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So soon, Corayne cursed, her fingers curling on the tabletop. “I must ask—” “Don’t,” Meliz said without blinking, raising her glass to her lips again. An angry spark flared in Corayne’s chest, chasing off her fear. “In winter you said—” “I made no promises in winter.” Her word was so terribly final, like the closing of a door.
“At least my father was good enough to only abandon me once,” Corayne said coolly, her teeth bared. With a will, she stepped away from Meliz. “You’ve done it a thousand times.”
She stared at her wrinkled and scribbled-over map of the known Ward, using her ledger and compass to keep it anchored. The Long Sea bisected the realm across the middle, in a winding ribbon of blue water that stretched between the northern and southern continents. To the west, it emptied into the Nocturan Ocean, to the southeast, the Auroran. Night and dawn, framing the edges of the known world.
Most of the time, Meliz an-Amarat had summer eyes, warm eyes. Mahogany flecked with amber and bronze. But now her eyes were cold and dark, still water beneath falling snow.
Meliz already had her in hand, pulling her daughter tight to her chest. Into the cage of her arms. “Farewell, my girl,” she said, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Keep your feet on the shore and your face to the sea.” Corayne inhaled deeply, taking one last gasp of her mother. “How fare the winds?” she whispered into her coat. Her mother breathed the smallest sigh. “Fine, for they carry me home.”
They stared at each other, both hesitant, both frozen. Black eyes met green, iron on emerald. Centuries separated the two of them, but they were alike for a moment, standing on the edge, terrified of the unknown below.
They hurried through a market. Whitewashed wattle-and-daub shops and timber-framed homes leered over them, their windows like empty eyes.
You’ll die trying. Corayne’s last plea to Andry hung in his head, ringing like the bells. That seems to be our only fate, Dom thought, feeling their circumstances rise up like a storm cloud. No allies, no direction. Nothing but the sword and the teenage girl who could barely wield it. To die trying.
In Lemarta that meant days of waiting, plotting around distant storms or political upheaval on some foreign coast. Corayne felt bored more often than not, watching the horizon with her ledger, letters, and reports tucked close. But she had room to maneuver, to think, to plan. Now Corayne felt like she was back in the hedge maze, running blindly around corners with gods-knew-what waiting on the other side. She could only react and hope to survive. Not exactly ideal.
Dom felt a muscle twitch in his jaw. He wished he’d paid more attention in his lessons half a lifetime ago, when Cieran had lectured the young immortals on the gods and Glorian, on the lost crossings to their realm and so many others. His mind had been in the glens, in the training yard, in the rivers. Not the classroom.
The wild noise of the tavern was a storm, thundering with the rumble of breaking bones and furniture, cracking with the lightning of a shriek or a yelp or a cackle.
She found Taristan and the wizard in the old chapel, in front of the single intact window, its glass blue and red and golden. The goddess Adalen wept sapphire tears over the body of her mortal lover, his chest torn open by hounds of Infyrna, a realm of fire and judgment. Their forms retreated in the back of the glass, burning and unholy. Erida knew the scriptures. Adalen’s mortal gave his life to save the goddess from the fiery hounds. Strange, the scriptures never gave him a name.
Corayne did not know she could move so quickly or with such force until her dagger pulled back, red in her hand, coated to the hilt in fresh blood. She froze, rattled, forgetting how to breathe, forgetting how to think, as the soldier fell to his knees, clutching his side. He looked at her, gasping for one last breath, spraying blood into the air.
