Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One

by de la Cruz, Melissa

  Nat looked up to find the dark-robed girl staring at her. Liannan’s eyes glowed in a rainbow of shockingly brilliant colors. She was staring at Nat, holding her gaze, studying her.

  “SHAKES!” Wes tossed a rope to the castoff, but it snapped in the air, torn by an invisible force.

  Please, let us save him. He’s just a boy, Nat begged. Somehow, she understood that thing out there was punishing them because Daran had killed the little white bird. That thing out there was angry, and its fury would not be abated.

  Please.

  “HELP ME!” Shakes screamed.

  Liannan shed her robe. “Drakon! The boy saved me! Let him live!” She pulled her hood and mask from her face. Underneath the dark drapery she wore a long, slim white tunic. Her long hair was the color of sunlight from long ago, dazzling and golden. The cold night air began to soften, the temperature growing warm as a light pierced the night. The light was strong and powerful, and the darkness faded and the wailing subsided.

  Nat clutched her forehead, trembling as a wave of frustration and anger washed over her. It felt as if someone—or something—was pushing her to do something, but what? What could she do? She was angry, so angry at Daran and confused that Shakes had fallen into the middle of the entire thing. She took calm, steady breaths. She could hear the sylph. The boy saved me. Let him live. The danger had passed. That’s what the sylph was trying to say, trying to make her understand.

  The darkness dissipated as quickly as it came.

  Wes grabbed the torn rope and lowered it to Shakes. With the crew’s help, everyone pulling together, they heaved the soldier back on deck.

  Shakes appeared, frantically rubbing his eyes and spitting. His skin and face were red, raw, his eyes wild and confused. Farouk ran up and dumped a liter of Nutri on his head.

  Shakes yelped.

  Wes knelt down and grabbed his friend by the shoulders. “Shakes!”

  The shivering boy paused. “What?”

  “You’re fine! You’re not poisoned, you’re fine!”

  Shakes looked down at himself, not quite sure what to look for. Then he smiled. “Right.” He turned to the ocean. “But what about Daran?”

  Wes threw a life preserver overboard, knowing it was a waste. “There’s no wind, no way for us to reach him. At least this gives him a chance—it’s all we can do,” he said, not liking it, but not having a choice either.

  Daran’s screams began to fade; soon they mixed with the familiar sound of the wailer’s mourning, and it became harder and harder to differentiate the two.

  31

  WHEN ZEDRIC AWOKE TO FIND HIS BROTHER still missing, he became violent. If they didn’t subdue him, he would hurt himself or the crew. They put him in the brig; it was cruel, but they had no other option. “Go on—I’ll take it from here,” Shakes told Nat, as he handcuffed the boy to the nearest pipe.

  She walked out of the room and saw the sylph approaching. The girl had put her dark cloak back on, but her hood was down. Her eyes were pure violet, the color of asters and twilight. Her pale blond hair was fragile and delicate like cobwebs, like fairies’ wings. The mark on her cheek was a six-pointed star. She was lovely, far lovelier than Nat had expected, like an exotic, rare creature, like the extinct and legendary butterflies from the world that no longer was.

  Liannan smiled at her. “You’ve seen my kind before, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “A prisoner, no doubt, or a token, a performing monkey.”

  Nat thought of the golden-eyed girl with the orange hair, the Slob’s favorite pet, and understood now. “You spoke about something called the drakon—what is it?” Nat asked.

  Liannan studied her before answering. “The drakons are protectors of Vallonis. They have been lost since the breaking, but now one has returned.” Her voice was like the sound of falling water, it had a lovely lilt, like a melody.

  “Vallonis . . . do you mean the Blue . . . is that what you call it?”

  “Yes.” Liannan nodded. “That is what I call my home.”

  Farouk came stomping down the stairs into the hallway, and when he saw the two of them, his face blanched and he crossed himself as if to ward them away. It pained Nat to see him—she’d thought Farouk was a friend, like Shakes—but now the young boy was gaping at them, pressing himself against the wall so that no part of his body would come into contact with either of them.

  Liannan laid a hand on his shoulder and he visibly flinched.

  “You have nothing to fear from me. I am not infectious. I can no more turn you into one of us than I can turn into one of you,” she said.

  Farouk did not look convinced and shook her hand off him. “Don’t touch me.”

  There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “What’s going on here?” Wes asked, looking at the troubled faces in front of him.

  “She touched my shoulder,” Farouk accused. “And she killed Daran.”

  “I did no such thing,” Liannan said. “It was the drakon who decided his fate,” she said, turning to Nat.

  “Leave her alone,” Shakes said, as he walked out of the room where they had imprisoned Zedric. “She didn’t do anything to him. He asked for it, he was looking for trouble. Things happen out here in the water—you haven’t been, you don’t know.”

  “Or it could be nothing. Coincidence,” Wes said, his gaze falling on Nat as well.

  “What brings you to this part of the world, Ryan Wesson?” Liannan asked.

  “You know my name,” he said, and Nat felt a stab of jealousy to see him give Liannan the same smirk he’d given her the first time they’d met. She knew she had no claim to him, and that she had already decided to all but cut him loose, but somehow she couldn’t help but feel as if he were hers and hers alone.

  Liannan cast her cool gaze upon him. “I know everyone on board this ship. Ryan Wesson, the mercenary. Vincent Valez, second in command, more commonly addressed as ‘Shakes.’ Farouk Jones, navigator. Daran Slaine, currently in the water. Zedric Slaine, his brother. And . . . Natasha Kestal.” Liannan turned to her and stared. “Who asked about the drakon . . .”

  Wes raised an eyebrow and regarded Nat with a questioning gaze.

  “You are marked,” Liannan said.

  Nat nodded.

  “So you are one of us.” The sylph nodded. “Do not worry,” she told the others. “Our powers are not malicious in nature, no matter what you have been led to believe. Do you know why they cast us out? Why we are hunted and killed, or confined to prisons? Why they spread lies about our people? Because their world is broken, their world is ending, and so they fear us, they fear what is coming. The world that is returning, that is growing in the ruins of this one. A drakon flies again, and we are renewed in its presence.” Liannan’s voice had grown lower, and her eyes were kaleidoscopes.

  Farouk was shaking. “She’s . . . cursing us, I swear . . . stop her . . .”

  Nat sucked in her breath, and Wes was frowning now. He turned to the golden-haired girl. “Okay, enough. You’re scaring my crew, and you’ve cost me a soldier,” he growled.

  “And you have gained a guide. I believe our journeys are the same. You are ostensibly on your way to New Crete, yet in truth you seek the Blue. You are headed to the doorway at Arem. Natasha wears the Anaximander stone.”

  “The stone!” Shakes said. “I knew it!”

  Nat’s hand flew to her neck as she stared at the sylph. “How did you . . . ?”

  For his part, Wes did not answer, but remained wary.

  “I can help you reach your destination,” she said.

  Wes sighed. “Listen, I hate to break it to you, but you’re no better off on my ship than you were on your own. We lost our engines to the same thing that took Daran. There’s been no wind for days, and we’re down to eating twigs. You want to join us? Be my guest.”

  32


  THE SYLPH HAD NO ANSWER TO THAT OTHER than a cold gratitude, and Wes went with Shakes to check on the sail—they could hear it flapping, which meant a wind had finally kicked up.

  They circled back again to look for Daran, but there was no sign of him; either the water or that thing in the water had claimed him. With Zedric in the hold, Wes ordered the family placed in his cabin, which was more comfortable. He went to check on their progress and found the parents lying on the bed, covered with a thin woolen blanket. Nat was sitting by their bedside, next to the two little ones.

  “How are they doing?” he asked.

  She cast him a stricken look that told him everything. They were dead. There was a cry of pain from the younger boy, and his brother soothed him.

  “I’m so sorry,” Nat whispered, and only when the child turned to her did Wes realize his mistake. He had been wrong about the new passengers. The little ones were not children. They only looked like they were. The boys were smallmen.

  Wes faced the group, taking a knee.

  “This is Brendon and this is Roark,” Nat said, introducing them. Brendon had curly red hair and tears in his eyes. Roark was dark and stocky. They were the size of toddlers—three feet tall, but proportioned and fully grown; Wes had never met any before, but they struck him as being about his age. The smallfolk were said to be wily and malicious; they could see in the blackest dark and hide where no hiding place could be found, giving rise to their reputations as thieves and assassins. But the two in front of him looked nothing like the sort. They had ordinary, pleasant faces, and their clothing was rough-hewn and handmade.

  It was Brendon who spoke. “Thank you for taking us on board.”

  “I’m sorry about your friends,” said Wes, shaking his hand.

  Brendon nodded, blinking back tears; he looked as if he were about to collapse. “They sheltered us from the raids when we were separated from our families. With their help, we found Liannan and the boat. We would not be here without them.”

  The smallmen told them their story. They were refugees from Upper Pangaea, where the RSA had just taken over. The smallkind had lived in the open there, along with a few tribes of sylphs. It was peaceful for a time, but things started to change. Many of them were suffering, dying from the rot, the strange plague on the marked and magical that no medicine could cure. As part of the cleansing, they had been rounded up with the rest of the marked and others like them, herded and made to live in confined areas until they were moved somewhere else. So Brendon and Roark had hidden with their friends on their farm and survived for a time, hiding in the attic, in the recesses of the walls, but it became too dangerous. The neighbors had become suspicious, so they looked for passage and decided to undertake the dangerous voyage to the Blue, where they heard there was a cure.

  For a while they had been lucky; their captain was savvy and the ship was fast, and they had made good time. Then they had hit a trashberg, and their ship began taking in water, which slowed them down. Supplies began to run out, then they were ambushed and drifted for weeks, with nothing to eat . . . and being human, the young couple had taken the worst of it. They had died of starvation.

  Roark put his face in his hands and sobbed. They were great, terrible sobs, and Wes felt helpless around such grief. He wondered at the depth of feeling and was envious of it, in a perverse way. He hadn’t cried like that since his parents died, since he and Eliza had been separated. Wes had seen so many of his soldiers die before him, and felt nothing but an abstract, removed sadness. Perhaps if Shakes had perished, he would feel it . . . Wes clapped Roark on the shoulder a bit awkwardly. He looked to Nat for help.

  “We’ll honor their life,” Nat said. “I’ll ask Liannan to help me prepare them for burial at sea.”

  Nat and Wes left the room together, Nat moving quickly and Wes following right behind. But he stopped, feeling a sharp tug on his sleeve. He looked down and saw Brendon. The smallman had a pinched, anxious look on his face and was wringing his hands in worry.

  “Captain . . .”

  “Just call me Wes,” he said. “We don’t go by formalities here.”

  “Wes, then.” Brendon nodded. “There are more of us—more boats out there—filled with our people, headed to the same place. But during the ambush we were separated.”

  Wes nodded. He knew as much from seeing the slaughter on board their ship. “The ships that attacked you, did they carry this flag?” he asked, showing the red stars of the RSA.

  The smallman nodded.

  Wes wiped his brow. It was just as he’d suspected: Sniper boats were circling. “Look, I’d love to help out every pilgrim in this ocean, but we’re running as tight as we can, and we can’t take any more. We don’t have enough supplies to feed ourselves, let alone you guys. We’ll be lucky if we make it to the Blue before the goop runs out.”

  “Then they are lost,” Brendon whispered.

  Wes sighed. “How many ships?”

  “Five . . . at most. We were following them toward the Hellespont, which is when the attack happened, and then we were separated by the trashbergs. We haven’t seen them since, but we know they’re out there. Some of them must have survived. They’re lost and hungry and they don’t have anyone. Liannan was leading us. They were following our boat.”

  This was why he never took these jobs anymore, Wes realized. It was too much—he couldn’t save everybody—he couldn’t even keep his soldiers alive, let alone in line. Daran was lost, and while the kid was a jerk and a lowlife, he had still entrusted his life to Wes and Wes had failed him. He couldn’t keep doing this, there were so many . . . and he was too young to watch so many kids die. Now he was being asked to save a few more . . . for what? So that he could watch them starve? Or fall victim to frostblight? He blinked; his vision had gone black again, as if to remind him.

  “Please,” Brendon said. “Please . . . just give them a chance. That’s all we’re asking.”

  Wes looked down at him. They were called smallmen . . . maybe they had small appetites? He wondered how they would feel about eating bark. “Look, I’ll see what I can do. We’ll do one loop around Hell Strait and if we see anyone we’ll pick them up, but that’s it. I can’t waste time circling this drain.”

  “Thank you!” Brendon said, shaking his hand vigorously. “Thank you!”

  Wes handed him and Roark a few fried chicken wafers he’d been saving for a dire emergency. “What is it?” Brendon asked, staring at the foil-wrapped object.

  “It’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but it tastes good—share it with your brother.”

  “He’s not my brother,” Brendon said excitedly, but he was already tearing off the silver wrapper and inhaling the scent.

  Wes’s cheeks creased in a sad smile. So many promises he had made already. To take Nat to the Blue. Now to scour the oceans for more of the smallkind. He was soft, he’d always been too soft; it was his Achilles heel, his heart.

  33

  LIANNAN PREPARED THE BODIES FOR burial with the help of Brendon and Roark. Nat lent a hand as well, helping to wrap the white cloth around each one, folding and tucking the linen so the fabric did not bunch. The smallmen were somber, silent tears rolling down their cheeks as they accomplished the difficult task of caring for their dead.

  “We’re ready,” Nat told Wes and Shakes, who were waiting by the doorway respectfully. Farouk had made it clear he wanted no part of this and remained on the bridge, watching. Together the boys lifted the body of the man first, then the woman, and laid them out on the deck. The small funeral party followed them upstairs.

  “Would you like to say a few words?” Liannan asked the weeping friends.

  “Yes.” Brendon nodded. He folded his hands together and took a moment to compose himself. Nat thought he would not be able to do it, but finally he spoke, and his voice was strong and clear. “We say good-bye today to our friends Owen and Mallory Brown. The
y lived simple, brave lives and were taken from us too soon. We will forever honor their memory and cherish their friendship. We give them to the sea. May they rest in the light.”

  “May they rest in the light,” Roark repeated.

  Nat looked at Shakes and Wes to prompt them and the three of them echoed the smallmen’s words. “May they rest in the light,” they murmured.

  The group looked to Liannan.

  She moved toward the still, shrouded bodies. “Owen and Mallory, may the wings of the drakon guide you to the Eternal Haven.”

  The sylph nodded, and Wes and Shakes lifted the first shroud to the edge of the deck, then the next, and gently rolled them off the ship, giving the dead to the waves.

  Three dead in one day, Nat thought. Daran was one of their team, but there had been no funeral for him. No words spoken on his behalf, no blessings, but then, perhaps he had not been worthy of any. The dead couple had given their lives for their friends, but Daran would only have brought death to his team.

  Liannan, Brendon, and Roark stood at the railing for a long time, watching the sea.

  Wes took Nat aside. “We’ll put them in the crew cabin.”

  “Right.” Nat nodded, understanding the plan. Space had opened up with Zedric in the hold and his brother lost.

  “I’m going to move back, too,” Nat said to Wes. “To the crew cabin, I mean.”

  “Oh?” Wes said, taken aback.

  It made sense, now that Daran was no longer a factor. “Is there a problem?” she asked, not meaning to sound brusque. But if she was going to nip this whole thing in the bud, she had to do it now, and quickly.

  Wes shrugged. “Do what you want; it doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Right,” she said, and couldn’t help feeling just a little hurt at his tone. Even if she wanted to push him away, she was irritated he had given up so easily. Just a few hours ago he had held her hand for a second too long when she’d saved him from the waters.

  “I’ll go, then,” she said, her pride getting the best of her.