Time passed, but it was hard to know how much. Surrounded by wooden walls, it all felt the same. Kye brought my meals, if that’s what you’d call the inedible sludge the galley boiled out of oil and gray meat, stalling to smirk at me as he leaned against the ladder, his foot carelessly propped on the bottom rung.
In the brightest part of the day, sun filtered through from above, allowing me to discern the shadows of the crates around me.
I knew there were three small catapults to my immediate right. There was some type of metal—copper, or perhaps tin—which caught strange glints on the opposite side of the cargo hold. But unless someone opened the hatch, I spent my time bathed in darkness.
During the day, the boots of sailors, vibrations of their voices, and various thumps and scratches could be heard. At night, my only visiting sound was the groan of the ship as it tipped forward and back. Creaking wooden whispers. Tapping overhead, boards flexing and shrinking. When the swells hit, I anchored myself to the iron bars, waiting with certainty for the ship to implode from the noise alone.
Kye came and went through my mind the way someone enters and leaves a room through a door. Sometimes he crept in on silent feet, announced only by the soft creek of hinges, startling me when I noticed he was there. Other times he flung the door of my mind open wide, marching in to take hold of my shoulders and shake me until my head whirled. I tried to dismiss him from my thoughts, but it might have been easier to shove him back through a real door.
My mind invited him in, as if it cared nothing for the anger it caused to think of him.
Men are traitors,said Nori’s voice in the dark. Her cold fingers circled my wrist. I jerked away, rubbing my hand, glancing around and patting the floor, searching for the sudden brush of insect legs I’d felt across my skin.
Nothing was there.
But the last look Olinne had given me flashed behind my eyes. I wondered if, somehow, they thoughtIhad betrayedthem.
Heavy breath pumped over my shoulder, hot on my heels. I ran between stalks of breadfruit, weaving through the leaves, catching my foot on a root.
My pursuer was on me as I fell. Hands wrapped around my throat.
“Do you know how many ships came to Leihani each dry season before you were born?” he asked.
“I’m not a witch,” I breathed, fingers clawing at his arm.
“It doesn’t matter if you are or not,” said Kye’s voice. He leaned into the light, and those eyes that had always seemed so soothing pierced me in the darkness. Kye reached to his side, and a glint of steel flashed. I twisted under his grip, hips rotating to scramble away—and a pain like nothing I’d felt collided with my flesh.
White agony burrowed into the small of my back. Ribbons of muscle tore under the clean edge of the knife, and I felt each one give as they rent apart. Kye drove it in deep, even though it almost pushed back, as if my body was unwilling to absorb the steel. I turned to face him in horror and froze at the sight of a young woman now in his place, her waist-length hair dark, her irises the color of obsidian.
“Murderer,” she said, and I realized her voice was my own.
A horn blared.
My eyes snapped open. My cheeks were wet, my heart pounding.
The cargo hold was dark. Quiet. Then the horn blared again. Anchor chains clanged through the wind, followed by the sound of half the crew being roused to moor the ship. I sat up to feel the iron bars ahead, cold and hard.
Dreams had plagued me since I’d left Leihani. I hated them; I could never decide what was real and what was memory.
Though to be honest, the feeling of hate was beginning to numb me from the inside out. I hated everything. The cold, the dark, the constant rocking of the ship. The quiet. The lumpy gray gruel.
If a sailor came down the ladder and offered me a warm floor and a fish baked in citrus, I’d probably just hate him, too.
Iron rattled through the wooden hull. Though the ship lifted and fell with the waves, I no longer felt the pull of travel in my center.
We’d arrived in Calder.
The hatch banged open an hour later, and Kye stepped smoothly from the floor above, neglecting the ladder and landing in the hold. Dressed head to boot in black, his dark gold hair tousled by the sea wind, I’m not sureMihaunacould have made him any more beautiful.
Lout.
He curled into the door of my cell with a wicked smile, keys jangling as he selected one and fit it inside. “Morning, island witch.”
Metal creaked as he pulled the door open, and he stepped back, allowing me enough room to exit. I didn’t move.
“Is my trial today?”
“You’ll find out.”
