The Cursed Sea

by Lauren DeStefano

  It was a welcome sign of life on an otherwise silent sea.

  By the final day of the journey to the Western Isles, Masalee was on her feet again. A brush with death had hardly lessened the ferocity of her gaze. She moved slowly but deftly, all her weapons sheathed.

  Masalee was at Espel’s side as they all stood on the deck to watch the land coming into view. It was late night now, and the timing had been Zay’s idea. Even though Southern ships were welcome in the West, they couldn’t afford any unwanted attention.

  Masalee should have been resting, especially on this ship where Espel was hardly in need of a high guard to protect her. Espel had told her this, but Masalee wouldn’t return belowdecks. The cold night air made her shiver, and Espel muttered, “Hells, you’re stubborn,” and wrapped her own scarf around Masalee’s neck. “You’re of no use to me dead, you know.”

  “You don’t think I’d make a good ghost?” Masalee said. “Haunting you all throughout the palace, stirring the curtains and such?”

  “No,” Espel said. “I order you to live forever.”

  “As Her Highness wishes.”

  Wil saw the smile Espel gave her guard. It was full of gratitude and relief and warmth, because for once in their lives, the winds of fate had granted them mercy. The king had surely aimed to kill, and for a while it had seemed as though he’d succeed. But on the third day, Masalee’s fever broke and she had been fighting her way back to her usual self ever since.

  Masalee was just the right height for Espel to rest her head against her heart. That’s precisely what Espel did in that moment, and Masalee wrapped both arms around her, enveloping them both in the wolf pelt blanket that puddled at their feet.

  In the palace, love was not an option for anyone in the king’s shadow. Love was a weakness that the king would use to twist his children into compliance. But out here, they were safe. They were free.

  “We’ll sell the ship first,” Loom murmured against Wil’s ear. She nearly jumped. She hadn’t heard him approach—stealth was one of his infuriatingly smooth abilities. She turned to face him. His eyes caught the lights of the distant port, like the reflection of the moon on black water. “You and Masalee should be the ones to make the deal while the rest of us lie low,” Loom went on. He didn’t have to explain further. Wil and Masalee weren’t of Southern descent, and ship vendors would likely assume they’d obtained the Southern ship through theft, given how rare Southern ships were on the general market. This would lower suspicions. Stolen ships passed through ports and changed hands every day.

  “I’ll trade this ship for one with a more Northern design,” Wil said. “So it will make things easier when we make our way to Arrod.” She kept her voice even, as though she weren’t desperate to talk to him, as though her stomach didn’t feel sick with all the tense silence that had plagued them for this whole trip. She spoke to him as though she didn’t want to kiss him, or punch him, or both.

  “Where are we going to dock?” she asked.

  Loom nodded ahead, to the docks that presented as shadows beyond the streetlamps. The port was cluttered with ships; very few people traveled by dirigible during the winter months.

  There was also a fair mix of wealth in the Western Isles. Affluent families sent their children here for its universities, so a ship as ornate as Espel’s was less likely to stand out.

  “We should get some rest once we arrive, and then everyone should leave at first light, so it will seem like I traveled alone.”

  “Masalee will be with you,” Loom said.

  Wil narrowed her eyes. “Where was I when all these plans were being made?”

  “It was Espel’s idea.” He averted his eyes, a gesture so unlike him that Wil couldn’t help being concerned.

  “You’ve been speaking to her?”

  “Not much,” he said, his gaze flitting briefly to his sister, who stood on the opposite side of the deck, fretting over Masalee’s blanket. “I think it’s important for Espel and me to establish a tentative sort of trust. We have to work together on this.”

  Loom was right; he and his sister did need to work together. But all this was leading up to the day they would inevitably betray each other for the throne.

  “Loom,” Wil whispered, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and rising on the tips of her toes. To anyone else, it would seem that she was bringing herself in for a kiss, murmuring platitudes. “I’m always on your side. You know that. But she’s going to betray you. I don’t know how or when; I only know that she’ll kill you for the throne.”

  He was staring at her mouth as she spoke. When their gazes finally met, the sadness in his expression threw her.

  “I know,” he said. “There’s something I have to ask of you.”

  “What is it?” Wil asked.

  “If Espel has to be killed, I’m the one to do it.”

  Wil caught herself tugging at one of the sweeping waves of his dark hair. She was winding the lock around her finger, worrying it. She wanted to tell him that he and his sister would surely survive this. She wanted to tell him that he would be able to save the sister who had been lost to him the moment their mother died bringing her into the world. She wanted to say that he and Espel would be able to rule their kingdom together, and that he would not lose the only family he had left.

  But he deserved better than empty promises.

  She took his face in her hands and she kissed him. It was a soft, small kiss. Only an instant. He bowed his forehead to rest against hers and he closed his eyes.

  “I promise,” she told him.

  Twenty-Two

  THOUGH THE WESTERN ISLES WERE neutral territory, and though the ship arrived silently and without incident, Wil was too uneasy to sleep.

  While everyone else retreated belowdecks to salvage what precious hours remained before sunrise, Wil paced the length of the deck. When this did nothing to settle her, she descended and strolled the line where the water met the sand, keeping the ship in sight.

  Though she hadn’t inherited her mother’s gold hair or blue eyes, Wil did have her restless and nomadic spirit. An insomniac’s soul. She couldn’t help it. Back at the castle, Wil often slept deeply and dreamlessly, worn from whatever mission she had carried out for her father or brothers. But without that accomplished exhaustion, her thoughts came alive at night.

  Now, she thought of Loom killing Espel. If it came to that, Wil knew it would be necessary. Loom would try to spare his sister’s life by any means. But he was not above claiming his kingdom at all costs.

  She thought of Owen. Of the heavy and horrific loss that sat forever in her chest, fossilized by guilt. Owen’s loss was fused to her bones. What she had done to him would never leave her.

  She didn’t want that for Loom. But she had made a promise and she’d meant it; it was his decision and his alone.

  She sat on a sand dune some distance from the water. She liked sand; it was soft and malleable, yet immune to her curse. It didn’t splinter and stab at her the way grass did.

  When all this was through, she might spend the rest of her life traveling between beaches. Northern Arrod’s Port Capital was waterfront, but it was all sidewalks and city, no real beach to speak of.

  She turned her head when she heard the gentle whisper of footsteps kicking away sand. Loom was approaching, his stride uncertain and tenuous. She smiled to let him know that he was welcome to join her. The smile felt wrong and forced and fake, and she cursed herself for it.

  He was shivering when he sat beside her, but he unwound the knitted blanket from his shoulders and fitted it over hers.

  “Thought you might have frozen to death by now,” he said.

  “Not a chance.” Wil raised her head into the forthcoming breeze. “Cold is good for you. Gets the blood flowing.”

  “I’m not sure how well my blood will flow if it’s frozen,” Loom said.

  She laughed, and threw half of the blanket around him. He burrowed into it gratefully.

  Wind blew her hair acr
oss her face, and Loom snared it with his finger and tucked it behind her ear.

  They had orbited closer to each other now. His eyes held hers. They were dark and lovely and as endless as the sea. Wil forgot whatever it was she had been about to say.

  The curse that bound their hearts was a cruel one, but it was not nearly so cruel as the burning white stars and the whispering wind and the night that lied and told her she could have what she wanted. She could have him.

  She should have been the one to pull away. She should have known better. But she raised her hand and traced her finger across his lower lip. She only wanted to touch him the way that the starlight did.

  His eyelids were heavy now. The cold burned a red blush across his cheeks. His finger trailed from her ear to the side of her throat, stopping at the place where her pulse thudded. A pulse that meant death for so many, but not for him.

  Wil felt like a fool for wanting to give in to her curse, and then in the next breath she felt like a fool for trying to fight it.

  She moved to kiss him, but he was the one to draw back. He started, the daydream gone from his eyes. He was alert now as he craned his neck and scanned the beach.

  “What is it?” Wil asked. “What’s—”

  He threw her back onto the sand just as the arrow shot over her head. Another followed. It embedded itself in the ground beside her.

  She looked up, breathless, but there was no one in sight.

  Loom was the one to act. He must have seen something she’d missed. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. The blanket fluttered and fell like a corpse as they started to run. They moved for the grass, where the solid earth wouldn’t slow their footsteps.

  Another arrow. Another. Wil and Loom were moving in a zigzag pattern, but it wasn’t throwing off their attackers as well as it should have.

  The next arrow confirmed Wil’s suspicion that she was the target, not Loom. She pulled him into the cradle of a giant tree’s roots.

  She pressed her palms to her eyes and tried to think. Who had she angered? Heaps of underground market vendors, but none of them would have tracked her here. Or if they held that much of a grudge, they would have come for her months ago when she was traveling alone and at her most vulnerable.

  “Could this be your father?” she whispered through labored breaths.

  “I don’t think so.” Loom leaned forward to scan their surroundings. “We might have lost them. Are you all right?” He was grasping her shoulder now, inspecting her. “Were you hit?”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  Grass stabbed at her legs and palms as it crystallized.

  “High winds,” a voice cursed. “Look at that.”

  It was a Northern Arrod accent.

  “The king was right,” another man said. “She really is some sort of evil witch.”

  The men were standing over them now. Lumbering and tall, with thick arms and armor that glinted cruelly against the night.

  Wil stood, but Loom was faster. He moved a pace ahead, his arm spread out, shielding her.

  She considered her weapons but didn’t move. Her assailants would have plenty of time to drive an arrow through her before she finished reaching for her gun, and Loom was stubbornly prepared to take that arrow for her.

  “We could kill them both,” the first man said.

  “The king was very clear that nobody else be killed,” the other man said. “Some superstition about ghosts.”

  “Winds, he really is a mad one, isn’t he?”

  Baren. Baren had hired assassins to kill her; but how had they tracked her here?

  The men laughed, and one of them nocked an arrow, pointing it tauntingly at Wil’s heart. “Shame to kill such a pretty little thing,” he said. “I hope the king lets me keep your corpse. Would make a lovely figurehead for my ship.”

  The words had only just left the man’s mouth before the knife came at him. He was on the ground, empty-eyed, a burst of blood at his temple. The other man had no time to react before he shared the same fate.

  There was fire in Loom’s eyes as he stood over them. His teeth were gritted. Blood dripped from his dagger onto his boots.

  Wil’s shoulders dropped. She stared at the corpses of the men who moments earlier had tried to take her life.

  Loom wiped the blood from his weapon and sheathed it. Wil didn’t realize that her hands were trembling until he took them in his own, covering them completely with his fingers.

  “You aren’t injured,” he said. “Come on. This isn’t the first time someone’s trained a weapon on you.” He tried to laugh.

  Wil shook her head. “He knows.” Her voice was shaky, like the rest of her. Loom was right; this was not the first attempt that had been made on her life. Nor, she suspected, would it be the last. But if Baren was willing to expend resources on tracking her across the ocean, then the old marveler woman must have told him what Wil truly was. Had he dreamed of Aleen, too? “Baren knows.”

  “Wil?” Loom touched her chin, her cheek. He sought her gaze until at last she looked away from the hapless assassins. “What is it? What does he know?”

  “We have to get rid of their bodies,” she said, awakening from her daze. “Before anyone sees. My brother knows about my curse and he’s sent assassins to kill me.”

  Disposing of the corpses was the easy part. The Western port slept at night; it was the woods that lived, far off in the distance and filled with the shanty songs of wanderers. In the darkness, Wil and Loom dragged the bodies to the sea. They would wash ashore eventually, but Wil and Loom would be long gone by then.

  Wil slung the crossbow over her shoulder while Loom picked the bodies of their knives before casting them to sea.

  It was gruesome but methodical work, and as Wil watched Loom crouch at the water’s edge to wash the blood from his arms, she felt as connected to him as ever. He was not one to balk at horrible things when they needed to be done, but moreover, he did not expect her to cower or retch or complain. They were equals. Equals when things were ugly. Equals when things were not ugly at all.

  He reached over her shoulder and slid an arrow into its place in her new quiver. The gesture was gentle and intimate, as if he’d swept the hair from her face.

  “You all right?”

  She nodded. “For now,” she said. “But there will be more. We can’t stay here. The second we get a new ship—”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” Loom said. His voice was soft. “You said that your brother knows something. What is it? Why is he so desperate to kill you? If he wants you gone, he could simply banish you from the kingdom.”

  “He isn’t trying to save the throne,” she said. “He’s trying to save our family. This curse—it doesn’t only affect me. It’s meant to destroy all of us. My mother, my father, my brothers. Anything that happens to them is all my fault.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Loom countered. “Of course it isn’t your fault.”

  “Why do you think I want to help you?” Wil snapped. “You have this idea that I’m kind and—and good, but I’m not. I’m trying to repair the damage done to your kingdom because it’s my fault that Cannolay was attacked. It’s my fault that Baren is on the throne, and it’s my fault that he’s trying to destroy both your kingdom and mine.”

  She had begun pacing for the woods now, as though she could escape the truth of it. Loom kept up beside her. “How?” he demanded, unbelieving. “How could it be your fault that your brother attacked my kingdom when you had no communication with him? When you couldn’t have possibly anticipated—”

  “Because I killed Owen,” she cried. Her voice was tight, but she would not let herself cry. She couldn’t afford to fall into that dark hole of grief. Not now. “You hate my family, and for what my father has done, I don’t blame you, but Owen was good. He was going to unite our kingdoms. He was going to fix everything, but because of me, he can’t, and everything is broken.”

  They had stopped walking, surrounded by rows
of half-dead trees. Loom offered no words of condemnation. He merely waited for her to go on.

  So she did. She told him about Aleen and the curse meant to destroy her entire family, with her as the weapon. Her crime? Being the daughter her mother had always wanted. Being the one thing the queen loved more than her king. She told him about the old marveler woman’s attempt on her life, and the dreams that showed the bloodbath of her late aunt in vivid detail. Love as a weapon. Love turned into hatred.

  By the time she finished the tale, she had backed away from him, as though subconsciously anticipating his disdain.

  “You were right,” she said. “You were right to think the worst of me for lying to you about who I am. You were right to be angry—”

  In two broad strides, Loom bridged the space between them. He put his arms around her.

  The embrace silenced her. She closed her eyes, shutting out the world and all the words she had been prepared to say. The apologies she had been prepared to give. Loom had a way of making the world feel still and calm. He had a way of making her feel like she was still a part of it. Her arms coiled around him and she gripped his shirt.

  “Before we kill my father, it sounds like we should kill your brother,” he said at last.

  Wil shook her head against his chest. “I can’t do that to my mother a second time.”

  “He shouldn’t be on the throne,” Loom said. There was a strange comfort to hear him talking once again about practical things.

  “He won’t be for long,” Wil said. She drew back just enough to look at him. “My family is planning something.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “That I can’t tell you,” she said, and hastily added, “Not yet, but you’ll know soon.”

  He didn’t press her for more, but she could see the perplexity in his stare. He didn’t know what it would be like to have a family with whom he could share a secret. There was no loyalty shared between him and his sister and their father.