Halla’s scowl changed her whole face. “Do you mean we will all be sleeping in here together? There is no way.” She rose. “Return me to my cabin this instant.”
Lachlan’s face remained amusingly blank. “No. I believe Imogen has further use for you.”
Halla plopped back down on the cot like a child who’d been denied a treat as Lachlan pulled me by the arm to the farthest corner of the cabin—which wasn’t far at all. The tight space was already warming with the heat of our bodies, the air going heavy and hot. No doubt Halla would spend the whole night being sick in the chamber pot. I didn’t want to share the space with her any more than she wanted to share it with me, but I needed to keep her close. She was my leverage. She was my key to Eusia’s demise.
The lantern gave a flicker, dimmed. Lachlan leaned in close to whisper. “Theo ordered the captain to reroute the ship, but I worry about the council’s opinion over it.”
“It’s no surprise that they’d be unhappy.”
“Unhappy is manageable,” he said. “I expected unhappy. This is worse. Everything that’s happened… with you and the Serafi attack… has made Eftan question Theo’s ability to rule and I think he’s finally gone too far… there was a look in his eye.” Lachlan shook his head. “He’s been trying to get the council to invoke a law that would let him essentially rule in Theo’s stead.”
My stomach sank low. Like a taunt, I remembered the Mage Seer’s prophecy.You will bring chaos, ruin, death.And here I was, despite my determination to keep far from him, still compromising Theodore’s crown.
I leaned against the rough wood of the cabin wall. Now that thenepenthe had dwindled, the ache that standing caused me was a deep, brutal current. “They’re all fools to question his care for the realm.”
Lachlan nodded, thoughtful. “Eftan wanted proof. They know Eusia is on Anthemoessa, but they don’t know how we’ll access the island, or how we would defeat her. Revealing to them thatyouwill allow us to accomplish those things might not be wise either—just yet.”
Nerves burned my stomach. “Did you… Does Theodore know? That I’m here.”
Lachlan gave me a brief nod, then pinched his mouth shut, like he would say nothing more on the matter.
I glanced over my shoulder at Halla, who’d laid herself across the cot and pulled the pathetic blanket up to her chin. The lantern wick fought for its dying life, shooting little bursts of light over her supine body.
“They want proof?” The gears in my mind began to whir.
“Proof that the empress is where we say she is, that we can get onto Anthemoessa’s main island when we get there.” Lachlan rubbed at his drooping eyes. “Which is, of course, something we cannot give them.”
A trill of anticipation filled my belly. My heartbeat kicked up in my chest. “Actually,” I said, not bothering to keep my voice between the two of us, “I think we can.”
10
Imogen
Lachlan followed me across the dark upper gun deck, toward the scuttle hatch, with a pouting Halla in tow. We wove through the morning-watch sailors as they woke and readied themselves to swap spots with the middle watch.
“This is one of your worse ideas,” Lachlan called up to me.
I gave him a sardonic glance over my shoulder. “Which is really saying something, isn’t it?”
But I did not know what else to do. I did not want to be the force that dragged Theodore down any more than I already had been.
“You don’t know that a locating spell will work,” Lachlan argued.
His argument was sound. I remembered the passage I’d read from that book on magic, back in Theodore’s palace, like the words had been stitched into my skin.
The night I’d read it, I’d lain beside Theodore, bare legs entwined with his, the book propped upon the warm arm he’d wrapped around my middle, and I’d learned about Eusia, about the true cost of spell work, about how spells could bring back the dead and raise ships from the deep. I’d learned that magic could be used to locate people across the sea.
I did not know how to perform such a spell, but I knew enough about magic to feel certain that Halla’s blood would aid me in finding her mother. In proving to Varya’s royal council that Lachlan’s claim was true. Hopefully that would be enough to keep Theodore’s sovereignty intact.
Lachlan rolled his eyes, stopping hard before the ladder that led up to the main deck. Halla stood behind him, wrapped in her cloak and looking dangerously close to being sick again. Her worried, wide eyes darted between Lachlan and me.
“What about your pain?” Lachlan asked.
It was deep and thumping. Standing, let alone walking, was agony, but compared to what it had been before the healer removed the infection, I could endure. I had to, for I worried that if I slowed, if I stopped, and let myselffeelbefore I reached Agatha and Eusia, this pain would clamp its jaws around me completely and never let go. “What about it?”
He swiped a hand down his face. “At the risk of you thinking I’m unchivalrous—”
“Too late.”
