“Of course you are.” Riel spun on her heels and turned her back to Fynn. “I’m going to check on Gracia. Not all of us can part the sea and live to tell the tale.”
She was thundering across the deck before Fynn could demand she stay, could insist that she was wrong about Sol. If she’d known she possessed such strength, Sol would not have kept it from Fynn. There were only so few secrets still between them.
“She’ll likely sleep until morning,” Luca spoke softly, bracing a hand on Fynn’s shoulder and hoisting himself up onto his feet. “I’ll examine her again when she wakes, but I think she’ll be fine. Her Magic, on the other hand…” Luca bit his lip. “I’d suggest not letting her touch it too soon. I don’t know how she’s still breathing.”
Fynn returned his attention to Sol. He monitored the rise of her chest, letting his own lungs expand with the knowledge that she was indeed still breathing. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Luca hesitated, but he did not need clarification. “No,” he admitted. “Even I couldn’t have done what she did. But isn’t her brother a powerful Wielder? Perhaps it runs in their family.”
“Perhaps,” Fynn agreed absently. “Is it safe to move her?”
“Yes,” Luca said, stepping back as Fynn slid his arms beneath Sol.
It was not difficult to lift her, to cradle Sol against the swell of his chest and hold her tightly against him. Sol’s head rolled against his shoulder. “If you need me—”
“We’ll survive without you for a few hours,” Amael assured him, smiling tightly at his Captain. “Sol, however… I’ll shake her awake if we’re in danger of being sunk by another tidal wave.” He moved closer, dropping his voice so that only Fynn might hear him. “Don’t worry about Riel. I think what happened scared the shit out of her.”
Fynn nodded and shifted his feet. “I know it did,” he said. “Talk some sense into her, will you? And set the crew straight on whatever they might have seen or heard.”
Amael clapped him on the shoulder. “Consider it done. Let me know when she wakes up.”
She did not move for hours, did nothing more than breathe and sleep and occasionally twitch her fingers. Fynn studied her with a critical eye, preparing himself to call for Luca at the first sign Sol was in distress. He’d perched himself on the edge of his bed, and he did not leave her side, did not let his eyes stray too far from her face. Draven was sprawled at Sol’s feet, Indyr still below deck with Gracia.
Fynn buried his face into his palms.
They had shared this bed ever since Sol had decided to stay on the Refuge.
She stole the blankets in her sleep. She did not lie still and she flailed her limbs until Fynn let her wrap herself amongst the furs. Once, she had kicked him from the bed entirely, knocking him to the ground where he’d stayed for the rest of the night. Sometimes, the Princess snored, and Fynn wanted to smother her with a pillow.
But he would not trade those sleepless nights for anything, even if he’d spent more than one on the floor. Fynn had slept in worse places long before he’d sailed across the Emerald.
He did not understand, did not know where Sol Rosebone had acquired such tremendous power. Silas had been trained in his Element, had burned and raged and nearly won the war all those years ago. Fynn could still see him on the battlefield, dripping with blood and looking every bit the part of a Crown Prince. His armor had glistened in the sunlight, the Sonamire family crest stamped across his chest in gold.
But Sol only knew what she’d managed to teach herself. She had never had any formal training. Silas had never allowed for it, and although the ocean had been just beyond her bedroom window, Sol had never been brazen enough to practice her Magic from the castle. Rarely had she snuck away to learn, but with the war at an end and her brother home from campaigning, her trips to the beach had been far and few between.
Fynn was forced from his reverie when the Princess rolled onto her side. She did not wake, her eyes did not so much as flutter, but the unsettling stillness had finally been broken by something more than her fingers. Relief crashed into the Captain with the weight of Sol’s monstrous wave, the one she’d somehow kept from sinking his ship.
There was nothing Fynn could do to thank her, no favors he could offer that were good enough. The Princess had saved his ship, his family, and he would always be in her debt.
The silver chain around Sol’s neck glistened in the candlelight, candles that Fynn had painstakingly lit so that Sol would not wake in total darkness. His water-logged skin and dripping clothes had made it difficult.
He had never glimpsed her necklace, had only ever seen her fiddle with the chain when she was nervous. Sol had once told him that it was a gift from her brother, one that their mother had passed down to him before he’d left to fight in the war. She’d spoken fondly of it, explaining to Fynn that it was all she had left of the late Queen. He had told her to count her blessings, that she was lucky to have anything at all. He himself had nothing of his own mother but a name.
But she had never shown him the ornament, and Fynn had never asked to see it.
The pendant slipped from beneath her tunic, sliding along Sol’s collarbone until it clattered softly against her pillow. Fynn frowned at the copper-wrapped jewelry, a sparkling black stone flush against the off-white fabric. This was what meant so much to her, a stone wrapped in wire that Fynn could have found in the market?
With his own stones within reach, he supposed he was in no position to judge.
The Captain knew better than to reach for it, to touch something of Sol’s without permission, but Fynn’s curiosity got the better of him. He wanted to see the gem.
He carefully tugged at the pendant, mindful not to pull the chain taut lest he strangle Sol in her sleep.
Fynn’s Magic surged the moment the stone touched his skin, the moment he held it gently between his fingers. Power flooded through him, his wind raging, and Fynn only managed to scratch his nail along the stone’s outer edge before he dropped the pendant and gasped.
He launched himself off the bed, stumbled across his cabin until his back collided with his bookshelf. Tomes scattered across the floor, their pages sopping up excess water from the planks. Fynn stared at his thumb, at the black shavings lodged beneath his fingernail.
He could not breathe—did not want to breathe. His own Magic was suffocating him.
The pendant was a nightmare and a dream, together a blessing and a curse.
Fynn Cardinal had finally found the Dragon’s Heart.
Sol Rosebone had had it all along.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SOL
She hated those first few moments between sleep and consciousness. It was the one thing about Sol Rosebone that would likely never change, even if these days she woke next to Fynn and could curl into the warmth of his chest.
Sol knew that the horse she was sitting atop was not real, that its glittering mane and the iridescent horn protruding from its head were a figment of her sleep-addled imagination. But the ragged breathing, the quiet, tearful praying to the gods—that was real, and Sol knew that smooth, lilting voice like the back of her scarred hand.
Her eyes fluttered, and she did not know what she was expecting, but it was not what she found when she opened them.