Wielder's Curse

by Elle Cardy

  “Did you lie to me?” she asked.

  Finn turned away and studied the wood paneling. While he glowered at the wall, he chewed on his bottom lip.

  He had lied. The Guardians hadn’t been wrong about him. He did know how to silence, and he’d used that knowledge against a wielder in town.

  “You lied to me,” she said, barely able to contain her anger.

  “And you’ve never lied to me?”

  Of course, she’d lied, but that was before they knew each other better, before they’d grown close. She wouldn’t lie to him again. Except that one lie. The one lie that would make Finn want to kill her too if he ever found out the truth.

  Jasmine backed away.

  He muttered a curse he’d learned from her. Swinging his feet off the bed, he said, “I’m sorry.” He gasped and clutched his side.

  Seeing him in pain, Jasmine wanted to go to him, to take that pain away. She held back. Despite their … whatever it was they had. She wondered if they had any hope of a future together. Even if her secret did remain safe, the lie itself could keep them apart if it meant she couldn’t give him everything she was.

  “I didn’t mean to lie.” He shook his head. “I did mean to. I… I didn’t know how you’d react to the truth. I silenced a man.”

  Hearing him say it out loud hurt more than she could imagine. She expected Brusan to hurt her, Aurelius to betray her, Marcelo to let her down, but Finn was supposed to be different. She had relied on Cassian getting his information wrong. But the Order hadn’t been mistaken. She had thought they hunted him because of the silencing, but it turned out they hunted him because he featured in their visions. They hadn’t known who he was until Jasmine had willfully gone into town. To help Finn. Instead she’d made everything worse.

  Jasmine sank down beside him. “You had no choice.”

  She wanted to believe her words, but there was always a choice. They both knew what silencing did. It made the Beast from the void stronger. It fed off the power of silenced wielders, making it stronger. Jasmine’s visions of the Beast and the boiling seas had started again when Finn did the silencing. And he’d silenced not just a regular wielder, but a wielder who could learn from other wielders. A wielder like Kahld. Like her. An abomination.

  Sweat beaded on Finn’s forehead. He still clutched his side.

  “Show me your wound,” she said and reached to unbutton his shirt.

  He gave a half-hearted attempt to stop her. With ease, she brushed him away. When she pulled his shirt open, his chest glistened with sweat. The bandages Brusan had wrapped around his waist were gone, his wound left exposed. The cut itself looked like it was healing, but a black mark covered it, deeper and darker than any bruise. Around the rim of the mark, his skin had broken out in a fine line of small blisters. Had the dagger that stabbed him been poisoned?

  “What is this?” she asked. Brusan hadn’t said anything about poison.

  The vision of the boiling seas shimmered on her periphery. Not now. She fought it down and took a breath to calm herself.

  Finn covered his wound with his shirt. “I just need rest.”

  Maybe the mark wasn’t poison. The blisters said otherwise. Maybe it wasn’t life threatening. She shouldn’t jump to conclusions or react without knowing more. If nothing else, her little jaunt in town had taught her that much.

  “Let me see.” She wasn’t going to put up with his surly attitude. He’d lied. He could press his lips together and scowl all he wanted.

  When she insisted again, he relented and let her pull his shirt away. There was something familiar about the black mark. It was the color of a starless night, as deep as an ocean trench, with the sheen of a raven feather. She touched the patch of Finn’s blackened skin.

  The room vanished, and black, boiling seas rolled in. Smoke and destruction bloomed around her. A storm of devastation whipped through her, threatening to tear her apart. The Beast turned. She wielded herself hidden, an automatic response born from years of abuse. It might’ve saved her life. It might’ve done nothing. She couldn’t tell in the storm.

  “Jasmine, what’s wrong?” A voice from far away and a long time ago.

  Her throat closed, and a hacking cough bent her over. Sparks of color danced around her head. The vision retreated, as did the Beast. Lost in a storm. A storm that lived in the darkness around Finn’s wound.

  When her coughing eased, she straightened.

  Finn studied her. “You had a vision then.”

  Not trusting her voice, she nodded. Her growing suspicions had been confirmed. This was her nightmare become real. It shouldn’t be possible, yet there was no denying it. The Beast had grown so strong that the walls of its prison had thinned.

  Jasmine’s stomach twisted. She knew now what she’d denied. It had been the Beast that had attacked Finn, manifesting as a phantom, forging a dagger out of its own poisonous self. It all made horrible sense. Finn had been in the void with her. He’d escaped with her. The Beast knew what he looked like because Finn didn’t have her ability to hide.

  Jasmine caught her breath. The Beast knew what Finn looked like. Finn from three months ago when his hair was shorter.

  Chapter 14

  Jasmine ran. While still locked in its prison, the Beast had grown stronger than she could’ve imagined. She needed to get Finn away from Oakheart, away from the Guardians who were unwitting pawns in the Beast’s game.

  The only one who could make escape possible was Captain Durne.

  She threw herself against the captain’s door and, using the serpent knocker, rapped hard and fast. A muffled yell came from inside. She wrenched open the door and dashed inside.

  “We have to leave Oakheart,” she cried.

  Captain Durne glared at her. He was a stocky man full of power and muscle, yet he seemed a hundred times smaller than Kahld occupying the same space. Maybe it had something to do with the room that still spoke so much of Kahld. The floors were still covered in lush carpets, the wood paneling still carried rare charts and priceless paintings. The desk was the same ornate piece too. Gone was the side table that Kahld had filled with trinkets and treasures. Gone was the smell of chamomile and cinnamon. Now it smelled of parchments and sweat. The only object in the room that spoke of Durne was his favorite beaten-up cutlass taking pride of place on the display near the door.

  “Good of you to join me.” Durne’s murmur had an edge that sounded like the growl of a predator.

  “We have to leave. Immediately.”

  Her captain put down the quill he’d been using. He closed his hand into a meaty fist and pounded it onto the desk.

  Jasmine flinched.

  “You disobeyed my orders,” he hissed. “Not only did you go into town against my express orders, but you also ignored Cagg’s direct instruction to come to me when you returned. I am your captain, and I won’t tolerate insubordination. I have the right and the inclination to throw you into the brig.” His anger radiated from every pore and charged the quiet air. He didn’t seem so small anymore.

  Jasmine didn’t know what to say into the space his silence left. She hadn’t wanted to disobey him, but she’d seen little choice. She had thought she could protect Finn by going. Was there any protection against the Beast now that it had grown so strong that it could influence the world outside its prison?

  “And if you say the Prize doesn’t have a brig, I’ll make your punishment worse.”

  She wondered if Durne would flog her. Flogging had been Kahld’s practice for punishing insubordinate crew members. There hadn’t been a flogging since Durne took over, but that could change. Maybe he hoped to beat her. No, not Durne. Surely not Durne. A small thought took charge in her mind. Maybe he would get Brusan to beat her.

  “I’m sorry, Captain.” She didn’t know what else to say.

  “There’s plenty of storerooms below,” he said. “I could put you in one of them. Airless. Dank. No view of the ocean.”

  He k
new her too well.

  “I’m deeply sorry.” It wasn’t a lie. She was sorry. Durne was like the father she never had. The father she’d always wanted. Betraying his trust had been the last thing she wanted to do — if she’d thought about it before running off.

  “Don’t test me. Never again test me. I won’t wait for you again. If the ship needs to leave, and you aren’t here, then it will leave without you.”

  “Aye, Captain. Never again.” She held her breath, hoping he believed her.

  Durne eyed her, perhaps evaluating her sincerity. It wasn’t exactly like she was known for her truthfulness, but in this, she fully meant what she said. Her whole being wanted life at sea. The only way to get her dream was to play by the rules. Besides, the crew was her family. It wasn’t just the ship she couldn’t lose.

  “We have to leave,” she said in a quieter voice, hoping to turn his mind back to her urgency.

  Durne drew his bushy eyebrows into a scowl. “Do you have a reason for this haste? And an explanation for your hellish stink?” At least she wasn’t dripping sewerage onto the precious rugs. “Strike that. Just tell me the reason for your haste.”

  The reason was the Beast. Could a man like Durne, who wasn’t a wielder, understand that such a creature was possible? Even Marcelo, a powerful wielder, fully versed in the ways of magic, doubted the Beast’s existence.

  “There’s a group…” The Order of the Guardians was meant to be secret for a reason. If anyone discovered wielders had a powerful organization behind them, regular folk would hunt down every last wielder and kill them. “There’s a group in Oakheart. They’re after Finn.”

  “And that’s why he was attacked?” Durne said, his voice low and dangerous. “He did something to enrage this group to a point they needed to slay him?” His eyes were black jewels glinting in the low light.

  She didn’t want to lie, but neither did she want to go into the gory details that ended in admitting it was her fault the Guardians knew where to find Finn. Cassian and Cal had started seeing visions of Finn three months ago. When Finn’s hair was shorter. That was when Jasmine and Finn had been trapped in the Beast’s domain. It had hunted them then, and she’d thought they’d escaped, but the Beast hadn’t forgotten and hadn’t given up its pursuit. Now, it seemed, it had grown strong enough to influence a wielder’s visions.

  “We have to leave.”

  Durne’s scowl deepened. “Did Finn break any laws?”

  Guardian laws, perhaps, but he was neither a thief nor a murderer. Apart from silencing a man in self-defense and lying about it, he’d done nothing wrong. His crime was to feature in a false vision of a future that terrified the Order for some reason. A vision created by the Beast itself. She couldn’t explain all this to Durne. Because of her horrible mistake, all her second chances would be tossed out like chum. She’d be called mad and unfit for duty.

  “He tried to free another man’s wielder.” It was the lie she was told. Maybe she wasn’t a changed person after all. The lies were too easy. They kept her and Finn safe.

  Durne grunted. “Any reason other than that?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “Then why do they want him?”

  “Isn’t that enough in Oakheart?” She hoped the town’s reputation would be enough to skim the truth. “I found wanted posters of him.”

  Durne grunted again. It was impossible to tell what he thought under those bushy eyebrows. “How much is Marcelo invested in Finn?”

  Jasmine wasn’t sure how to answer the odd question.

  Durne pushed his chair from his desk and stood. “Because Marcelo came in here while you were off gallivanting the countryside. Like you, all in a flutter. He demanded we leave immediately. He professed danger but wouldn’t divulge the reason for this danger. He would’ve left half the crew behind if he’d had the power. Why Marcelo thinks he can order me and my crew around, I have no idea.”

  The old man knew something. Jasmine was sure of it. He’d proven it was never about Finn’s welfare, so it had to be about something else. He’d seen a vision of his own. Cassian had said all wielders who saw visions had seen Finn. Marcelo must’ve seen Finn. And what exactly had they all seen? She could only guess she didn’t feature in those visions because of her innate ability to hide. That didn’t mean she was safe from the Beast. With each vision of boiling seas, she felt its lust for her power. As soon as she was done with the captain, she planned to hunt down the old man and squeeze the answers from him.

  “Please, Captain, we have to leave.”

  Durne shook his head. “As sentimental as I am, I can only assume that love has made you blind.”

  Love. That word sent a prickle up her spine. It was none of anyone’s business what she felt for Finn. It certainly hadn’t made her blind.

  “We are already underway.”

  It was only then, Jasmine noticed the waves outside Durne’s windows had frothed up in the ship’s wake and felt the sway of the ship as it left the smooth harbor waters. In the distance, First Mate Cagg barked out orders to secure the raised anchor and unfurl the sails. She hadn’t paid attention to anything.

  “We’d simply been waiting for the last crewmate to come aboard,” Durne said, not looking as amused as he sounded. “Also against my orders, Brusan went to find you. He has been given a warning. As have you.”

  Jasmine sank into the chair opposite Durne’s desk. Finn was safe from the Guardians for now. While the Prize sailed the open seas, they wouldn’t be able to reach him. It would be a different matter once the ship reached Auslam. She couldn’t think about that right now. One problem at a time.

  The captain’s door burst open.

  “My quarters are not a thoroughfare,” Durne roared.

  Ignoring Durne’s objection, Marcelo strode in. When his gaze fell on Jasmine, he stopped and blanched. Turning on his heels, he reached for a fast exit.

  Jasmine wielded and slammed the door, locking him inside. “Why did you try to convince my captain to abandon half the Prize’s crew in Oakheart?”

  Marcelo raised his hands in a show of surrender. “The town is a bad place for wielders. A vision told me there was danger to the ship.” He dropped his hands and smiled. “How’d you fare while in town?”

  Jasmine suspected he specifically wanted to know how she managed being separated from her talisman. Apart from Finn, he was the only other person who knew her ship was her talisman.

  “I was fine.” Her throat betrayed her. She doubled over in a coughing fit that threatened to wrench her guts up.

  “Go find Brusan,” Durne said to her in disgust. When she tried to complain, another coughing fit doubled her over. “This is an order from your captain. You are to rest until Brusan deems you fit for duty.”

  “But, Captain—”

  “Do you understand me?”

  It was just a tickle in the throat. She still needed to find a way to protect Finn. She could still do her duty to the ship too, still bend her back to the work, be a part of the crew, not a simple passenger, not a weak burden.

  “Do you understand? You’ve already fallen overboard once. I don’t want accidents on my ship.”

  “Aye, Captain.” The moment she rose from the chair, the captain’s quarters shifted left. She caught hold of the chair and righted herself. They’d seen her stumble, but neither said a word.

  She glared at Marcelo. Cassian had claimed all wielders who saw visions saw something awful enough to want Finn dead. Had Marcelo seen such a vision? Had that been why he’d wanted the Prize to leave Oakheart in a hurry? To protect Finn? Or to harm him? Too many questions. Under a direct order to find Brusan and rest, she would have to wait to confront the old man.

  Grumbling choice words under her breath, she headed out the door.

  Chapter 15

  Leaning against the captain’s door, Jasmine took a deep breath of the fresh air. And promptly doubled over with a coughing fit. Someone approached and steadied her u
ntil the fit passed. When she looked up, she discovered Finn standing beside her. Out in the open.

  “Why’d you run out so fast?” he asked. “I was worried about you.” He looked ragged.

  Small spots of light and shade danced in her eyes. She tried to choke down another coughing fit and failed.

  Finn hooked his arm around hers. “Where are you headed?”

  “The galley,” she said, between gasps.

  By the time they reached the mess, she had nothing left except gratitude for his help. Feeling like a ball of unraveling twine, she sank onto a bench seat. He didn’t look much better.

  “That you, Midge?” Brusan stuck his head out the galley door.

  Jasmine glared at him.

  “Good, good.” He disappeared into the galley.

  The worst stink she’d ever had the misfortune of experiencing caught in her nostrils. “What is that smell?”

  “You?” Finn ventured.

  She gave him a withering look as she dragged herself to her feet. It was coming from the galley. She approached the doorway. Busan hunkered over a pot boiling on the stove. When he gave it a careful stir, the stench intensified as if it bloomed from a festering sore.

  “Hope that’s not lunch,” Finn murmured, his complexion growing paler.

  Jasmine couldn’t name what possible ingredients Cook had put in the pot. Poisonous bark? Rotten eggs? Burnt sealing rubber? Maybe eye of newt. “You’ll be scrubbing that pot out for weeks.”

  “Ain’t wrong there.” Brusan grinned.

  He put a funnel in the long neck of a bulbous bottle and poured in the contents of the pot through a strainer. He wiped his hands on his apron, removed the funnel, and stoppered the bottle with a cork. “All done.”

  If he expected the crew to use that foul stuff as a sauce, he was wildly mistaken.

  Jasmine coughed into her hand. Globules of spit landed on her palm. She wiped them on her trousers.