“You should have come with me when I left.”
Cainon’s words jar me, and I spin, looking into his bold blue eyes. He looks so much larger outside of Rhordyn’s castle, like he’s shed some sort of skin of his own. Or perhaps it was Rhordyn’s dominating presence that cast Cainon in a crushing shadow.
“You said it was okay for me to come on a separate ship.”
“A mistake that almost cost your life.I underestimated how little Rhordyn taught you about the outside world,” he dredges out. “He may have saved your life when you were a child, but he’s failed you every moment since.”
I can’t deny it, but I’m no damsel. Not anymore.
Never again.
“You’re not giving me enough credit.”
“You almostdied.You might still, should your hand become infected.”
I don’t tell him I have enough herbs in my sack to disinfect an army’s worth of wounds for fear of drawing attention to its illicit contents.
Straightening my spine, I watch a dinghy being hoisted onto the deck of a larger vessel. Silence stretches, dented by sloshing waves and the clunk of the oars rotating in their rungs every time Cainon stabs and pulls.
Stabs and pulls.
“Tell me, is there a reason you’re still dressed in Ocruth garb?”
I catch his stare.
Hold it.
“I like black,” I answer simply, because there’s no easy way to say I’m all caustic blackness on the inside. That it feels fitting to wear it on the out.
I’m not here to fit in.
I don’t.
Iamhere to make peace with the mountain of death lumped inside me; with all those condemning stares that watched me from the wall in Whispers.
I’m doing this for the ships. So Rhordyn and Zali have the vessels they require to sail the Shoaling Seas and work their way into Fryst through the Northern Territory’s back door. So they can cork the spill of Vruks at the alleged core and put a stop to the devastating raids shredding through the continent.
I’m doing this so they cansavelives.
His gaze flicks to my cupla, then over my garb again. “The crew don’t see you as one of us. Which means they don’t see you asmine.”
“I don’t belong to you,” I snap so fast I barely register the words passing my lips. “I don’t belong to anyone.”
“Perhaps, but youareexpected to play the part. You’re a soon-to-be High Mistress. Like it or not, sacrifice comes with the title.”
“What is that supposed to—”
An ear-splitting explosion rips across the ocean, and I whirl, seeing the ship we just came from riddled with writhing flames, vomiting a cloud of smoke and ash as the vessel is violently demolished.
“Who—” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “Who lit the fuse?”
A harsh blow of wind breathes boisterous life into the fire and batters me with the smell of burning flesh.
Something inside me withers.
I can’t breathe. Can’t speak.
All I can do is stare.
