She stands outside the door of the captain’s room, Arda at her side. Nix creeps up from below deck and begins rounding on me slowly.
“There is nowhere for you to go!” she yells over the crashing of waves as they break against the bow. “Let us put this behind us.”
She takes a cautious step toward me, her eyes ravenous as she takes in every bit of my new form.
Another step. “Come with me, and I will show you what true power is.”
Another step. “Let me free you from the bonds of your fate.”
Nix is nearly at my back when I step toward her. She smiles, reaching out her hand. When I level her with the heat of my fury, her face falls.
The ship pitches beneath us. While she struggles to keep her footing, I clutch the rail, using the momentum of the waves and the leverage I’ve gained to throw myself off the side. The wounds on my torso tear themselves anew.
The cries of Vos’s rage are lost to the icy water as I plummet into the sea. The calm of her womb is a stark contrast to her violent surface overhead. Dark waters surround me. Only the distant, flickering light over the forests of Brax declares where I might find air. Air my lungs should desperately need. Yet, there is no burning in my chest, no gasping urgency.
My dress weaves among the current, thousands of tiny crystals shimmering in the sea. I find that I am content to remain in the quietdarkness, and I close my eyes, letting myself rest for what might be the first time in my life. After everything, I’ve found peace in the stillness and quiet of my end.
A thrum in the deep, and I open my eyes. Lightning streaks across the sky, dancing upon the waves that ripple overhead. In the darkness that surrounds, tiny lights flicker into being. A beautiful hum in my chest rises to meet her song. I can feel her now, my demon. Dancing in the midst of the starlight that encompasses me. So familiar, and yet…
She greets me as never before, shattering the last of the fragile panes that divide us. She pours herself into me, filling the deep void in my being, sharing in every sorrow, every joy, and every fear. She sings to me sweetly, tenderly, enduring the pain of our breaking until bound together we are knit anew.
A murmur from the depths of Terr. Her name is a soft caress as it skates across my ears, only a whisper in the darkness.
“Shivay.”
CHAPTER 41
BRAX
Present Day
There is a ripple in the deep stillness—a heart beating in time with my own—when the surface of the water breaks overhead.
A hand grips my wrist, a touch I know well. Another breaking I endured to become what I am. He pulls me close, the terrible pain of my open wounds nothing compared to the pain of those memories that rush to the surface just as we break the turbulent waters above.
“Vari!” he yells, his voice drowned amidst the rain that beats against the sea. “Stay with me.”
And isn’t that the same request he denied me so cruelly when I begged it of him?
My lungs burn, but not for lack of air, when he hauls me to the sandy shore of Brax. His hands are at my side, a swear on his lips as he attempts to rebind the gauze falling from the bloody lacerations.
But it is the warship I watch in the distance, the flames that lick up its bow as lightning continues to strike it in an unnatural fashion. The mast cracks, splitting in two as it falls upon the deck, the ship lost to the archingfire of the fates. As if Terr herself willed an end to the lives of those aboard it. I don’t blame her.
Wrapping an arm around my waist, hooking the other beneath my knees, he pulls me to his chest. He breaks toward the A’kori ship that made it to shore. The rain pounds the ground around us, a small break in the clouds above offering a momentary pause to the deluge stealing the heat from my bones.
Though there are many voices on the ship, they all slip past my ears as he races to the captain’s quarters, laying me in the center of a large wooden table as he yells, “Bri’vek eh hiven!”
I’m hardly aware of the heavy blanket he drapes over the wracking form of my body. A young feyn with a kind, freckled face barges into the room the next moment. They share a quickly whispered exchange in feyn speak before, with an apologetic glance, the young male clasps my side, releasing his gift.
I scream as the parted sinew of my side knits back together. Though the pain of healing is nothing compared to the disgust I feel at Nix’s mark searing itself onto my neck. My vision turns to a blinding white before shuddering to black.
“You’re safe, Vari.”
It’s the last thing I hear before I let myself drown in the void of my agony.
Safe. You’re safe.
The gentle light of morning is a stark contrast to the heavy blanket of dark I’ve lived in for the last week of my life. The windows of the captain’s cabin, a welcome sight for someone who wasn’t sure they would ever see the sunrise again.
