His hands gripped the railing, white-knuckled around this one flimsy safeguard keeping him separate from the tortured statues he’d once been part of. Seeing the ashen quality of his face, Kaialmostfelt sorry for him. But maybe Thames had deserved being sent here; he’d done horrible things alongside Clover, after all. Or was that another misremembered memory?
“I don’t remember all of it, Thames’s suffering,” Farran continued. “It comes to me in bits and pieces, like fragments of a nightmare you’re eager to forget upon waking. But being down here always draws it up to the surface.”
“And when you’re not down here?” Luce asked. “Where do you go?”
“I stay on the ship, sail as far as it’ll let me. And when I need even more of an escape, I have this.” He tugged on a chain around his neck, revealing a curious pocket watch. “Stole it from the god of balance’s workshop. It lets me travel to any point in time, to live in the past for a while until the magic wears out and it depositsme right back here.” A wan smile ghosted his lips. “I guess it’s the price I paid for leaving the god’s side. To be trapped here with no real way out except this temporary reprieve.”
The ship skewed with sudden violence, sending Kai tumbling straight into Farran. The boy tried to hold him steady even as Kai shoved off him with a glare.
“Guys.” Luce’s voice was high-pitched, her face pale as she held on to the ship’s rail. “What is that?”
Before them was what looked like a rip current or jet stream made of swirling ash and white-hot flames. And the ship was heading straight toward it.
Farran swore as he hurried to grab hold of the mast. “Brace yourselves,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s about to get ugly as we pass through the hellfire stream.”
“Thewhat?” Luce echoed.
“It’s nothing. It’s fine.” Farran had always been a shit liar.
“Can’t you steer the ship away?”
Farran shook his head. “This is the path we have to take. Just hold on, and whatever you see, whatever torture you experience, stay on the—”
His words were drowned out as the ship glided into the hellfire stream. Screaming filled Kai’s ears as faces appeared in the gusts of brimstone and fire and ash that swirled around him, like translucent ghosts, wayward souls clawing at him to pull him overboard. Kai couldn’t see or hear Luce and Farran in the chaos. The smell of sulfur was cloying, and every ghostly form that grazed his skinburned.
These spirits were desperate, angry, and as they engulfed him, they drew up Kai’s own anger to the surface.
He felt every wicked shard of it tearing at his insides, this anger that had shaped his life and stayed with him like splinters stuck beneath the skin. Anger at his parents for always leaving him,forcing him to adapt to new environments and grow faster than perhaps a child should. Anger at the world for how he was treated simply for being Eclipse-born. Anger at the Institute who’d put his magic to sleep and the Selenic Order who’d lined their pockets with his blood. Clover for turning out to be such a pathetically evil piece of shit. Farran for breaking his trust and his heart all those years ago. The universe itself for ripping Baz away from him.
The spirits recognized that anger. They fed on it, eager to make Kai one of their own, to turn these individual splinters into one implacable weapon, an unstoppable force they might wield to hurt and maim everything around him and put an end to his own torment in the same breath.
The temptation to go with them was undeniable, thisneedto jump off the ship stronger than anything Kai had ever felt. He took a step forward, those ghostly arms pulling him toward the rails. The part of him that wanted to fight back kicking and screaming was trapped in his own mind, powerless to do so. His hands gripped the rail against his will. A foot lifted as if meaning to hook over the rail so he could jump off.
Into the Deep he would go, bound to remain with things worse than nightmares. Just where he belonged.
Arms wrapped around his middle and pulled him back. The spirits screeched louder in his ears, their translucent mouths elongated and their eye sockets hollow and dark as their fingers sunk into him, shedding his skin—
With a grunt, Kai fell back against the floorboards. Hands were still on him, and he shrugged them off, scurried back, only to realize it was Farran. Farran, who’d fallen to the floor with him when he pulled him back from the guardrail. The spirits were gone, their screams with them, and the ship was sailing unencumbered now through the abyss, the hellfire stream behind them.
Luce sat on the floor a few feet away, clutching the mast, tearsrunning down her cheeks, looking as hollow and shaken as Kai felt. “Is it over?” she asked in a small voice. “Someone tell me it’s over.”
“It’s over. We’re safe.” Farran got to his feet and offered Kai a hand.
Kai ignored him, damn well able to stand on his own. “What the hell were those things? I thought you said souls here were trapped in stone.”
“The ones that were sent here, yes—the souls that have been judged and condemned to an existence in hell. Butthosesouls…” Farran’s face was tinged green as he glanced over his shoulder. “They are wayward souls that don’t necessarily belong, who’ve been finding themselves trapped here for some time now, ever since the fountain of gods was depleted. They’re trying to find a way out. To seek the eternal rest they were robbed of.” Under his breath, he added, “I’ve never seen so many of them, though. Never felt them so…”
“Hungry?” Kai suggested.
Farran’s gaze met his, full of understanding.
Luce was hugging herself tightly. “The things they made me feel, all the guilt they drew up about leaving my infant child…” She trailed off, her skin white as the ash that had resumed falling slowly, almost peacefully, around them.
Kai knew how she felt. The taste of anger was still in his mouth, like blood drawn from all the splinters embedded in his soul. If it hadn’t been for Farran, he would have jumped off the ship, and what then? Those spirits were hungering for power, for a way out, and Kai never wanted to find out what happened if they got their way.
“You’re welcome, by the way,” Farran said as if reading Kai’s mind. “I know it doesn’t make up for everything I did to you, but maybe—”
“I’d say go to hell,” Kai interrupted, “but seeing as we’re already in it, how about you just shut up about the past?”
