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“By now, I’m certain you realize,” I whispered, gripping the back of his throat. “The earth bender king did not take too kindly to your threats against his people.”
“My King, please!” The woman from Hesh’s chamber, wrapped in a quilt, sprinted across the deck. “Please, stop this. I beg of you.”
She fell to her knees, gripping my legs, tears in her eyes.
“Not me you ought to beg, lady. Your lord would watch it all burn to keep his secrets.”
Her glassy eyes drifted to Hesh. A flush burned through her cheeks, and her tears dried. “My King, please, my wee one remains on land. I-I-I’ve no one to reach her. She’s alone, she’s innocent.”
Godsdammit, Hesh. “And my queen is lost to me. Seems we both have trials, lady.”
The woman’s jaw set with such force it was as though her bones were trying to reposition teeth that had gotten loose. “His lordship speaks a great deal when he beds a woman, likes to spout off his feats and such. Tis the only way he gets off, talking about himself, I’m afraid.”
Laughter rippled across the deck from those who’d come with us.
“Shut your mouth or lose your tongue, Evanlee,” Hesh gritted.
“Oh.” I struck his head again with my fist. “Who will be taking it? You? I doubt that. What do you know, woman?”
She blew out a breath and slowly rose to her feet. “He said only he could find the hidden place where a new king is building his forces. A place on the edges of the Dark Isles.”
The fragile, stony exterior keeping me from sinking the whole of the house into the sea was cracking. “The Dark Isles. He’s been in the Dark Isles all this time.”
Mere lengths from the royal city. Mere lengths from the Tower. I’d sailed around my songbird without even knowing.
“If it be true, dark curses live in this hidden land,” Evanlee whispered. “No one else leaves without losing their way back, he tells me. Only he knows the way. ‘Tis marked within him. It calls to the curse of that gods-wretched soil.”
“Within him?”
“On his bones, My Lord.” She nodded frantically, ignoring Hesh’s curses and threats. “‘Tis over his heart. Told me himself, showed me the burn of the spell.”
You’ll find me in the heart.
I pinched the woman’s chin. “Thank you, lady. You and your child will find refuge in the royal city.”
Her breath quivered. She pressed a kiss to my fingers for a mere moment before I tossed Hesh backward. There was no telling how delicate this spell might be. I would not risk a wrong move. Not when we were this close.
I cupped the back of Gavyn’s neck. “I need you to go to the shore.”
“For what?”
“Bring me Fleshripper.”
“Erik, no.”
“Do it, Gavyn. Or do your own fears outweigh her life?”
Unfair of me, no mistake, and Gavyn would likely resent me for putting such an impossible choice atop his shoulders. I cared little.
He said nothing before dropping over the rail, part of the tides.
The House of Bladesburned in the distance. A few sloops and row boats were skittering across the sea toward the House of Kings with the displaced, Evanlee and her daughter included. The rest would be left on their scorched lands to await their king’s return with a new lord of their house.
They would be waiting for some time.
Hesh still breathed, but he would not the moment his usefulness was spent.
We’d returned to the Ever Ship after sending theFire Stormto the deepest ravines in the sea.
