Safire shrugged. “I lied.”
It was then that Eris saw the hard clench of Safire’s jaw—trying to hide the fact that her teeth were chattering. She, too, was soaked to the bone. Wet and cold and shivering.
Eris had a strange, sudden urge to take her somewhere safe, build a fire, and warm her up.
She shook off the ludicrous thought, then looked to the top of the cliff.
If Eris went with Safire now, despite the horror of what lay up there, she would learn where her spindle was buried. At that point, all she’d have to do is get free of this girl and double back to dig it up.
“Fine.” Eris glanced down to the hilt peeking out of Safire’s boot. “But if you want me to cooperate, you need to give me that knife.”
“So you can cut my throat with it?” Safire turned back to the path, tugging Eris after her. “I don’t think so.”
Worth a try,thought Eris, who winced and gave in.
Not that she really had a choice.
By the time the trees thinned, the torch had gone out completely. The lightning flickered across the sky, illuminating their way. They followed the dirt path through the darkness and up the cliffs. When the sandy soil turned to crumbling shale steps wet with sea spray, they started to climb.
Eris’s legs were soon burning as they rose higher into the cliffs. It had been seven years since she’d walked these steps. As the lightning lit up the black sea below, Eris thought of all the nights she’d sat watching storms surge over this same sea. Letting the thunder silence all the unanswered questions inside her.
The higher they rose, the closer they came. With every familiar sight and sound and smell, Eris’s gut twisted. Memories she thought she’d locked away sprung loose, making her nauseous.
I can’t do this....
Eris stopped, halting Safire. She pressed her hands to her knees, trying not to throw up.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to keep it all back with the sheer force of her will. “Just... an effect of the scarp berries.”
When the nausea—which had nothing to do with the scarp berries—settled, Eris avoided that too-keen gaze and stood. Safire watched her in the darkness. Eris ignored her and pressed on.
Soon she was breathing hard. Her legs shook with exertion. It had been so long since she’d made this climb. But when she looked to Safire, no sweat broke across the girl’s hairline. Nowheezing breaths issued out of her lungs. She was as fresh and alert as when they started.
When they arrived at the top of the slab steps, Eris slowed her pace. A huge black shape now loomed before them. Eris felt its presence like a knife in her ribs.
She forced herself to raise her eyes and look. It wasn’t the home of her childhood that stood in front of her now; it was the nightmare she’d run from.
Flashes of lightning illuminated it. Once clay-red and creeping with dark green ivy, the walls were now blackened and scorched. The shattered stained-glass windows gaped like too many mouths of broken teeth. The timbers hadn’t been able to support the roof as it burned, and it had long since caved in.
No dogs barked at their approach. No animals brayed.
The silence felt like a weight around Eris’s neck.
Sometimes, when she was out at sea, or inland doing a job for Jemsin, she could pretend it had all been a dream. But now, as Eris stared up at this ghost from her past, that horrible night came back to her like a rushing wave, crashing over her.
When Safire stepped up to her side, Eris whispered, “Welcome to the scrin.”
Seventeen
Safire gaped at the scorched and soulless wreck before them. It seemed to her like something between a lighthouse and a temple, half burned to the ground.
The scrin.
Had she heard Eris correctly? This was the scrin—the place Asha and Torwin had set out for?
A horrible thought struck her then.
