by Adalyn Grace
The Lusca has no time to draw back. The moment it connects to the necklace, the beast freezes. Its tentacles form a cavern above my head, and I stumble back as water rains onto my face from its lifted, unmoving limbs.
Shivers rip through me with such force they nearly bring me to my knees. I claw at any remaining strength I have and latch onto it, forcing one foot in front of the other. Step by excruciating step, I make my way across the beast’s still back and toward the tip of one of the tentacles.
The necklace has completely frozen the beast. The Lusca cannot scream as I slice through its tentacle, but I relish in knowing it can feel every inch of my blade. Its flesh is thick, and requires far more energy to cut through it than I have to offer.
But I’ve no other choice. I dig the nails of one hand into the tentacle to hold my body up as I sear through its flesh. My breaths come in constricted gasps as the poison tears through me; I don’t have much longer. I rip the tentacle the rest of the way off and its inky blood coats my hands as I hold it.
There’s power in the Lusca’s blood. Pulsating, fierce, wondrous power. It’s strong in a mythical way I’ve never known. I’ve stopped the Lusca, but I can’t just let it sit here for someone to discover, or for something to remove the necklace before it starves out. I need to get this tentacle back on the ship and light it on fire. I need to kill it with my magic.
I need to get back on Keel Haul.
I need—
Balance is a distant thing I can no longer maintain. My foot slips on the back of the frozen beast and I grip the severed tentacle as though it might somehow rescue me. Ten red, unblinking eyes watch as I trip and tumble off its back.
My body refuses to listen as I try to reach for my dagger, wanting to use the Lusca’s body to slow my descent again. But my arms won’t unwind from around the tentacle.
I shut my eyes as the ocean swallows me whole. Water floods my lungs, and I choke on the one thing I love the most.
The sea. The waters of my kingdom. They’ll be the death of me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I wake in a room flooded with warmth. Moonlight spills from behind open velvet curtains, and a dimmed oil lamp burns on the mahogany table beside me.
A soft mattress draws my body in, lulling me back to sleep. I didn’t mind sleeping in a hammock, but now that I’m reminded of what I was missing, I want to wrap myself between the lavish navy blankets and never come out. Exhaustion urges me to sleep for a solid week.
Maps and atlases cover the floors and walls. In the dim light, I make out one wall where clothing hangs, pristine and sorted by type and color. Coats on one side, linen shirts on the other. More men’s shoes than I’ve ever seen in one place form a line on the floor.
Bastian’s sitting in a chair, hunched over his desk. He wears only a thin black linen shirt and loose trousers, more casual than I’ve ever seen him. The definition of his arms and shoulders catches my eye as he examines something that sits on the table. His back is to me, broader and more muscular than I realized. With how quickly he can scale the rigging and drag in Keel Haul’s anchors, I should have expected he’d be strong.
What I don’t expect is how much I enjoy the way the black shirt looks against his warm brown skin. I also don’t expect the thought of how his back and shoulders might feel beneath my hands, powerful and firm.
Bastian pushes away from his desk with a sigh. The Lusca’s tentacle rests before him. I remember wanting to bring it onto the ship with me, but I never made it that far. How did both the tentacle and I get here?
He startles when he turns and catches me staring. “You’re awake.” He searches my face carefully. “How do you feel? I’m sorry about your clothes. Vataea changed you; Ferrick needed to see how deep your wound is.”
I know the Lusca hit me, but I don’t remember the wound being deep, nor do I remember any blood. All I remember is flashes of tentacles, water, and eventually complete numbness.
I look down at myself for the first time, finally noticing the stiffness of my body as I try to move.
“Careful!” Bastian moves to the edge of the bed. “Ferrick was able to stabilize you, but we had to drain a lot of your blood to get the poison out. Even a Suntosan healer can’t return lost blood.” His body is tense as the skin between his brows wrinkles into lines that age him ten years. Looking at them, my head spins. I try to speak, but the words burn.
Flashes of dark, blood-tainted water slosh behind my eyes as I recall the memory of drowning. Of gagging on the sea as I fought to resurface. My throat scorches as though I’ve swallowed gallons of straight rum. I take my time until I’m able to speak through the pain.
“How bad was it?” I rasp. “How long have I been out?”
Bastian smooths a loose curl from my neck and tucks it back into place. His touch is gentle, as if too much pressure might shatter me. “Two days.” He raises his hand when I begin to sit up in protest. “Relax. This far south, the waters start to get rocky from the cold. Even with Keel Haul’s speed, the trip to Zudoh will take three. You need to rest.” He says the last part with a long, drawn-out sigh. “You must have a death wish, you know that? Jumping into the water with a sea monster? You were nearly killed.”
“But I wasn’t.” I try to grin, but my lips are chapped from sea salt and I grimace as they split open. Even bone tired and barely able to move, the adrenaline surging through me is undeniable. It boils in my blood and speeds my heart in a way I’ve never known.
Is this how Father felt, after his adventures? After he tamed a kelpie and chased the leviathan?
Until now, no one has been able to document proof of the Lusca’s existence.
No more getting out of bed, Father once told me. The Lusca will snatch you, if you do! It’ll grab your ankles and gobble you whole! He makes his favorite meal from the bones of disobedient children, you know …
In some stories, the monster was rumored to have a shark’s head. In others, it had three heads and poisonous tentacles. In my nighttime paranoia, it was an oversize beast with long, slimy tentacles made for snatching ankles, and dagger-long teeth for chomping through the bones of children. But compared to the real thing, my imagined Lusca was a puppy.
I can’t wait to tell Father that I not only faced the beast, but that I bested it. I only wish he’d been there to see.
“How did I get back on the ship?” I try to wet my cracked lips, but my mouth is too dry.
“I jumped in after you.” Bastian says it so simply, like the answer is obvious. “It took me a while to figure out how you did it, but freezing the Lusca was genius, I admit. Though you shouldn’t have risked yourself like that.”
I tip my head back on the pillow, clamping my eyes shut in protest against the dizziness. “It’s what had to be done.”
For a moment there’s only silence. No words. No footsteps. Perhaps not even any breathing aside from my own. When Bastian does speak again, his words may be quiet, but they’re sharp as a blade.
“You really will do anything for your people, won’t you?”
I want to open my eyes and remind him I’ve already given my answer, but when I do, Bastian doesn’t look smug or angry. His face is shadowed by the oil lamp, jaw strong in his profile. He shakes his head just barely, as if to himself. “You’re a Montara; your father banished my island from the kingdom. He destroyed my home. I tried not to be a hypocrite, because who am I to judge someone by the family they come from? But still, I wanted to hate you.” His fists clench and unclench at his sides, eyes pinched at the ground like he’s struggling with some sort of internal war.
“And do you?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, Amora. I haven’t been able to hate you since the moment we first spoke.”
I can hardly tell if the wooziness I feel is from my injuries, or because of Bastian’s words. My skin is hot, but I can’t get myself to look at him. Slowly, carefully, I reach up to take his hand. He tenses at first, but his shoulders slowly relax as I motion for him to sit
at the edge of the bed.
Warmth spreads through my chest as I let a small portion of my magic work its way through me, using it to search his soul and confirm the suspicion that knots in my stomach.
On the first night I met Bastian, I thought my magic was too tired to see the entirety of his soul. But as I look at it now, it’s still the misty light gray it was before, with the edges fading into wispy smoke that refuses to show me the rest. I see only half of him.
“I saw you during the fight, Bastian,” I say. “I heard you scream.”
He stills, but doesn’t pull away.
“The first time the Lusca struck, I never saw you get hit,” I press. “It struck Keel Haul, and yet you reacted. As if you were the one in pain.”
His eyes catch the moonlight, and for a moment they’re silver and doused with stars. He leans his weight onto one arm. “What are you getting at?”
The words are a challenge I can’t back away from. Though he’s tense, it almost feels as though Bastian wants me to know. I can feel it in the way his hand closes halfway around mine, his thumb brushing my wrist, practically begging me to say the answer out loud and free him from his secret. I wonder how long he’s been holding on to it.
“You said before that Keel Haul was a magical ship.” I lift my chin, holding his attention. “And Vataea said she sensed curse magic the moment she stepped aboard Keel Haul. Now that I’ve seen that magic in action, I think I might understand what one of those curses is. Every time you were hit by the Lusca, the ship reacted. Every time the ship was hit, you felt the pain. You and Keel Haul are connected by this magic, aren’t you?”
His hand forms a fist in the sheets. He flexes his jaw and looks out the window, at the dark sea. “What if we are? Would it change the way you think of me?”
“No. I’d want to understand.”
He grinds his teeth together, hesitant, but the words come quickly. As though he desperately wants to share them. “It’s Zudian magic, as you guessed.”
“How?” I ask. “Curse magic stays contained, doesn’t it? When I let go of the necklace, the curse followed it, not me. I wasn’t cursed permanently.”
His sigh tells me it’s more complicated than that. “Zudoh used to be the most popular island in the kingdom. It was often visited by curious tourists and people who sought potions and protective cursed charms to bring back to their own islands. About thirteen years ago, this started to change.
“Part of Zudoh wanted to separate from the kingdom,” he continues. “They wanted to expand their reach, their power, and do more than make trinkets for rich tourists. They saw a way for their magic to grow. But to achieve that, they needed a way to create curses that could last forever—by binding them to a person’s soul.”
“They learned soul magic?” My palms are clammy with sweat as I inhale a sharp breath. King Cato restricted it to the Montara bloodline, to protect our people from the beast he fought off centuries ago. “But it’s not meant to be learned by others. It’s the Montaras’ burden to carry.”
“And it can only be the Montaras’ burden,” he says. “That’s why Kaven had to create something new. It’s essentially cursed soul magic. You can’t destroy someone’s soul like you can with Aridian magic, but you can curse one.”
The room’s temperature drops ten degrees. Even with the warmth of Bastian’s hand against my skin, I shudder. “How are they still alive?” Multiple magics break down a person’s body and soul until they eventually cease entirely. Protecting people from that is how my magic even came to exist.
“I don’t know,” he admits, “but it’s the truth. Those who practice this magic can steal and curse half a soul.”
How would a cursed person even continue to exist, with half of them missing? I’d call Bastian a liar if I hadn’t seen his soul myself. “How does it work?”
Bastian’s face darkens. “First they use soul magic to access someone’s soul. And then, using their victim’s blood, they can curse part of their soul into anything. Take my relationship with Keel Haul, for example. Kaven cursed me to this ship; that’s why I’m forced to stay on it, and why I get sicker the longer I’m away from it. A person can’t live comfortably with only half their soul.”
I think back to his clammy skin and sharp breaths during our time in Ikae. We’d only been off the ship for a few hours. “What would happen if Keel Haul were destroyed? Would you die?”
Bastian shakes his head. “I’d survive, but it wouldn’t be a life worth living. I’d become a shell of a person, empty and void. I’d desire nothing but my broken soul.”
My head spins as I try to process this. “And what would happen to Keel Haul if you died?”
“As much as I love her, this ship is nothing more than a ship. Keel Haul holds part of my soul, not the other way around. Should I die, she’d go back to being a normal ship, no longer bound to anyone. I feel what she feels, as my soul is within her. It doesn’t work the other way around; nothing of her is within me. I can use our connection to help sail her, but that’s the extent of my power over Keel Haul.”
My skin cools with sweat. “Can everyone in Zudoh do this?” Because if they can, how does he expect us to win this fight? One drop of blood, and our souls would be as good as gone.
Bastian shakes his head, voice taking a defensive edge. “The last I heard, only a few practiced this magic. It started off as a small group, brought to life by the son of the island’s leading ambassador—Kaven.
“What you need to understand is that our magic isn’t meant to be like this,” he continues. “It’s meant to be protective. To put wards on your house so that you can sleep easy at night, or dissuade children from touching things that may be too dangerous for them. Things like that. But Kaven broke away from this style of curse magic and formed something dark and new, and if you’re not with him, you’re against him.” When Bastian speaks of his home island, his words are passionate. Yet cool sweat licks my throat, my body sick to its core. Kaven isn’t a simple opponent. He’s a wielder of an unheard of new magic, which makes him dangerous.
“Why wouldn’t my family do anything about this?” I ask. “My father wouldn’t stand for such a twisted magic.”
“Your father was the one who declared Zudoh’s banishment from the kingdom, when their intention to learn soul magic became clear. He took Suntosan healers off our island, and cut us off from trading. He probably thought they’d never manage to learn it—that this mess would sort itself and they’d come back begging to be a part of the kingdom again. But he was wrong. This magic has divided Zudoh, and the island is in a crisis. The Montaras are the reason my people are struggling.” His grip relaxes on the sheets as he peels himself away.
The ship stirs with the same discomfort that claws at me, swaying uneasily against even the smallest waves. It is not the confident, magical ship I’m used to.
“How long has half your soul been cursed to Keel Haul?”
Bastian tries to smile, but it withers as the weight of the truth hits him. “Since I was a child. Zudoh’s a small island, so there was no hiding from Kaven. I was young when he tried to recruit me, promising kids he’d teach us magic like it was a shiny new toy. My parents wouldn’t let him have me, so he had them killed and took me away—as he did with every child he could get his hands on—to study cursed soul magic. I never learned it, though.”
I shiver. I never imagined this level of evil. Murder and stolen children? Cursed soul magic? This is what Father turned his back on?
Why? All this time cooped up on Arida, practicing our magic—was it because he’s that afraid of starting a war?
“Before he was killed, Father had been teaching me to sail, and after a year of being forced to study under Kaven day and night, I knew his ship was the only way for me to escape. For a week I snuck food and supplies aboard, and then one night, when I thought everyone was asleep, a few friends and I made our escape. Only, Kaven must have been hiding there, waiting. He killed the others, and to show everyone what he
was capable of should they disobey him, cursed me, and ripped away my magic. The moment I touched the helm, my soul ripped in two and bonded to Keel Haul. But he made a mistake, and didn’t think through cursing me to a ship. I commandeered it and escaped before he could stop me.”
Energy and anger simmer off his body. I reach out to put my hand on his shoulder, and Bastian stiffens.
“Surely there’s a way to break the curse?”
His teeth grind together, sharpening his jawline. “As I’ve said, to make a permanent curse on someone’s soul, their blood is needed. And the more Kaven takes, the stronger he becomes. But this magic has a weakness—to keep control of their magic, its creator must always keep some blood of the cursed person.” Bastian leans forward. “Kaven is a vain, prideful man. He collects leather bracelets smeared with the blood of those he’s cursed. He wears his favorites like a trophy, and keeps others close to him on Zudoh. To ensure his charms remain intact, he treats these bracelets as you treat your satchel, rarely leaving Zudoh so that he never has to stray too far from them. But if we can destroy those bracelets, every curse he’s ever made will break, and he’ll be weakened.”
“Do you think yours is one he keeps on him?” I ask. “One of his trophies?”
Bastian snorts. “I know it is.”
I can’t decipher the expression Bastian wears as the oil lamp flickers and dims, struggling for life. It casts the bed in a hazy burnt-orange glow. Shadows dance in the hollowness of his cheekbones and curve along his neck, down into his shirt.
Years of traveling on the sea, moving freely from one island to the next without constraints, should have filled him with wisdom and life. I’ve always been jealous of those who travel. Jealous of adventures and experiences I could only imagine.
But I have family and friends who are likely worried and awaiting my return. Bastian, I sense, doesn’t have this. His family is gone, and his soul has been cursed to a life of solitude. The stars in his eyes aren’t only crafted by adventure. They’ve been formed by years of loneliness. Of looking up into a sky full of dreams and never being quite able to reach it.
