He glances back at Yaz, standing on the steps leading to the beach next to a torch, her arms crossed over her middle. “I’m not letting you leave her,” he says, gesturing to Yaz.
Zahira throws his words back at him from our meeting. “I love you, but I don’t really need your permission, my friend. I need hers,” she nods toward Yaz. “And I have it.”
“Zahira.” His nostrils flare. “This is dangerous.”
She cocks her head, her big, dark eyes intent. “As though I have not faced danger during my life on the seas? In the Watch? In war? And you need a captain, which I am. So stand aside and let me help.”
Alexus shakes his head, working his jaw, but then he looks up, and his gaze hangs on something. I already know from that morphing expression on his face what that something—or someone—is.
When I turn, I’m not surprised to see Hel running toward us, her lips skewed into a smile. I’m also not surprised to see the woman stalking behind her.
My sister.
She’s dressed like Death, garbed in black leather, carrying her pack in one hand, her swords in the other. Her hair is pulled back from her face in a long, thick braid, loose tendrils blowing in the wind, the silver-handled daggers strapped to her thighs glinting beneath the starlights.
Sand scatters as she walks to the side of Alexus’s boat where she dumps her pack and swords. She looks up, staring at the man I know she loves, the very one she now calls Collector, and motions to the sea with a flinty expression.
Alexus doesn’t speak. But he does nod at her and smile, if wickedly.
As Dru, Rhonin, Hel, and Zahira row to the ship, the three of us and Harmon drag the last vessel into the water. In perfect time, we row through the night, the sea lit with magick, quickly moving toward the Lady Belladonna.
And a water witch to whom I owe a godsdamn kiss.
V
A WORLD APART
42
NEPHELE
The Malorian Sea
The Lady Belladonna
* * *
The ship’s oaken deck is slick with cold mist, glistening beneath the light of the ship’s many lanterns.
Raina, Hel, and I lean against the railing holding hands, facing Malgros as the ship rocks and creaks on the waves. The world is awash in white, as though we’re sailing through a cloud, the ship and Joran’s magick carrying us across the Malorian Sea, unseen as a ghost.
My gut twists that we can’t watch the Northland Break fade in the distance, but…
“Perhaps it’s better this way,” Hel says, as though reading my thoughts. “It hurts less if we don’t see it.”
Raina steps back, her cold hand leaving mine. She wipes her eyes before turning and heading past Terrowin’s crew who walk around a bit dazed. In moments, my sister vanishes to the cargo hold where we will sleep for the night.
“We’re going to need to help her through this,” Hel says, rubbing her temple. “She wants to be here, but I’ve never seen her in so much pain.”
I think about Raina’s years without me, the relationships she built, everything she’s lost in the last two months, how it must hurt to say yet another goodbye. “She’s far more attached to the Northlands than she believes,” I say. “A life isn’t so easy to walk away from, especially when you love the people you must leave behind.”
Hel tilts her head, her deep black hair falling over her shoulder. “Was it like that when you chose not to return to the valley?”
A heavy sigh leaves me, and I look out over the fog. I’ve been waiting for this. I thought Raina would be the one to mention it, long before now, though I worried she wouldn’t believe me.
“I had my reasons for staying at the castle. It was difficult, and yes, the pain was unimaginable.” Tears well in my eyes, but I swallow them back. “I forfeited time with my parents and my sister because it was important that I learn how to protect Winterhold. And yet, even with years of work and sacrifice, when the time came, I still failed.”
I shake my head, a sinking feeling inside me. Before I left on that Collecting Day eight years past, Father told me to stay with the king. It wasn’t anything I wanted to hear, and though we cried many tears, he emphasized that I would be needed one day, that I must remain on the far side of the wood to learn and study. And though I was twenty-two years old, I felt like a little girl seeking her father’s wisdom, so when he said stay, I did.
