“What’s that?”
Cainon twists to look in the direction I’m pointing, hand slipping off the oar. There’s a grinding sound as it begins to slide free from the metal thole, and we both launch for it at the same time—my teeth gritted as we drag it back into place.
“What’s what?” he asks, tone short as he spins again. But when I look at that tree, there is no dark smudge.
Nothing.
I frown, desperately scanning the cliff’s edge.
Perhaps I’m going mad. Perhaps my nightmares are leaking from the shadows of my mind just to fuck with me.
“Never mind,” I murmur, but the hairs on the back of my neck don’t smooth, the air still tinged with a lingering charge that tries to shake me up.
Screams at me toflee.
“Where are we exactly?” I rip my gaze from the cliff.
“A back entrance.” Cainon throws the oars forward, digging deep. “The palace is on the northern tip of this small island, two days’ walk from here, with a bridge connecting it to Bahari’s capital.”
“The capital is Parith, yes?”
“Correct,” he confirms. “The southernmost point of the main continent before it crumbles off into a litter of islands. Docking in the city harbor is too risky during rough weather. The chain goes up whenever the swell tops five feet.”
“Why?”
“Too many rock shelves. I don’t relish the idea of sinking another ship.”
Blazing screams echo in my mind, and I’m ripped back to the ire I felt watching sailors dive off the engulfed deck, lathered in flames.
“Could’ve fooled me.”
He shoots me a sharp look, and I close my fist around its cutting edge.
Refuse to look away.
He tsks. “Such pretty lips spitting such bitter words when there’s much better things you could be doing with them.”
“You have an overactive imagination,” I mutter, and he flashes me a smile I don’t reciprocate, shoulders bulging as he plows those oars through the water.
“Oh, petal. You havenoidea.”
My cheeks blaze, his words a lick of warmth to the area defenseless to the fact that I’m in a confined space with a powerful High Master twice my size, looking at me like he wants to drown me in a sea of pleasure.
I skim my stare across the water to escape in whatever meager way I can.
His responding chuckle only riles me more.
“As I was saying before you led my mind into suchdelightfulterritory, we’ve already taken severe damage from the storm. Much of my fleet will require extensive repairs before they’re fit to sail again.”
The blow to my chest leaves a dull ache.
Somyhard-earned fleet won’t be setting sail toward Ocruth anytime soon.
Wild panic worms up my throat.
“No welcome parade, then.” The words are cold and crisp—something to fill in the silence while I try to tame this jittery beast swelling inside my chest. Because every day that slips by without Rhordyn and Zali’s proposed intervention is another Vruk attack. Another slaughtered family.
Another child without a mother, or a father, or a brother …
