Prologue
Eighteen Years Previous
Skye was only a child the first time she watched them put a traitor on trial. She saw them take the man’s hands. Saw the blood run swift and dark over the stone altar as the soldier wiped his blade clean, like a storm sweeping over a sapphire sea.
Skye remembers the way the severed hands twitched like crushed spiders dying on their backs, thin legs curling inward. Remembers the way the enemy stared at the stumps of his arms as the blood ran down to his elbows.
Remembers how he screamed.
That was a lifetime ago. Tonight, they’ll put another traitor on trial. Skye is waiting in her cell. Because it won’t be an enemy’s hands they take this time—it will be Skye’s hands. And she has only herself to blame.
Be a good girl. Keep your head down. Remember your place.
These were the words she lived by once. The lessons instilled in her since birth.
That was before she met Crow. A boy from the shadows undid all her lessons. He undid everything.
Crow. Like a swallowed thorn, the name stings her lips and tongue and throat.
How could she be so naïve?
Skye will tell you how. She will weave you a tapestry while there’sstill time. It will be her last weaving. Because once the moon rises and they come for her, Skye will weave no more.
You can’t weave without hands.
One
Eris had never met a lock she couldn’t pick.
Lifting the oil lamp, she peered into the keyhole, her wheat-gold hair hidden beneath a stolen morion. Its steel brim kept slipping forward, impeding her vision, and Eris had to shove it back in order to see what she was doing.
The wards inside the lock were old, and from the look of them, made by a locksmith who had cut all possible corners. Any other night, Eris would have craved the challenge of a more complicated lock. Tonight, though, she thanked the stars. Any heartbeat now, a soldat would round the corner. When they did, Eris needed to be on theotherside of this door.
The lock clicked open. Eris didn’t let out her breath. Just slid her pin back into her hair, rose to her feet, and wrapped her slender fingers around the brass knob, turning slowly so as not to make a sound.
She glanced back over her shoulder. The hall lay empty. So Eris pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Holding up the lamp, its orange glow alighted on a simple desk made of dark, scuffed wood. An inkwell, a stack of white parchment, and a knife for breaking wax seals were neatly arranged on top.
Eris shut the door gently behind her. Her gaze lifted from the desk to the object hanging on the wall: a tapestry woven of blue and purple threads. The very thing she’d come for.
Eris knew this tapestry by heart. It depicted a faceless woman sitting at her loom. In one hand, she held a silver knife curved like the moon. In the other, she held a spindle. And on her head sat a crown of stars.
Skyweaver.
The god of souls.
But it wasn’t just the image that was familiar. It was the threads themselves—the particular shade of blue. The thickness of the wool and how tightly it was spun. The signature way it was woven.
The moment Eris glimpsed it from the hall two days ago, she nearly stumbled. Every morning for years, this tapestry stared down at her from stone walls flanked on either side by the sacred looms of the scrin—a temple devoted to the Skyweaver.
What was it doing here, in the dragon king’s palace, all the way across the sea?
Someone must have stolen it, she thought.
So Eris decided to steal it back.
She had some time, after all. Her captain—a heartless man named Jemsin—was currently meeting with the empress of the Star Isles. It was why he sent Eris here, to steal a jewel from thedragon king’s treasury. Not because he needed the money. No. He needed Eris out of sight while the empress and her Hounds came aboard his ship—for his sake as much as hers. If it was ever found out that Jemsin harbored the very criminal the empress had been hunting these seven long years, it would mean death for both Eris and her captain.
