Lynn
I WOULD HAVE liked to pass out myself, but someone had to do the cleaning up.
It took about ten minutes for Latoya and her troops to finish off the last of the Freemen, ten minutes that Ariadne spent standing stock-still, eyes glued to Latoya as she whirled and slashed and pounded. I myself was tired both of standing and of sitting in the dirt, so I sat on Darren instead. She’d fallen on her stomach, luckily, so her buttocks made a raised seat, and it was easy to keep an eye on her that way.
When the last unfriendly face had been punched, and the last unfriendly testicle smashed into testicle jam, Latoya hurled down her sticky chain and raced over to us. Ariadne raised herself up on her toes and lowered herself again, like someone getting ready to jump off a cliff, and changing their mind at the last second.
Latoya ground to a halt a foot away. “Uh,” she began, with eloquence rivalling that which Darren displayed at stressful moments.
Ariadne had no such difficulty. She spread her arms. “Seriously? Seriously?”
“Um,” Latoya said this time.
“I’m so angry that I can’t even decide who to murder. You made me believe that you betrayed my baby sister!”
Latoya closed her eyes briefly, and she let out a sigh of pure exasperation. “Because it was the best play we had after you decided to martyr yourself.”
“That was my choice.”
“And coming after you was mine. I’ve chosen you so many times and in so many ways, Ariadne. Now you have to decide whether this is what you want, too.”
“Well, of bloody course I want you!” Ariadne screamed into the wind. “But how can I do that to you? You know what it’ll mean to live your life with me. It would mean choosing this bloody country and its bloody people and this bloody, bloody war—”
“I already chose those things—”
“But why? Why?”
“You chose them!”
“Yes, well, I’m an idiot!”
“Maybe I am too. Or maybe it’s because I like solving problems, or maybe Darren infected me, or maybe I want to do something that’s never been done before. Whatever the reason—no, look at me—I’m not afraid of what a life with you would mean. Not as long as you’re choosing me, too. Are you listening?”
“I . . . I . . .” Ariadne put a hand up to her head, and blinked hard, swaying. Latoya’s eyes widened with worry, but Ariadne shook off the moment of dizziness.
“I want to continue this conversation,” she said, in something close to her normal tone. “But not this very minute. You see, I think I’m on the point of having a bit of a breakdown, and if you don’t mind, I’d like you to hold me for the next ten hours.”
Latoya blinked. “Oh.”
“Is that all right?”
“Of course.”
I can be polite, from time to time, in situations where it doesn’t take much of an effort, so I looked away when Ariadne launched herself into Latoya’s arms. I still heard them—the heavy breathing, Latoya’s husky voice murmuring, “I was so scared for you,” and Ariadne’s voice in answer, repeating, “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”
At least I didn’t have to lock them in a crate together, I thought, patting Darren’s thigh as she stirred underneath me. I already had more than enough to do.
THE NEXT WEEK passed in a blur of dispatch-sending and bandage-rolling and firewood-gathering. Miniature disasters bloomed on every side, and had to be stomped out before they grew to full size.
Ten or so of the Freemen who had surrendered to us tried to unsurrender the next day, then re-surrendered when Latoya demonstrated her ability to bend swords into novelty cock rings. The sick men called Ariadne an angel when she brought them clean water from the well in the hill-fort, and kept clutching at the hem of her dress. It rained, snowed, and rained some more. A rabid-looking squirrel found its way into the middle of the camp. The messengers from Torasan Keep were hostile at first, then cautious, then curious, and then swung back to hostile for no apparent reason.
It was just one thing after another in a sort of conga line of frustration. Darren, through it all, was so loving and patient with me that I finally had to bite her ear and chew semi-hard until she was forced to grab me and hold me still. Once she figured out what I was asking her to do, she did it, with as much pirate queen swagger as I ever could have wished. All the restless itchy terribleness of the world’s never ending demands went away when I was pinned to our bedroll, with Darren’s weight and breath above me, keeping me down.
The world came back the next day, because the sun has this exasperating habit of rising each dawn. Fortunately, Darren ordered me to stay in our tent all morning—once I’d given her a series of pointed hints to that effect—and that gave me enough time to level out again.
Three days and a cross-island march later, we were back at the Keep for peace talks.
There was an odd selection of people on the rebels’ side of the bargaining table. Gryff, the lieutenant whom Milo had left in charge of the Keep, had shown a bit too much interest in a seven-year-old page boy. As a result, a bunch of kitchen servants got together and encouraged him to take a swan-dive off the castle walls. Encouraged him pretty hard, I must say. He splattered into so many bits at the bottom that it took a whole month of rainstorms to get rid of all the stains.
After Gryff made his dive, a ragtag bunch of strong personalities had taken charge in his place. There was a drover, and a dockmaster, and a cook named Tavia that Darren couldn’t quite look in the eye.
It was the drover, a man named Kelman, who bent over the table in the first hour of negotiations and said, “There’s one thing you have to accept. Darren of Torasan will not be lady of the Isle.”
And Darren, who wanted to rule the Isle rather less than she wanted to wear trousers with inward-facing spikes on the crotch, managed to summon a shocked expression. “You must admit that I’m the rightful heir.”
All by herself, Darren did this. Without any encouragement from me. Without so much as a nudge or a poke. Which proves, once again, that nobody is unteachable, as long as you’re willing to put in the time.
Latoya jumped in. “You’re going to have to give way on this one, pirate queen. Torasan’s legacy can’t be redeemed. Your house has to end here, or there’ll never be peace.”
“That’s what we say,” Kelman agreed, and a mighty argument erupted, Darren shouting and protesting on one side of the table, Latoya pounding her fist on the other.
And I twisted around and pressed my face against Darren’s trousers to hide the smug smile that I couldn’t suppress. Sometimes, things just work out.
We’d spent hours preparing for the negotiation the night before, charting out eight or ten ways that Latoya could emerge as the spokesman of the rebels without being too obvious about it. Then Latoya and I came up with five or six more ideas after the others went to sleep. Even so, we hadn’t been really happy with any of the options. They’d been sketchy, relying on guesses and estimates, full of if-this-then-that contingencies.
No need for any of that now. Darren and Latoya could dominate the table for hours, as Darren demanded the throne and Latoya shouted her down. By the time Darren finally, reluctantly gave way, Latoya would be positioned as the loudest voice among the rebels, which was right where she needed to be, for the next stage. Negotiations are much smoother when you control both sides.
And all with minimal work on my part. Hell, I could probably take a nap.
I didn’t nap, though, because it was too entertaining to watch the two of them going at it. Darren wasn’t used to Latoya yelling at her, sneering at her, and discussing her personal flaws in brutal detail. It made for some quite genuine frustration on Darren’s part, which, in turn, caused Darren to be extra shouty and obnoxious. Lots of fun.
After a few hours of this, a bell clanged down in the harbour. Darren went rigid; so did Kelman, and Spinner, and—I scanned the crowd quickly—yes, everyone who had grown up on the Isle. Only outsiders like Latoya and I were in the dark.
“Corsairs,” Darren said. She gave my shoulder a squeeze and stood up, ripping her cutlass from its sheath. That was sort of silly, since she would have to sprint to the harbour and climb onto a ship before she could get in stabbing range of a corsair, and it would be awkward to do all that with sword in hand. It looked good, though, so it was still a reasonable decision, from a piracy perspective. “Quick break for violence?”
Latoya shrugged. “I need to stretch my legs, anyway.”
And they headed out together because they were still, occasionally, the same kind of idiot.
While Darren played conquering hero, I kept up my work in the council room, flitting between groups of people, now listening, now suggesting, now diving behind a pillar to compare notes with Spinner. I got so engrossed that it seemed minutes before she was back.
Darren stalked through the hall, sweaty but uninjured, and tossed her bloody cutlass down on the council table as she went—a nice touch. Just before she reached the far door, she snapped her fingers in my direction. “Girl, attend me.”
I scrambled to follow her to the storage room we’d appropriated as a base of operations. “How did it go?” I asked, as soon as the door swung shut behind us.
“Fine. Corto’s sword arm is back in form. He did the slashy-slashy-make-them-all-die thing. I just watched his back.” Darren nodded towards the council chamber. “Do you think that our friends in there are ready for the next step?”
“I think so. Spinner and I have been warming them up for you. Question is, are you ready, Ariadne?”
Ariadne had been waiting in the storage room for most of the day, alternately pacing and chewing her nails down to the nub, fussing with her clothes and re-doing her makeup. She must have gone through six or seven different faces before she settled on light powder, faint blue shadows around the eyes, and a hollow in each cheek. It was a haunted, unsettling look, but it gave her a solemnity that was worlds away from her old costume of lace, frills, and titters.
“Am I ready?” Ariadne repeated. “Well, that depends. You think anybody’ll notice if I throw up and then run away screaming? Or if I scream and then run away throwing up?”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that. The things that I’ve done here . . . the things that these people have seen me do . . .”
Her voice cracked on that, her breath quickening. It was all so fresh and raw for her still, and I wondered all over again whether this was really the right move.
I took hold of her hands before she could rub her eyes and destroy her makeup all over again. “You don’t have to do this. We can find somebody else.”
“Lynn, stop,” said Darren, of all people. It was surprise, more than anything, that made me shut up. “Ariadne, listen. She’s right. You don’t have to do this. You can say no. But I’m asking you to do it, because in a decade of searching, I won’t find anyone better. The job needs you. It needs everything that you are.”
Was it my imagination, or did Ariadne stand a little straighter at those words? She moistened her lips. “You’ll be there?”
“Every moment. For crowd control, and whatever else you need, up to and including snack delivery.” Darren carefully plucked a piece of lint from the shoulder of Ariadne’s dress, and flicked it away. “Not that you’ll need us. You’re a force of nature and you’ve terrified me since the day we met, and I know with every speck of my soul that you can do this goddamn thing. So give them hell, princess.”
“You bloody pirates and your smooth talk,” Ariadne said, after a few seconds in which I didn’t breathe at all. “Fine. But you’ve promised me snacks, and they’d better be excellent. If you try to foist me off with carrot sticks, murder will be committed.”
“I think that’s entirely fair.”
BACK AT THE council table, Ariadne sat very tall, very straight. She didn’t fidget, and her face was cool and composed, but she was breathing much too fast.
Latoya, on the rebels’ side of the table, cut right to the chase with her first question. “Why should these people let you rule their island?”
“I’d do it well,” Ariadne said, without a pause, but without a whole lot of conviction, either. “I know how to administer a state. I understand trade and fiscal policy and military strategy.”
“So we should make you a queen because you’ve read a lot of books?”
Yes—that was the right tone, that edge of scorn and condescension. It stiffened Ariadne’s spine, made her eyes flare and her chin jut out.
“I know how to do the job,” she said. “I once negotiated a sixteen-part treaty with the House of Tours and entertained thirteen lords for supper on the same day. I can make a balance sheet sit up straight and sing hallelujah.”
“So what would you do if, say . . .”
Latoya shot off a question, a complicated one that involved flour prices and barley blight, and Ariadne answered. Latoya asked another, this time about defending a long border with inadequate troops, and Ariadne answered. By now, the other people at the table were getting interested. Kelman asked about conscription and Tavia asked about meat imports, and Ariadne answered and answered and answered again. She didn’t always have a perfect solution, and when she didn’t, she admitted it, but she weighed each problem, took it apart into bite-sized pieces, and suggested a way over or under or through.
She wasn’t shaking anymore.
After an hour or so, the rebels ran out of questions. Latoya shot me a quick glance, and I nodded. Time for the tricky part.
“All right, you know how to govern,” Latoya said. “But someone else could learn. Why should these people put your faith in you? Why should they let you send their children to war? How do they know that you won’t turn into another Stribos, or Milo? Why will you be any different?”
Ariadne’s eyes sought out mine, and held them, as she gathered her courage. We’d planned for this, practised it, but even so . . .
She swallowed hard, gripped the edge of the table, and finally said the words out loud. “I’m barren.”
There wasn’t the uproar that I’d half-expected, but there was instant unease, bodies shifting in their chairs.
“I know,” she said, before anyone could talk. “Blood is rank and blood is right and blood is bloody everything, and in the eyes of every other Kilan noble, I’m a broken useless woman, unfit to rule so much as a tea trolley. And that’s exactly why you want me ruling you. You need a guarantee that things won’t go straight back to business as usual once I’m on the throne? This is the best you’re going to get. The rest of the ruling class will never accept me, and if I adopt an heir, they’ll never accept him or her. Whatever happens, I’ll have to fight all my life for the right to exist, and the right to pass on my crown. If I’m going to rule in Kila, I have to change Kila. I don’t have another choice.”
That was the end of her prepared speech, the one she’d practised in a mirror the night before, while I rubbed her shoulders and muttered encouragement. But she wasn’t quite done.
“I’ve been messed up a long time,” Ariadne said. “Like most of you, I suspect. But I’m done with hiding my damage. I’m going to hone it and polish it and sharpen it and send it off to war, and with it, I will fight for you. For us. I’ll fight for all of us.”
THAT WAS THE end of the job interview, but not the end of the conversation. There was more talk after that, and more, and more, and bleeding hell, more, about everything from the punishment for theft to the price of salt. So much talk that Latoya scooted her chair close to Ariadne so that they could hold hands under the table, and Darren took me out of the room for half an hour to commit some crimes against god, man, and nature. But we all refocused for the last item on the agenda, which was the re-naming of Torasan Isle.
Darren was very quiet during this, though she didn’t protest. I stroked her leg while other people made their proposals. I really wanted to suggest “Thundercunt,” because, though I knew it wouldn’t win, it was bound to liven up the debate. I managed to quell the urge, though.
It was Kelman who suggested calling the Isle the “Stormrock.” It sounded ridiculous to me, but most of the people in the room seemed happy with it. It wasn’t important. I let it pass.
THE FIRST TIME I offered to deal with Jada, Darren refused very politely. The second time she was less polite, the third time she was positively sarcastic, and the tenth time, she was too frustrated even to speak, and just made gurgling noises. We argued for approximately forever before she agreed to at least let me in the room.
Jada didn’t bother to get up from her stool when we came in. (She had a stool in her cell—and a cot, and a bucket. All the conveniences. Darren had insisted.) Her breakfast tray was at her feet, empty except for crumbs and spilt tea. For a little while, Jada had refused to eat and her meal trays came back to the kitchen untouched, but you need willpower to play that game, and she didn’t last long.
Darren closed the door, leaned against the door. She wasn’t quite as angry as I would have liked. More bewildered, and sad, and even a bit fond.
Jada spoke before long. Of course the little coward didn’t have the stones to wait out the silence. “Are you going to ask why I did it, pirate queen?”
Spite in the words, a prickle of venom, but Darren didn’t blink. “How’s your head?”
“I won’t die before you have a chance to execute me,” Jada said, picking at the skin around a thumbnail. “That’s what you’re worried about, right?”
“You’re not going to be executed.”
The breath left Jada’s lungs in a sudden hard pant, a sign of relief that she couldn’t quite hide. When she looked up, her eyes were bright and glassy with unshed tears. “You murdered Milo. Why spare me?”
Darren sighed. “Jada—”
“You murdered him!” And now the tears were flowing, as Jada’s face twisted up with ugly anguish. “There’s never been anyone like him, there never will be again. He saw all the horror around us that no one else could see, and he dared to take the world by the throat and shake it and choke it until the rest of us could see it too. He took the stupid preening pigs who were set to rule over us and he made them crawl and he made them cower. There are a thousand fat greasy nobles gloating over his death today who don’t deserve to lick his boots clean. And you killed—”
“It was me, actually.” I raised my hand. “Spinner helped, but I definitely got the killing process started. Rather enjoyed it. Would do it again.”
Darren pinched the bridge of her nose. “Lynn, didn’t you promise to keep your opinions to yourself during this heart-to-heart?”
“Yes, but I didn’t really mean it, so it doesn’t count. Jada, you vicious little idiot—you do realize that Milo had nothing but contempt for you?”
“Maybe I deserved it,” Jada flung back. “Maybe we all deserved contempt from a man like him. You’ll never understand why—”
“I do understand,” Darren said—tired now, as well as sad. “You sat alone in the dark and took out your soul and looked it over, and whenever you saw a rotten patch, you tried to cut it out. Maybe you wouldn’t have cut so much if you’d been a little less lonely. Maybe you wouldn’t have cut so much if you’d been a little bit braver. But as it was, you cut and you cut and there wasn’t much left of you when you finished. You left a big hole, and Milo poured in and filled it. And that was that.”
She put a heavy hand on my shoulder, and I shifted my weight to support her. I hadn’t had a chance yet to bully her into eating lunch.
“I’m leaving now,” Darren said. “You’ll be leaving soon, too. Maybe, one day, we’ll be able to talk to each other again. But if that happens, it won’t be for a long time, I don’t think. You need to figure out who you are, and whether you want to be something more than Milo’s creature. And if you do come back from that, it’s going to hurt like hell. I couldn’t keep you from that pain if I wanted to. I don’t even know if I want to. I think I probably don’t.”
There seemed nothing else to say after that, and anyway, Jada had lost interest. She slumped in the corner of the cell, tears streaming, and gnawed at a bloody hangnail. Darren rapped twice on the door.
Outside the cell, Jess stood waiting, a solid reassuring presence in her tunic of nut-hull brown. She fell into step beside us as we headed down the hall.
“I’m not making any promises,” she said. “That is one damaged girl.”
“I’m not asking for promises. You know what I’m asking for?” Darren squeaked to a sudden stop. “Cows. I want Jada to spend at least the next five years up to her elbows in cow shit. I want her to shovel mountains of the stuff.”
“And as I told you, Holly and I can make that happen. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to change. Just don’t get your hopes too high, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Right.” Darren stared at the toes of her boots. “I’m grateful, you know.”
“Yes, yes. I should be horribly insulted. Your sister is an accomplice to mass murder, and how are you punishing her? You’re sending her off to spend time with me.”
“Her punishment is being banished to cow shit purgatory, as you know perfectly well—and can you please stop taking the piss out of me for two consecutive seconds? I’m serious.”
Jess smoothed her hands down her long split tunic, flicking away an invisible speck of dust. “Our relationship, such as it is, consists of me taking the piss out of you. It’s a little late to renegotiate.”
“Oh, for the love of crumpets.” Darren turned imploring eyes at the ceiling. “Will you just let me thank you for once?”
“For what?”
“For always being there when I needed you. Even after I dumped you by sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night. When I think of everything that you’ve done for me—when I try to imagine what would have happened if you’d been even a little less kind—”
“Oh, shut up,” Jess snapped, though her eyes glistened. “Are you fishing for compliments? Fine, then. You are, in many special ways, an asshole, but damn it all, you care so much and you try so hard. So I don’t mind having your back. I never did. Now, begone. Ariadne wants to see you before the coronation.”
They managed to get through something that was halfway between a handshake and a hug before Darren hurried off, and then I politely pretended not to notice while Jess blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
“I forgot to ask,” she said, tucking her handkerchief away. “Are Holly and I supposed to send updates about the murder baby? If Jada discovers the remnants of her soul, or if she falls off the wagon and starts to kill kittens with her teeth, do you want us to keep Darren in the loop?”
“You’ll keep me in the loop. I’ll decide what my mistress needs to know.”
“Yes, I figured.” She tucked her hands into the opposite sleeves and gave me a long, level stare. “Are both of you all right?”
“Sometimes. For certain definitions of ‘all right.’ Or did you mean now, specifically? Because we’re not all right just at the moment, no.”
Darren had woken up halfway through the previous night and spent an hour sitting at the edge of our bunk, just staring. I’d been awake already, so I watched, and eventually held her, but I couldn’t take her nightmares away, any more than she could take mine.
“Holly wants to see you,” Jess said.
“And I want to see her. Maybe we’ll be able to swing by the secret harbour soon, for a visit.”
“For an afternoon. Or, at most, a day. And then you’ll be back at sea.” She sighed. “We both know that Darren’s martyr complex will drive her forward until she drops, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep pace with her. I wish you would slow down once in a while, Lynn.”
“I can’t. Sometimes, I wish that I could . . . but, well, I’m useful this way. And I just can’t.”
This didn’t seem to cheer her up much, so I gave her hand a reassuring pat. “On the plus side, now I’ve met Darren’s family, so I don’t have that hanging over my head anymore.”
AND SO, AT high tide on New Year’s Day, as all the world knows, Ariadne was crowned High Lady of Kila.
That “High Lady” part was aspirational in the extreme, since her realm was limited to the Stormrock and a mile of sea offshore, but we had to think big. Besides, we were pretty sure that we’d make gains soon, what with Darren’s fleet and our connections to Bero, and we didn’t want to have to arrange a whole other coronation six months down the line.
We didn’t have an actual crown, a problem we’d only recognized the night before, so Spinner improvised something at the last minute with copper wire and grey seed pearls. It did the trick, though it fell apart shortly afterwards, if I remember right.
We also didn’t have a priest, so Latoya did the crowning. She was in full Master of Storms regalia, with embroidered vest and wrist bands. A coiled anchor chain hung over her shoulder, scoured until it gleamed silver-bright.
I lurked behind a pillar at the back of the Great Hall and watched the pageantry. Ariadne bowed her head, Latoya set the pearl-and-copper chaplet into place. The sun cooperated, for once, and streamed through the window arches just at the right moment, bathing everything gold. Cheers, clapping, all of that.
Darren marched forward in boots I’d polished to a mirror shine that morning, and went down to one knee in front of them. In a firm, clear voice, she swore to bear arms for the High Lady and the Master of Storms, to serve them with all her strength and all her wit and all her soul, until the fall of their house or the end of the world.
“You could be up there, you know,” Spinner murmured, from his place beside me. “They didn’t ask you to hide in the shadows.”
“I know. But I like the shadows, and I’m not the only one.” I poked him in the ribs. “I heard a rumour that Ariadne offered somebody a job as her spymaster.”
“Well. Not all of us are so in love with the seafaring life that we want to give big wet kisses to every ship we meet. And Gilbert, my old flame, the one who helped me sneak into the Keep? He’s aged pretty well. Bit of a paunch, but it suits him. What the hell are they doing up there?”
Latoya stepped to the edge of the dais and cleared her throat. She glanced at Ariadne, and the two of them did a bit of the talking-with-their-eyes thing that Darren and I could manage on our better days. Are you sure? Yes I’m sure. Are you really sure? For gods’ sake, woman, get on with it.
“All hail Ariadne, High Lady of Kila!” Latoya roared—and it really was a roar; it put Darren’s best to shame. “All hail Ariadne of the House of Elain!”
“Elain,” Spinner muttered. “Isn’t that—?”
“My mother’s name,” I finished for him. Oh, that cheeky so-and-so. I’d wondered in an idle way whether Ariadne would rule in the name of her own house, or come up with some other alternative, but this . . .
Latoya wasn’t done. After a pause to let the clapping die down, she took hold of Darren’s shoulder. “All hail Darren of the House of Elain!”
The clapping was more scattered that time, but Spinner joined in it. “Do you have any idea what they’re up to?” he asked.
There was no time to answer, because Darren cleared her throat. “All hail Latoya of the House of Elain!” And she started the applause when no one else would.
“Well, it’s official,” Spinner said. “They’re all cracked in the head.”
I rubbed my chest. I was aching there for some reason that made no sense at all. Now was a silly time to get emotional.
Spinner sighed and gave my arm a squeeze. “Your romantic life is entirely too complicated. I’m going to stick to hairy men with sexy paunches. Now—the captain’s coming, so I’d better go look busy.”
He slipped into the milling crowd just as Darren reached me. She was looking entirely too pleased with herself, so I had to smack her a few times.
“What exactly was that?” I flicked her nose. “What was that meant to accomplish?”
She rubbed her nose, but the smugness didn’t dim. “Had to send a message, didn’t we? A sign of a new beginning.”
“A new house?”
“A new kind of house. A house made up of people who choose it, rather than being born to it. Is that such a terrible idea?”
“No.” I smacked her again anyway, just because. “I should have been consulted about the name, though. Sod Off would have been a brilliant house name. It rolls from the tongue.”
“Too bad you blew it on a ship, then.”
“But seriously, why name the house after my mother?”
“Who else? This is really your mother’s victory. Isn’t this what she planned?”
“ . . . how do you know what she planned?”
“I know her daughter. And I recognize the tactics.” Darren linked her arm in mine, which I’m almost sure was a chivalrous gesture and not an attempt to forestall further smacking. “Your mother spent every moment she could with a lonely princess, teaching her about love and guilt and abuse and devotion. You’re going to tell me that there wasn’t a plan behind that? Your mother couldn’t protect you on your own, so she set out to create a person who could. She always planned for Ariadne to grow up into someone who would change the world for you.”
My eyeballs got a bit hot, and I quickly squinted off into the distance—which, strangely enough, had gone misty. Somehow or other, we’d left the castle, Darren’s arm in mine as she guided me down the path. “Where are we going?”
“Back to the Banshee. It’s all settled. Ariadne and Latoya and the rest will join us there tonight for dinner—Jess said she’d cook. But after dinner, I think we should get underway. I don’t want to sleep on this damn rock another night, and we shouldn’t waste the full moon.”
What she didn’t say, what we both knew, was that the nightmares would matter less once we were at sea. Back on the Banshee, where we alone decided the limits of what was possible, we could run from our demons and stay at home together, fight for the old world and invent a new one, all at the same time.
Dream a world with me, build a world with me, change the world with me, rule the world with me. It’s much the same thing, in the end.
“Wind from the west,” said the pirate queen. “If it keeps up like this, I bet we can outrun the rain.”