They piled onto the ship, Mavrel settling atop the mast. The hours passed slowly in the monotony of the landscape, lush as it was. When night finally fell, they asked the ship to continue and set a watch rotation.
Thran was just rousing Thia for the final shift when the forest suddenly fell away, the river emptying into an expanse of gray. With the horizon now on full display, Thia could see where a golden dawn was just beginning to devour the night, the sky directly above still a deep navy. Waves lapped against the hull of the ship, choppier than anything they had experienced on the River of Dreams.
“The sea,” Thia breathed, wiping bleary eyes, as she sat up to water that was like charcoal under the dark sky. “We made it.”
FORTY-ONE
“SHOULD WE WAKE THE OTHERS?” THIA ASKEDTHRAN.
He stared at the horizon from his perch near the mast. “I’d say let them sleep. I doubt we’ll have many more moments of peace before the end.”
He was probably right, but Thia didn’t want to think about that. She surveyed Oskaren, sleeping at the bow. A frown marred her sculpted face, and she tossed and turned under her cloak. Thia wondered what she was dreaming about.
“I know the boy gave you a hard time,” Thran said. “I thought you handled it well.”
Her cheeks flushed, and she inspected the horizon, clutching the Eye of Syrrene absent-mindedly in her palm. “Do you think I’m being foolish?” She didn’t know why she asked. She didn’t need his approval. Maybe it was the memory of the quiet acceptance he’d shown when he’d first noticed the shift between her and Oskaren. Maybe she just wantedsomeoneto understand, to see what she did in the other girl. To trust her choices.
Thran was quiet for a moment. “If there’s anything life has taught me,” he said, “it is that time is precious. We are guaranteed nothing. Life is loss. So no, I do not think it foolish to love, no matter what may come of it.”
Tears pricked Thia’s eyes. “Thank you.” He would have been a good father, she thought, had the king not taken the chance from him.
His voice turned a bit gruff. “No need for that, lass.” He cleared his throat. “What will you do first, once you are home?”
“I can’t think about that,” she admitted. There were too many unknowns: the battle against the witch, the journey back to the Tower, how she would say goodbye to her newfound friends.
“If by some chance, the king doesn’t help you, you’ll always have a home here with us.”
Thia started. “If he—do you think that’s possible?”
Thran rubbed his beard. “If he could so easily walk between realms, why would his lust for conquest have stopped with us?”
Thran was wrong. He had to be. Callista was an expert in magic, and she thought the king could do it.
“I spent some time speaking to Lythia during the festival,” Thran told her. “I asked her what the Losrohir know of the Mage King, with their foresight and long lives. We have legends, of course, but the fact is, until he began his conquest a little over seventy years ago, his origins are elusive.”
“What did she say?”
“The Losrohir are as nescient as we are. They can see how the threads of time will weave, but only if they know where to look. The first they learned of the Mage King was seventy-five years ago, when the earth cried out at the birth of his shadowling army. Shortly after, they began their retreat.”
“Surely someone powerful enough to scare the Losrohir into hiding can send me home,” Thia protested. “Why do you doubt it?”
Thran sighed. “I don’t know that I do. I’m just thinking, lass. Apologies.”
“You said his eyes reminded you of something,” she recalled.
“Aye. Birth records I found, in my time as a scribe. Of a babe with that same gaze, white ringed with black.”
She examined him. “What are you saying? That child is the king?”
He pursed his lips. “That would make him over two hundred years old. And that child showed no signs of magic; Wordlung manifests young. Though I suppose mages could be different. We know so little of them.”
That had to be it. If there was one thing clear in all of this, it was the king’s power.
“Come now, don’t fret,” Thran continued, in response to her expression. “I read too much into things—burden of the trade, I suppose.” He gave an encouraging smile. “Why don’t you get some more sleep? I don’t mind having another turn.”
“Aren’t you tired?” she asked. If she were honest, she craved the escape from her own overactive mind. She had to trust Callista’s knowledge of Caradoc, and the king’s own promise, or she would never get through the coming fight.
“I don’t think I’d be able to catch a wink if I tried.”
