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Idonea turned it over in her hands. “Why? I’ll suffocate in this.”

“It’s for your safety. The capital air’s thick with toxins. Too many manufactories. The Republic fears plague more than witches. Only Templars walk barefaced in the capital.”

Apparently, divine authority protected lungs as well as souls. Safira bid her farewell, leaving Idonea to enter the narrow passages alone. At her cabin door, Idonea stopped.

The Current thrummed, recoiling from down the way. Daemon essence.

Current swirled like ash behind her eyes, barely perceptible. Like smoke through cracks in a floorboard. The hallway was silent, not even footsteps sounded. Just a breathless tension, as if the ship held its breath.

She took a deep breath, took her glasses off, forced her pupils to slit, and slid into full Current Sight.

The world blurred and shifted, edges glowing silver, and the air thickening with phantoms. The daemonic trail shimmered, pulsing erratically, disappearing down the hall.

Idonea followed it, step by step, fingertips brushing the ridges in the wood. The pulse strengthened as her temples throbbed. The trail led to a door, sealed tight.

Her breath hitched. The stench of daemon was overwhelming; thick as rot in summer heat.

She released her grip on the Current before it ripped too much from her. Her eyes watered hard as she released the Current. Reality snapped painfully back into shape as she fit her glasses back on, and with it came the silence again. No sound from within, and no light beneath the door.

She pressed her palm to the wood. It was cool with no vibration, and no presence she could sense.

Two breaths. Then she shoved the door open, braced for violence.

Chapter 6

Bile rose. She gagged, and kept gagging after there was nothing left to bring up.

The boy who'd stood outside Nellith’s house now lay crumpled on the floor. His chest opened up by five strokes, jagged wounds, the cuts crossing one another at angles. Where his throat should've been was a gap, and nothing else.

Books had described these wounds. The throat opened, the chest carved in five strokes. A daemon's killing. Specifically, an archduke's killing — a signature, the way some artists signed their work. The boy had failed to keep her in sight, and Vinea had collected him for the failure.

She couldn’t even feel her heartbeat. The boy’s spirit lingered, trapped in the void left behind.

Tears burned her eyes as she knelt beside his ruined body. All his skin was a greenish-blue colour, and rotting flesh and daemon stench mixed in the air.

Her hands trembled as she reached out, fingers brushing the boy’s cold, clammy skin. His spirit needed release, needed to be freed from the confines of a decaying vessel. She whispered the incantation, her voice a soft murmur.

“Lament him, Current. Let his spirit be free from the confines of a bodily prison. Let the winds mourn and carry the tears to rain. He is unburdened. Let him be swept free.”

The door slammed behind her. She jumped and spun around, but there was no one. Her mouth dried, and her heartbeat hammered in her ears.

A bloody handprint marred the door from the inside. Her skin prickled. If the daemon followed her here, then Nellith might still be alive. The thought hit hard enough to hurt. Guilt followed immediately. What if she'd led it here instead?

Her thoughts clawed at her as every possibility played out in harsh clarity. Idonea shook her head, trying to pull away from the spiralling panic. She needed a plan, not despair. But even as she forced herself to breathe, the handprint thrummed in her mind, a silent accusation. Her fingers itched towards her dagger.

Safira had a right to know a daemon roamed her ship. There was no question about it now.

Inside the captain’s cabin, Safira sat at the dining table, nonchalant as Idonea recounted the events. The captain’s demeanour was unfazed, as if a daemon was a mere inconvenience.

“It is but one more day and we reach the capital." Her tone was flat, bored. “Then the daemon will leave this ship, and it is my problem no more.”

Idonea’s pulse quickened, her frustration bubbling to the surface. “You’d not care if it killed again?” She paced back and forth, adrenaline coursing through her veins.

Safira barely looked up. The faint curl of a smile teased at the corner of her lips.

“I’ve no need to fret, doll.” She stood, moving towards the window. “I’ve got a witch on board.”

Idonea froze, a mix of relief and indignation warring inside her. Her gaze flicked to Safira, poised at the window, calm and impossibly composed.