The weight of it presses down the length of my spine.
I was sealed into stone to protect this coast. I woke into a world I do not fully recognize, tethered to a woman I did not ask for, and now the war I thought I had already fought is arriving at the same harbor where my rubble still sits in the square.
Selah is looking at me. She has turned in her chair, and her green eyes are steady. I feel through the tether that she already knows what expression I am wearing.
“I know what you’re about to say. You’re going to tell me I should leave. That if I run, they follow me and the town stays safe.” Her chin lifts. “I have been running for months. Everyplace I stopped, I left. Moved on before I could make it worse. But those families Vaedrin had killed didn’t get to run. Those children—” She stops and swallows once. “He’s been doing this for years, and the relic is the only proof. If I run, he buries it. He buries all of it.” Her hands close at her sides. “I’m not leaving this time.”
The tether tells me everything she is feeling in that moment. She is full of fear underneath the resolve. There is grief locked behind her jaw and exhaustion brought on by surviving so long they almost forgot what fighting back felt like.
“Then we do not let him have the harbor,” I say.
It is not the answer I intended to give. It is, apparently, the only one I have.
9
SELAH
The inn looks nothing like it did three days ago. Corvin has pulled up sections of the cellar floor and connected them to the smuggling tunnels that run beneath Gullhaven. Planks have been replaced with false panels. Crates are repositioned to cover trapdoors. The back corridor that leads from the kitchen to the harbor alley now has three separate exits, each one known to a different set of people. Rennic has spent two days running messages between the fishing quarter and the farms north of town without sleeping enough to look human.
It is organized chaos, and I am in the middle of it, which is exactly where Droza does not want me.
“You should be in the room.” He says it from the doorway of the back corridor, arms crossed, wings held tight against his back in that particular way that means he is restraining himself from doing something larger.
“I’m helping Corvin route the Aldermere family through the south tunnel.” I don’t look up from the map Corvin has spread across the kitchen table. “The Aldermeres have two children under five. They need someone who can keep them calm whenthey move through the dark. I’m smaller than everyone else here, and I don’t terrify toddlers on sight.”
A beat of silence.
“That was not directed at you personally,” I add.
“Go to the room.”
“Droza.”
“Selah.”
I finally look at him. The golden glow of his eyes is steady, which I have learned means he is working very hard to stay level.
“I am not property,” I say quietly. “I’m not going to become something you store somewhere safe while the actual work happens without me. These families are being moved because of what I brought to Gullhaven. The least I can do is make myself useful.”
He doesn’t answer. He holds the doorway and watches me go back to the map.
By midday,I helped coordinate routes for three families and talked Rennic through a near-panic when one of his dock contacts stopped responding to messages. Droza has not left the inn’s perimeter.
We don’t fight about it again, but we don’t speak much either. The tension between us has a different texture now than it did before the watchtower. Before, it was friction. Now it is something that has been pulled toward tenderness and then yanked back by circumstances, and neither of us quite knows what to do with the leftover weight of it.
I step outside before the afternoon light starts to fade. The harbor stinks of brine and rain, and the wind is cold enough to cut through my coat. I want five minutes of air that doesn’t smell like sawdust and anxiety.
The docks are quieter than usual. Most of the fishing boats have been pulled from the water. The few sailors still working move quickly, heads down, the way people move when they’ve heard something they don’t like.
I’m watching the horizon when the man steps into my path.
He is large, not Droza large, but large enough to block the narrow stretch between two tied-off fishing vessels. He has dark hair, sun-weathered skin, and a lazy confidence.
“Haven’t seen you before,” he says. “You staying at the inn?”
“Passing through.” I keep my voice flat and start to move around him.
“No need to rush.” His eyes move over me and my skin crawls. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”
