The bell was a warning. Something had gone awry.
“Full cover, you bastards,” I roared. “Light those damn spears.”
Another boom, another cinder stone, peeled toward the dark isle. True to the word of those we’d met along the way, this land was not of the Ever. A dark cloak of mist hovered along the edges, and it seemed to be locked in a violent storm.
It seemed to be fighting against revealing itself, like it was pulling away.
The ashen sails of Tavish’s vessel reeled ahead. Shouts of his crew rippled over the Ever Ship as the House of Mists came about, the hull aligned with the shoreline of the isle. Pressure, like a warm wind before the violence of a storm, billowed the sails.
From here, I could make out Tavish’s form. He stood on the rails, one hand on the rigging, the other outstretched.
“He’s breaking the wards!” I shouted. “Keep aiming at the shore. When those wards shatter, I want no man left alive on that damn isle.”
“King Erik!” A man reeled back off the rail. “The sea witches are sayin’ these wards be trying. No telling if they’ll break entirely.”
Dammit. “Keep firing!”
Repeated calls for more spears echoed down the deck. The Ever Ship jolted before it reached the shallows, forced to go still.
“I’m going.” I hurried to the port side of the ship.
“It won’t allow it,” Gavyn shouted. “This is what happened. I could remain in the sea but could not breach the shore.”
“Not without the bone.” Sander flailed Hesh’s breastbone. “It is the key, remember what the woman said, he was able to step through the wards while his crew was not. The bone and runes are both locator and key to step onto the shore.”
Without a word, I snatched the bone from the prince and leveraged both feet onto the rail. I clung to the rigging, desperately scanning the shoreline.
Gavyn had made it to the water. Livia was no fool. She would’ve hidden. The bells raging over the shore were sounding before we found the isle, and I had a sinking in my gut—they’d found her.
Another cinder stone cracked through night, but fell into the sea, twenty paces from the shore.
Songbird.
Celine handed me her knives, strapping them on my belt, turning over her own cutlass, as though she feared the same—there was a chance I would be depending on blades to fight until I found Livia.
I would. I would not stop until I laid eyes on my queen.
“Bloodsinger.” Valen took hold of the rope next to me. “You get one true chance. You cannot fight this alone.”
“No choice, Earth Bender. Only one goes ashore unless Tavish breaks through.”
“Then, I’ll go,” he said. “I’ll shatter this damn island.”
I could trust her own father to find her, no mistake, but there was no telling if he would have power over this isle. There was no telling if I would have power over the edges of that sea. There was a hum of strange magic here.
At a cove, mottled in trees and wood, a flicker of golden light rose against the shadows. Crimson flames spread in a distinct pattern, winding up the hillside, blazing through shadows like a beast devouring the land.
Air abandoned my lungs when the fire came to an end, burning in a writhing shape across the treetops. The fire spread in the deliberate shape of a writhing sea serpent.
“There! Livia’s there.”
Valen leaned farther over the rail. “How do you know?”
I didn’t respond, didn’t think, before I tightened my grip on the bone key and dove into the sea.
“Godsdammit, Bloodsinger.” Valen’s anger struck my back when I surfaced.
I dove again, demanding the pull of the current to pull me forward. The moment my knees struck ground, I stood and hurried to the shore. My leg protested. I dug a fist into the point of pain and forced the bones to move, forced my legs to quicken my step.
Billows of thick smoke towered over the isle. Lost in the frenzy of fire and ash, clear shouts of men revealed the truth of it—Larsson had a damn force in his command.
“Livia!” I blinked through the sting of smoke, vision blurring. The pathway through the burning trees sloped up for a short distance, then curved back down toward the shore. “Livia, answer me!”
I followed the blaze down the backside of the slope, coughing and retching against the burning air.
My foot slipped on a stone, landing me on flat, pebbled shore. Breaths were a struggle. I hooked my arm around my nose and mouth and limped through the thick smoke.
“Livia.” My voice croaked.
I hurried around a bend on the shoreline, only to meet another slope, and my heart stopped.
There, clinging to the spindly trunk of a small tree, my songbird, dirt-soaked, wild and fierce, halted her descent down the rocky ledge. Eyes like the deepest sea locked with mine for an endless breath.
Pain in my leg forgotten, I sprinted across the shore.
“Erik!” Her cry split me to the marrow of my damn bones. A broken cry, a cry of relief.
Livia used notches in the soil to climb down to the shore, not bothering to wait for her feet to meet pebble before leaping off the edge. She stumbled but caught her stride. Twenty paces, ten. Distance was spent, and I crushed her in my arms. Her body fit against mine, like our flesh and bones yearned to meld together as one.
“Gods,” I said in a frantic gasp, brushing her hair out of her face—a new compulsion.
Livia’s hands padded over my shoulders, my back, my chest, almost as though she weren’t certain if all this were some wretchedly wonderful dream. I pulled away, just enough to press my forehead to hers, enough to breathe her in.
My palms trapped her face. Tears bled onto her cheeks. My own eyes burned; her face blurred.
“Hello, love.” My voice broke, dry and jagged. I pressed my lips to the side of her head, and whispered, “I promised I’d come for you.”
“Erik.” My name slid over her lips like a fleeting hope, one if uttered too fiercely might dry up and whisk away on the wind.
With my thumb, I traced the perfect curve of her bottom lip. I wanted to taste her, wanted my mouth to leave a dozen marks so no land, no kingdom, no eyes would doubt whose heart she claimed.
The clap of an ember spear pulled me back to the sea. The Ever Ship fired bursts of flashing light, one right after the other, all aimed at our cove. A roar of unbridled rage collided with the boom of the Ever Ship. Shouts and commands were swallowed in the chaos, but there were warriors here. Enemies and blades.
I unsheathed my cutlass and reached for a dagger on my thigh.
Livia tapped my arm. “I have one.”
She yanked a sleek dagger from a braid of grass wrapped around her thigh. A grin played over my mouth when we made our way for the curve of the shore. My feral queen. I would devour her the moment she was off this damn land.
I strangled her fingers with my grip. If my hold ached, Livia made no complaints and kept close to my side. Another blast struck the shoreline. The fiery cinder stone arched in the darkness, then seemed to crack against an unseen wall, falling into the shallow tides.
Closer. Wards were falling.
“Is Fione still building the wards?” I asked. To kill the witch would weaken her lingering spells, it would benefit Tavish and quicken his own ability.
“I don’t know. I trapped her.”
“Where?”
“Fury blocked her behind that wall.” Livia pointed to the bend in the shore.
Distant, but I could make out a dark barrier of mangled roots, tree boughs, and vines.
I cupped the back of Livia’s neck, drawing her mouth close to mine. “You, Songbird, are the most vicious of foes.”
The ground shuddered. Livia drew in a sharp breath, lips parted when she looked to the sea as if she knew. If Valen’s fury magic was bending the soil of this isle, Tavish was shattering the wards.
“Time to go, love.” I threaded our fingers together.
“She cannot leave.”
I wheeled around, one hand on Livia’s waist, and shoved her behind me. Gull-fletched arrows aimed at our hearts. Archers looked nowhere but me. In the center was a woman, dressed in a sullen ebony gown. Her eyes were dull, like a dying star. Lost, empty.
“Skadi,” Livia’s whisper was warm against my neck. “Skadi, what was done to you?”
I leveled the point of my blade at the woman. “It’ll take more than a few arrows to stop us.”
“Arrows will not stop you.” The woman laced her fingers, staring through me like she could see into my soul. “I’ve already shown her—the isle will not release her.”
Livia’s eyes were wet. “I can’t leave. I-I’ve tried.” Her breaths came in sharp, frantic gasps.
“Songbird, listen to me.” When I shifted, the bowstrings stretched and groaned as archers readied to fire. I paid them no mind and trapped Livia’s face in my palms. “We’ll find a way.”
“Go.” Livia pushed against my chest. “You must go, Erik. They’ll kill you.”
My lip curled. I tangled my hand in her hair, holding her in place against my body. “I am not leaving you. Never ask me again.”
“I will not see Natthaven attacked.” The woman took note of the blasts of the ship. “We’ll fall into the mists.”
“Skadi!” Livia cried. “Please. Help us, and I swear I will help you.”
The woman hardly seemed like she needed help. Hard eyes drank us in. Her head cocked to one side when she locked her gaze on Livia. “I have no time to spend helping you when I must help my lands instead.”
“No,” Livia said, shaking her head. “This isn’t you. This isn’t what you wanted! Gods, Skadi, wake up. What did they do to you?”
There wasn’t a response from the other woman. Only strange iridescent ribbons of darkness around her hands.
Wind, unnatural and furious, whipped through the trees, forcing every branch, every trunk to yield to its rage. I steeled against the torrent, cradling Livia’s head against my body. Pebbles underfoot skidded and clacked against larger stones, rolling inward. Rolling toward the trees. Sea spray pricked at my face, a thousand needles against my skin.
“No!” Livia screamed. “The isle, it can fade if threatened.”
“Then we go now.”
She pulled back on my wrist. “I feel it, already, it’s keeping me here.”
“Bloodsinger!” Behind the empty-eyed woman, Larsson shoved forward, battling the force of the isle.
A familiar rage ripped its way to the surface, like an old friend I’d always carried with me, dormant and docile, locked away in the scorched edges of my soul. Larsson stumbled. His dark hair flung around his face, a face I saw so differently now. I could almost see hints of my father, of me, in him.
It made me want to snap his head free of his neck.
“Take her, then you kill your lover,” Larsson roared. “Stay, and I will make your death swift.”
We were surrounded by archers and blazing arrows. Flames lit the tears on Livia’s cheeks, the gleam of my sword. I knew nothing about fading isles, knew nothing of how to break a bond that kept my queen a prisoner. All I knew was the gods could not tear me from her side.
“If I die,” I shouted. “You die with me.”
More ember spears rained shots against the isle. One stone lanced through a guard’s chest, splattering bits of bone and flesh along the rocks beneath his boots. Panicked shouts filtered through the guards. Another stone shattered a knee and shoulder. Even Larsson crouched.
“How are the damn wards breaking? Pull us into the mist,” he snapped at the woman.
A man with gold-flecked crimson hair cursed. “You keep pulling her deeper, and she will never resurface.”
Larsson ignored him and commanded the woman to tear them away again. Stony indifference lined her features, a mask over what might’ve been lovely.
“Erik, it’s taking me,” Livia cried. “Skadi! Let me go. This is not you.”
Already, countless trees were blotted out in a furious cyclone of dark mist, fading into the night. Only the outer ring of the isle seemed to remain. It was drawing Livia in, and I would not lose her. With Larsson knowing we could find him, there was no telling how long he’d hole away before he struck again.
Two forces fought the other—a magic of the isle drew Livia toward the land, and vicious magic cracked the shore, desperate to pull us back to the sea.
“Sea king.” The strange woman merely stood amidst the colliding magics, hair wild in the wind, fingers laced in front of her body. “White iron is an interesting blade.”
From the darkness around the woman’s hands, a dagger fell, all silver and pearl, like it was nothing but bone. The blade landed at my feet. Perhaps she’d fashioned it from her darkness, summoned it from some pit of the hells, it mattered little. After one look at the woman, after one curse from Larsson when he saw the dagger, I snatched it up.
The moment my fist curled around the ivory hilt, a jolt tugged around my middle, and the shore cracked and split. As though touching the blade broke some sort of chain keeping us grounded on the soil.
Bursts of dirt and bedrock shot from the deep fracture, aiming at the stars. The shore broke away from the isle and plunged me and Livia into the sea.
Before the tides swallowed us whole, the mist of the isle devoured the strange woman and Larsson’s face into nothingness.
I kicked us to the surface, Livia in my arms.
Where peaks and lanterns and forests had been, now empty seas stretched for lengths. Where furious tides and winds had been, now haunting silence remained.
Livia shuddered.
Horror, cold and sharp, flooded my chest. Her eyes spun wildly in her skull. Blood seeped from her nose, her ears, her damn mouth. The remaining wards tore her apart.
“Shit, shit! Livia! Livia, look at me.” I tilted her head in my hands. Her lashes fluttered. In another breath, I demanded—begged—the tides to get us back, to lift us, help us. My mind was spinning, I hardly felt the thud of the hard deck of the ship when the sea tossed us aboard.
Hands shaking, I laid Livia on the deck. Gods, every one of her limbs were soaked in blood; new gashes kept splitting open.
“Livia!” Valen’s voice, frantic and fearful, came from across the deck.
In one tug, I stripped my shirt and took my own dagger to my middle. A long swipe, deep and swift.
“Erik!” Tait shouted. “Godsdammit, too much.”
There would never be a line, never be a limit, to what I would do to keep Livia Ferus breathing. Did he not know that?
Blood stained my stomach, my thighs. I wrapped my body around Livia’s, aligning her numerous open wounds with mine, and sang. Desperate, broken, the sound of my song was one I did not recognize.
Her body convulsed in my grip. I closed my eyes and focused, blocking all shouts, all voices.
A haze gathered in my mind, a sort of peace, and through it, a vision of Livia smiled.
I deepened my song, tightened my hold on her calm body. She wasn’t trembling anymore. In my mind, her smile widened. She waved for me to follow.
“Erik!” Someone called for me from a great distance, like their voice carried on the wind. I ignored them and reached out for Livia’s outstretched hand.
Some force pulled me away from her. I shook it off and tried to reach her again.
“Bloodsinger.” The voice was rough, deep. Familiar. A voice I’d heard since childhood. The earth bender’s voice. Another tug, and I lost my grip on Livia’s hand. I tried to fight my way back to her, tried to reach for her again.
Hands were on my skin. Too large to be my songbird’s. “Enough, boy. That was enough.”
The image of Livia’s face faded from my mind. Hovered over me was Valen Ferus. His hands were soaked in my blood. I understood, and in truth, I didn’t blame him for taking the strike he’d vowed to take as my payment for stealing her away.
At least Livia was free now.
I let my eyes close, resigned to my end, and my mind went dark.
