We returned to the ship with plans for Jenara to meet us the next morning. Kiva, Res, and I ate dinner with the rest of the crew in the mess hall as we did every night, but Caylus stayed locked in his room, and I reluctantly let him be.
Like every night before, as the conversation dwindled and people reclined in their benches, full of hearty stew and thick, warm bread, someone stood to tell a story.
Myths and legends were the kingdom’s domain, and I’d heard many of the tales the sailors told before, famous as they were among the nearby kingdoms.
The storyteller was an older woman, threads of gray lining her wheat-colored hair and laugh lines framing her kind green eyes. I recognized her as the ship’s cook, Darya. She held a pint of ale in one hand, the other held up for silence, which was quickly given.
“Any requests?” she asked, her voice strong but soft.
I leaned forward. “Do you know any stories about the Sellas?” I asked, ignoring Kiva’s incredulous look. There was no harm in investigating what Ericen had said. “Real ones, not the fairy tales in the books.”
Darya laughed. “Who says because they are fairy tales they are not real?” The question prickled at the back of my neck. “True enough, there’s little history of the Sellas left behind. No books that are more than stories, few artifacts that have not crumbled into dust. In many places, they’ve been all but forgotten, almost as though someone erased every mention, every memory, until they faded into obscurity. And yet we all agree they were here once. They did exist.”
Behind me, someone made a low humming sound of excitement, and I realized the story had already begun. With Kiva on one side of me and Res on the other, I settled back to listen.
“So what happened?” Darya asked. “Once, people worshipped the Sellas like gods. We paid homage to them for their protection from the land’s wild magic, for gifts of power beyond our belief, and for the benevolence with which they let us live freely. Or at least, so one story goes.”
As she spoke, Darya wound her way through the mess hall, the slow rock of her voice hypnotizing every gaze. It wrapped me up like a wool blanket, carrying me away in the story.
“Others say the Sellas were hungry and cruel, saturated with power and with nowhere to use it but on weak, powerless humans. They extorted us for their protection at the same time as they tormented us.”
She paused in the center of the room. “War broke out between humans and Sella, led by the crows of Rhodaire, and we proved far more capable than our gods expected. An unsteady truce was reached.
“Now,” she said quietly, her voice taking on a curious edge, “what came next is up for some debate. Some say the Sellas, their pride wounded from defeat, sought to destroy the humans who had bested them. Others say the Rhodairen riders intended to ensure they’d never face a Sella threat again. But they all agree that in the end, the kingdoms banded together and slaughtered the Sellas.”
A strange unease cut through me. There was an uncomfortable parallel between her story and the future I hurtled toward. An alliance forged in the face of an unbeatable foe and the promise of blood to be spilled.
“When the Sellas died,” Darya continued, “the magic died with them. It retreated from the land, as did all the creatures it’d once sustained, from the aizel to the South Sea serpents. But it hit Sellador worst of all, turning the land to dust and desert. And so the Eastern Wastelands were born, their border now guarded by remnants of long-ago magic.”
Silence settled in the wake of her words, as if everyone feared to break the spell she’d woven. Across the room, Onis watched me with bright, almost feverish eyes, a talisman clasped in his hands.
I leaned forward, startling Res awake with a flutter of feathers and shattering the trance. “How can we be sure they’re all dead?” I asked, and a chorus of chuckles sounded back that I ignored. “What if some of them survived?”
Darya smiled sharply. “Perhaps they did. Perhaps they’ve been lying in wait to get revenge on the humans who turned against them. Or then again, perhaps this is all just another fairy tale.”
* * *
I lay staring up at the bunk above me, where Kiva’s snores emanated in waves. I couldn’t put my mind to rest.
It was full of Darya’s story, Caylus’s pain, and Res’s strange magic. And it was full of the look in Ericen’s eyes. The guilt, the determination, the battle between the two as fluctuating as the sea.
Giving up on sleep, I rolled out of bed and wrapped a cloak about myself. Res slept soundly in a pile of blankets as I emerged into the hall and climbed the stairs to the main deck. The chill night air cooled my hot skin, each breath laced with the briny scent of the sea. The waxing moon hung heavy in the cloudless sky, bathing the deck in silver light and illuminating a figure near the bowsprit.
I recognized the wiry build and stiff posture of the ship’s captain and joined Samra wordlessly, staring out at the black waters of the open ocean. For a while, the only sound came from the snap of the sails and the break of water against the hull.
We’d hardly spoken since Kiva and I had abandoned her on the rooftop. It struck me that in my attempts not to be ordered about by her, I’d blatantly shoved aside her own concerns about being seen working with me, something that put her family in danger. I’d been so concerned with being a leader that I’d forgotten one of the most important parts of leadership was listening to those around me.
But if I couldn’t get Samra to agree with even my simplest decisions, how was I going to convince her to ally her rebels with Rhodaire? My response had been to force my decisions, but that only made her dig her heels in deeper, creating a chasm between us.
Maybe leading didn’t mean just making decisions and enforcing them. That was what Razel would have done. What my mother would have done. Maybe leading meant being the kind of person people wanted to follow.
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about today. I shouldn’t have forced all this without you on board. I should have listened.”
At first, I didn’t think she would respond. Despite her decision to help us, I knew Samra didn’t like me much. She resented me for my mother’s decision not to help the Ambriels. I understood. My bitterness at my mother had only grown in recent weeks.
I tried again. “Your father—”
“I don’t give a damn about my father,” Samra said with deadly quiet. “He can rot in the night’s depths for all I care.”
“But your family—”
“I didn’t mean him.” Her hands tightened into fists at her sides, then relaxed all at once. “I was twenty-one when Illucia attacked five years ago.” Her voice had a slight rasp to it, as if the words were still too raw to speak. “My mother was a soldier. She died early in the fighting. My father is the leader of the high council, or what little remains of it. When Razel’s army took Seahalla, she forced the council to submit to her.”
It was an easy image to conjure, a line of leaders on their knees before the Illucian queen. Razel liked to exert control, and she liked to force people into submission when they stood against her.
“When they came to our house, my father refused,” Samra continued. “Even though he was already loyal to the bastards. He thought he could extort them for more money and power.” She spit the words out like sand. “My older brother and I were there when they came. They slit my brother’s throat.”
The words pierced ice cold, and I wrapped my arms about myself for warmth. Another family member dead at Razel’s command. In her lust for power.
An ember of fury flickered to life in my stomach. Lately, it never seemed to leave. Everything I saw around me, every thought I had of Illucia or Razel—it all lit a fire inside me. I let it burn.
“I broke the jaw of the soldier nearest me.” She flexed her hand as if remembering the sting of bone against her knuckles. “They blinded me in one eye in retribution.”
Samra didn’t stumble over the words. Didn’t shift her weight or clench her hands or betray any hint of the turmoil inside her. She relayed the events like a general reporting the dead—grave, reverent, colder than the sea spray misting against my skin.
“My father submitted of course. My younger brother and sister were in Trendell at the time. They unknowingly returned home only to be used as more leverage against him.”
“It’s them you wanted to protect,” I said quietly.
She didn’t reply, but her silence was as good as a confirmation.
A soft breeze lifted her dark curls and pulled at the ends of my braid, prickling like frosted teeth at my skin. The ember in my stomach blazed hotter.
“I’m going to stop her.” My voice trembled with rage. “I’m going to make her pay for what she’s done.”
The captain shifted her dark eyes to me. “Careful of what promises you make. The Night Captain doesn’t take kindly to liars.”
I shivered. I’d heard stories of the Night Captain as a child, mostly from my mother on the rare occasions when she spent the evening telling me stories, but two weeks of nights on Samra’s ship had given me a new appreciation for the legend, which spoke of flaming ships left burning in the night after Diah’s crew was done with them. Apparently, even mentioning her name was considered ill luck. The night was her domain, and uttering her name on a lone ship with nothing but miles of vast ocean in every direction risked invoking her power.
I held Samra’s gaze. “I give you my word.”
She studied me, her eyes obsidian in the moonlight. Then her gaze softened, and the barest hint of a smile pulled at her lips. “Perhaps you’re not so bad after all, for a Rhodairen.”
The unspoken meaning behind her words rang louder than the crash of the sea: perhaps you are not your mother.
Perhaps you are better.
“Did Caylus ever tell you how we met?” Samra’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. I shook my head, and she continued, “Most of the fighters that come to Malkin’s court are free. Caylus was one of the few in his debt whom he forced to fight. Though at the time, I didn’t know anyone was, or I’d never have gone there.
“After Illucia claimed the Ambriels, I started joining the fights. I had trained all my life, and throwing myself into those fights was the only thing that kept me from killing every Illucian soldier I saw.”
Her jaw tightened. “One day, I learned who Caylus was from a girl who claimed to be his sister. When he fought, I saw the way he receded into himself, as if he became someone else entirely in order to do what he had to. He hates fighting, and because of that, he won’t be able to make this journey with you. He’s spent too long fighting. Given too much of his life to it. If you go down this path, he won’t walk it with you.”
My cheeks flushed with a frustration I didn’t fully understand. “You don’t know that. He’s here, isn’t he?”
He’d left behind his new life, his workshop and his bakery, all to help me escape, to fight. Without him, I never would have made it out of Illucia.
She shook her head. “He cares about you. Maybe he even loves you, and it has brought him this far. But whatever bond the two of you forged sitting in that workshop of his wasn’t made to go to war. You run toward a fight. Caylus has been forced into them again and again, and he is one wrong blow away from breaking.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Even as I spoke, a sliver of doubt prickled at my insides. What if she was right?
Could our connection survive the landscape of blood and steel and pain we would soon face?
“Maybe.” She turned away, gaze settling once more on the sea. “But it’s what I think.”
The wind picked up, whistling through the masts and rattling a distant chain. I turned back for the warmth and safety of the bunks below.