“Enough,” I snapped. “Eusia—Obelia’ssaint—is the monster that animates and controls the nekgya. She resides on Anthemoessa. She is the First Mage. The envious sister of the Great Goddess Ligea. And when she is finally found, she can be defeated.”
For Aleka and Markis, that seemed to be enough. The nekgya had been an insurmountable threat for far too long and hope of ending them had started to wane.
Aleka rose and straightened her tidy robes before she bowed. “It’s a dangerous path you set us on, Your Majesty,” she said, sagely. “But you have my trust.” With that she left the stateroom.
Doxa met my eye next and begrudgingly dipped her chin. She strode out onto the deck, where her bellowed commands rang through the damp air. Sailors’ whistles and calls followed as they set the ship on its new course.
I wouldn’t show my relief, but exhaustion pressed in around my eyes, and my body rang with nerves. I met Markis’s stupefied gaze, then Eftan’s. “Go,” I said. “You will be summoned in the morning. When I’m ready to see you.”
Both bowed deeply before they wound their way toward the door, but once there, Eftan slowed. Steady assuredness oozed from him like thick blood from a gash. The smile that curved his mouth was deliberate and baleful. In it hung a terrifying admission, a gleeful realization. His voice was smooth when he said, “Sleep well, Theodore.”
He left my stateroom with his chin high, Markis following at his heels like a leashed dog.
Lachlan bolted the door behind them and we stood there in a silence so dense it kept me still.
Eftan knew.
He knew Imogen was on this ship, and it filled me with unspeakable terror. For whatever reason, he’d given the woman my father had loved a dignified death—a vial of pure nepenthe oil for a quick and painless end.
I had no doubt that he’d aim to give Imogen the opposite.
“You owe me, Lach,” I said miserably. “Get to Imogen,now.Do not, for any reason, let her out of your sight, or so help me—”
He nodded, knowing better than to speak. The bolt scraped and I watched, hapless, as he made his way into the night, across the deck… to Imogen.
9
Imogen
The oil in the lamp was running low, but I’d turned it up regardless.
I wanted to see every dart of Halla’s eyes. Her every tell and twitch would point me toward the truth, but in the short time we’d been huddled together in the small cabin, she’d not said a word.
“I’ll ask you again,” I said, forcing as gentle a voice as I could. Despite how I’d tried to quiet it, I could not unhear the conversation she’d just had with Theodore. Like an echo in a cave, the words rolled over themselves again and again until they became an overwhelming ache in my chest. “Did you know that your mother took my friend?”
She only stared at me for a long moment, her face ashen even in the warm light of the lantern. Finally, after the ship dipped and swayed over a violent patch of sea, she spoke in a weary voice. “I thought you might be here.”
“Why would you think that?”
Halla pressed a hand to her mouth, looking pained. I’d not expected to feel so… disarmed by her. The intensity of her sickness,the mass of scars on her body, the serene way in which she held herself despite everything, had me off-kilter.
She cleared her throat. “The sea went still… earlier.” She sat upon the narrow cot of my purloined cabin with her back straight and her white, fur-lined cloak wrapped around her. The ship dipped steeply again, and she groaned. “I’ll need a chamber pot.”
I moved carefully, not wanting to reveal my pain, and slid the chamber pot from beneath the cot. She reached for it, but I barred her from taking it with my leg. “Answer my question.”
Her eyes flared with antipathy. “No,” she blurted. “I did not know what my mother did.”
I would have called her a liar had I not caught the barest hint of resentment in her tone. I pulled my leg back and she dove for the pot, heaving it up into her lap and retching.
“Then tell me about your scars. About the spells you’ve performed.”
Her face pinched with distaste. “I have never performed a spell.”
“Every time you gave your blood and spoke Eusia’s prayer, you performed a spell, Halla.” My temper was shortening, my pain building. I remembered her praying to Eusia, ankle-deep in the sea, the day I’d taken the severing draught. “That is why you grew ill that day you asked for a blessing on the beach.”
Halla’s blue eyes locked with mine. Feverish hunger flashed through them before she opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again.
“What? Speak.”
