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Nothing.
Another breath and the currents roughened, the ship swayed, a new air warmed my flesh rather than chilled the skin.
The ship rocked violently. I had to grip the rigging to avoid spilling over the edge. Overhead, the banner of our colors whipped and snapped, then pointed in the opposite direction.
“Wind’s changed,” Stormbringer whispered.
“Three hells.” Valen leaned over the rail. “Look.”
Straight ahead, a new curve of land broke the horizon. Land unknown, prominent cliffsides, torchlight, lanterns, all of it lighting a beach made of dark crystal stones, not the soft sands of the Ever.
In the distance, the sound of a bell rang out over the tides.
Shouts, beastly and wretched, rose from the crew. Blades raised with their voices, and a single ember spear fired in a blast of crimson and ash into the night.
Songbird!I shouted through my heart, desperate for her to hear me.Turn your eye to the sea, love. We found you!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE SONGBIRD
A tumultof wind ransacked the wood. I trudged forward, bowing my head, and making my way for my bower until I could find a way to Skadi.
If I could find a way to the princess, she might be able to free us of these wards. She could free herself of whatever arrangement Arion had forced upon her head. There’d been a change in Skadi after she’d used her darkness, but she was the last hope I had left. She was the only one with enough power, it seemed, to shatter mystical barriers.
I didn’t know how to find her in the palace, then escape. Again.
The deep bong of the bells from the palace tower rattled through the soil. Above the frenzy came shouts, commands, pounding footsteps.
There was a tug around my middle, a distinct nudge to turn back to the sea.
No. I needed to aim for the palace. But warmth, bright and almost familiar, burned in my chest, urging me back toward the water.
He is coming. I shuddered at the thought. Not quite my voice, more ice-edged that burrowed into my blood. A chilling sound—ascrape of claws on my skull—but it didn’t bring fear. It was as though something like my fury took hold of me, anxious to guide my steps.
I lifted the tattered hem of the shift, biting through the pain of sharp twigs and briars on the battered soles of my feet.
Branches cracked at my back. It sounded as though an entire army were surrounding me. The elven were formidable, no doubt. They knew their land. I’d no desire to meet them.
“Get me away from them,” I called out to the last embers of fury tingling down the tips of my fingers. I brushed my palm across a twisted elm.
Brambles on the narrow path in the wood thickened, forcing me to turn on a bend, deeper into the shadows of the trees. Hair lifted on my arms, the unsettling notion that unseen eyes were locked on me rattled up my spine in great shudders.
He is coming.
Be it the voice of Natthaven, my fury, or a spectral, I no longer cared. The voice in my mind throttled me in panic.
Larsson was coming.
I hastened my pace until I broke free of the trees. A tang of blood burned in my throat, and my chest felt as though I’d swallowed flames. No, gods, no. I was back in the open. Open to arrows, open to Larsson’s gaze.
A boom shook the glassy pebbles underfoot.
Thick night burst into a fiery sphere. Short-lived, but enough for gold light of a cinder stone to brighten towering squares of crimson sails. Enough to reveal the sheen of a pitch hull carving through the tides.
I stumbled. “Erik.”
For a breath, the tumult in the wood ceased, as if the whole of the isle were stunned into silence at the sight of the Ever Ship.
