The balloon teeters against the moonlight as we cross the black waves of the Endless Sea.
The world up here is calm and quiet, no sign of the war below. Of all the souls, vying to cling to their mortality and escape the clutches of the king and his witch.
Soon we will arrive in Polemistés, where the fiercest warriors in the Six Isles will descend upon us. As the only people to have ever held out against the king, I don’t imagine they’ll be too welcoming, but Nox is determined that Polemistés holds the key to his salvation.
He believes that the sword his father spoke of, died for, is there and so there will be no turning around or thinking of another destination.
Where Nox goes, I go.
Staying together is the only reason we’ve survived this long.
“You should rest,” Nox tells me, leaning over the edge of the balloon beside me. “Take note from Micah and Irenya.”
He gestures to our sleeping friends, wrapped in blankets at the edge of the balloon, not at all bothered by the way the wind blows the contraption to and fro through the clouds.
“I’ll sleep when you do.”
“I don’t sleep,” Nox says with a sigh. “Not really.”
“Too busy trying to save the world?” I ask.
He laughs at that, the sound carrying through the whistle of the wind so that he almost becomes a part of it. That’s the thing I’ve noticed with Nox. Where I’ve just existed in this world, shut away from all the things that make it special, Nox has lived in it and become a part of it. He exists in the wind and every promise of adventure. Floating up here, where the stars make their home and the moon is a kiss away, he doesn’t look out of place. He is at home in the sky.
You look like a princess.
I wrap my arms around myself, to keep away the shiver that overtakes me at the memory of his words.
“Polemistés isn’t far,” he says. “I can hardly believe we’re so close to finding the magical weapon my father spoke of.”
I pause slightly at the notion of vengeance in his voice.
It surprises me, the calm in him parting as sudden as an ocean wave to reveal something far more fatal and unyielding beneath.
“What will you do when you find it?” I ask him.
Nox squares his shoulders and draws in a steadying breath.
“Whatever it takes to bring the king to his knees,” he answers.
Though he doesn’t say it, I hear the unspoken words. Even die. Nox is willing to lay down his life for this and I’m the only thing stopping that.
Protect my son, Asden said before he died. Don’t let him pay for this.
I don’t think he realized that the person Nox would need protecting from most was himself. That despite his wishes, Nox has been paying for Asden’s choices every day since.
In a way, I feel like I have too.
It’s strange, but the day Asden died wasn’t just the day I lost my mentor. It was the last time I ever saw a glimpse of caring in my mother, or felt the relief of her touch. Over the years, the pieces of her faded as the blood oath forced her to relent to the king. It stole her more and more over time, but still there were always parts of her, small pieces, that I could find and put back together. After that day, they disappeared completely.
Every glimpse gone.
Every light extinguished.
She never spoke of Asclepina after that, or sang me to sleep when I cried. Now she’s even willing to kill me if that’s what it takes.
Nox may have lost his father that day, but I think I lost my mother too.
“I’m sorry for what happened to him,” I say.
“Who?” Nox asks.
“Your father.”
Nox grows still. His hair tumbles into his face, but this time Nox doesn’t push it away. He lets it stay there, shielding a part of him away from me.
“I miss him,” he says. “And a part of me hates him too.”
His voice is low and tired, as though he has ached to say this for so long.
“I hate him for giving me the burden of this grief,” Nox says. “The burden of trying to end the king’s reign so nobody else will ever have to go through what I have.” He looks to me, brown eyes meeting mine, just as sad as his father’s were. “Does that sound awful?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“It seems impossible to love and hate someone so equally,” he says.
I nod, running a finger across the space where my bracelet used to be. “I understand how that feels.”
“I know you do,” Nox says. He raises a brow. “I’ve met your mother.”
I snort out a laugh, unable to help myself.
“I wish I knew what happened to him.” Nox leans farther over the edge of the balloon, to the world that beckons below. “I know the king killed him and made it look like an accident, but if I knew what my father’s final moments were truly like, how it happened and what he was thinking, then maybe it would … I think maybe it would give me…”
He pauses, searching for the right word.
“Solace?” I offer.
“Closure,” he says. “For years, my every thought has been of my father. Even if we find the sword and kill the king, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to free him from my mind. How can I move on if I don’t know what I’m supposed to be moving on from?”
A shard of sorrow gets lodged inside me, sharp enough that I want to wince and cry out.
If Nox discovers that I was there when his father died—worse, that I was the one who foresaw his death—he’d abandon me to the king. He wouldn’t care that Asden was my friend and my teacher. He’d think all magic, including mine—especially mine—was evil and would never trust me again.
I want so desperately for Nox to trust me, I realize. Whatever bond tied us together to begin with has been replaced by something else, not dictated by fate, but by choice.
I don’t want to lose that.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you find out what happened,” I say.
The betrayal slips easily from my lips.
Nox’s hand shifts, moving just a moment across the balloon’s edge, a fraction closer to mine. My hand aches beneath my gloves.
“You help me in other ways,” Nox says.
I look at his hand, so close to mine. At his arm, his neck, his dimpled chin, until I reach his eyes.
They aren’t cautious and demanding like my mother’s, or dark and angry like the king’s. They aren’t fearful or expectant like everyone else’s have always been.
They’re just brown and staring straight back at me.
“I should give you another vision,” I say quickly, swallowing the unsteady feeling in my chest.
Nox blinks back his surprise. It is the first time I’ve ever offered in place of being asked.
“Are you sure?” The concern in his voice makes my heart pound. “I know how much they affect you.”
I nod. “We have to be ready for what may happen on Polemistés.”
Between the island of warriors and the immortal king, it makes the most sense to be prepared. Though it isn’t just that. There is a more selfish part of me that wants to give Nox a vision because I don’t want to push down this craving for his touch any longer.
I pull my glove from my hand and place it into my pocket.
Nox swallows and the sound is louder than even Micah’s snoring.
“Ready?” I ask him.
Nox smiles at the familiarity of the words that he has always been the first to ask. “Ready, princess,” he says.
He slips his hand over the top of mine, cool with the touch of night. My heart races, every inch of me humming as his fingers slide down my hand and press against my wrist.
Wrapping around me, securing me to him.
It is the safest I have ever felt.
This time when death comes, I am ready.
We are standing on a beach, with legions before us.
The sky above roars with thunder and the clouds gather, turning a bright crimson. The Red Moon.
My mother holds out a clenched fist and I am caught in the net of her power, my arms raised in the air, frozen, like an icicle dripping from the rooftop. The wind wraps around me as she siphons its power into me, turning it from flowing breeze to chains.
“If you will not bow, you will die,” she says. “You both will.”
She turns to Nox and I see him on his knees, gasping out for breath. Above him, Seryth towers like a mighty statue.
“I’ll give you what you crave,” he says. “I’ll let you meet your father again.”
Then without ceremony, he picks up Nox’s sword—Asden’s sword—and slices it through the air.
Wordless, almost casual.
The blade cuts clean into Nox’s heart.
My mother unclenches her fist and I fall to my knees.
Across the beach, Nox’s eyes find mine.
Run, he mouths.
The light fades from his eyes before he hits the ground.
My breath dies in my throat.
Seryth turns to me, his eyes such a pure, bottomless black.
“Now it’s your turn,” he says.
“Selestra,” Nox calls to me now.
This time, he doesn’t rip his hand from mine to pull me from the vision.
His voice alone is enough to do that and his fingers stay laced in mine, pulse pressing steadily on my own as he coaxes me to the present.
From the worst moment I have ever seen.
“There will be a battle on the shores of Polemistés,” I say, gathering my breath. “And—”
“Later,” Nox says, pushing the words away as if they don’t matter to him anymore. The concern in his eyes grows. “Are you all right?”
I shake my head.
His father’s sword. The king is going to kill Nox with Asden’s own sword and I will be powerless to stop it.
“I won’t let it happen,” I promise Nox.
Though he doesn’t yet know what I’m talking about, his face softens. “Why do you keep saving me?” he asks.
Because we’re connected by fate, I think.
But the moment I think it, everything in me screams that it’s a lie.
Nox and I are connected, but it isn’t the only reason I’ve saved his life. It isn’t what drove me to search for him in the battle on the pirate ship, or what called my magic from deep inside to save him. Nor is it what makes my heart feel like it might explode at the thought of him dying on that beach.
It’s because I’ve already seen so many people’s lives ruined during the Festival of Predictions.
Because Nox reminds me of his father.
And because there is something about him, this wild boy who steals adventure from the clouds, that calls to me. It punctures through me more fiercely than any blade.
The king can’t take that.
I won’t let him.