The god of tides was coming.
Day looked below to find Leandra approaching the tower with an army at her back.
“I know a place you can hide her,” he said, taking the baby and swaddling it in a blanket. “But we must go now.”
He held the child out to Skyweaver. But the god of souls only gazed at her newborn with sorrow in her eyes.
She did not take her baby. Instead, she lifted her weaving knife andheld it out to Day. “Keep Eris safe. Until I find you.”
Far below, Leandra’s soldiers broke down the tower door. Their footsteps echoed up the stairs.
Skyweaver went to her weaving bench and picked up the spindle there.
“The key to your escape,” she whispered. Taking her servant out into the hall, she drew the spindle across the floor. In its wake, a silver line shimmered delicately on the floorboards. On one side stood the door to her weaving room. On the other... a world of mist and starlight.
Day looked from the mist to the god he served.
Skyweaver looked to her daughter, seeing a life she might have had.I could still have it,she thought. She would fight for that life—and for her daughter. She would defeat Leandra just as she defeated the Shadow God.
The soldiers’ footsteps were close now. As their shouts got louder, the baby started to wail.
Skyweaver kissed her daughter’s brow. She tucked the spindle into the blanket swaddling her, then turned to face the enemy on the stairs.
“Come with us,” Day begged.
Skyweaver shook her head. “I must end this,” she said as Leandra appeared before her, as cold and ruthless as the sea. “I will find you when it’s done. Now go!”
With no other choice before him, Day obeyed. Clutching the child in one hand and Skyweaver’s knife in the other, he stepped across the shimmering line and into the mist.
Leaving his god behind.
Forty-Three
Safire woke to a bitter taste in her mouth. She lay on her side, her wrists and ankles bound, her mouth gagged, and her body aching from the constant bumping of a cart’s wheels on rough terrain.
It smelled like fish and brine here. And though the cloth sack over her head blocked out the world, Safire could hear the clop of horse hooves and the softer hush of waves lapping against a wharf.
Axis Harbor,she thought.
Suddenly, the cart jerked to a stop. Someone stood over her. Safire flinched, waiting for whatever was coming. But whoever it was simply untied the rope around her ankles. A heartbeat later, they dragged her from the cart by her armpits and set her on her feet.
Safire would have tried to run, except she couldn’t see. The effect of the scarp berries hadn’t completely worn off yet, making her sluggish and dizzy. She tried to listen, taking inevery sensory detail she could.
She heard the clink of money and the murmur of voices as they shoved her up a slope of some kind. As soon as the ground leveled, her boots thumped against wooden planks, and she knew she was on a ship.
The pressure around her throat let up as they untied the sack, then pulled it off her head. Several faces swam into view, none of which were familiar, and then, quite suddenly, she was being shoved down through a hatch and into a dark, dank hold where several people huddled against each other.
Safire rose, shakily, to her feet. Her hands were bound behind her back. She looked up just as the hatch slammed shut, plummeting her into darkness once more.
“Where am I?” she asked.
From the darkness, the deep-throated voice of a man answered, “In the belly of theAngelica.”
That meant nothing to her. “TheAngelica?”
“A ship that trades in human cargo.”
“Where is it headed?”
