Текст книги "The Pirate's Wish"

Автор книги: Cassandra Clarke

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“I really expected you to do that sooner,” he said.

“What?” My breath was coming too fast, and I tried to rein it so he wouldn’t think anything was wrong.

“Run off. I didn’t think I could truly keep you locked in the shack.” He went back to stirring our meal. “I assume you went to get water? It seems like it was an uneventful trip.”

He looked at me again, and I could only stare back at him, stricken.

He frowned, and his eyes darkened. “What’s wrong?”

I set the water down in its place beside the hearth and tried to come up with the words. Course, I didn’t get the chance, cause the manticore bounded into the shack, damn near knocking the door off the hinges.

Naji was crouched in fighting stance with his knife drawn before I even saw him move.

“Ananna,” he hissed. “My sword.”

I picked the sword up from where it was propped up against the wall and tossed it at him, but I kept my eyes on the manticore. “You promised,” I said.

Naji whipped his head around at me.

“Yes, but you did not tell me you had a Jadorr’a in your stone-nest.”

She said “Jadorr’a” the way I might’ve said “sweet lime drink” or “sugar-roses”.

“Ananna, what have you done?” Naji asked me, his voice low. He sounded angry, which if he was like any other man meant he was scared.

The manticore let out a little grumbly noise and crouched low like a cat about to pounce.

“Kaol, couldn’t you just eat some fish like a normal cat?” I shouted.

But both of ’em acted like I hadn’t said nothing.

And then the manticore’s pretty human face twisted up in a grimace. “Jadorr’a!” she said. “You’ve been cursed.”

Neither me or Naji moved.

“You hide the smell well, but… there, there it is again.” She shook her head, mane flying out in a big golden puff.

“You can’t eat him if he’s cursed?” I said.

“Of course not! It taints the flavor of the meat and will pass onto me, and besides which, from the smell of it, this is not a curse I want to possess.” She sniffed the air again.

“So, you’re not going to eat him?” I said.

“Not until the curse is lifted.” She sniffed once more, her nose wrinkling up at the brow. “Three impossible tasks,” she said. She turned to Naji. “I shall help you.”

Naji looked at a loss for words, which might’ve been funny in any other circumstance.

The manticore sat back on her haunches. “It’s very warm in your stone-nest.”

“We have a fire going,” I told her.

Naji shot me a dirty look.

“You promise you ain’t gonna eat him till his curse is lifted?”

The manticore shuddered. “I told you, I cannot abide the flavor of cursed flesh. It tastes half-rotted.”

Naji stayed in fighting stance.

“Girl-human, you were correct in assuming that I would find your stone-nest too similar to the walls of the wizard-human’s prison. I shall make a nest nearby. Is that acceptable?”

I didn’t dare look at Naji when I answered “yes”.

The manticore nodded and backed out the door, the snap and stomp of her footsteps drifting through the cracked stone walls.

Naji finally let down his knife and sword. He turned toward me. Kaol, I wanted to run out onto the beach and dive into the cold black sea. Anything to get away from the expression on his face.

“What–”

“She bullied me!” I said. “She asked if I knew a way off the island and I was trying to keep her from finding you and – and eating you and–”

Naji held up one hand.

“You don’t have a way off the island.”

“I will when Marjani shows up. Look, she doesn’t eat women, alright? And she won’t eat you cause of the curse, and we can’t break that till we leave. So Marjani takes us to the Island of the Sun and we drop off the manticore and then we fix your curse.”

Naji stared at me. “My curse is unbreakable,” he said.

“That ain’t true.” Sadness washed over me, and I wondered what would happen if I kissed him right then, and showed him at least one of the tasks wasn’t impossible.

“It is.” He sighed. “At least I know I won’t die in the jaws of a manticore. Although I can’t believe you brought that creature here.”

“I didn’t have no choice! What the hell was I supposed to do? She kept shooting spines at me.”

Naji looked at me sideways. “She wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“Yeah, but how I was supposed to know that?”

Outside, the manticore roared, and it sounded like a trumpet announcing the winner of the horse races in Lisirra. Naji tossed his sword onto the table and looked defeated.

CHAPTER TWO

I was sick to hell of eating fish. Even onboard Papa’s ship we never ate this much fish. There’d be dried salted meats, and fresh seabird, if we were close to land. But here on the Isles of the Sky it was nothing but fish, flaking like paper and just as tasteless.

“Then go hunting,” Naji told me one evening when I complained. “I’m sure your pet manticore will be happy to accompany you.”

“She ain’t my pet.” I flung a piece of fish down to the strip of tree bark we used as plates. In truth I’d thought about hunting before, cause I’d seen flashes of these graceful horsy animals through the dappled light of the trees, but I didn’t know the first damn thing about hunting game. If I had a pistol, maybe I could do it.

I didn’t tell Naji none of that, though, cause I knew he’d make fun of me. He was still sore about me bringing the manticore around.

“Finish your meal,” he said, like I was some little kid.

I glared at him and shoved the food away, sending the fish splattering across the floor.

“Finish it for me,” I said, and stomped out of the shack.

I walked down to the shore edge to calm down. I made sure not to get too close to the signal fire, but I could see it glimmering off in the distance, golden swirls twisting up toward the sky. And the smell of it was strong, too, on account of either the breeze or the island shifting us downwind: it wasn’t so much like wood burning at all, but like blood.

“Girl-human, I am in need of your assistance.” The manticore came ambling down the beach, flicking her tail left and right. That tail still gave me the shivers.

“What do you want?”

“There’s a burr in my mane.” The manticore shook her head. “A great tangle. Would you remove it for me?”

I stared at her.

“The hell would you do if you were on the Island of the Sun?” I asked. “Take it out yourself.”

The manticore growled. Growls I didn’t mind, but you best believe I had my eyes fixed firmly on the poisoned tip of her tail.

“I would command one of my servant-humans to remove it for me,” she said. “And she would remove it without complaint, singing all the while.”

“Servant-humans.”

“Yes. We fill our palace with your kind and they do our bidding and offer themselves as food whenever we are hungry.”

I wasn’t sure I believed her. She had a lot of stories about the Island of the Sun, and its great red-sand desert and the great wealth of her family and what an honor I’d give them, one they would certainly thank with a boon, if only I delivered an uncursed Jadorr’a to their eating table.

She trotted over and sat down beside me, tucking her massive paws underneath her body, sticking her head close to my lap. There was a snarl in her mane, a big knot where something’d gotten stuck.

“Fine,” I said. “But I ain’t singing.”

She sniffed like she wasn’t too happy, but then she stuck her chin on my knee. The weight of her head was a lot more than I expected.

I combed my fingers through her mane, which was surprisingly soft, plucking out around the tangle. I moved slow and steady cause the last thing I wanted was to pull too hard and have those big white teeth of hers slice through my leg. Ain’t no way it was a burr in that huge mass of fur – a burr’s too small – but I felt around with my fingers and I realized she had a pine cone stuck in there.

“This may take a while,” I said.

The manticore didn’t answer save for that trumpeting sound she made whenever she was content. Everything about her voice sounded like a musical instrument. Even her full name – Ongraygeeomryn – kinda sounded like a bell chiming when she said it. I couldn’t say it, which was why I just called her the manticore and left it at that.

When I had the pine cone about halfway untangled from her mane, my stomach growled, and I thought about the fish I’d flung at Naji.

“Hey,” I said, plucking at her fur like it was a guitar string. “Would you go hunting with me?”

The manticore lifted her head a little, enough that I got a face full of her mane.

“Hunting?”

“Yeah.” I leaned back, wiping her fur from my mouth. “I’m sick of eating fish.”

“Fish is not food.”

“It is for people. Look, could you help me or not? I just want to bring down one of those horse-animals I’ve seen in the woods.”

“Caribou. That is what the wizard-human called them.”

“Fine, the caribou. Could you bring one down for me? Don’t use your stinger,” I added. “I want to eat it, remember.”

The manticore laughed. “To bring down such a clumsy creature will be easy. Tis a shame there are no more humans on this island.”

I didn’t say nothing to that, just tugged at the pine cone, hoping it’d come free. It didn’t.

“If I bring you a caribou,” the manticore said, “will you groom me whenever I ask?”

I stopped. “Groom?” There I went, making deals with a manticore again.

“Aye. Brush my mane and coat, and pull the thorns from my feet.”

“That all? You want me to wipe your ass, too?”

“Don’t be crude, girl-human.”

“I’m just checking on the particulars before I agree to anything.”

“No, that service I will not require of you. Manticores bathe themselves.”

Well, that was something, at least. In truth plucking the pine cone from her mane wasn’t that terrible – kind of relaxing, actually. Took my mind off Naji.

“Sure, I’ll groom you. But not for one caribou – for any you catch. And you’ll catch ’em anytime I ask.”

She made a hmmm noise of displeasure.

“Look, it’ll take me and Naji awhile to get through a whole one of the things.”

The manticore sighed. “Yes, I suppose that is true.”

“Plus you said it was easy hunting.”

I had her there. She got this squished-up look on her face that meant I’d just called her manticore-ness into question.

“I agree to your terms, girl-human. A lifetime of caribou for a lifetime of grooming.”

I hope not a lifetime, I thought, but I picked up her paw and shook on it.

The manticore stayed true to her word. I pulled the pine cone from her hair and the next morning I woke to the sound of claws scratching across the shack’s door. Naji stirred over in the corner, still asleep. The fire in the hearth had burned down to ash. I stumbled over to the door and opened it.

The manticore sat with a dead caribou at her feet, her face smeared with blood.

“Here is your caribou, girl-human,” she said.

A jagged tear ripped across the caribou’s throat, and its head hung at an angle. “You didn’t sting it, did you?”

“On the spirits of my mothers, no, I did not.” The manticore gave me this solemn look. “Enjoy your meat, girl-human.” Then she trotted off, wings bouncing, toward the shadow of the forest.

When I turned around, Naji was lurking behind me, sword and knife drawn.

“Kaol!” I shouted. “How long you been standing there?”

“I was in the shadows,” he said. “I didn’t want the manticore to see me.” He walked up to the caribou and poked it with the toe of his boot. “Why did she bring you this?”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest and didn’t answer.

Naji turned around. “Ananna, you have no idea how dangerous that creature is–”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “She can’t eat either of us.”

“She won’t eat either of us,” Naji said. “There is a difference.”

I scowled at him cause I knew he was right.

“Now answer my question,” he said. “Why did she bring this to you?”

I sighed. Naji kept his eyes on me, waiting. And so I told him what happened the night before, with the pine cone and all. His face didn’t move while I spoke, though his eyes got darker and darker.

“That was a mistake,” he said. “Making a deal with a manticore.”

“Well, it got us meat, didn’t it? Something that ain’t fish.” I yanked his sword away from him. “You don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it.”

He didn’t say nothing, and I stomped outside and pushed the caribou to its side and stuck the knife into the skin of its belly. I’d cleaned fish before – big fish, too, sharks and monster eels – so I figured a land creature couldn’t be much different.

Naji came out and watched me. I could feel him standing there, the weight of his presence. It made my skin prickle up sometimes, having him watch me. Not in a bad way.

“I would still check for spines,” he said. “You shouldn’t take a manticore on its word.”

“Planning on it.” I had been, too. I ain’t stupid.

It took me close to an hour to skin the caribou and gut it and slice the meat from the bones. I didn’t find any spines, and I checked everywhere I could think of – in the stomach and mouth, in case she tried to hide one. Nothing. By then Naji had the hearth fire going, and he roasted some of the meat and we had a right proper meal.

The caribou didn’t taste like any meat I’d had before – it was a bit like sheep meat, only wilder and leaner – but it was sure better than another round of fish. Naji ate it without saying nothing, and I figured he was sick of fish too but wasn’t gonna admit it.

When we finished eating, Naji told me to start cutting the raw meat into strips.

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because otherwise we’re going to wind up with a mountain of rotting caribou carcass,” he said. “Which is something I’m guessing you didn’t think about when you asked the manticore to hunt for you.”

I hadn’t, mostly cause I didn’t realize how much meat was on ’em, nor how dense it was. So I went outside and started hacking at the caribou with his sword. I laid the strips out on some flat stones, figuring Naji planned on drying ’em out but not sure of the procedure for it.

He disappeared with the water bucket into the tree shadows and returned a few minutes later, the bucket full of seawater. He went into the house, then came back out and started gathering up the meat strips.

“What did you get all that seawater for?”

“We need the salt.” Naji draped the meat strips over his forearms. “Keep cutting. We’ll probably have to sleep outside while the meat is processing.”

I frowned at that, thinking about the rainstorms that stirred up the woods without warning.

By the time I finished cutting up the caribou my arms ached something fierce and the whole front of my coat was stained with blood. And I couldn’t run over to Eirnin’s house and get a spare, neither.

I carted the sword back into the shack and dumped it next to the hearth for cleaning. Naji was scraping salt out of the bucket, this big pile of it glittering on a piece of tree bark like sand. Another kettle boiled and rattled over the fire, and the air smelled like his magic. He’d already hung up some of the meat strips, hooking ’em to the rafters with little bits of vine from the woods. They swayed a little from the breeze blowing through the open door, looking like dancing snakes.

“How’d you know to do all this?” I asked.

“I learned when I was a child,” he said. “Did you finish slicing up the carcass?”

I nodded, wanting to ask him about his childhood, wanting to know everything I could about him. But I figured he’d snap at me if I said anything.

“Good. Start hanging the rest of the meat from the ceiling.”

I did what he asked. It was satisfying work – we’d pack the strips in sea salt, let ’em sit, and then lash ’em to the ceiling. Plus, I liked working with Naji, being close to him without having to find anything to say or without having to worry about the stupid curse. It reminded me of the way Mama and Papa used to work together on the rigging, in the early parts of the dawn, clambering over the ropes and shouting instructions at one another. I used to watch ’em from the crow’s nest and think about how that must be what it’s like to love someone.

When we finished the whole shack smelled like meat and you could hardly walk from one side to the other on account of all the slivers of caribou dangling in the way.

“How long’s it gonna take?” I asked. “Till it’s all dried out?”

“A few weeks.” Naji glanced at me. He was over at the hearth, messing with the fire. “There’s a cave not far from here. We should start moving our things.”

“The cave!” I said. “The rain’ll get in.”

“Exactly. It’s why we had to hang the caribou up in here.” Smoke trickled up from the fire, gray and thick. It made my nose run.

“I know that.” I scowled. “Just don’t know why we have to live in the cave is all.”

Naji stepped away from the hearth. “Would you rather move into Eirnin’s house?” He glanced at me. “Spend the next few weeks living side by side with ghosts and magic-homunculi?”

I glared at him. He looked like he wanted to laugh. I knew he had me.

CHAPTER THREE

Living in a cave wasn’t so bad, despite the way the dampness flooded in every time the skies opened up with rain. This soft, thick moss grew over the rocks and made for a bed more comfortable than my big pile of ferns back in the shack. We kept a fire burning near the entrance and ate half-cured caribou and berries and the occasional fish to mix it up.

After a few days, the manticore sniffed us out.

“Girl-human,” she said. “Did you and the Jadorr’a think you could flee from me?”

It was nighttime, the sky starless from the rainclouds, and Naji was sleeping down deeper in the cave, his tattoos lighting up the darkness. I didn’t know if he was dreaming or casting magic in his sleep. He’d told me once he talked to the Order sometimes, though he never told me what about. They would’ve rescued him weeks ago, when we first landed, but they wouldn’t have rescued me. That’s why he was still here.

And no one else is crazy enough to sail to the Isles of the Sky. Hadn’t seen so much as a sail on the horizon the entire time we’d been on the island.

I popped my head out of the cave’s entrance. The manticore sniffed at me and flicked her tail back and forth.

“The shack’s filled up with meat,” I said.

“Caribou is not meat,” she told me. “Too gristly, too tough. Like tree bark.”

I couldn’t imagine the manticore having ever actually tried tree bark, but I didn’t say nothing, just shuffled out into the woods. The air was damp and cold like always, and I pulled my coat tight around me.

“Do you need something?”

“May I see your new rock-nest?”

I sighed. “It’s just a cave.”

“It is larger than your old nest.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

The manticore trotted past the fire and into the cave’s main room, her footsteps silent on the moss. Naji’s tattoos turned everything pale blue.

For a minute the manticore stared at him, tongue running over the edges of her teeth. I edged toward the sword.

But the manticore didn’t lunge for him or shoot a spine. Instead, she turned around on the moss a few times, like a dog, and then settled in.

Well. Looked like she found a new home.

“Brush my mane, girl-human,” the manticore said. “In exchange for catching the caribou.”

“I thought the caribou was in exchange for pulling out the pine cone.”

She shook her head and I didn’t feel much like arguing with her.

“What do you want me to use?” I asked. “My fingers?”

“Don’t be silly. A brush will suffice.”

“A brush?” I laughed. “I don’t have no brush.” I pointed at my own hair, which was a tangled, knotted mess from the rainwater and the woods and the wind – even if Naji had been halfway interested in me at some point, he sure as curses wouldn’t be now. I’d hacked some of it off with Naji’s knife, but it was hair. It grew back. “You think I’d look like this if I owned a brush?”

The manticore frowned. “I thought that was merely the humans’ way. You will not tend to your grooming unless commanded by a manticore.”

“The hell did you get that idea from?”

The manticore looked genuinely confused.

“You know what?” I said. “Forget it. I don’t have a brush, but I’ll work it through my fingers, alright? Best I can do.”

The manticore heaved a sigh like this was the biggest burden to her, worse than getting trapped on a deserted island in the north, worse than having to eat animals instead of people. Not that she shut up about either of those things.

I sat down beside her and started working through her mane, a few pieces at a time. It was pretty tangled – not as bad as my hair, but bad enough that I could see how someone as prissy as her would want it fixed.

It was boring work, but calming. Once I got the tangles out her mane was soft as spun silk, and it reminded me of the scarfs and dresses we’d pull from Empire trading ships, the ones I used to sleep on as a little girl.

And there, in the darkness of that cave, in the cold damp of that island, I started missing Papa’s ship real bad. I combed through the manticore’s mane and I thought about the open ocean, the hot breezes blowing across the water and the warmth of the sun. I didn’t think I’d ever feel warm again.

I moved to the other side of the manticore’s head. I could see Naji, curled up on his side. Seeing him made me sadder still, remembering how miserable he’d been on the Ayel’s Revenge, how comfortable he’d been in the desert.

Even if he loved me back, we were tied to different parts of the world.

“You should kiss him, girl-human.”

I yelped in surprise at the sound of her voice, and my fingers caught on a snag in the manticore’s mane. She hissed and yanked her head back.

“What?” I said. “Kiss who?”

“Who else is here?” she said. She rubbed against her scalp with the back of her paw. “The Jadorr’a.”

“What would I do that for?”

The manticore giggled. It sounded like a wind chime. “To complete the first impossible task, of course.”

I froze, my hand hovering near her mane. Ain’t no way she could know that I was in love with him. Did manticores even know what love was? I doubted it.

“I ain’t his true love,” I said gruffly, shoving my fingers back into her fur.

“Aye, but he’s yours,” she said. “I can feel it when you’re close to him, like a lightning storm.”

My face turned hot. “That’s the island talking,” I muttered. “Don’t mean nothing.”

“Go on,” she said. “While he’s sleeping. Don’t you want to help him? Your friend?” She smiled, teeth sparkling in the firelight. “Your true love?”

“Course I want to help… my friend.” I pushed away from her and crossed my arms over my chest. “But you’re just telling me to do it so as you can eat him.”

“In time,” she said. “All tasks must still be completed.” Her eyes glimmered. “Just one little kiss. He won’t even know it was you.”

I looked at her and then I looked at Naji, handsome and disfigured all at once. Maybe she was right. If I kissed him softly enough, maybe he wouldn’t even know it was me: it had never, in the past month, occurred to me to kiss him while he was asleep. In the soft, velvety haze of the open air, this seemed like the most perfect idea I’d ever heard.

One kiss, just enough to help him on his way. To give him hope again.

“Go on,” she said, speaking into my ear, close enough I could smell the carrion on her breath.

I pushed away from her. Naji kept on sleeping. He lay on his side, one arm slung across the pallet of moss. His hair curled around his neck. The lines of his scar looked like the paths a lover’s hand would take as she ran her fingers down his face. They were beautiful.

I knelt down beside him. His breath was slow and even. I could feel the manticore staring at us, waiting.

I leaned forward, holding my breath. He didn’t move.

I closed my eyes.

I pressed my mouth against his, and his face against mine was rough and soft like falling leaves.

My whole body swelled with light. I felt a crack, like lightning cleaving a tree in two, like a wine glass shattering on a stone floor.

Something breaking

And then I was flat on my back, and Naji’s knife was at my throat, his knee digging into my stomach.

“Ananna?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” I shrieked. My face was hot and I could feel this weight behind my eyes and I told myself I wasn’t going to cry, not over this. The memory of the kiss was sweet as spun sugar on my tongue, but the rest of me burned with humiliation.

He slid back, dropping the knife away. “What did you do? I felt someone attack me–”

The manticore started to laugh.

“I was just walking by!” I shouted. “And you jumped out at me.”

“Jadorr’a,” the manticore said. “The girl-human kissed you.”

Apparently manticores knew as much about keeping a secret as they did about humans –not a damn thing.

Naji’s face didn’t change. I wanted to throw up.

“You can feel it, can’t you? I know you can. I can smell it, the change in the curse–” whispered the manticore.

“Shut up!” I scrambled away from Naji. He was still staring at me, but now something had changed in his expression. I couldn’t read it, didn’t want to read it.

He didn’t move except to let his knife drop to the floor. The weight in my eyes built and built, and I jumped to my feet and turned and ran out of the entrance of the cave, into the dark rattling woods. It was cold as the ice-islands, but I was so hot with humiliation – I gave him a kiss and he thought it was an attack – that I didn’t feel it except in my lungs, burning ’em like fire as I ran into the chiming forest.

I tripped on a fallen tree trunk and went sprawling into the ground, wet from the recent rain. The gossamer dust of the leaves coated my palms, and when I sat back and pushed my hair out of my eyes I could feel it sticking to my skin.

The forest was chiming like crazy, as though a storm was on its way, and I let out this scream cause it was the only thing I could do. I screamed and slammed my fists into the ground. The dampness crept in through my clothes and I didn’t care. I just screamed.

“Ananna?”

Naji’s voice was soft and hesitant, blending in with the forest’s chiming.

“Go away.”

He materialized beside me.

“Go. The. Hell. Away.”

“No.”

I wiped at my face, smearing mud across my cheeks. The powder from the leaves came off on the back of my hand. “Fine,” I said, and tried to stand up. He grabbed my arm.

“Look at me,” he said.

“Let go.”

He didn’t, and his grip was stronger than I expected. I tried to wriggle away from him but he held me tight.

“Will you stop it?” he said. “I’m trying to thank you.”

That stilled me, the kindness in his voice. I slumped against the ground, and he dropped his hand to his side. My arm burned from where he touched me, and not cause it hurt, neither.

“It worked,” Naji said. “Your ki… what you did. It worked.”

I didn’t say nothing, just drew my legs into my body and curled up tight like I could disappear into the shadow.

“It wasn’t impossible,” Naji said.

“Course it wasn’t,” I snapped. “What’s impossible is somebody loving me.”

He didn’t answer. Part of me had been hoping he’d tell me I was wrong, that he’d at least try and comfort me, but when he didn’t my chest got tight and painful. I turned away from him and my skin prickled the way it did when the air was full of magic. But there was no magic here Just another reminder that Naji didn’t love me back.

“Thank you,” he said after a few moments had passed.

“Whatever.” I stood up. He didn’t stop me this time. I couldn’t stand the closeness to him. I kept thinking about the way his mouth had felt. “I have to go.”

“Thank you,” he said again, like those were the only words he knew.

I walked away from him, away from the forest and the cave, toward the sea.

I woke up the next morning covered in sand, my head pounding like I’d spent the night tossing back rum in some Bone Island drinkhouse. The sunlight, weak as it was, hurt my eyes, and I rolled over onto my stomach and pressed my face against the cold beach.

I thought about Naji. Jackass.

I thought about myself. Idiot.

It took me awhile to work up the willpower to sit up, and longer still to get myself to standing. I didn’t know where I was. I couldn’t see the smoke from the bonfire, which was a bad sign, but one I chose not to dwell on for the time being.

Somebody said my name.

At first I thought it was Naji, that he’d been lurking in the shadows waiting for me to wake up so he could humiliate me again with his thank yous, but then whoever it was said my name again, and I recognized the ice in the voice.

The Mists lady. Echo.

“Hello again,” she said, curling into existence beside me. “I heard you experienced a bit of a disappointment last night.”

I couldn’t speak. I was too blindsided by her sudden appearance. She slid closer to me, the edges of her body blurred and translucent, as if she wasn’t completely in our world, and I skittered backwards a little, not daring to take my eyes off of her. She was after Naji at the behest of her lord, who Naji’d stopped from taking over our world a few years ago. The lord wanted revenge for it, wanted to see Naji dead or enslaved or worse. Naji had hidden himself from the Mists, though, so she always came to me instead.

Except Naji had cast new magic when we came here, magic that was supposed to keep me blocked from the Mists, too. It was supposed to keep me safe–

Unless he’d dismantled it while I slept last night. Like the thought of me loving him was enough to leave me soft and vulnerable out there on the beach. Like it was worth the pain it caused him.

“What do you want?” I asked, pushing myself up to standing. My legs wobbled and the world spun around me like I was drunk. I didn’t want to let on that I was supposed to be hidden from her sight.

“My lord would be willing to extend his offer to you a second time. Power. Wealth. Magic.” She leered. “All you have to do is hand over the Jadorr’a. It’s an excellent arrangement, if you’re so inclined.”

“I ain’t.”

I took a few steps backwards across the beach, hoping I was headed in the right direction, hoping that my running away would discourage her somehow. But of course it didn’t. Echo followed, sliding up close enough that I could feel the cold dampness from her body. I stopped, paralyzed by fear. Echo curled around me, one hand tracing the outline of my profile. But she didn’t touch me. I was still wearing the charm around my neck. I wasn’t hidden, but I was protected.

“I know what it’s like,” she whispered in my ear. “To be hurt by a man. It must be hard for you. It’s not the kind of hurt you can heal with violence.”

A starburst of anger exploded in my chest, and for a moment my thoughts were filled with an irrational white-hot blaze.