“A far distance from here, lass.”
Safire turned toward the voice. “What do you mean?”
“He means,” said a woman’s voice from farther away, “you’ve been sold by the empress. It’s what she does with petty criminals. Selling them is more profitable than imprisoning them. Or killing them.”
Safire was starting to lose feeling in her hands. The rope binding her wrists was too tight. She breathed in deep, trying to focus. Needing to take stock of the situation.
These were the things she knew: Eris was in terrible danger. Dax and Roa were in the clutches of the empress. Asha would soon be forced to hand over the Skyweaver’s knife. And she herself was trapped on a ship bound for some godsforsaken place she’d never heard of, where her friends would never find her.
A cranking sound thundered around them, and Safire knew from the limited time she’d spent on ships that they were hauling up the anchor. As soon as it was fully raised, they’d head out to sea.
First things first,she thought.
“There’s a knife in my boot,” she spoke into the darkness. “Could someone cut me free?”
Forty-Four
Skye.It was the name carved into her spindle.
“How long have you been in here?” Eris gripped her bars as she stared at the woman in the cage across from her own. Her face and clothes were streaked with dirt and grime.
“Oh, child.” Skye’s tiny frame heaved with a sorrowful sigh. “Years and years.” She tilted her head then, carefully pushing herself to the edge of her cage—so as not to set it spinning. “You look so familiar”—her gaze gently traced Eris—“almost as if—”
“But why did they put you here?”
“Because I defied her.” Skye’s jaw tightened. “She declared me an enemy of the Star Isles and accused me of colluding with the Shadow God. Of creating an abomination—one she would never stop hunting.” Her green eyes narrowed, as if remembering. “They took my hands to punish me.” She lifted the two stumps of her arms. “But they couldn’t take my child. My servant, Day, hid her away.”
Eris’s heart constricted at that name.
“Day?” she whispered. It was Day who made her stay in her room when visitors came to the scrin or sent her up to the scarps to cut plants for dyeing. As if he didn’t want her seen. Swallowing hard, she said, “Day was the name of the man who raised me.”
Skye lowered her arms, staring fiercely now. “What did you say?”
Eris swallowed. “I... was abandoned. Day found me on the steps of the scrin and convinced the weavers to take me in.” If the Lumina hadn’t taken the spindle Day gave her, she would have reached into her pocket and shown it to Skye.
Skye leaned closer to the bars of her cage. Her green eyes flickering back and forth as she studied Eris. “The night Leandra turned against me, I gave Day three things to guard with his life.”
Eris ached with a sudden, hungry need. “What did you give him?”
“The knife I used to betray the man I love.”
Eris thought of the knife she’d sold to buy passage aboard a ship.
“A key disguised as a spindle.”
Eris squeezed the bars, thinking of the spindle the soldiers took from her.
“And”—Skye looked up, her gaze sharp as a needle—“my baby girl.”
Eris swallowed.
“Her name was Eris,” whispered Skye. In the stunned silencethat followed these words, she said, “It’s also your name, isn’t it?”
Eris stared, frozen, as the pieces locked into place.
She’d been no more than a baby when Day found her on the steps of the scrin, swaddled in a woven blue blanket. Or so he’d told her, years later, when he gave her a knife for cutting scarp thistles and a spindle for spinning wool into thread.
“I knew it the moment they brought you in here,” Skye whispered, her gaze turning tender as it moved over Eris. “I see him when I look at you.” She shook her head. “Day didn’t find you on the steps of the scrin. Hebroughtyou there—to hide you from my enemy. To keep you safe. He knew they were searching for you.”
