Suddenly, the waves began to beat their fists against her hull. They spilled their froth over the sides.
The sea was trying to sink her.
Whatever was in the water wasn’t Crow.
Skye tried to turn. Tried to row back to shore. But the sea grabbed her oars and pitched them into the storm.
Skye grabbed the sides of her boat, determined to stay in the dory. To keep it upright.
The very next wave turtled her boat.
Salt water surged up, cold and dark as death. It silenced Skye’s screams. Wrapped its icy fingers around her ankles. Dragged her down and down and down.
Into the darkness.
A world away, Crow felt it: Skye’s life draining away.
He surged over the water, searching the sea. His too-human heart beat a terrified tattoo. Was this his fault? His punishment for leaving her?
By the time he found her, it was too late.
The sea had dashed her on the rocks.
“Skye...”
The water was eerily calm as he pulled her to him. The sand glittered against her death-pale skin.
Skye’s eyelids fluttered open. Her life was fading fast. “You came back.”
He had mere heartbeats now, and a choice to make. It was the nature of mortal things to die. All Crow had to do was say good-bye. To hold her tight as her soul passed into a place he could never follow. It was the last lesson his human girl could teach him.
Except...
Make me immortal, she’d asked.
If Crow had never met her, it would have been easy to say no. But Skye had taken the god in him and taught it to be human. Taught him to want and crave and yearn.
In that moment before she slipped away for good, Crow took her strong, skilled hands in his. There, on the rocks, with the sea silent and still around them, he laced his fingers with hers. Fingers that hauled and rowed, mended and wove.
Weaving is what she loved best,he thought.
In exchange for all the gifts she’d given him, he gave her one back. He made her Skyweaver and gave her dominion over the souls of the dead, fashioning her into his opposite: a god of hope. One who could light the way through the dark.
When he finished, Crow stepped back and looked at what he’d done.
She was no longer Skye, the fisherman’s daughter. With her mortality, he’d taken everything that made her. She did not remember her cove, or the dory she’d spent half her life in, or the husband she’d left pining on the shore.
She did not know Crow. She did not even know herself.
He’d changed her.
She was now deathless. Formidable. A god of hope and light.
And though she was magnificent, she was not his Skye. The human girl he loved was gone. And where his heart had once been—if indeed he ever had one—there was now a roaring, empty void.
Eighteen
The next morning, on the deck of Dax’s ship, Safire leaned against the taffrail and into the salt spray of the sea. After last night’s storm, the ocean was calm and glittering like a jewel.
