Seventeen

Safire gaped at the scorched and soulless wreck before them. It seemed to her like something between a lighthouse and a temple, half burned to the ground.

The scrin.

Had she heard Eris correctly? This was the scrin—the place Asha and Torwin had set out for?

A horrible thought struck her then.

What if they were in there as it burned?

“No . . .”

Suddenly, she was running, dragging Eris behind her. She passed beneath the entrance, where flames had eaten the doors right off their hinges. Her heart pounded in her chest. Her stomach tightened into knots.

Eris halted just inside, forcing her to stop. “Safire.”

Safire didn’t hear her. Her gaze hastily scanned the dark interior, looking for . . .

Fingers dug into her shoulder. On instinct, Safire spun, drawing her stolen knife, eyes wild. Eris let go, raising her bound hands, and took a step back. Eris’s pale hair was slick against her face and her body shivered uncontrollably. Safire could see the girl’s collarbone through her shirt, soaked as she was.

“It happened a long time ago,” said Eris.

Lightning crashed above, illuminating the ruin. It was then that Safire saw the leaves, decomposing in the corners. And the fallen timbers, soft and rotted with rain and age.

Asha must have arrived, found the scrin a ruin, and left.

Unless she was still here. . . .

Safire glanced around her. They stood in a wide room with high ceilings, its purpose unclear to her. Piles of ash and rubble gathered along one wall while several archways—their doors long since burned away—stood empty on the other.

The only unbroken window rose high on the north-facing wall. A faceless woman was cast in multiple shades of blue and purple glass while seven stars crowned her forehead. In one hand she held a loom, and in the other a spindle shining like starlight.

Safire recognized her. It was the same image woven into the tapestry on her office wall. The tapestry Eris stole.

“The Skyweaver,” Eris explained, looking where she looked. “A god who spins souls into stars and weaves them into the sky.”

Eris stepped forward, toward a statue standing beneath the window. At first glance, Safire thought it was a dog. But when she looked closer, she saw chiseled wings and a lion’s tail. Talons and a head like an eagle.

The statue was cracked, the head fallen to the floor. Eris picked up the head in both hands, almost tenderly.

Safire looked at the pile of rubble at her feet. Reaching down, she pulled out a shaft of burned wood.

What happened here?

She turned to ask Eris, but paused when she found the girl picking something else up off the floor. From where Safire stood, it looked like a small gold disk. And from the way Eris stared at it, it seemed to be important.

“What is it?”

Eris looked up, her brows stitched in a frown as she seemed to be piecing something together.

“A button,” she said, her thumb tracing its circumference. “Belonging to someone you know.”

She flicked it. The button arched toward Safire, who caught it in her free hand. When her fingers uncurled to reveal the object on her palm, Safire’s heart skipped.

She remembered that day on the dragon fields with Asha, who’d worn her new flight coat. The one Dax had made uniquely for her, his Namsara. Safire remembered the way the sun glinted off the golden buttons down the front, each one impressed with an image of a namsara flower.

The button lying on her palm was one of those same buttons.

“She’s here,” said Eris, already turning, her gaze searching the shadows. “Or was here recently.”

Safire glanced up to find Eris changed. Standing before her was no longer the drugged, drenched waif of a girl she’d climbed the stone steps with. This girl looked more like the one on Jemsin’s ship, that night in the rain. Her hair shone like starlight and she smelled like a storm—surging, powerful. Her green eyes lit up as her gaze searched the scrin, hungry to find her prey.

The sight made Safire remember what Kor said.

Let me tell you something about Jemsin’s precious Death Dancer. . . .

Safire remembered how Eris had been reluctant to come here. How she seemed weighed down—almost sick—the closer they came.

Seven years ago, she set fire to a temple full of people. Half of them children. Not a single one of them escaped.

“You did this,” Safire realized aloud, drawing her stolen dagger. Eris spun. Seeing the blade, she drew back. But the rope was still tied to Safire’s belt. She was still a prisoner. “The temple Kor spoke of . . . it was this place.” Safire shook her head at the monstrosity of it, imagining the ones locked inside these walls as they burned. Imagining their panic and fear. “This is why the Lumina are hunting you. Because you’re a monster.”

Filled with loathing, Safire backed the Death Dancer up against the wall, keeping the blade pointed at her chest.

“That’s right,” Eris said bitterly, her back hitting the charred red-clay bricks. “Why not finish the job you prevented Kor from doing? It’s what the empress will do as soon as you hand me in anyway. This way, you can save yourself the misery of my company.”

Safire heard the resignation in her voice as she said it. As if she truly wanted Safire to plunge the knife in. To end it all.

But a remorseful murderer was still a murderer. This one had killed innocents. Eris wouldn’t hesitate to hunt down Asha in exchange for her freedom—especially now that she knew how close the Namsara really was. Right here on these islands.

Eris stared Safire down, a challenge in her eyes. “Go on,” she said, pushing back, forcing the steel of Safire’s blade to pierce her skin. “Get it over with, princess.”

Safire’s grip tightened around the dagger. But this crime hadn’t been committed against her. Safire wasn’t going to take Eris’s life. She would deliver her to the empress and let the laws of the Star Isles deal with her.

Seeing her hesitation, Eris whispered, “What happened to the girl who puts knives through the hearts of her enemies?”

Safire narrowed her eyes.

Jarek. She never should have said his name aloud. Not in front of Eris. But it was too late. And Eris’s question—the thought of him—threw Safire back to the night of the revolt: the king was dead; Dax had won; Jarek stood surrounded by their rebel army.

Safire had waited her whole life for that moment: to see her tormentor brought to his knees. But Jarek wouldn’t kneel. At the very end, he was still standing, still fighting, refusing to bend to the new order.

Safire had never hated him more than in that moment. Hated his defiance and loyalty. Hated it because, just for a moment, it made her understand him.

It made her see herself in him.

So, yes. She put a knife through his heart.

She thought her hatred would go with him. That his death would soothe the ache of a lifetime of loathing. But it didn’t.

As Safire stood over Jarek’s corpse that night, with the killing blade in her hand, her hate remained swollen inside her. She felt sick with it.

“Safire?”

The voice chased the memory away. Immediately, she was back in that ruined room, and though it was her pressing a stolen dagger to Eris’s collarbone, she was the one who felt unexpectedly defenseless.

It happened sometimes, when she was alone on her rounds. Or awake in her bed. Or even standing watch over the king in a busy assembly. Suddenly, irrationally, this feeling would come over her: a craving to be held. For someone to tell her it was going to be all right.

That she was going to be all right.

It shamed her, that feeling. Because of course she was perfectly fine. Safire didn’t need someone to take care of her. She took care of herself.

“I’m sorry,” Eris said suddenly. “For whatever he did to you.”

Safire abruptly became aware of just how close they were standing. Close enough to feel the warmth of Eris against her. Close enough to smell the scent on her skin—like thunder and lightning.

And then, from behind them, someone cleared his throat.

Safire went rigid. Eris glanced up, over her shoulder.

“Am I interrupting something?” came a deep, familiar voice. A voice Safire would know anywhere. Her heart leaped at the sound of it and she whirled to look.

“Dax!”

The dragon king stood before her, dressed in a gold tunic. A saber hung at his hip and four guards flanked him. His dark curls glistened with rain and though exhaustion dulled his brown eyes, the relief at the sight of Safire—alive—was clear in his smile.

She hadn’t realized she missed him until that moment. How much she missed all of them. Her cousin’s presence sent a rush of joy through Safire. She wanted nothing more than to hug him, but Eris’s rope was still attached to her belt and Safire’s blade was still pointed at the girl’s chest, keeping her from trying anything.

So instead, she asked him, “How did you find me?”

Dax opened his mouth to answer. But his eyes fell on Eris and he said, “Who’s this?”

Safire looked to the Death Dancer, who’d gone uncharacteristically quiet.

“This . . .” But what could she say?

The girl who’d burned down this temple along with everyone in it?

The thief who intended to hunt down Asha and deliver her to the deadliest pirate on the Silver Sea?

The empress’s fugitive?

Safire took a step back, putting space between herself and Eris. Because of course, Eris was all of those things. “Never mind that right now. There are pirates nearby and I’d rather avoid them if we can.”

“They’ve already been dealt with.”

Safire tilted her head at Dax. “You caught them?”

He nodded, his gaze flicking from her to Eris and back. “They’re being taken to the ship as we speak.”

He glanced over his shoulder, motioning for guards Safire couldn’t see until they stepped out of the shadows and into the starlight. The four soldats moved in, blades drawn, surrounding Safire’s captive. “We can take her from here, commandant.”

But Safire shook her head. “This girl is the worst kind of criminal,” she told them, grabbing Eris’s shoulder and pulling her away from the wall. “She remains with me.”

There was no way she was entrusting Eris to anyone else’s care. Now that she’d captured the Death Dancer, she couldn’t let her escape.

Asha’s safety depended on it.