“This is becoming a most inconvenient habit.” Vaness shifted in a chair and leaned out of a shadow. Lantern light warmed her face. “I thought I was the one with a sickness.”
Vivia offered a weak laugh and pushed herself upright. Vaness leaped forward to help, but Vivia was already sitting by the time the Empress reached her. So she stared down at Vivia, and Vivia stared at up at her.
“This isn’t normal.” “Vivia rubbed at her eyes, crusted with sea salt. “I’ve never passed out from my magic before. And certainly not twice in two days.”
“Hmmm.” Vaness eased onto the bed’s edge. She sat primly, hands folded upon her lap. Like Vivia, salt had caked against her skin.
“All magic has a price,” Vaness said after several moments. “And the more powerful the witchery, the steeper the toll. Although…” A tightening of her face. Then a full frown. “I have noticed my own sickness getting worse. As if the magic I’m tapping into has a limit. As if—”
“You are becoming the iron you need to use.”
Vaness blinked. “Hye. That is exactly it.” Her head tipped sideways, gaze roaming over Vivia’s face. “It happens to you then?”
“Hye.” Vivia’s cheeks warmed at the scrutiny. “And because of it, I lose sight of my own limits. I lose sight of—”
“Who I am.”
Vivia swallowed. Vaness wet her lips. And for several long seconds, they stared at each other. An open, unmasked stare that made Vivia’s neck warm. And her chest and hands too.
A knock thumped at the door. Vivia’s heart jumped; Vaness startled to her feet. And a moment later, the Blessing’s captain shoved in. A stocky woman, shorter even than Vaness, she had been several years ahead of Vivia in training—but like Stix, her family was nobility. And like Vivia, she could control the tides.
Shanna Quintay. She nodded at Vivia and her swagger across the room paused just long enough for a bow, fist over heart. Then she directed her attention to Vaness. “We could not reach Ginna, Your Imperial Majesty. We tried several times, but the Voicewitch must be drugged as you were.”
Vivia’s eyebrows lifted, and she turned a surprised eye on Vaness. The Empress had clearly updated Shanna and asked her to reach out to Vivia’s crew, for which Vivia was … grateful. Surprised, impressed, and grateful.
“We did, however,” Shanna continued, “contact a Voicewitch from Noden’s Gift. She said only that the village was under attack and Lovats would not reply.”
Of course they wouldn’t. It was so like Serafin to hide himself behind the Sentries of Noden. To lock himself within the city while the rest of the world burned. Share the glory, share the blame.
“Then we must help them,” Vivia said. She scrubbed at her eyes—so salty—and searched for the right words, the right plan to help a village faced with hundreds of Dalmotti sailors.
Before she could conjure anything or sort through all this spinning and tightening in her gut, Shanna said: “Where Noden’s Gift has failed, though, we have succeeded. My Voicewitch is in contact with Lovats right now.” She snapped her fingers toward the door, and a lithe man walked into the cabin. His eyes glowed rose, his attention fixed on the middle distance. At his side, a ship’s boy cradled his arm and guided him toward the table.
“He’s connected right now?” Vivia asked, finally shoving off the cot and crossing to him. Her legs, though weak from lying down, were strong from the boat’s tender rocking. “To whom?”
The Voicewitch found Vivia’s face. “Daughter.”
And Vivia’s stomach bottomed out. She hadn’t heard her father’s voice in over a month—and though this was not truly his voice, it was close enough. The sharpened consonants, the subtle condescension. It was a perfect mimicry. Bile swam upward in Vivia’s belly. Her fingers curled into her thighs.
“Your Maj—” She broke off. No. “Father,” she offered instead. “Nihar burns. You must send in the Royal Navy.”
“I must do nothing,” he replied, and she could just imagine him seated at his desk, cold eyes locked upon his Voicewitch. Gray light filtering through threadbare blue curtains. “You must turn yourself in. You and that Marstoki smut must give yourselves up to Dalmotti immediately.”
“Our people are dying—”
“Exactly,” he barked. “And the longer you wait, the more lives will be lost.”
“Ah.” The word escaped on a sigh, and for some inexplicable reason, Vivia wanted to laugh. She shouldn’t be surprised by his words. She’d told Vaness what he was made of. Yet knowing and knowing were not the same thing.
What a silly little fox. What a sad little fox.
“What happened to ‘bringing the empires to their knees’?” she asked, head shaking. “What happened to the man who would never surrender, never give in—”
“Says the girl who consorts with the Iron Bitch.”
Girl. Vivia had not been a girl in so long. Not since Jana had died. Not since she’d been left with a parent who bragged and boasted and convinced the world with his charm that he was one way … while none of his actions spoke the same. He’d fooled all the admirals of the Royal Navy, all the generals of the Royal Soil-Bound. He’d fooled Lovats. He’d fooled Vivia.
She’d always believed his self-flattery worth emulating. That such confidence was something to aspire toward. But tucked within the constant crowing were pointed insults. Jokes, he would call them, though Vivia never laughed. Advice, he would proclaim, though Vivia never learned. Concern, he would insist, though Vivia never felt loved.
She glanced at Vaness, held the Empress’s dark, earthen gaze. Vaness wasn’t perfect, but at least she was her own person. Her own well-honed blade of steel tempered by herself and those she ruled.
“I am not turning myself in,” Vivia said at last. “I am queen, and a queen must be free to help her people.”
A beat passed. The faintest curve hit Vaness’s lips.
Then Serafin replied: “If only Merik had not been the one to die.”
The Voicewitch’s magic ended. The man’s eyes shuddered, his breath loosed, and the ship’s boy gripped him steadily. But already the man’s lips were parting in horror as he realized what he’d just said.
Shanna’s neck muscles tensed and bulged. The ship’s boy stared at anywhere but Vivia. And Vaness …
The glint in her eyes had changed from amusement and pride, from approval and admiration, to something made of daggers. She, like the others, clearly expected Vivia to erupt. Or perhaps to cry. Something after words as hateful as the King Regent’s. But for once, Vivia felt no anger or grief. Gone was the churn in her gut and the sense that she was falling. It was as if some final mooring had been released. Now her ship was free. No anchors, no barricades, no shoals to block her way. Now the little fox knew.
Vivia smoothed at her salt-stiffened shirt. Then adjusted her collar. Then finally patted at the edges of her face. No mask now, for she was not a bear and didn’t need to be. Foxes had all the cleverness and wiles she could ever wish for.
“Contact the Dalmotti ships,” she told the Voicewitch. And then to Vaness, her mouth twisting sideways, “I think it’s time we turned ourselves in. But on our terms and as the Well Chosen you think we’re meant to be.”