My wings broke through my skin. I stretched them wide and tried to keep my balance with the new weight tugging me back.Our ship was badly beaten, splitting further with each blow. But the Serafi flagship had not been able to overcome my current. It listed, its sails going slack.
“I’m boarding that ship,” I called back to the captain.
Her face was red, spittle at her lips. “Get them in the water first, Gods damn it.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t risk accidentally luring Nemea over the side of that ship.
She drew her sword. A cannonball flew over the deck, and she ducked, darting around sailors at work. “You gave your fucking word,” she yelled, sword tip pointing at my throat.
“Tread carefully.” My body had grown taut—my power tremulous. “I have a poor history with captains.”
The lines on her face deepened with my threat. She bared her teeth, her nose wrinkling with disgust. “Get off my ship.”
The strike of her enmity felt familiar, and I bore it well. I held my chin high and got my footing. Nemea’s ship was close enough for me to glide across. When I called it, a gust blew under me, and I stepped off the ship with my wings spread wide. My stomach flipped at the sensation of moving over the air. Ungracefully, I landed on the Serafi ship’s shroud and held tight. The square-hatched ropes burned my palms, my knees, my shins.
My presence unsettled Nemea’s crew. My dark wings set them on edge, like hounds scenting their quarry. They nocked arrows and prepared ropes as they dodged the cannonballs that still flew at them. With a clamped jaw and all my focus, I sent out only three lures. I shook to maintain them, to not let Eusia take them from me. They pierced the chests of the men standing nearest Nemea. The men’s shoulders slumped as they surrounded him. As they hauled him toward the nearest mast, that burn began once more in my throat.
Nemea didn’t fight them; he didn’t rail and scream. I kept moving, trying to keep myself from arrows’ paths, trying to keep my hold on my power, and watched through the ropes. I waited for his face to redden and his eyes to bulge as they always did when his ire was up, but he only leaned back, head tipped against the mast as they tied him to it. He looked me directly in the eye. His graying hair whipped, and he held my stare even as they took his sword from his scabbard. They bound his hands and pulled the wax from his ears. And as my body began to drain of its warmth, they took the dented gold crown from his head.
The sword and crown clattered to the deck as the three men turned toward the port side of the ship. I’d sent no command. I’d not even felt when the lures had putrefied, but Eusia now tugged on the strings. The three men mouthed the prayer as they stepped over the deck with jerking movements and threw themselves into the sea.
Arrows whizzed past me, and I climbed up, fighting to keep my balance, when Nemea called up to me.
“You’re tarrying, girl.” The slice of his voice through the din made my body lock up. I felt like a child, small and powerless and in want of discipline. “I thought I taught you better. We die when we tarry, Imogen. Do what you mean to do before we both meet our ends.”
He was right, and it anguished me to admit it. It anguished me to do what came next. I closed my eyes and let my power fly. I could not count how many lures, but my power—or Eusia—knew what was required. They hooked in and the sailors on the deck all let out a breath at once. I whimpered at the searing pain in my throat and the chills that broke out over my skin. Bodies went limp, weapons clamored to the ground. And then they all began to climb over the edges of the ship. Like a wave of tar, they slowly crested the rails and spilled into the briny water.
I looked to Nemea. I’d set all the focus I’d possessed on keeping him safe from my lure. The wind rolled over the deck, carrying with it the incessant splash of bodies and the mumbled prayers of the crew up to me on the shroud. Our gazes locked.
When Nemea heard his crew speak the familiar words of Eusia’s spell—the one he’d taught me so long ago—a slow smile curled his mouth.
Ijumped to the deck. Pain shot up my shins when I landed. My attention narrowed on the poor knots the sailors had tied around Nemea. The ropes were slung loose across his barrel chest. It would take little effort for him to remove them. Yet he didn’t struggle. He sat at ease, gaze on me.
His stillness—his peace—sent a spear of anxiety shooting through me.
His sword lay on the deck a few paces away, gleaming gold in the early evening light. It gave a metallic scrape as I retrieved it. Cannon fire still quaked through the warm air, but the volley from the ship I’d been on had ceased. They were sailing away, up the line to support the others, leaving me and Nemea on his flagship—alone.
With a forceful current and a steady wind, I guided the ship away from the tight cluster of firing vessels. I let us drift out farther from Varya’s shore, yawing and pitching with the chaos of the sea. The sun limned Nemea’s silvering hair and shadowed his narrow face. I stared, forcing my adrenaline-sodden body to still, and looked for something of myself in him.
I’d inherited so much from my mother. Her features, the shape of her body too, were nearly identical to mine. But I feared I’d inherited my father’s heart.
All the deaths I’d caused did not pierce me like they should. I still stood on my own feet, I still pulled breaths into my lungs without collapsing under the weight of self-detestation. I wished to feel the sting of these terrible, punishing things, to feel absolution, as Theodore had said, but I was numb.
I must have gotten that from Nemea.
The sails flapped overhead, unmanned and now loose in the breeze. I’d never looked at Nemea with such clear eyes before. I could picture what he would have looked like with the years peeled away, back when the empress had known him. The dark hair and light olive skin, the narrow slant of his gray eyes. How they pierced like pointed steel. I walked nearer to him, toward where his crown lay on the deck. My heart knocked into my ribs as he watched me. I bent to pick it up, weighing the heavy, sun-warmed gold in my palm.
“Hello, Imogen,” he finally said, over the snapping sails. “Have I surprised you?”
That voice. Low, nasal. It sent a host of rotting emotions spreading through me. “You have.”
“You left,” he said simply, head leaning back against the mast. “I had no choice but to retrieve you.” His gaze slid to my wings. “I’ll admit, you’ve surprised me too.”
My fist tightened around his crown, its edges denting my palm. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know what I was,” I spat. “And I am not yours to retrieve.”
He gave a chuckle. It was unamused, rough, empty. “But you are. In so many ways, you are.”
“What is your strongest claim to me, Nemea?” I asked, adjusting my fist around the sword’s hilt. “That you are my king? My warden? That you fed my blood to a monster since I was a baby?”
