“I’m not—”
Blue light explodes from the Hellion with a high pitched hum and a cracking noise. One of Rancor's enchanted cannons. I brace for a hit, but it isn’t pointed at us.
The light envelops the Governor’s ship.
I shouldn’t hear anything from this high above them. But I swear I can make out the sound of screams. When the lights cut out that bright blue stays seared into my eyes, and even when my lids fall shut all I can see is the explosion. The Governor’s ship, with Malkin and Angar and the others, is gone.
“We have to save them.” The words spill from my numb lips. Istare at the ocean but there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, except the Hellion.
“It’s too late. I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean, you’re sorry?” I twist, jamming my elbow against his chest. “We—if there aresurvivors,we have to save them.”
“Do you really think there could be?” his voice is gentle. My hair blows in front of my face and he tucks it back for me.
“Yes!” I cry. But I know Rancor; I know her weapons. The Governor’s ship didn’t sink. It disintegrated. “...No,” I say, more quietly. “No. No.”
“I’m sorry,” Roiven repeats.
I need to go in anyways, to check. If I fell off Sava and survived once before, I can do it again, can’t I? I can’t let Malkin drown, alone in the dark ocean.
I start to stand and Roiven yanks me back down.
“What are you doing?” he whispers harshly.
“I need to get to them.”
“They’re gone. You know they are.”
“But what if they aren’t. What if… just this one time… one of them could be down there.”
“Up here, we’re invisible. Savasaeirn dives, and we’re in the ship’s sights. If there was a real chance of survivors, I would understand, but thereisn’t, knight, and you know that.”
I hug my arms around myself instead of the spikes, but I don’t try to dive again. I know he’s right, but I can’t stomach it. I squeeze my eyes shut and replay the flash of blue light again, and again, and again.
16
Malkin shouldn’t have even been in exile.
Soon Roiven tells me to hold on again. I ignore him. Sava dives, and Roiven holds me against him, forearm across my stomach and large hand splayed across my hip. We don’t approach from the rockfield like I’d planned, but instead swoop past the castle—or the remains of it. The structure, once five stories tall, has been blasted down to just two levels, with a ruin of rubble around it.
It doesn’t look like dragonfire, but it must be. A Hellion could be confused and attack the wrong ship, butnotour castle. We sweep past it and skim lower as we reach the northern edge of the rockfield.
A jolt slams through my body as we land. The dragon tucks her wings back.
“Come,” Roiven says, and swings down off her back. The witch scales her leg without problem in the moonlight. My head is reeling, but I follow, picking my way down by feel and by the pale light glinting off the black spikes and scales that decorate Sava’s body. When I reach the familiar rocks of the Bluff, my legs wobble.I stand shoulder-width apart by habit and command my mind to shut up. Panic gets you killed on the seas.
But my mind won’t stop spinning. Someone else has to have been on the Governor’s ship. Rancor wouldn’t have destroyed our own people. What was Harfor even doing so close to the Bluff, so long after she left it?
“It was your people, right? On the ship?” I ask. My voice shakes. “That’s why…?”
“No,” Roiven says quietly, shivering as he folds his arms. “Sava says three of ours survived, and they flew. On the other dragon.”
“But that’s not possible.” I shake my head violently and stare in the direction we came from. “Harfor must not have realized. She must have thought your people…”
But Harfor never should have been here in the first place.
I pace away. Roiven stands silently, Sava behind him. I keep seeing the ship vanish in a burst of blue.
