Page 90 of Cursebreaker

“We can’t—leave her—” I choke, gasping for breath.

“She’s not here!” Titus’s hands are on my face. “Look at me, Aster. My love,” he says. “My love, look at me. She’s not here. She’s not here, but we’re going to find her, all right? I promise you; we’re going to find her.”

Rook and Diana row us out of the tunnel. Titus seems reluctant to let me go, his jaw clenched, tears streaking his face, but he holds out his hands, his eyes shut tight, controlling the waves as we break from the mouth of the cave and into the storm.

We reach the Starchaser by some divine miracle.

As the jolly boat is hoisted into the air, Titus grabs hold of me again.

He trembles, soaked through from the rain, but I feel nothing. My face is numb, my chest hollow.

“We’re going to get her back,” he tells me, droplets of rain dripping from his nose, his chin. “We’re going to find the Relics, and we’re going to get her back.” He pushes wet strands of hair out of my face, grabs my shoulders, shakes me as if trying to wake me from a deep sleep. “I swear it to you.”

Relics. Wishes. None of that seems to matter now.

“She’s gone,” I croak. Elsie is gone.

Diana and Rook haul Lewis, unmoving, from the jolly boat. But the instant Owen’s feet hit the deck of the Starchaser, he’s barking orders to set sail.

Blood, I think I hear him say. He wants blood.

It’s the first thing—the only thing—that snaps me out of my daze.

Because I know what he means.

Something—someone—took Elsie from us. Some twisted magic. Some curse.

He will not rest until someone pays for it in blood.

And I stand, finally, ready to follow him wherever that path leads.

Margaret’s bloodcurdling scream is a knife to my gut. She drops, and Jack sinks to the ground beside her, holding her close as she falls apart.

I watch as Titus tells the others what happened. It feels as if I were standing outside my own body—as if I were living in someone else’s nightmare.

But there’s no waking up from this.

Charlie punches a hole in the wall of the captain’s quarters, weeping violently as he curses the Stars, and the Underlings, and the True King himself. Gabriel’s reliably stoic expression crumples, and he lurches, as if to make for the jolly boat, row himself back to the Tidesinger, and pry Elsie from whatever force stole her away. Eliza wipes tears from her face as she checks Rook and Diana’s injuries, but the two of them send her away, and she doesn’t waste another second before pulling Lewis into her arms. Henry sits on a crate, unnervingly still, his eyes vacant as he stares straight ahead—trapped inside his own mind, his own memories.

Titus takes the Helm from Lewis, who looks as if he were caught between succumbing to despair and declaring war on the Known World—which appears to be what Owen is already planning as he spreads the Elysian Map over a barrel.

I see the moment Titus takes his first real look at the Helm—see his mouth part on a shocked breath when he sees the moth in the center of its forehead. See the tears glaze his eyes as he mutters a curse under his breath.

Owen doesn’t have to ask for my hand. When he retrieves the compass from his pocket, takes the needle from inside, my finger is already outstretched.

He doesn’t hesitate to draw blood.

Crimson splashes the parchment, but I stare at the Helm as Titus holds it at arm’s length. One of three legendary Relics of Night. A treasure many have spent lifetimes searching for—including my father. And we’re the first to find it.

Elsie found it.

Owen points at the map. “There.”

I tear my eyes away from the Helm to where the glowing silver ink forms the image of a sword.

“Castle Grim?” Gabriel asks, peering over my shoulder.

Titus sways, staggering backward a step. He shakes his head, just slightly, the movement almost imperceivable, but there’s no mistaking the fear in his eyes. The anguish.