aeternalis.
They’d slipped through a ward to the mainland before anyone was the wiser.
Most would think it’s a miracle I survived their ambush, especially after Dawson shot me in the shoulder. But since I was a child, there has always been a ruthlessness inside of me: a twisted shadow fed by the death in my heart, by the sins in my blood. It has driven me to survive, simply because dying would mean allowing someone else to win.
And deathalwayswins. There is no outrunning it, no outsmarting it. It is infallible.
So even outnumbered and weak and powerless, I’d managed to run a sword through my brother’s belly. And the Everlasting, who was weakened by death and the lack of magic on the mainland, hadn’t been able to stop the bullet I lodged inside his heart through the gaping wound in his chest.
I hadn’t lingered long enough to find out if the blow was lethal, and now I know why it wasn’t. I turned and ran before I bled out, leaving behind both my revolver and my vengeance in order to survive. By the time I was healed enough to begin my hunt, boththe Aeternalis and my brother had seemingly vanished off the planet.
“Open that wardnow,” I growl at Wendy, before stalking to the bow.
“Who is it?” she hisses from behind me, rocking on the balls of her of feet in a nervous rhythm. Her arms are wrapped around her chest, like if she squeezes herself hard enough, she’ll be able to keep her panic trapped inside. “Is ithim?”Her voice is high and slightly hysterical, and it grates unpleasantly in my ears. “Is it Peter?”
“I swear to the star above Wen, I will slit your throat open again and toss your body overboard to feed the sharks if youdo not open that ward right now.”
Wendy gapes at me, her mouth bobbing open and closed a few times. With a firm hand on her shoulder, I shove her back down into the seat with a lethal stare. She swallows roughly, her eyes darting to the approaching vessels, before she finally squeezes them shut. The ward begins to pull open again, and I breathe in the scent of possibility, letting it settle at the base of my spine, as I readjust my grip on the hilt of my sword.
Our boat lists precariously, seawater slopping over the sides and spilling over the deck as we’re surrounded. Each ship is manned by at least fifty men, all armed with guns. My brother stands grinning at the bow of the largest vessel, the whites of his teeth eerily reflecting the sparks of magic around us.
Wendy screeches at the sight of him and tumbles from her seat. The ward winks shut again, and I consider slitting her throat once more merely to sate my rapidly rising frustration.
Dawson’s blue gaze flickers in amusement, as Wendy scrambles gracelessly over the slippery deck to cling to my ankles.
“This is pathetic, Nikolas…even for you.” He laughs, the sound a scraping clash, like metal against metal. “Always crawling back to those who never wanted you in the first place.”
Despite his year on the mainland, Dawson’s made no effort to assimilate to mainland culture. While the men around him are dressed head to toe in various forms of tactical gear, my brother wears nothing but a soiled pair of trousers and the homemade weapons belts he wore in Letum. His black hair is wild around his head, his bare feet calloused and dirty.
My lip curls in disgust. Both for him, and the woman currently attempting to claw her way up my leg.
