Before I can think on it further, Evie hurries across the deck, picks up a book, and flips to a section near the back.
“In later mythology, Homer places sirens geographically close to sorceresses,” she says, her words coming faster now. “Some medieval interpretations claim sirens learned their enchantments from Circe, or that they were nymphs she cursed into monstrous forms.”
Callie glances back at where we came, then refocuses on Evie. “So, you think the sirens are connected to Aeaea?”
“Connected, yes. But not allied.” Evie flips another page.
“Great.” I laugh, and it comes out too sharp. “Circe’s neighbors are murderous fish-women who wear dead people’s faces. This trip is getting off to a fabulous start.”
Nobody responds, and after what we just went through, I can’t really blame them.
Evie looks up from her book, scanning the gray horizon. “If the sirens are geographically close to Aeaea, we’re in the right region. We just need to figure out which direction to go.”
Callie pushes away from the wheel, looking out at the sea in frustration. “After all that chaos, we’re completely turned around, and the compass can’t point us somewhere that isn’t on a map.” She huffs in frustration, then frowns up at the sky, pausing for a moment. “Although is it just me, or is the gray less solid?”
Evie looks up and squints. “You might be right. And if the clouds keep thinning…” Her eyes light up, and she’s alreadydigging through her bag. “According toCelestial Patterns of the Lost Seas,the stars here shift, but not randomly. The old charts track formations that appear on cycles. If the clouds clear, I can match what we see to a timed pattern.”
“Show me.” Callie moves to her, and they settle near the bow, heads bent over Evie’s notes.
With the two of them occupied for gods know how long, I’m left standing by the front mast with Kieran, Logan, and the accusations I hurled during the siren attack.
How many versions of me did you practice on? How many times did you reset us until I kissed you back the right way?
Kieran tosses his dagger in the air and catches it by the handle. “I’ll check the back rigging,” he says, and with that, he moves to the other end of the boat, leaving me and Logan alone.
“We need to talk.” Logan clenches his hands at his sides, his expression so flat and hard that I know I hit him deep. “Below deck. Now.”
JADE
Four doors branch offfrom the space below deck.
Logan leads me to one at the front end, opens it, and motions for me to go first.
A bed fills most of the wall, narrow enough that two people would have to sleep tangled together or not at all. The only window is a porthole showing nothing but gray, and when Logan flicks his fingers, a lantern flickers to life from the only shelf in the room.
The door clicks shut, and I move to the porthole, tracing my finger across the glass as if it will magically clear the fog.
Logan’s watching me like I’m about to break, the shadows under his eyes deeper than they were an hour ago. He must have jumped back gods know how many times to save us from the siren attack. Without him, we’d all be fish food at the bottom of the ocean, and I don’t have words big enough for that kind of debt.
The only ones I had were the hateful ones I slung his way on deck. Every accusation echoes in my head, and I wish I could take them back, swallow them down, and pretend they never existed.
Unfortunately, that’s not possible, which leaves us here, where the air between us is charged with the ghost of every kiss, every confession, and every time his hands found my skin and the world went quiet. My magic buzzes low in my veins, reacting to his proximity the way it always does, drawn to him like a current seeking ground.
There’s so much swirling through my mind that I have no idea where to start, so I’m relieved when he speaks first.
“You buried what you said to me up there for over a week,” he says, his tone edged with more darkness than the black fire that burns at his fingertips. “You let it fester until the sirens ripped it out of you.”
“I know.” My throat tightens, but I don’t apologize.
“Did you mean it?”
“Not the way it came out.” I wrap my arms around myself, struggling to find the right words. “But I can’t just forget that there are times you’ve touched me that I don’t remember. You got to experience all the versions, and I only got to keep the ones you picked.”
The lantern flame bends toward him, like it’s being pulled by an invisible string.
“The first time, in the Drowned Tower,” I continue, because silence is worse. “You knew what I wanted because you’d already tested what worked and erased the failures.”
He flinches, as if my words physically hurt him. “You would have killed everyone in that tower if I hadn’t gone back.”
