Cassi landed on the ship at full speed, her boots slamming into the planks with such force they shook. “By order of the king, don’t you dare lower those sails one more inch.”
The captain arched a brow. He was young for such a position of power, his skin hardly weathered, which meant his magic was undoubtedly strong. Muddled green eyes cast her a dubious look, his expression just as hard as she expected from someone who’d spent his life crossing these dangerous seas. “Do you have papers?”
“There wasn’t time.” And technically, she wasn’t here under Malek’s orders. But if she had consulted him, she knew exactly where he’d stand. “There’s a man on your ship I need to speak with.”
The captain frowned and signaled to his first mate. The creak of wood and ropes told her everything. Cassi reached out and gripped the wheel. “I said, don’t lower the sails another inch.”
“Or what?” the captain drawled. “No papers, no proof. And the only people on my ship are my crew.”
“Oh, really?” A fiendish smile widened her lips as her wings spread menacingly. “Not even the man I watched you smuggle on board last night, foolishly believing you were alone? I’d expected more from the captain of a dragon-hunting ship. You, of all people, should know someone is always watching. The king has eyes everywhere.”
He slowly perused her wings. By the time his gaze settled back on her face, it was sharp with realization. “You’re a dormi’kine.”
“I have business with the skryr.”
He hesitated, but only for a moment, before nodding to someone behind her. Boots stomped on wood then a door opened, the planks groaning. Cassi turned slowly so as not to appear too eager—superiority was her only source of control on this ship. Inside, though, her nerves fluttered.
The skryr had been a surprisingly difficult man to track down, especially considering she’d spent much of her youth hovering in the back corners of his shop, using her magic to watch him work. His spirit was slippery. She’d never quite caught the scent of it, the flavor shifting and changing with each new object his magic touched, as though bits of the souls lingering in those items leaked into his. By the time she’d arrived in Da’Kin a few days before, the city had been in chaos. His shop was located in one of the sectors blown apart by the earthen creature, nothing left but wood shards floating in the canals. It had taken hours of scouring the city to even catch the hint of his name on the breeze, something about money and a debt owed, which was when she’d realized he was on the run. She’d spent the next few nights searching the ships, but in truth, dumb luck was the only reason she’d stumbled upon his being smuggled onto this ship in the early hours just before dawn. She’d been on her way to the ship docked two streets down when she saw a hooded figure creeping through the mist, just suspicious enough to pique her interest.
He wore the same cloak now as two sailors dragged him up the steps, one holding each arm, though it hardly seemed necessary. The man was ancient, his skin covered in wrinkles and his white hair swirling in the breeze. A sneeze would have knocked him over.
“You can’t, please,” he begged as they carried him on deck. “He’ll kill me.”
“Not on my watch,” Cassi interrupted as she pumped her wings twice to sail over the rail and land on the main deck.
The skryr whipped his head in her direction. “Who are you?”
“A person who is very much invested in keeping you alive,” she answered truthfully, signaling for the two sailors to release him. “And in Da’Kin.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“We don’t have time to go anywhere else.”
His thick white eyebrows knitted together, intelligence churning in the depths of his hazel eyes. “Who sent you?”
“The king.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Can you guarantee my safety?”
“Look at the world.” She scoffed. “I can’t even guarantee my own safety. But I can promise this—if you don’t come with me, I’ll never stop looking for you, and there’s nowhere you can run where my magic won’t find you.”
“Very well then, dormi’kine.” The words came out sounding like a sigh. Clearly, it wasn’t the first time in his long life he’d been threatened. “But first I need proof of your connection to the king.”
“I don’t have papers.”
A sly grin crept across his face. “That’s not the sort of proof I require.”
Cassi swallowed. Guarding her secrets had long been her way of life. Freely offering them to a stranger went against every fiber of her being. Still, she reached for the dagger at her hip and offered it to the mage. Of all her possessions, it held the strongest connection to her spirit. After all, what was it she’d told Xander all those weeks ago?
Your weapon is your best friend.
The skryr snatched the blade from her hands. As soon as his pale skin touched the metal, bronze sparks circled his flesh. His hazel eyes glittered with his magic, and his expression went blank as he sank into a world where no one else could follow. Cassi’s heart pounded in her chest.
What was he seeing?
What parts of herself had she given away?
What would he know?
A few minutes passed in silence before the power fizzled. With a blink, he returned to the present. She snatched the dagger from his palm and slid it back into its sheath. He looked up at her slowly, his head tilting to the side as though he was seeing her in a new light.
“Well?”
“Lead the way, Kasiandra.”
A shiver rippled down her spine, but she tried her best to ignore it as she ushered the old man off the ship.
“Stay close and keep your hood low,” she whispered. “With any luck, people will be too focused on my wings to even notice the man walking slowly before me.”
He nodded and retreated farther into the cloth. Cassi mumbled directions, letting him set the pace. It was early, but the docks already bustled with life. People gawked as she passed by. The occasional single-winged avian, such as her mother, was a rare enough sight in the world below, but one with two working wings? That was unheard of. If Malek didn’t know she was in the city, he soon would. Though she doubted he would tell Lyana, if for no other reason than to keep her focused on him.
By the time they reached the inn, she was eager to get inside. Her mother had given her a purse full of coin before she’d left Sphaira, and she’d been renting a room since her arrival. The skryr didn’t lower his hood until they closed the door behind them.
“What did you see?” she asked, the words practically shooting from her lips the moment they were alone.
“You don’t work for the king,” he said—a statement, not a question.
“Not anymore.”
“But you want to save the world.”
“More than anything.”
Her answer must have reassured him because the angles of his face softened. “I saw your last clear memory of the king. You were yelling at him, threatening that you were going to tell the queen who the real King Born in Fire was, a fact I’ve recently suspected myself.”
He’d seen the dream when she confronted Malek, before he’d healed her and tortured her and kept her locked in his dungeons. Disgust curled her lip. “I didn’t think your magic worked so quickly. I used to come to your shop and watch you. It took hours for you to glean information.”
“On a grand scale, yes,” he explained as he dropped onto the edge of her bed with a grunt, his old body giving out. Cassi pulled a chair over from the other side of the room to sit beside him. “If I’m trying to absorb all the information an object can offer, it can take hours, days, even weeks to learn every secret the soul housed inside has to give. But I was just looking for a single moment, and thus directed, my power works quickly.”
Suspicion needled at the back of her mind. “What else did you see?”
“Why do you ask?” A delighted sparkle lit his weary eyes.
“Call it a hunch.”
“I guess someone who's spent their life learning other people’s secrets would recognize a half-truth when it’s offered. Let me see it.”
She frowned. “What?”
“My girl,” he murmured, his voice amused. “The diary. I saw you take it from the library of the owls. I sensed your spirit sing as soon as your fingers grazed the leather binding. You want to know what it says, and with any luck, I can tell you.”
Cassi reached inside her jacket, then paused. “What makes you so eager all of a sudden?”
“Is it so incredible to think you’re not the only one interested in saving our world?”
“In my experience, altruism doesn’t rank high on the list of human motivations.”
“It’s what drives you.”
She flinched as though struck. It was the sort of compliment she might have paid Xander, not the sort reserved for people like her—people who lied to their best friends and betrayed nearly everyone who had ever been kind to them.
“Perhaps you’ll understand this more, then,” the skryr continued. “Curiosity. You believe the answers to all the questions that have ever plagued our world might rest in that book, and I’ve touched many compelling objects in my life, but I’ve never touched one as powerful as that. Or maybe my reasoning is even more banal. I don’t want to die, not before I’ve seen the blue sky beyond the fog or felt the sun warm my cheeks. Everyone who lives in Da’Kin can see the time of prophecy is drawing near. If my actions can tip the scale—if they can grant me a few more years—I’m sure as magic going to take them.”
All three were convincing reasons, yet Cassi still didn’t quite believe him. Regardless, she had no choice. She needed his magic, a fact he clearly knew. And he needed her, to keep him alive if nothing else.
“Who were you running from?”
“A woman came to my shop about a month ago with a trinket she said belonged to her father. I realized too late it belonged to one of the most powerful mages in the city, and now I know a secret of his he very much wants to keep quiet. If I tell you what it is, he’ll want to silence you as well.”
Now, that she believed. Cassi shook her head. It didn’t matter anyway. “What sort of mage?”
“An umbra’kine.”
She wrinkled her nose. Shadow mages could be sneaky bastards. “Does he have access to a dreamwalker?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Good. I’ll need to know more if I’m to keep us both safe, but it can wait.” She tightened her fingers around the leather book pressed against her chest and slid it free. “The diary can’t. I want to know who it belonged to, what it says, and everything it can tell us about the prophecy, and I want to know now.”
“Answers such as those will take time.”
“In case you haven’t looked outside recently, time is the one thing we don’t have. Da’Kin burns. The dragons are multiplying. The rift is weakening. And in a few weeks—” Cassi broke off as the words caught in the back of her throat. An earthquake had struck the House of Wisdom the day before. The light creature would soon be here, and when that happened…she didn’t know. Just the thought sent a hot rush of fear into her veins, not only for their world but also for Xander, now living among the owls. “In a few weeks, there may be nothing left.”
The skryr lowered his gaze to the book in her hands, then lifted it back to her face, the hint of a challenge in his eyes. “Then I suggest you let me get to work.”
She extended the diary.
He snatched it, his magic bursting from his fingertips before they even touched leather. A bronze halo exploded from his palms, lighting the room in a glittering haze. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he collapsed on the bed, his body twitching. Cassi jumped to her feet to help, then froze. Breath passed evenly through his lips. No strain tightened his features. He was alive yet removed, a sensation she understood better than most. So she sat back down and propped her feet beside him, doing the only thing she could—waiting to hear what secrets he’d reveal.