The wrong thing to say, perhaps, because Arion moves forward, and his wings thrust in front of me to shelter me from Amaya’s view. Or to protect us all from another explosion of violence. “His power didn’t just dissolve,” Arion says with forced calm. “It left him when he lost his heart. Itstayedin his heart. And we know where that heart is located.”
Thunder reverberates the floorboards. The walls. Amaya cocks her head, looking more like a lion on the prowl than a woman. “And where might that be?”
“Abysses,” Arion says. “We believe the heart is in Abysses, and with it, I’ll be able to strengthen my power. Anything you want—anything atall—I swear to grant you—”
“You’ll be a god,” she murmurs. Silence echoes through the brig. Even Vesper doesn’t seem to be breathing. Several seconds pass, thetension thicker than the charcoal clouds. Water begins to mist on our skin. Droplets finer than grains of sand. “How do you know? What proof do you have?”
Arion shifts uneasily. His spine straightens to an impossible degree, as if he’s afraid of the princess spotting any sign of weakness. Any holes in our logic. “There was a poem—”
Amaya barks a harsh laugh. “Poetry?You must be kidding.” Lightning splinters through the cloud. “You really seek to barter for your life withpoetry?”
“If you’ll recall, you offered to help us first,” Gavriall says. A streak of vivid yellow lances the floor at his feet. Gavriall throws himself out of its path, cursing under his breath as he palms the wall for support. “Wait, wait.” He exhales hard. “It’s not just a poem. The poem told us where the heart is located, but we—I—read journals from firsthand accounts. They tell us where to go.”
Amaya crosses her arms. “You have two minutes. If your proof is shit, I will collect the bounties King Constane has put on your heads—or I will murder you myself.”
My gut roils, and not just because the ship keeps tipping this way and that. I’m so—sotiredof this. Tired of threats and danger and enemies, of constantly fearing for our lives. Luckily, Arion speaks before I can dig us even deeper into a hole. “Dima Vasiliev,” he explains. Amaya listens without a single emotion flickering across her sharp face. “Gavriall read about an expedition. Gavriall is a historian, and he’s clever. He memorized them.” Arion sounds pained to admit it. “Vasiliev was setting off on an expedition to uncover the ruins of Abysses. He found some sort of rock that was old and strange, and he thought it came from the Sol.”
Amaya grins, and the sight is deeply unsettling. “And what happened on this expedition?”
Arion swallows. Hard. “We—we don’t know. No one ever returned.”
“Hm.” Amaya bends down, snatches the cursed skull from the floor, and sweeps past us. Out of the brig. Up the stairs. She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t explain herself. I glance at Arion in confusion, but he’s already moving, following her step for step. Amaya reaches thedeck, barking orders for four dozen soldiers to adjust the sails and steer us south. My stomach plummets. This can’t be good. I rush after them with Gavriall and Vesper behind me. Brutal winds—magical winds—whip my hair around my face. My knees slacken at the sight of how high we are. Thousands of feet in the air. My head swims. I’m going to puke. I’m—
“An interesting story, Warlock Stone,” Amaya calls over her shoulder. “However, Vasiliev did not discover ‘some sort of rock.’ He discovered adamant flecked with amber. And not just any amber, but a sort that glowed as if it had a pulse of its own.”
I suck in a harsh breath.Amber.Blood roars in my ears, and bile stings the back of my throat. But it’s—it’s vertigo. Just vertigo.
“Run,” the High Sorcerer rasps.
So I do. After hours—after hundreds of shallow slices all over my flesh—I manage to throw myself against a door. Inside a room. The topmost point of the sorcerer’s castle, the tower illuminates itself with light from a single gilded window, and I hurl myself around a bed carved out of a massive oyster shell. I crouch behind the beastly thing, trying desperately to catch my breath. To forget about everything today. Blood under my nails. Blood in my hair.
Jacin screaming for help.
A sob betrays me, and I crumple against an adamant wall, waiting for the sorcerer to enter. Waiting for the horrors to begin. But the door clicks shut, and a lock turns. “Sleep well, dear,” the sorcerer whispers—the preternatural amber light of the tower’s window flickers out. I am trapped in the pitch-black for two days. My cuts never fully heal. They leave me covered in silver scars.
“How do you know that?” Arion asks.
“Because”—Amaya grins—“it was my great-great-great-grandmother who funded the expedition.” The breeze whips faster, a brutal pummeling, until we’re riding through the center of a storm. I hardly feel it. I hardly feel anything right now. There is only the memory of glowing amber shuddering into darkness.
I want her to be wrong.She has to be wrong.
“Your great-great…” Gavriall trails off, staring hard at the skull cradled between Amaya’s hands. “You mean—”
“Yes, historian. I mean Queen Emilia.” Amaya kisses the temple of the skull. “Dima Vasiliev was tossed out of Mortia. They treated him as if he’d lost his mind. But Emilia knew there was a chance he was right. She brought him to Tempest and had him show her the proof. He said the size and shape of the adamant was too intricate,intentional. He thought it was the tallest tip of a spire. An underwater castle. But no one in that part of the ocean had ever seen a castle before.”
Arion shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”
The skull chitters, “A trench in ruthless blue. A lie in crimson red. Adamant, amber, magic, and pain. Vasiliev never returned again. An expedition lost. Abysses forgotten. The end of the road did dishearten.”
No.
A trench in ruthless blue.
No, no,no.
Adamant, amber, magic, and pain.
I stare at my feet as the world tilts sickeningly around me. This can’t be happening. I can’t… I can’t…
