But I was already sneaking into the entry hall, toward a shadowed gap between the wall and the stairs. There were a few servants on the other side of the hall, but it was the handful of armed guards by the main door that would prove to be our greatest hindrance.
I reached—with great pain—toward the marble statue of the Great Goddess Diantan that stood upon a low plinth at the start of the risers. The flame hissed as I rested it against the deep green swath of fabric she’d been draped in.
The movement made my eyes tear up, made me drop the torch, but the flames had caught. They climbed rapidly, engulfing her effigy so completely, that I stood in the stairs’ shadow for a moment, awestruck.
The guards surged into motion, calling for help, as a cloak landed across my shoulders. The hood pulled over my head. Lachlan gripped my arm and started dragging me along the wall, toward a narrow servants’ hall.
He spoke through his clamped teeth. “Holy bleeding Gods, Imogen.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” I mumbled as we made our way down the hall and out into a side garden. The sunlight shone in a golden swirl, and while my pain remained, I realized the nepenthe had begun warping and easing it. I gave a little whimper of relief as my damp boots hit a gravel path. I might be able to sleep like this, floating over the hurt like a spirit lingering above its body.
We stopped suddenly, caged in by a ring of trees and sun-dappled shadow. Lachlan glared down at me with clear fury, but even with my head spinning, I noted the touch of worry in his eyes. “You look like shit.”
I blew out an annoyed breath. My words ran together as if I were drunk. “It’s a wonder Agatha never took you back.” The world around me began to blur and tilt like I stood upon a rolling ship in a fog.
Lachlan gripped my arm tighter, holding me up. “There’s that nepenthe kicking in.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
We were moving again. Through a high garden path, down a tree-lined trail. Time began to play strange. I caught a blurry glimpse of the stables. The daylight felt like hot fingers moving across my skin. There came the scent of horses and their whickering. The stalls swayed, and I was being helped into the back of a hay-filled wagon. My manacles gave a metallic clatter when Lachlan undid them, then I curled up in the hay like a trembling new foal.
As we lurched into motion, I soothed the frantic flutter in my chest by forcing my liquid thoughts toward Agatha. They moved in a rushing current, and I swam through them, back and back, to when I had been young. Agatha had been young too, but to me, a girl of six, she’d been a fully fledged woman. Now the decadebetween us was nothing, but then, she’d been some perfect amalgam of a mother and sister.
The nepenthe let me see her in flashes, in moments of laughter, or reprimand. Me, hunched over my desk, quill scratching, and Agatha, pacing before the tall windows as she rattled off the day’s lesson. Agatha, braiding my hair before bed. Agatha, hissing her dismay over how I’d made a habit of sneaking through the fort in the dead of night.
As we jostled along, my memories branched. Too wide, too deep. There was a white flash, bright like a strike of lightning, and all of my senses suddenly stretched thin as a veil. I could no longer feel my pain, but I could taste blood. I saw through someone else’s eyes. Uncomfortably warm water slipped around me and two familiar voices rang through my ears. One, low and nasal; the other a lovely, melodic croon.
“Hold these words in your head, Nemea, Mortal King of the Isle of Seraf. For you will be this spell’s herald. You will carry it forth.”
The lines of his face began to come clear, though they wavered like I looked at him from just below the surface of a murky pool. My consciousness was not wholly gone, for something in my chest tightened to see him again. His narrow face and tight glare. So young, with his long dark hair unstreaked by white. His fair olive skin was smooth. His gray eyes looked different, somehow. Hungry and hopeful, as opposed to how I had known them to be, like weather-beaten stones. I wished to look away.
“What are the words?” he asked, gaze searching. Suddenly, as if the body I possessed had risen through the murky water, his visage came fully into focus. He yelped and reared back, tumbling to the slate floor beneath him. He stared on in horrified shock.
When Eusia spoke, I felt it in my own throat, felt it resonate through my very bones. “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me, cleanse the sea.”
Nemea remained on his backside and gave a frantic nod. He repeated, “I give to the sand. I give to the water. Hear me, heed me, cleanse the sea.”
“Go,” Eusia said. “Forge your bonds, Nemea. And you will know my power and benevolence.”
A hard hand shook my shoulder. “Imogen.” Another shake. “Imogen?”
I cracked my eyes open to the sun’s harsh glare. My skin was feverish and clammy.
Lachlan stared down at me curled up tightly in the hay, gaze wide with alarm.
“What… what is it?” I slurred.
“Theo’s ship,” he said, grimly. “It’s left.”
4
Imogen
As Lachlan hurried to help me down from the back of the wagon, my thoughts jumbled.
Theodore’s ship was gone, but I couldn’t grasp the impact of it while the taste of fetid water and blood still lingered on my tongue. It had been a brutal dream, a hallucination of a memory Nemea had told me before he’d died, but it was particularly cruel of my mind to have me inhabit Eusia’s body. I didn’t want to know the curl and ache of her withered bones, or what the sharp edges of her teeth felt like against my tongue.
“Come on, come on,” Lachlan said, dragging me behind him as we moved down the first run of docking.
