Page 78 of Cursebreaker

I can do this. I have to do this.

I’m already moving, starting for the steps that lead to the helm, when Elsie’s excited chatter reaches me from the companionway. She races onto the deck, but before I can intercept her, Henry is there, corralling her down the steps.

“Are they back?” Elsie asks, her voice pitched with fear.

“Yes,” Henry says calmly, “they’re all back. You just can’t see them yet.”

“Why not?” she demands. “Are they hurt?”

“Everyone’s fine,” Henry insists, a subtle edge to his voice. “They’re tired, that’s all.”

She attempts to slip under his arm, but our eyes meet across the deck, and she stops cold when she sees the dried blood already crusting my face.

“Mind Henry,” I tell her, leaning heavily on the banister at the base of the stairs. I grip the weathered wood hard enough that I’m not sure if it will splinter first or I will.

Her throat bobs. She nods earnestly and, without another word, follows Henry belowdecks.

“Who was she?” Rook asks, his voice hushed—reverent in a way I’ve never heard from him.

“She was—” I crack. Cough. Keep it together. Clear my throat. “She—”

Someone takes my hand, and lithe, calloused fingers twine with mine.

“It’s all right, love,” Titus whispers, lips brushing my ear.

When I look up at him, standing by my side, his mouth is pressed in a tight line, but his gaze is soft.

“Together?” he whispers. He says it like it’s a promise.

It feels like more.

I nod, squeezing his hand, hoping it says everything I still want to tell him. “Together.”

The coast of Hellion is a thin, jagged shadow in the distance. The sun creeps over the horizon as morning breaks, and a gentle breeze billows in the sails of the Starchaser. Everything feels still—peaceful—as we leave Hellion behind us.

But as the others gather around Gabriel, their faces a mixture of fear and disgust, a heavy sense of foreboding nearly steals the breath from my lungs.

“What is it?” Titus asks, his grip tight on my hand, as if whatever Gabriel holds face up in his palm might be the thing that tears us apart.

Gabriel says nothing, just extends his hand to give us a better view of the pebble, still coated in Batya’s blood, and the crudely etched illustration of the flower someone had carved into the stone.

A sprig of blue salvia.

“What does it mean?” Diana asks, looking between the pebble and me, her brows quirked, hand resting on the hilt of a sword at her hip as if the flower were a call to arms.

And in a way, it is.

Because where Will once gave me flowers under the guise of romancing me, this etching is a lifeless mockery of the real thing—just like my feelings for Will. And this message, carved in stone, is more than a warning. It’s a threat.

This one means I’m thinking of you.

Will has no intention of letting me go without a fight.

I take the pebble from Gabriel’s hand, my chest aching, but my mind clear. Will no longer gets to determine how I feel—whom I feel for. He can threaten me. He can chase me to the ends of the Known World and back. But he will never get to make my decisions for me ever again.

I turn my back to the others, my strides purposeful as I make my way to the taffrail, and Titus, his hand still clutched tightly in mine, matches me step for step.

I look toward the horizon as the sun rises, bathing the ocean in its golden glow.