Sorrow was heading straight for them.
They circled once. Kozu looked up first. Safire could see his one yellow eye burning in the night. Sorrow started to descend too quickly, then remembered he was carrying the weight of a rider. They were headed straight into the tuckamore forest.
Safire felt him panic. Panicked, too, she forced herself to be calm and ran her hands smoothly over the creature’s scales, murmuring encouragement even as the night screamed in her ears and the trees rose up too fast.
At the last moment, Sorrow banked, catching a current, then slowed his descent. The tuckamores faded. Mossy rock appeared beneath them. And finally, Sorrow landed—a little clumsily—in the moss.
“Perfect boy,” Safire murmured into his neck, then patted him gently as she dismounted.
Sorrow seemed to brighten, watching her.
“Safire!” came Asha’s voice at her back. Safire turned to find her cousin standing in the knee-high grass. “How . . . ?”
The orange glow of the lantern flame illuminated the Namsara’s black eyes and scarred face. At her side stood Torwin and a bearded, bowlegged man. His windswept dark hair was peppered with gray. Behind them, Kozu tilted his curious head at Sorrow.
At the sight of them, Safire felt a weight lift from her. She ran, the grass hushing against her legs, and threw her arms around Asha, squeezing her tight, breathing in her smoky scent.
“Are you all right?” Asha murmured, squeezing her back.
Safire swallowed. “I missed you.”
“Are you linked?” Torwin interrupted. When Safire pulled away, she found him studying Sorrow. His hair was mussed and his cheeks were pink from the cold.
As they watched the white dragon, who was already shying away, moving to more barren ground, Safire said, “I would feel it, wouldn’t I? If we were?”
Asha nodded.
“That’s all right,” Torwin said, his smile sliding away.
“Safire, this is Dagan.” Asha gestured to the man with them. He tipped his head to her. “He was just in the middle of showing us something. Come, I want you to see. . . .” Asha reached for her arm, already turning.
Safire braced herself. “Asha, no, we need to leave. You’re in grave danger.”
All of them turned to look at her.
“What?” said Torwin.
Asha frowned. “What danger?”
Safire quickly told them everything. Starting with being kidnapped by the Death Dancer—the very thief she tried to catch in Firgaard—to losing that same thief in Axis. She made it clear that Asha was next on the Death Dancer’s list of things to steal.
Asha frowned. “Even if she could steal me, she doesn’t know where I am. And Kozu would be here in a heartbeat if I called him. And I have this.” She tapped the hilt of the Skyweaver’s knife where it hung from her belt. More like a dagger than a knife, the blade was hidden in a silver sheath embossed with strange symbols.
But none of those things would stop Eris. Eris and her poisonous scarp thistles that could make a person sleep with a single prick. Eris, who could disappear and reappear somewhere else, taking someone with her.
Asha could be drugged and dragged halfway across the world before she even realized the Death Dancer was in the room with her.
Safire told her as much.
“You need to come with me.”
Asha’s dark eyes narrowed and her mouth turned down. “And where would I go?”
Safire was about to say the citadel because that’s where Eris wouldn’t set foot. Except Eris had disproved that theory tonight when she walked straight into the middle of the empress’s ballroom.
“If she’s so formidable, why would I be any safer anywhere else?”
Safire opened her mouth to respond, only to realize Asha had a point. Was there anywhere safe from a girl who moved like wind and walked through walls?
“You’ve warned me, and I’ll be vigilant. Now come. I want to show you something.”
Safire went to protest, but Asha grabbed her arm and pulled her.
“Dagan has been telling us about a girl who used to live in this cove, centuries ago.” As she talked, her eager pace quickened and Torwin and Dagan fell behind. “She’s become a kind of myth in these islands, and there seem to be different versions of the story. All of them begin with her falling in love with a god. But some end with the god killing her, while others end with him giving her immortality. In all the stories, though, she disappears and her body is never found.”
Safire slowed. This sounded familiar. “Skye,” she murmured.
Asha stared at her. “Yes. How did you know?”
Raif had told her something similar when they arrived in Axis yesterday.
But it was also the name carved into Eris’s spindle.
At the thought of Eris, Safire’s body buzzed with anxiety. She needed to make Asha realize just how dangerous the Death Dancer was, along with the pirate captain who commanded her. If Asha didn’t come with Safire, then the only way to ensure her protection was to hunt Eris down and . . .
Safire remembered the look in Leandra’s eyes as she gave her order.
I want you to kill her.
A chill swept through her.
“Asha.” Safire halted again. “What if we returned home to Firgaard? I could keep you under armed guard at all hours. If the Death Dancer—”
“There’s a story here,” said Asha, not really listening. “I intend to find it.” Tired of being held back, she let go of Safire’s arm and drew the Skyweaver’s knife from its sheath, revealing the silver-white blade. It glowed faintly—like starlight—and Safire could feel a faint hum emanating from it.
“It’s been doing that ever since we set foot on these islands.” Asha held it up, her face shining in its eerie light. Safire could see the fierce determination in her jaw. It was the same look she used to get when she was still the king’s Iskari, and a dragon was reported near the city. “I can’t be sure, but I have the strangest feeling Skye’s story and this knife are connected.”
She continued on.
With no other choice, Safire followed her down the dirt path through the tuckamore forest, with Torwin and Dagan trailing quietly behind them. As they walked, Safire debated telling Asha more—about the empress’s kill order and her conversation with Dax and also, maybe, her feelings for Eris. Before she could, they stumbled out of the tuckamore forest and into a grassy meadow.
Around her, nine gray stones the size of big men rose up in a wide circle around her.
“Aren’t they incredible?” said Asha, her eyes shining as she walked the circumference of the circle.
Safire stared at the shapes. They look like . . . rocks.
“They’re from older times,” said Dagan, who drew up beside her. Safire glanced up into his face to find it sun darkened and weathered from years of grappling with the wind and sea. “When people still worshipped the Shadow God.”
Safire frowned at that. “I didn’t know people worshipped him.”
“Neither did we,” said Torwin, watching Asha set down the lantern and walk out past the circle, toward the edge of the head. Beyond Asha, the moon rose over the sea, its white reflection rippling on the black water below.
Lured like a dragon to a story, Torwin walked out to meet her.