Page 50 of By the Flames of Her Fury

A lump formed in my throat. “She was.”

“Were—were you happy?” she asked. “Back then?”

A huff escaped me, and I groaned at the residual pain. “I don’t think I even know what happiness feels like anymore. But…yeah. I was. We had a good life. You know my father was a fisherman, and Mother weaved blankets. We’d go as a family to the market four times a week to buy and trade, and it was…it was good.” My lips curved up at the edges, making me forget the pain. “I used to get bored and wish for something different. Something more exciting than just the same things, over and over.” My smile fell. “I would give anything to have that life back now.”

We sat in the quiet for a while. It wasn’t uncomfortable, more like something settling between us. Not quite warm, not happy, just there. Living, breathing, pulsing.

“Can I tell you something?” she finally said.

“Anything.”

“I’ve never really had this. Someone like you.” There was a pause. “I had my mother and brother, but they’re family. My life in Scarven’s mansion…it wasn’t a life. It was a different kind of prison. The two of them were the only thing that kept me going. That kept me from…” She trailed off, her words turning into a sigh.

“I get it,” I whispered back.

She went quiet again. Until— “I don’t want this to sound weird.”

I chuckled softly. “You’re already pretty weird, Songbird.”

“Hush.” Another hesitant pause. “You’re kind of that person for me now, Swift. My person.”

My breath caught. A strange flurry of nerves swirled in my stomach. I didn’t think it was happiness, exactly. It wasn’t the kind of joy I remembered from childhood. But whatever this was…it was more than the hopelessness I’d felt the last four years.

I closed my eyes and swallowed the lump in my throat. “You’re my person, too, Songbird.”

23

Everett

The next three days passed in a disappointing blur. Sailing, arriving on Ash Serah, meeting their High Council, doing it all over again. Under any other circumstance, I would’ve eagerly soaked up our time here. The wealth of new knowledge, of sights, of peoples and cultures different from ours…it was unlike anything I’d read in Veridian texts. But my urgency and impatience was a constant itch beneath my skin, making me unable to hold on to any of it.

Thank the Fates for Kieran, who had slowly been recovering from his injuries and seemed to never tire of talking through legislation and terms of peace. The people of Ash Serah were less welcoming than Chancellor Bay, but once they discovered our powers were dormant and we couldn’t use them to make a surprise attack, they were less wary.

After we dined on fresh fish and honey on our first evening there, I dared to ask about Vera with Ash Serah’s Chancellor Connell, a tall, lanky man of about fifty years old, with shiny piercings along the edges of both ears.

“Sir,” I began, “is there any chance you know of a woman living in this area? Her name is Vera Duma, about this tall”—I held out an arm to my chin—“with blonde hair and red streaks, perhaps working somewhere nearby?”

Chancellor Connell hummed, and his dark eyes crinkled in thought. “She doesn’t sound familiar. Why do you ask?”

I spared a glance at Kieran. “No reason in particular. Someone in Saltmourne was asking for her, and I thought I would help them look.”

“I know that name,” a new voice said. I whipped around to find a servant cleaning the table we’d eaten at.

“You do?” I pressed. “Do you know where she is?”

“No, sir,” the servant said. “I don’t think she’s from Ash Serah. I’ve seen her with a salvage crew at the port when they make deliveries. It’s been a couple months, though.”

“Thank you, Lydia, that will be all.” Connell dismissed her.

“What’s a salvage crew?” I asked him.

Connell shook his head and grumbled under his breath. “Not much better than a pirate, if you ask me. They prey on shipwrecks to salvage any worthwhile goods, then sell them to the harbormasters. Or the highest bidder.” He raised a pierced eyebrow. “If this girl you’re looking for is with one of them, you’ll probably find them cozying up to the nearest shipwreck, waiting to make their profit.”

I mulled through the information all night, wondering if that servant really had seen Vera. Why would she have gotten wrapped up in a crew like that? This little morsel only left me desperate for more answers.

We spent a couple days voyaging up and down the enormous Ash Serah west coast under the guise of meeting all of their harbormasters. The coastline itself was something straight out of a fantastical portrait. Black volcanic rock carved by centuries of wind into jagged formations that dropped straight into the sea. Narrow channels of turquoise water were threaded between them. The harbormasters worked out of buildings built directly into the cliffside, with staircases cut into the rockface leading down to the sea. Red and orange fishing nets hung between posts along the docks, bright against the black stone.

I caught myself cataloguing it all while I restlessly searched for signs of Vera and her salvage crew. I thought I saw her everywhere. Any flash of blonde hair, any glint of sunlight, any birdsong flitting on the wind. But that was all there was. Feelings and whispers, endless frustration around every corner. We heard rumor after rumor of a strange girl and her captain appearing and disappearing every few months, almost like ghosts. It was maddening, like trying to catch water with my bare hands, only to watch it trickle over the sides and drain away.