Safire heard the resignation in her voice as she said it. As if she truly wanted Safire to plunge the knife in. To end it all.
But a remorseful murderer was still a murderer. This one had killed innocents. Eris wouldn’t hesitate to hunt down Asha in exchange for her freedom—especially now that she knew how close the Namsara really was. Right here on these islands.
Eris stared Safire down, a challenge in her eyes. “Go on,” she said, pushing back, forcing the steel of Safire’s blade to pierce her skin. “Get it over with, princess.”
Safire’s grip tightened around the dagger. But this crime hadn’t been committed against her. Safire wasn’t going to take Eris’s life. She would deliver her to the empress and let the laws of the Star Isles deal with her.
Seeing her hesitation, Eris whispered, “What happened to the girl who puts knives through the hearts of her enemies?”
Safire narrowed her eyes.
Jarek. She never should have said his name aloud. Not in front of Eris. But it was too late. And Eris’s question—the thought of him—threw Safire back to the night of the revolt: the king was dead; Dax had won; Jarek stood surrounded by their rebel army.
Safire had waited her whole life for that moment: to see her tormentor brought to his knees. But Jarek wouldn’t kneel. At the very end, he was still standing, still fighting, refusing to bend to the new order.
Safire had never hated him more than in that moment. Hated his defiance and loyalty. Hated it because, just for a moment, it made her understand him.
It made her see herself in him.
So, yes. She put a knife through his heart.
She thought her hatred would go with him. That his death would soothe the ache of a lifetime of loathing. But it didn’t.
As Safire stood over Jarek’s corpse that night, with the killing blade in her hand, her hate remained swollen inside her. She felt sick with it.
“Safire?”
The voice chased the memory away. Immediately, she was back in that ruined room, and though it was her pressing a stolen dagger to Eris’s collarbone, she was the one who felt unexpectedly defenseless.
It happened sometimes, when she was alone on her rounds. Or awake in her bed. Or even standing watch over the king in a busy assembly. Suddenly, irrationally, this feeling would come over her: a craving to be held. For someone to tell her it was going to be all right.
That she was going to be all right.
It shamed her, that feeling. Because of course she was perfectly fine. Safire didn’t need someone to take care of her. She took care of herself.
“I’m sorry,” Eris said suddenly. “For whatever he did to you.”
Safire abruptly became aware of just how close they were standing. Close enough to feel the warmth of Eris against her. Close enough to smell the scent on her skin—like thunder and lightning.
And then, from behind them, someone cleared his throat.
Safire went rigid. Eris glanced up, over her shoulder.
“Am I interrupting something?” came a deep, familiar voice. A voice Safire would know anywhere. Her heart leaped at the sound of it and she whirled to look.
“Dax!”
The dragon king stood before her, dressed in a gold tunic. A saber hung at his hip and four guards flanked him. His dark curls glistened with rain and though exhaustion dulled his brown eyes, the relief at the sight of Safire—alive—was clear in his smile.
She hadn’t realized she missed him until that moment. How much she missed all of them. Her cousin’s presence sent a rush of joy through Safire. She wanted nothing more than to hug him, but Eris’s rope was still attached to her belt and Safire’s blade was still pointed at the girl’s chest, keeping her from trying anything.
So instead, she asked him, “How did you find me?”
Dax opened his mouth to answer. But his eyes fell on Eris and he said, “Who’s this?”
Safire looked to the Death Dancer, who’d gone uncharacteristically quiet.
“This . . .” But what could she say?
The girl who’d burned down this temple along with everyone in it?
The thief who intended to hunt down Asha and deliver her to the deadliest pirate on the Silver Sea?
The empress’s fugitive?
Safire took a step back, putting space between herself and Eris. Because of course, Eris was all of those things. “Never mind that right now. There are pirates nearby and I’d rather avoid them if we can.”
“They’ve already been dealt with.”
Safire tilted her head at Dax. “You caught them?”
He nodded, his gaze flicking from her to Eris and back. “They’re being taken to the ship as we speak.”
He glanced over his shoulder, motioning for guards Safire couldn’t see until they stepped out of the shadows and into the starlight. The four soldats moved in, blades drawn, surrounding Safire’s captive. “We can take her from here, commandant.”
But Safire shook her head. “This girl is the worst kind of criminal,” she told them, grabbing Eris’s shoulder and pulling her away from the wall. “She remains with me.”
There was no way she was entrusting Eris to anyone else’s care. Now that she’d captured the Death Dancer, she couldn’t let her escape.
Asha’s safety depended on it.
A Breaking
For seven years, Skye had waited for him. Watching the shore, the cliffs, the trees. Wanting her friend and confidant.
How dare he return today—of all days—only to leave her for good.
Skye did not return to her wedding festivities. Instead, she hauled her dory down to the shore and rowed it out to sea. Pulling hard on her oars, she swore to herself she wouldn’t come back until she’d rowed out all her fury and grief. Until she was so tired and sore, she no longer cared about the shadow called Crow.
The sky darkened above her.
Skye kept rowing.
The sea swelled around her.
Skye rowed harder.
The wind screamed its warnings. The rain tried to drive her back. But Skye was a fisherman’s daughter. She’d spent her whole life on the sea.
She wasn’t afraid of a little rain.
And then, far from shore, she felt it: power surging beneath her. Coming up from the depths.
The storm had brought something with it.
Skye stopped rowing.
“Crow?” she whispered.
Had he changed his mind? Had he come back for her?
Suddenly, the waves began to beat their fists against her hull. They spilled their froth over the sides.
The sea was trying to sink her.
Whatever was in the water wasn’t Crow.
Skye tried to turn. Tried to row back to shore. But the sea grabbed her oars and pitched them into the storm.
Skye grabbed the sides of her boat, determined to stay in the dory. To keep it upright.
The very next wave turtled her boat.
Salt water surged up, cold and dark as death. It silenced Skye’s screams. Wrapped its icy fingers around her ankles. Dragged her down and down and down.
Into the darkness.
A world away, Crow felt it: Skye’s life draining away.
He surged over the water, searching the sea. His too-human heart beat a terrified tattoo. Was this his fault? His punishment for leaving her?
By the time he found her, it was too late.
The sea had dashed her on the rocks.
“Skye . . .”
The water was eerily calm as he pulled her to him. The sand glittered against her death-pale skin.
Skye’s eyelids fluttered open. Her life was fading fast. “You came back.”
He had mere heartbeats now, and a choice to make. It was the nature of mortal things to die. All Crow had to do was say good-bye. To hold her tight as her soul passed into a place he could never follow. It was the last lesson his human girl could teach him.
Except . . .
Make me immortal, she’d asked.
If Crow had never met her, it would have been easy to say no. But Skye had taken the god in him and taught it to be human. Taught him to want and crave and yearn.
In that moment before she slipped away for good, Crow took her strong, skilled hands in his. There, on the rocks, with the sea silent and still around them, he laced his fingers with hers. Fingers that hauled and rowed, mended and wove.
Weaving is what she loved best, he thought.
In exchange for all the gifts she’d given him, he gave her one back. He made her Skyweaver and gave her dominion over the souls of the dead, fashioning her into his opposite: a god of hope. One who could light the way through the dark.
When he finished, Crow stepped back and looked at what he’d done.
She was no longer Skye, the fisherman’s daughter. With her mortality, he’d taken everything that made her. She did not remember her cove, or the dory she’d spent half her life in, or the husband she’d left pining on the shore.
She did not know Crow. She did not even know herself.
He’d changed her.
She was now deathless. Formidable. A god of hope and light.
And though she was magnificent, she was not his Skye. The human girl he loved was gone. And where his heart had once been—if indeed he ever had one—there was now a roaring, empty void.
Eighteen
The next morning, on the deck of Dax’s ship, Safire leaned against the taffrail and into the salt spray of the sea. After last night’s storm, the ocean was calm and glittering like a jewel.
With Dax at her side, Safire tilted her head back to watch the dragons above, their massive wings spread wide as they glided beneath the sails and around the stern of Dax and Roa’s ship, locked in a game of chase. Dax’s slender yellow mount—a gentle creature named Spark—was currently in the lead. The others belonged to various soldats aboard the ship—all except one, which hung back from the group.
This solitary dragon flew farther out, all alone. Safire watched the sunlight ripple across Sorrow’s white scales as she and the king filled each other in on everything that had happened since Darmoor.
Dax explained that Sorrow appeared on the horizon shortly after their ship left Darmoor’s port, surprising everyone. Roa worried about what they would do with him once they arrived in Axis. But Dax thought it could be good for Sorrow to be in the company of other mounts—dragons who were paired with riders. They might teach Sorrow how to play and fight and, most important, show him that not all humans were things to be feared. They might teach him how to be a dragon again.
Safire, studying the solitary creature, had her doubts.
“I don’t understand,” said Dax from beside her, watching the shoreline glide by as they followed the coastline of Axis Isle, heading for the harbor. He’d just informed her that it had been an off-duty soldat—one who often worried about his commandant’s lack of consideration for her own safety—who’d followed Safire to the Thirsty Craw. When she didn’t come out, he reported it to Dax, who’d been tracking her ever since. “What does a pirate like Jemsin want with Asha?”
“It could be a ransom,” said Safire, thinking of something Eris said. “Or he could be trying to get at you.” She squinted up at him in the sunlight. He wore a golden tunic today, embroidered with the royal crest, and his damp curls were even curlier than usual from the mist rolling off the sea. “Have you harassed any pirates lately?”
Dax tilted his head. “Not that I can think of.”
“Maybe it’s not Asha he wants,” came a voice from behind them.
Both Asha and Dax turned to find the dragon queen approaching. Roa wore a simple wool dress that came to her ankles, the elegant hood pushed back and falling loose around her shoulders. No golden circlet adorned her dark brow, where black curls were cropped close to her head, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. She’d grown so wan and thin since her last visit to the scrublands, like she was wasting away. Her worry and grief over the starvation of her people had sharpened Roa’s soft edges. And if it pained Safire to watch, it was certainly excruciating for Dax, who loved his wife more than life itself.
Safire hoped that whatever gift the empress intended to give them truly would alleviate the suffering in the scrublands.
Unconsciously, Roa touched her own shoulder. The one, Safire knew, bearing eight years of claw marks. Essie, Roa’s sister, had spent eight years trapped in the form of a hawk and in those eight years, she’d never left her sister’s side and could often be found perched on Roa’s shoulder. Roa, Safire had noticed in the months of Essie’s absence, had a frequent habit of running her fingers across the scars. Almost fondly.
Roa turned her dark brown eyes on Safire. “Asha and Torwin have the Skyweaver’s knife.”
Safire remembered it—the weapon Roa used to save her sister—in Torwin’s hands the day before they left. It was their sole reason for traveling to the scrin.
“It’s possible Jemsin wants the knife Asha carries, not Asha herself.” In her dark eyes, Safire could see the night Roa set her sister’s soul free. She remembered the corrupted thing Essie had become in the end. Roa would never have been able to save her without the Skyweaver’s knife.
“But what would Jemsin want with a knife that cuts souls?” Safire murmured.
No one had an answer to that.
“What about the Death Dancer?” Roa asked, hugging her thinning frame now against the chill of the wind. Seeing it, Dax reached for his wife, sliding his arms around Roa’s waist and drawing her against him. “What’s her part in all this?”
At the thought of Eris, Safire pulled the girl’s spindle out of her pocket. She’d lied to her about burying it so that Eris wouldn’t try to steal it back. “She seems to be some kind of indentured servant rather than a part of Jemsin’s crew. Jemsin gives an order, and she obeys.” She ran her thumb over the worn wood, examining the smooth curves, as she remembered something Kor said. “I think Jemsin may be hiding her, and in exchange for his protection, she does whatever he asks.”
“Hiding her from what?”
Safire looked up into Dax’s worried eyes. “From the empress.”
Safire hadn’t quite filled him in on this part of the story yet. So she told him and Roa everything she’d learned about Eris. That she wasn’t just an uncatchable thief. She was the empress’s fugitive.
“Apparently the empress has been hunting the murderer who burned down the scrin for years. She just didn’t know that person was also the Death Dancer.”
When she finished, Dax’s eyes were dark and Roa’s lips were pressed into a hard line.
“How did you capture her?” asked Roa from the circle of Dax’s arms as she watched Safire’s hands run over the spindle. “I thought the Death Dancer was uncatchable.”
“I thought so, too,” said Safire. Back in Firgaard, the girl seemed to be a ghost. Walking through walls. Disappearing right in front of her. But then Kor captured them and locked Eris’s wrists in those horrible manacles, and Eris’s strange abilities had just . . . stopped.
Why?
She shook her head. “The important thing is keeping her confined until we deliver her to the empress.”
“Well, it won’t be long now,” said Dax, resting his chin on the top of Roa’s head as he looked to the prow. “We’re almost in Axis’s harbor.”
“I’m sure Leandra will want to know that her waters are infested with pirates,” said Roa. “We should offer to help her eliminate them.”
It wasn’t until her thumb’s third time around the spindle that Safire noticed the symbols carved into the wood. Seven stars ringed the widest part, almost completely worn away. And there was something else, too.
Safire lifted it to her face, squinting at the carved word.
Skye, it read.
Safire frowned at the name. But why she was surprised, she didn’t know. Eris was a thief. Of course the spindle was stolen.
“And then you can fly to the southern tip of Axis Isle and make sure Asha’s s
afe,” said Dax.
Safire looked up, startled. “Is that where she is?”
“Torwin sent a message the night you went missing. I’ll show you the letter. It should be easy to find.”
Those words pricked her. If Asha was easy to find, then if Eris ever got free . . .
At that thought, Safire realized it had been a while since she’d checked on her prisoner.
Gripping the spindle hard in her hand, Safire pushed away from the taffrail. “Then as soon as Eris is safely locked away in the empress’s prison, I’ll find Asha and warn her about Jemsin.”
Safire was still thinking about the spindle as she headed for the cabin Dax had designated as hers. She remembered her first encounter with Eris. She’d bumped into her, disguised as a soldat, and the spindle had fallen to the floor. Safire picked it up and handed it back.
The second time, in Safire’s bedroom, the spindle was there again. Safire had seen it in Eris’s hand before she disappeared.
Clearly there was some connection between this spindle and Eris’s disappearances.
What is it?
As she stepped through the doorway and into her cabin, two soldats greeted her. In the center of the lavish room stood Eris.
Dax wanted to put her in the brig, where Kor and his crew were currently confined. Safire prevented it, remembering the look in Kor’s eyes that night on his ship. Criminal or no, she didn’t want that man anywhere near Eris.
Now, in an ironic swapping of places, Eris’s manacles were chained to one of the beams above her head. But the look of pain on her face made it difficult for Safire to gloat. She quickly glanced to find the girl’s wrists raw and bleeding.
Stardust steel would take three days to eat through human flesh, Eris had told her.
How many days had passed?
Almost two.
Safire’s stomach twisted at the realization. But they were nearly in Axis. As soon as they made port, she would make sure they found a metalsmith who could take them off. It would be safer and smarter to head straight for the empress, but those cuffs were a perverse kind of cruelty. And Safire didn’t abide cruelty. She would just have to keep a close eye on Eris while they made their detour.
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