by Becca Andre
“Those are judgments you place on yourself,” the woman replied. Her voice was familiar, and Briar felt she ought to know it.
“I suppose,” Briar relented, “but I feel that way just the same.”
The woman sighed. “And those very stars aligned for you the night you were born. Do not let your recent losses detour you from the course you were destined to walk.”
Briar smiled, a twinkling star drawing her eye. “I’m not a big fan of such ideas. I make my own destiny.”
“And what is your destiny, Bridget Ellen?”
Briar frowned. No one except Andrew ever called her by that name.
She sat up to face the woman. A lantern sat on the rail of the tiller deck, casting some light on them. Briar didn’t know the fair-haired woman sitting on the edge of the deck, but there was something familiar about her.
“I won’t know until I create it,” Briar answered.
The woman nodded. “Have you decided what that will be?”
Briar frowned. There was something she must do, but the course that had once been so clear was no longer. She eyed the canal before her, trying to see what lay ahead, but the darkness and overhanging trees hid it from view.
“I once crossed the Atlantic on a much larger ship,” the woman said. “The captain used the stars to guide him.”
Briar looked up at the stars overhead. The small twinkling light she had noted earlier was much larger. It must be a comet.
A male throat cleared. “It is time.”
Briar glanced up at the man standing over them. Uncle Charlie’s name rose to her lips, but when his eyes met hers, she fell silent. It wasn’t Uncle Charlie.
Briar scrambled to her feet as the man helped the woman up. Briar stared at the couple, a certainty gripping her.
“Father?” Briar’s gaze moved to the woman she had never seen, yet knew. “Mother?”
The woman’s eyes met hers, and with the lantern light now shining on her face, Briar could see that her irises were blue-gray.
“I know you don’t want to speak of destiny,” her mother said, holding her gaze, “but you have a role in all of this.”
“You also have a choice,” her father added.
Goosebumps rose on Briar’s arms at the familiar tone and cadence. She had known him. She had just forgotten.
Briar struggled to pull her attention from the novelty of their presence to the words they had spoken.
“What kind of choice?” she asked.
“You must decide the fate of a cursed race,” her mother answered. It was getting brighter, and Briar could see her much more clearly.
“Should any one person have that kind of power?” Briar asked, so overwhelmed by all of this.
“You’ve always shouldered responsibility well, my little Briar Rose.” Her father smiled, the twinkle in his green eyes so reminiscent of Uncle Charlie’s. “When the time comes, I know you’ll do what must be done.”
The growing light exploded in sun-like brilliance. Her father looked up, and Briar followed his gaze.
The golden comet was nearly upon them. Except it wasn’t a comet at all, but a brilliant golden nimbus surrounding a man. A man with wings.
He dropped from the sky and landed with a soft thump on the stable deck, his momentum carrying him into a crouch. He braced a hand against the deck and bowed his dark head, his silver wings spread behind him.
“Magnificent, ain’t he?” a voice said from behind her.
Briar spun to face Dale Darby. His torso hung open, not unlike how Owens’s corpse had been, but inside Dale’s chest, his silver heart and organs glinted in the golden light.
“My master has the power to change the world,” Darby told her, a smug smile on his lips and a certainty in his metallic eyes.
Briar glanced over her shoulder. Still surrounded by that golden nimbus, Grayson rose to his feet. She abruptly noticed that he was no longer human—or not entirely. Silver horns sprouted from above his temples. His hands, more metal than flesh, were tipped with long curling talons. Tears in the skin of his chest revealed the soul iron within, and even as she watched, the skin receded further.
He looked up and his alien eyes met hers. She saw nothing of the man she knew in that gaze. She was nothing but an obstacle to him.
“What are you going to do?” Darby asked her, a sneer in his voice. “How are you going to stop that?”
Briar ignored him and brought her fiddle to her chin. She was a soul singer, but not just a soul singer. She was a daughter of the Scourge.
She pulled her bow across the strings, and a musicless jumble of random notes and incomplete cords came from the instrument.
Turning her head, she checked the position of her fingers. They weren’t in the correct places, and try as she might, she couldn’t move them to where they needed to be.
Then she saw the hole in the back of her hand. The gaping wound revealed the bones and tendons. They were made of soul iron.
Chapter 21
Briar sat up with a gasp.
“Easy,” Molly said, her hand gripping Briar’s shoulder. “You’re safe now.”
Briar blinked, and the panic faded as she took in her surroundings. She sat on Molly’s bunk in the aft cabin. Judging by the light through the open windows, it was late afternoon. She hadn’t been out long.
“Lie back down,” Molly encouraged her. “I’ve just rubbed on a poultice.”
Briar glanced down. She wore a clean shirt, but it was only half buttoned and left the center of her chest exposed. The long wound down her sternum was no longer bleeding. Instead, it was covered in a thin paste she remembered from the time Hester had stabbed her. Hester Darby.
The terror of her dream was suddenly replaced by a more real horror.
“He made Darby soulless,” Briar whispered.
“I know. Mr. Waller told me.” Molly brushed back Briar’s loose hair. “He also told me that you refused to let Mr. Martel touch you.”
She nodded, remembering the blood on Grayson’s hands—both Darby’s and Owens’s.
“Why won’t you let him heal you?”
“I just… can’t.”
Molly sighed. “Kali refused as well.”
“Kali?”
“Darby shot her.”
Briar struggled to pull her scattered wits together. She had forgotten about Kali.
“What about Zach?” Briar asked.
“The bullet struck a rib. It left a nasty wound and broke the rib, but he seems to have avoided greater injury, though he’s in a lot of pain. Poor Benji is beside himself.”
Briar could imagine. Those two were very close and had been through so much.
“It’s Kali I’m worried about,” Molly continued. “She was shot in the stomach. I suspect some organs have been damaged. She isn’t doing well. Perseus hopes you will play for her.”
“Of course. Lock?” She looked around for him, surprised he wasn’t curled up on her pillow.
He flew over from the table and landed on her knee. She felt a surge of sadness that wasn’t her own, and he looked up with a forlorn whirr, his wings drooping. His body language reminded her of the time she tried to give him to Esme. Like then, he was worried that she would leave him.
“I’ll always love you, Lock.” She rubbed him beneath the chin.
He leaned into her, but she still sensed his sadness and worry.
“He really disappointed me,” she told the little dragon. In truth, Grayson had scared her—and if she was completely honest, he scared her still.
“Be the fiddle?” she requested.
Lock immediately complied, and the beautiful silver fiddle now lay in her lap.
She reached for the neck but hesitated when she saw the bandage wrapped around her left hand.
“Can you play?” Molly asked, her voice so
ft.
The terror from her dream was still fresh, and Briar fought the urge to rip the bandage from her hand and examine the wound for soul iron.
Taking a shaky breath, she reached out to wrap her hand around the neck of the fiddle. Or she tried to. Only her index finger somewhat obeyed the command, though the movement sent a bolt of pain screaming up her arm.
She gasped and gripped her wrist with her good hand.
“Briar?” Molly squeezed her shoulder once more.
“I can’t move my fingers,” she whispered. “And not because it hurts.” She looked up, meeting Molly’s eyes. “I can’t play.” The enormity of that hit her. To never play the fiddle again would be…
Molly’s grip tightened. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to let Mr. Martel heal you.”
Briar took a breath, but Molly hurried on.
“Then you can save Kali and perhaps heal Zach as well.” Molly sat down beside her. “And what about Mr. Martel and the other ferromancers? Solon. Without your soul singer ability, what becomes of them?”
That thought stopped Briar cold. To lose her ability to play would certainly kill a part of her, but Molly was right; it was so much bigger than that. Was this the decision her father had alluded to in her dream? Yes, she had some ferra-like talents, but the core of her ability lay in her music. Besides, she must face Grayson eventually. There was no sense in putting it off.
“All right,” Briar relented. “Help me button my shirt, then call him in.”
“Doesn’t he need to touch what he heals?”
“He’s going to heal my hand.”
Molly studied her for a moment, then wordlessly began buttoning Briar’s shirt. Once the task was complete, Molly got to her feet and left the cabin.
A shimmer of molten metal, and Lock was once more sitting on her knee. He sprang up to her shoulder and rubbed his cheek against hers, sensing her anxiety.
She brushed his scales, trying to comfort him—and calm herself.
Footfalls approached the open cabin door. Unable to clasp her hands, Briar gripped her wrist.
Molly stepped into the room, followed by Grayson. He was no longer soaked in blood, nor did he sport horns or talons. He was just Grayson, dressed a little plainly in clean trousers and a simple linen shirt.
“Molly said you’d let me heal you.” He spoke softly as if uncertain of her temperament.
Briar studied her bandaged hand instead of looking at him. “I’ve lost the use of my fingers. I can’t play the fiddle.”
“Oh.” The single word gave nothing away.
Briar looked up.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Molly announced. Not waiting for a response, she left the cabin, pulling the door closed behind her.
Grayson gave the door a worried glance before turning to Briar.
“Are you sure you want to heal me?” she asked. “At the moment, I’m not a soul singer.”
“Do you truly believe I wouldn’t?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.” Her voice lowered as she continued. “You made Darby soulless.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“It was you. I watched you do it.”
“You know what I mean.”
She did, but she didn’t want to go into that right now. She held out her bandaged hand to him.
He eyed her a moment as if debating what to say. She hoped he wasn’t debating whether to heal her or not. She had only said that out of spite. In her heart, she knew this Grayson loved her, but the other Grayson… She had no answers there.
He knelt before her and taking her injured hand in his, began to unwind the bandage.
Briar’s stomach rolled over as the last of the soiled cloth fell away. It wasn’t as bad as her dream, but there was a hole all the way through her hand. She remembered Owens twisting the knife and reaming out the hole.
“I made his end too quick,” Grayson whispered between clenched teeth.
“No.” She looked up from the injury, her eyes meeting his. “If you had prolonged his suffering, that would make you as much of a monster as he was.”
“But I am a monster. At least, you think so.”
“You can be a monster,” she allowed, refusing to look away.
He dropped his gaze to her hand.
A worm of guilt twisted in the pit of her stomach. She had always come to his defense and stood up for him when others suggested what he could become. Would she no longer defend him?
He cupped her injured hand in one of his, then covered it with the other before closing his eyes.
She watched his face as he frowned in concentration. She could also see his misery, or perhaps she sensed it. They were still connected after all, bound by more than her possession of his construct. She longed to reach out and brush his cheek. Comfort him. Yet she couldn’t get that memory of Darby and his ripped-open abdomen out of her head. Unlike other ferromancers, Grayson didn’t need to touch the organs he changed to metal, yet he had shoved his hand into Darby’s stomach. What did that say about him?
Grayson gripped her hand in both of his, but there was no longer any pain. Already kneeling, he leaned forward to press his forehead to her knees. “Please forgive me,” he whispered.
She gasped as the raw emotion rolled over her. Where she had been numb after the ordeal, his emotions were a caustic mess that burned everything they touched. Fear and self-loathing, abject terror that he would lose her—both how he’d felt while she was missing, and how he felt now.
Lock moaned and pressed against the side of her neck.
Briar felt like her chest had been ripped open and her heart extracted. She slipped off the bunk and, kneeling on the floor with him, pulled him into her arms.
He broke down completely and hugged her fiercely in return.
She opened herself to him, sharing her own confusing mix of emotions. How she was afraid not only for him, but of him. For the first time since they met, she truly understood what he could become. But the worst part was that she hadn’t been able to call him off Darby. She hadn’t been able to touch him at all.
Because you can only influence what is human in me, he answered in that burst of sensation she translated easily.
She now knew that was true, and this was the heart of the problem because when nothing human remained in him, the only resource left was her Scourge magic.
“What are you thinking?” He pulled back to look her in the eye.
“You don’t know?”
“It seems you’ve learned to shut me out.” He scrubbed a hand across his cheeks. “Aside from initially showing me that windowless room, I got nothing from you until you gave me the location.”
“I feared that if you knew what was happening before I could tell you where I was, you might… lose it.”
“Guess I vindicated your assumption,” he muttered. “How did you get the address?”
“I tricked Owens into giving me his oath—or something close enough that I could command him.”
“A blood oath works on the soulless? I thought it only worked on the Scourge. Those are the ones the ferra bind.”
“I’m not ferra,” she reminded him. “And if you’re correct, my ability is based in humanity. Owens was human once—at least, biologically. He was a true monster. I’m fairly certain he has killed several women as he tried to kill me.”
Grayson clenched his fists. Was he wondering, like she was, how Solon could keep such a creature?
She looked down at her hand, studying first the back, then her palm. She opened and closed it several times. There was no pain, and her fingers moved as they always had.
“I need to go heal Kali,” she said.
“I haven’t finished healing you.”
She looked up, meeting his eyes. “Yes, you have.”
“Please, no. I
can’t bear the thought of leaving that… thing’s mark on you.”
She reached up and pressed a finger to his lips. “I love you Grayson—which makes it really easy to forget that there are monsters in this world. I don’t want to forget.”
He dropped his gaze but said nothing.
Another wave of guilt tore through her. How could she say such a thing to him? And yet…
Shaking her head to dispel those awful thoughts, she got to her feet, trying not to flinch from the discomfort the movement caused. Retrieving her fiddle case, she took out her bow.
Grayson stood but remained silent.
“Lock?” she prompted.
The little dragon hopped down to the table and an instant later, became the silver fiddle.
Grayson spoke before she could leave. “Aren’t you going to ask about Darby?”
She stopped. “I was trying not to think about that.” She didn’t believe she could bear it if Grayson decided to keep him around.
“I commanded him to sell his boat,” Grayson said. “Then I ordered him to return to his wife, confess his infidelity, and give her the money.”
In other words, Grayson had taken everything from him. If he hadn’t taken his life as well, Briar might have been amused.
“And then?” she asked.
“Then he is to return to me.”
“Why? What will you do?”
Grayson’s brow wrinkled. “I… I wanted to ask you. I can’t undo what I did, but I can’t leave him as he is.”
“That’s true,” she agreed.
“Then…”
“I’ll play him a song.”
“I don’t want this on you.”
“It already is.” She held his gaze for a moment, then left the cabin.
Perseus came to his feet as she stepped into the cargo hold. He’d been sitting at Kali’s side, where she lay on the folded blankets that served as her pallet. He’d been holding her hand in his.
“My lady, you are healed?” he asked.
In answer, she lifted her left hand to display her undamaged palm.
He smiled but didn’t comment as she walked over to join him at Kali’s bedside. She appeared to be asleep but was more likely unconscious. Her skin was pale, and sweat dampened her hair around her face.
