But she’d never heard of stardust steel.
“They use stardust steel in all their weapons.” Eris’s mouth twisted, and there was a haunted look in her eyes again. With her wrists still raised, she stared at the bands. “It’s a corrosive metal that . . .” She paused, and Safire saw her skip over whatever she was about to say. “It eats away at whatever it touches. It can take years or . . . days. Depending.”
“Depending on what?”
“On the substance. Another metal, for example, will take longer to corrode.”
A cold feeling spread through Safire as she studied the frost-white skin beneath the bands. “And human flesh?”
“Three days. At most.”
Safire tried to imagine it. What Eris’s wrists would look like in three days. First, the flesh would corrode. Then the muscle beneath. Then the bone.
“They’ll sever your hands from your wrists,” she whispered.
Eris’s silence confirmed this.
Safire felt ill—only this time, it wasn’t from the tumultuous sea. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter if Eris lost her hands. This girl was beneath her pity. She was the worst kind of criminal. Surely, she deserved this fate.
Still, Safire searched the silvery bands for a clasp or a lock. One that could be picked. But there was nothing. The metal was one smooth circle ensnaring Eris’s wrist.
“Where does it open and close?” she asked.
“It doesn’t,” said Eris.
And then she saw it: a cold-forged pin.
The only person who could get these off was a blacksmith.
A Good-bye
One dark day, the sea changed. Crow felt the powerful, terrible thing moving beneath its waters. Felt something ancient and familiar calling to him.
Hunting for him.
Crow kept his distance from the fisherman’s daughter, drawing the thing’s attention far away from Skye and her islands. But he was no longer the powerful creature he’d once been. Years walking alongside Skye had changed him.
So, when his pursuer closed in, Crow hid. Deep in the darkness, he forced himself to forget the strength in Skye’s rough and callused hands. To forget the gaze of her one good eye and the yearning she awoke in him. In his hiding, Crow forced himself to remember what he truly was: an ancient creature made of darkness.
A god of shadows.
He came out to face his pursuer—a thing as old and wicked as he was. A god of the sea.
“Too long you’ve wandered,” she called to him in dulcet tones. “Come back to me.”
When the god of shadows refused, she attacked.
They battled for seven days and nights. They fought with tempests and maelstroms and monsters. And with every strike, the shadow god remembered a little bit more of himself.
Finally, he reared up and dealt her a devastating blow. In shock and defeat, the sea god fell to her knees before him. The shadow god stood over her, lifting a fist to finish her off.
But before he struck, a memory flickered through him: one of Skye in her father’s dory, unhooking a spawning fish and throwing it back to the sea.
As he stared down at his enemy, a new and tender feeling unfurled within him.
Pity.
The god of shadows stayed his hand.
Seeing it, his enemy fled.
A long time later, when Crow came back to himself, his first thought was of Skye. Was she safe? But as he went to seek her out, he slowly came to realize that it wasn’t seven days which passed while he waged war on the god of the sea, but rather seven years.
Surely, his mortal girl had forgotten him.
“It’s better this way,” he said.
But he needed to know.
What harm could it do to walk through her cove, past her father’s wharf, and up the cliffs, just one last time? To make sure she was safe?
Gathering the darkness around him, Crow set out. He would only look from a distance. He would not seek her out.
But as he neared Skye’s home, he heard the sound of music. Felt the joy of dancing. And so, filled with a curiosity he’d tried so hard to extinguish—a curiosity Skye gave to him—he came closer than he should have.
It was the longest day of the year, and her village was celebrating. He found her immediately in the crowd of dancers. She wore a sleeveless white dress that fell just past her knees and a crown of blue forget-me-nots on her head. Her hands were gripped by a man. He smiled as he danced with her, as if she were everything he loved most in the world.
Skye’s face was older and her hair longer. It fell around her like autumn leaves as she and the man spun around and around, laughing as they did.
They weren’t celebrating the longest day of the year. They were celebrating a wedding.
Skye’s wedding.
If Crow had a human heart, it might have broken in his chest.
Suddenly, her eyes met Crow’s.
She stopped dancing.
Time seemed to slow as they stared at each other. Her face drained of color as her lips formed his name.
It took all of Crow’s strength to turn away from her. From all of them. This had been a mistake. He should never have come here. He did not belong in her world, just as she did not belong in his.
He was already in the trees when he heard familiar footsteps. He closed his eyes, trying not to hear. He gathered the darkness around him, trying to hide himself in it.
But Skye found him. Like always.
“Where are you going?”
The words stopped him, rooting him to the earth the way only hers could. There was a pain in his chest. Like some weighty thing now rested there, beating in time with the waves on the shore.
He didn’t turn around. Couldn’t bring himself to look at her.
“It’s been seven years,” she whispered, and he heard the wobble in her voice. “You chose to come back today . . . of all days?”
Suddenly, she was beside him. In front of him.
“And now you’re leaving again? Without even saying hello?”
He covered his face with his hands.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he whispered.
“Then why did you!” Her two small palms collided with his shoulders. Crow stumbled back, hands falling to his sides, shocked by the strength of her. They stared at each other. Her eyes were like hurricanes. He’d never seen her so angry.
No, not angry. Hurt.
He had done that.
“You were never my friend,” she said, chin trembling. “I realize that now. You let me believe you were because you pitied me.” Her mouth twisted. “Poor, ugly, mortal girl.”
That was too much.
He stepped toward her, remembering their last meeting as if it were yesterday. A moment ago. “Don’t say that.”
Tears trembled on her lashes. He swept them away before they spilled down her cheeks.
“I couldn’t come,” he said.
But how could he explain it? That seven years were like seven days to him? She wouldn’t understand.
Skye reached for him, gathering the shadows around him in her fist. “Take me with you.”
“I can’t.”
“Because I’m mortal.”
“Yes.”
“Then make me immortal.”
He stared at her. She didn’t know what she was asking. But he did. And the cost was unbearable.
“I can’t. You and I—”