I tried to crawl. My skirt bunched between my legs. My throat seized, squeezing tight, and I realized I was suffocating. My heart bludgeoned my rib cage, pounding in agony as my airways tightened.
I might have thrust my face into the flames. My lips and chin blistered. Foam gathered in my mouth, thick like paste. My arms curled involuntarily into my torso, elbows bent tight, wrists locked at odd angles.
“Time to go,malá ryba,”Kriska said, dragging me up by a catatonic arm and against a saddle.
I gasped for air, begging my lungs to inflate. They didn’t. Sunlight ravaged my senses, searing into me when I openedmy eyes. Thrust across a horse’s shoulders, Kriska climbed on behind me. I turned my head, trying to escape the assaulting sun.
Wooden walls and wooden floors.
I called water to my fingertips—but the moisture in the air didn't answer.
The water didn't hear my plea, as if Kriska had silenced me so thoroughly even the thoughts in my mind were bound and tied. As if I’d eaten—
Shield weed. He'd blown the ash of shield weed into my mouth.
He pushed my arm away, and I might have been no more than a wandering insect for all the good it did to fight as he kicked his horse into a gallop. A hand anchored my back, holding me down. My ribs clanged against the pommel, head rattling with each stride.
My legs spasmed, muscles jerking unintelligently. The sensation traveled up my body, balling my fingers and locking my jaw. A shudder consumed my limbs and spine. I screamed at my lungs to open. But everything in me had turned to stone, fire eating me alive in slowly ripening torture.
Metallic clashes reached my ears, a distant ring over the dull thud of hoof beats.
Somewhere behind me, Kye screamed my name.
I didn’t have the breath to yell back. My eyes rolled into the back of my head. And suddenly, the sunlight stopped hurting.
28
Maren
Rough hands gripped along my sides. Lifting me. Sound and light joined and collapsed, obscure and foggy. My head rolled over my shoulder, and when the rap of hooves stopped, the hands yanked me down with a fistful of my dress.
I didn’t know if I was awake or dreaming. Didn’t know if I was moving or sitting still. But I suddenly felt the sensation of tipping sideways, my weight sending me through open air until something hard and sharp slammed into the back of my head. The smell of earth and grass hit me, and I realized I could breathe. Breathe, but not move. Soft, tickling blades whispered across my brow.
The aroma, noise, light, and motion whirled around me, and I closed my eyes, shutting it all out.
Warmth oozed from my skull as though my head had been cleaved open. A dull burn coated my skin, the ash slowing the healing properties of my Naiad blood.
Kriska had tied my wrists behind my back. He’d wrapped a swath of cloth around my eyes, damp across my brow from sweat.
Dizziness swept over me, and every inch of bare skin vibrated with quiet stinging, my face and mouth raw. Pain rippled from my crown. Though I laid still, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was slowly spinning.
Don’t throw up.
Don’t do it, don’t do it—
I did it. Leaning heavily to the side, my arms ached as I tensed against my binds. Heaving the fish I’d shared with Kye in frothy bile.
Beside me, Kriska clicked his tongue. I recognized his scent as he leaned over me. Oil and unwashed skin. Moth-ridden canvas and molded rope. Cedar and pine. The flat edge of a blade pressed against my cheek, cold and solid.
“Good morning to you,malá ryba,”he said. The jovial tone he’d carried while sailingDarkness’s Hourglasshad gone, his words laced instead with the calm static that tingles in the air just before lightning strikes. “I was worried you had gone off without me, leaving me with a deal unfinished after doing me the favor of ridding me of my beloved ship. The one I purchased is a worthy replacement.”
He trailed the knife along the curve of my jaw, down the column of my neck. A warning, spoken without words.Behave.
I thrust my chin away and called to any nearby water.
Nothing answered.
I didn’t even try to sing. If he carried shield weed, he knew how to avoid becoming avacous.
