Chapter 1

Adomed shell of lucent crystal shields us from the haunting eddy that keeps slashing.

Slashing.

The beasts kick up dirt and pulsing red embers every time their powerful paws assault the frosty soil—leverage for their frenzied attack on the dome.As much as it’s protecting us, I feel it taking from me. Little sips that turn my blood thick and cold.

My brother shivers in my lap, burrowing deeper with every ear-blasting blow.

They can’t have him.

I tighten my arms around him, bury my nose into his whitewash hair, and close my eyes, savoring the smells of paint and spice and a hint of toffee apples. Smells that stuff my chest with warm love and conjure up visions of chiming giggles and half-moon smiles. Of familiar rooms decorated with a patchwork of vibrant pictures stuck to stone.

Home.

I want to stay with the image and never leave …

A dense thud. A hiss of breath.

I open my eyes to see a fat, stubby nose slick with moisture pressed against the crystal, fogging it with a violent chuff.

Slowly, I reach out my trembling hand, brush the dome’s smooth interior, and gasp at the sudden, gulping tug that comes from deep inside my chest. I flatten my palm, splay my fingers, and peer at the beast through the gullies between them.

You. Can’t. Have. Him.

Its upper lip peels away from its teeth, and a violent roar blasts free of its boastful chest while the others alternate between slashing at the dome and trying to bore beneath it.

“W-what do they want?”

My brother’s small, fractured voice has me snatching my hand back, gasping as I battle the shadowed haze threatening to overtake my vision. He’s watching through wide eyes, his jagged limbs flinching at every blow—each quivered recoil an axe to my heart.

I cup the side of his face to shield him from that blood-lusting stare.

But I hold it. Threaten it.

What do they want?

Me.

You.

“Everything,” I whisper, bringing my gaze back to his. “But they can’t have you.”

Because in this nightmare, I’m bigger. Stronger.

I’m going to be his hero this time—not the other way around.

He blinks at me with big eyes that lack their usual luster. “They already got me, Ser …”

The words lock my spine.

“No. I’ve got you.” Teeth chattering, I tighten my grip. “You’re here with me. S-safe. Forever.” A snarled challenge to the circling beasts.

Another onslaught strikes the dome—the strident sound cutting through me like a blade. He doesn’t flinch. Not even when a splintering crack attacks us from all angles.

A warm dampness blooms against my palm, and I look down, pulling my hand from his back. I blink away the frosty haze, trying to focus on the smear of wetness there. Like I’ve been finger painting with liquid starlight blushed with a kaleidoscope of muted colors.

It’s … it’s him.

My heart splits like a seam, inch by painful inch, and I try to breathe past the pit in my throat as I bury my face in his hair.

Chase his fading scent.

I close my eyes, but can no longer see the patchwork paintings. The colors. The half-moon smiles.

All I see is black.

My face crumbles, and I squeeze him tight while thorns attack the backs of my eyes. While the monsters continue to slash. Hack.

Roar.

“Stop!” I scream, voice cracking, heart shredding.

Please don’t take him again.

Another screech splits the air.

I look up to see a fracture scribbling across the crystal like forked lightning, and I stamp my hand against it, letting it gulp.

My body grows colder. Slower.

Another savage swipe rattles my bones, and the cracks spread like a mosaic plague.

“We don’t end here.” My belted words somehow rival the clamorous wrath attacking us from every angle. “We’ve barely started.”

My brother doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch when another blow shrieks across the crystal dome.

I squeeze my eyes shut, warmth dashing down my cheeks, leaked from the part of me that’s painfully aware.

He’s gone.

“Don’t leave m-me ...”

I wish he could hear. That I wasn’t so alone. That I was bleeding out in his arms, and not the other way around.

“Don’t leave me,” I repeat—louder this time. A curse to myself because they took him. Not me.

They always do.

An unfurling knot of black, sizzling hurt stirs beneath my ribs, striking its own malicious heartbeat. Gnarled vines slither up the walls of that chasm inside my chest, feasting on my pain. Growing bigger.

Stronger.

“Don’t leave me.”

I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Those vines writhe, whip, stab at the underside of my skin, digging for release.

They want freedom.

Revenge.

I just want my brother back.

Another jagged rupture rips across the surface. Rather than patch it up, I tear my hand away, sever myself from those greedy draws, and watch the entire thing bloom with a field of fissures. There’s a keen popping sound, and shards of light splinter my skin. Slice it up.

Bleed me.

I bow forward and shield the limp body in my lap from the shattered assault, pulling him so close I can feel the lack of a beat in his chest. Everything stings, but it’s nothing compared to the grief gnawing on my heart.

The terrible commotion stills.

Silence.

Something wet lands on me, and I dare a shielded glance at the thick rope of drool hanging off my arm. I tip my face to the sky, look into big, inky eyes that reflect my dazzling stare …

The Vruk’s ears are pinned back, his mammoth form eclipsing the stars. There’s deadly intention in his narrowed eyes, thick on his fervid breath hitting me with every vile exhale.

I can’t tell who’s the bigger monster.

Him. Or me.

His barbed snarl digs beneath my skin, and that vicious jaw cranks wide, revealing a tomb of dripping ivory sabers.

I hold his savage stare and let him take his fill—let him see how unsatisfying his impending kill is going to be ... because I’m empty.

Bled dry.

I’m already dead.

* * *

The wind snatches my short-lived scream, the crunching, sloshy sounds of my own masticated flesh and bones haunting me to wakefulness.

I jerk upright, gulping briny air.

A nightmare.

Not real.

I become aware of the creak of swaying ropes, my world tipping back and forth in a deep, monotonous sway beneath a litter of midnight stars.

Clutching my swirling belly with one trembling hand, the other fists the jewel hanging around my neck, as if my subconscious was tempted to snap the chain and rip it free.

I release it, draw a deep breath, and hold until my lungs are about to burst, pulling my focus from that echo of raw hurt, from the feel of my brother’s motionless body lumped in my lap. Swallowing hard, I knead my throbbing temples with a near-deadly force.

They already got me, Ser ...

I drop my hands, slam my spine against the thick, wooden mast at my back, and stretch my legs—bare feet pushing through the gaps between the wooden spindles and poking over the edge as I rub the sleep from my eyes. Lazy wind plays across my sweat-slicked skin, ruffling my loose hair and delivering gruff voices to my sensitive ears …

“Does she always scream in her sleep?”

“Hard to tell when the wind’s up, but she usually wakes in a fit like that.” Vanth’s apathetic voice is as hollow as this void in my chest.

“It’s chilling. Makes me regret stepping in for Roal in exchange for his serve of salted pork. Why’s she even up there? It’s a lookout, not a loft.”

“Who fucking knows.”

“Cap’s not pleased about it. Did you hear Brock’s been ordered to lock her out of the nest if the wind passes eighteen knots? He’s afraid to nap and risk a lashing.”

Idoubt my guard and the barrelman occupying the central mast a stone’s throw away know I can hear them over the slapping of the sails, billowing and slack … but I can.

“She still hasn’t changed out of her black garb?”

“Not hard to guess where her loyalties lie,” Vanth snipes.

He’s taken a nightly shift on the central mast on the pretense that he’s required to keep constant guard on the Western Territory of Bahari’s future High Mistress.

Me.

Scratching the itchy scab from my fading bite mark, I scowl at the cupla caught around my wrist …

His watchful chokehold on my actions is suffocating.

Edging around the mast until I’m partially hidden by the slab of shadow untouched by the moon’s harsh glow, I reach for the stuffed sack tied to the rails and brimming with all my belongings—a grain sack I traded my basket for with the obliging cook. I loosen the drawstring, retrieve a small parcel, and peel back its layers of damp cheesecloth to reveal a bulb of caspun the same deep shade of indigo as the sky.

Stamping my nose against the sawn-off nub, I draw on the potent, earthy punch …

The smell only adds to my pain—makes that swelling pressure thrash as though it’s afraid to be silenced, taunted by the pacifier I refuse to indulge in.

A deep sigh is snatched from my lips by a whip of humid air.

I rewrap the bulb and tuck it amongst my belongings, rummaging past my wooden sword, fingers tangling with a slip of silky material my face and palms are achingly familiar with.

My heart flops.

Rhordyn’s pillow slip.

A swallow. A short, shuddered breath as horses gallop through my chest.

Blood-boiling fury and finger-tingling desperation battle inside me, and I steal a moment to pretend I’m stronger than I really am before the desperate flood of need bursts through me like a gulp of icy water. I free the slip, burrow my face into its soft pleats, and draw my lungs full of him—spiked with equal doses of rapture and self-loathing.

I’m sailing toward my promised, still drugging myself with the fading dregs of another man. My final vice. The hardest anchor to cut loose.

The one I don’t want to cut loose.

Unlike the caspun, I don’t limit myself to just one breath. I inflate myself with gluttonous gulps until I’m light-headed and floating before I tuck it beneath my sword and retrieve a parcel that’s long and heavy for its small size.

I unroll it—slow and cautious.

Nestled between the folds is a fork I stole from the galley, its pronged tips sharp enough to puncture flesh. I keep unrolling, and a spoon tumbles into my lap.

I stare at it, trying to ignore the two silhouettes leering down on me from their loftier perch—hard to do when their voices keep pecking at me.

“You know she asked the cook for some preserve jars and baking twine so she could ‘tie ‘em to the mast to root her clippings’? You should’ve seen the way he looked at her.”

“Witch, I tell ya,” Vanth bites out. “I’ve known from the moment I watched her pick mushrooms off a pile of shit. High Master’s been beguiled by that round ass and fuckable face.”

“Not me. Something about her eyes makes me want to shit my drawers.” A small pause, then, “Gage seems to like her …”

“Only because he no longer has to pull night shifts on the aftermast.”

Snatching the utensils in white-knuckled fists, I suspend them before me, teeth gritted, stare stabbed through the spindles and out across the ocean that looks like crumbled moonlight. I fill my lungs with salted air and tune into the sound of water slapping against the side of the ship.

Muscles bunched, I tighten my sweaty palms around the tools and bring them together ...

Tink.

The sound chips at my bones. Releases a flood of pressure from somewhere deep inside my chest, racing to attack the confines of my skin until it feels like I’m about to split ten ways.

It takes me too many drawn-out breaths to shore up the courage to drag them down the length of each other—a sharp, screeching sound that snaps my eyes shut and has me clamping my lips against the urge to scream.

I fill my lungs, hold, release …

Repeat.

“What’s”—footsteps shuffle—”what’s she doing?”

“Some weird ritual. She’s done it every night since we set sail.”

I ease deeper into the shadow, thoughts thrown back to the time I forgot one of Baze’s vital rules and tucked my thumb before I threw a punch at his face.

We both heard the crunch seconds before the blow of pain crippled me.

For weeks, I couldn’t braid my hair, shoot an arrow, swing a blade. Worst of all was not being able to wield my diamond pickaxe or even hold a paintbrush.

I never tucked my thumb again.

Pain taught me a lesson then; my penance for not listening was weeks of a dashed routine. Now, it’s the only shield I have against myself. A reminder that, should I forget what I’m capable of—what I’ve done—I could lose control again.

“Told you,” Vanth mutters. “She’s fucking nuts.”

I crack my neck. Feed on their words. Drag the utensils against each other—harder this time.

The sound can’t break me if I’m already in pieces.

Beads of sweat dart down my temples while violent things erupt against my skin and skull, rooting around like an army of caustic, flesh-eating worms. Because that’s what it is, I realize—the raging pressure that strikes every time I’m triggered.

Those sizzling roots seeking freedom. Seeking something to saw.

I look to the stars, doubting Rhordyn knows how ugly I am beneath the pretty skin he’s forced me to hide all these years. Layers upon layers of lies. Either way, the dull metal clasp at the back of my neck now feels too flimsy.

The crescent moon taunts me with its smile. Tries to pull a different sort of hurt forth.

“You reckon watching her family get eaten alive messed with her head?”

Screech.

Blood dribbles from my nose to my chin, then drips.

Drips.

Drips.

“Perhaps. I don’t know. Something about it doesn’t add up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I look in her fucking eyes and I don’t see a survivor. I see guilt and ghosts and my own death flying at me. I think she’s cursed. I think her family learned that the hard way and paid the ultimate price.”

Guilt and ghosts …

Swallowing, I close my eyes and pretend I’m drenched in sunlight, folded on a windowsill in Stony Stem—not tucked in the crow’s nest halfway up the aftermast, shackled by a bold blue cupla and feasting on my pain. Molding it into a different sort of Safety Line.

A numb shield for my bruised and battered heart.