“Sorry,” I said reflexively, then instantly wished I hadn’t when all he did was scowl at me. “Do we have a problem?” I asked.
His nostrils flared. “My problem is you and that night-cursed crow. Rhodaire’s always been too quick to meddle in magic. Now that beast is doing more than he should, and you’re raising talk of the Sellas? Duren protect us from your foolishness.” He waved his hand across his face in a gesture I’d seen some of the other crew make.
I stared at him. Religion had never been my strong suit, but I was pretty sure he’d just warded himself against me.
Onis leaned closer, his voice dropping to a growl. “Your ancestors may have worshipped the Sellas, but we knew better in the Ambriels. Nothing waits for those who meddle with those creatures but death!”
With that, he swept past me, muttering to himself about reckless Rhodairens.
Frowning after him, I yanked Samra’s door open. She sat at her desk, a pile of papers before her, fingers rubbing her scarred eye gently.
“Are you causing trouble with my crew?” she asked, clearly having heard everything.
“What? No. He’s causing trouble with me.”
She leaned back, lacing her fingers and pushing out to stretch them. “Onis is an ornery one, but he’s a good sailor and he’s served me well. Just ignore his superstitious nonsense.”
I refrained from pointing out the talismans on her shelves; that wasn’t what I’d come for. “Can I borrow your copy ofSaints and Sellas?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Curiosity,” I replied. “I haven’t read it in a long time.”
Samra’s expression remained impassive, but I could feel her weighing me. Then she shrugged. I hurried forward, carefully extricating the book from the shelf and retreating for the door before she could change her mind.
Back in my room, I pored over the book well into the night. The stories were different than I remembered, darker and more vicious. Humans who angered the Sellas died painful deaths or else were subjugated to far worse fates—maimed or blinded, cursed or trapped in the Wandering Wood for eternity.
The book painted a picture of the Sellas that was both beautiful and cruel. They were as graceful as they were deadly, as magnanimous as they were ambivalent, content to grant humans gifts and then snatch them away when we inevitably corrupted them.
It was that piece that fascinated me, the idea that the Sellas granted people magic. Every story followed a human granted magical abilities, and each one ended the same. When the human inexorably used the magic for war and destruction, the Sella always knew, for by giving the human magic, it created a connection between them. In the end, the human died a bloody death.
There was something there though. Something familiar.
“A connection,” I muttered to Res. “Like the bond between us.”
A sleepy tug echoed back at me across the connection, tinged with irritation. Apparently, Res didn’t appreciate my late-night conversation.
An idea sparked. “A magic line!”
“A what?” Kiva grumbled from above.
I winced. “Nothing, sorry. Go back to sleep.” The bunk above shifted, and a moment later, Kiva’s heavy snores filled the room again.
I’d learned about magic lines from an abandoned journal in a forgotten library back in Aris. The scholar had believed that magic was passed down from generation to generation, like hair color or height. It was a connection, like the one that bonded Res and me.
Was this what happened when a crow chose a rider? It created a magic line between them? It would explain why riders often came from the same families. The crow’s magic must influence the person’s physiology somehow, creating the magic line, which was then passed down from parent to child.
It was a theory Caylus had had too.
The bond between rider and crow was something we only partially understood. When a crow hatched, it usually imprinted on the first person it saw. It was for this reason that new riders would take their chosen egg to one of the many hatching alcoves at the top of the royal rookery at the start of the process.
When Res had struggled to access his magic back at Caylus’s apartment, Lady Kerova had told me to push on the bond. The result had been disastrous. I’d helped Res release his magic, but he’d lost control, revealing his presence to Razel’s spy. But it suggested that the bond was a conduit for more than just emotions and thoughts.
Could it also be a channel for power?
Sleep tugged at my eyelids. Kiva and Res had the right idea. The book had yielded interesting possibilities, but who was to say they meant anything? They were just stories, after all. Who knew whether I was just molding them to fit my own purposes?
I needed more information.
