Finally, Eris stopped scrutinizing her. Tucking Safire’s knife into her belt, the girl rose to her feet.
She moved toward Safire, who immediately tensed and flicked the blade out from the toe of her boot. Eris glanced down, visibly wincing at the memory of its sharpened tip driving into her shin.
“Try it again,” said Eris, “and I’ll take those boots right off your feet.”
Safire went still. Her picklocks were hidden in her left boot. She’d need them if she had any hope of escaping these manacles. So, obediently, she flicked the blade back in and let the girl approach.
Eris studied her. Safire studied her back.
She was startlingly pretty, this girl. Pretty and graceful.
Eris reached for her chin. Safire’s skin scorched at her touch and she jerked her face away.
Those green eyes narrowed, but Eris’s voice was soft as she said, “Who hurt you?”
“What?” Safire breathed.
“Anyone can see you’re afraid to be touched.”
This wasn’t exactly true. Safire just wasn’t used to people touching her. She’d spent most of her life without physical contact on account of her mother’s skral blood running through her veins.
Before Dax became king and changed everything—freeing the skral and abolishing the unjust laws that governed them—the only time anyone ever touched Safire was to injure or punish her. So now, something as little as the brush of a hand, if it came from someone she didn’t know or wasn’t comfortable with, could hit her with the force of a lightning strike.
“Who hurt you?” Eris asked again.
Safire thought of the night of the revolt. Of the knife she put in Jarek’s heart. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. “He’s dead.”
Eris’s mouth turned down at those words and she stepped warily back.
“Well then,” she said, studying Safire like she was some kind of puzzle. Turning, she headed for the door. Before she opened it and stepped through, she paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Remy is just down this hall. So don’t try anything.”
The way she said it was less of a threat, more like a genuine warning.
The door shut, locking Safire in with only the lamp, its flame burning low. Safire listened to the lock click into place. Listened to the footsteps disappear down the hall.
Her stomach growled in the silence, making her realize she hadn’t eaten since before she’d followed Eris into the Thirsty Craw.
Safire waited several moments more. When she was certain Eris was gone, she pulled her leg up so her bound hands could reach inside her boot. It took her a few tries, but her fingers finally reached the hidden flap between the leather and her calf, freeing the lockpicks there.
With her hands bound, it took longer than usual to get the manacles unlocked. But as soon as they clicked open, Safire moved through the dimly lit room toward the table. Carefully, she reached for the lamp, turning the thumb wheel until the low flame burned brighter, giving her more light to see by. She then began to inspect the room.
First, she searched for her knives, looking in drawers and between folded trousers and shirts. Her fingers meticulously traced the floorboards and clapboard walls, trying to find secret compartments.
When it became clear there were no weapons in this room, she looked for something that could be used as a weapon. But all she found was a rusted directional compass in one of the drawers. She pocketed it.
Where do you keep your secrets? she wondered, thinking of the thief with the moon-pale hair. It seemed unnatural for someone’s room to contain no trace of their identity.
Thinking of the night the Death Dancer walked into Safire’s own room and stole her throwing knife, she approached the bed, which was little more than a lumpy mattress on a roughly hewn wooden frame. Reaching beneath the pillows, she found a plain wooden spindle there. Drawing it out, she ran her thumb over its smooth curves wonderingly.
Suddenly, footsteps thudded in the hall.
Safire’s gaze shot to the door, her heart thundering. Had someone heard her? Seen the light from the lamp?
Before she was caught in the act, Safire put the spindle back, turned down the lamp’s flame, and returned to her manacles, closing them around her wrists.
But the footsteps came and went.
The door never opened.
Safire ground her heel against the wall, the chains of her manacles clinking as she did. She closed her eyes, trying to think of what to do.
Asha would surely be at the scrin by now, oblivious to the danger coming for her. Dax and Roa would be fully panicked at Safire’s absence. If they tried to pursue Jemsin’s ship—as she knew they would—it would delay their arrival in the Star Isles. Not a good start to their alliance with its empress.
She needed to escape, track down Asha, and warn her. She and Asha could then find Dax and together they could inform the empress about the pirates trawling her waters. The empress, Safire was certain, would send her navy after this ship and sink it to the bottom of the sea.
Safire had a compass in her pocket. She knew the Star Isles were northwest of Darmoor.
All she needed was a boat to get her there.
Yearning
The fisherman’s daughter was seventeen the next time she saw him. She was down on the shore, scraping barnacles off the hull of her father’s boat when she felt a ripple in the air, as if someone had just stepped into this world from another.
What world he came from, she could hardly guess. When he was here, though, he seemed to hover at the edge of things. Sometimes a man, sometimes a shadow.
She set down her scraper and listened.
The wind stung her cheeks. The gulls screamed over the water. The sea spirits had all disappeared from the craggy rocks below the cliffs and gone to calmer waters.
A storm was coming.
Casting her gaze into the junipers, the girl saw no one. Back and forth went her good eye, between the trees. She was just about to turn and quickly finish her task when she saw it—a black shadow—between the jagged gray rocks.
Crow. Dark like the deepest part of the woods and insubstantial as a ghost.
“Are you a ghost?” she asked quietly, putting a voice to her thoughts as she went back to scraping barnacles.
“No” came his voice loud and clear as a bell. Right beside her.
The girl shivered. But not out of fear.
“What, then?” she asked, still focused on her work. “Not a man.”
“Are you so sure?”
His response surprised her so much she slipped and cut herself with the scraper.
Blood welled up. She dropped the blade into the sand and stared at the crimson shine blooming across her palm.
He breathed her name. His solid form disappeared as darkness swelled around her, enclosing her in a cocoon of night.
Where a moment ago there was pain, now there was . . . nothing. The sting in her hand extinguished like a snuffed flame.
The wind roared in her ears once more. The gulls and the sea returned.
She stared at her palm. The blood was gone. The skin was split no longer, and in its place was a thin, tidy scar.
Looking up, she found him solid before her. He stood close enough to touch.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
A pleased smile tugged at his normally stern mouth. The sight of it made something unfurl within her.
Her pulse quickened. She studied those clear black eyes. Deep as the sea. In all their years of friendship—Was that what this was? Was he her friend?—she’d never touched him.