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The male chuckles as he studies me, bundle in hand as if debating whether or not to hand it over. “We have nothing to do with the King of Askarea. The Crows rule themselves, and our king has his own little kingdom.”
Before I can begin to understand what he is saying, he tosses the bundle at me, and I catch it with both hands, wincing at the injury in my stiff one where the nail cut into my palm. “Eat. We have quite a journey ahead of us, and my king doesn’t appreciate me bringing back skeletons for brides.”
I could swear he is grinning, but the beak makes it difficult to tell any facial expression.
The bundle weighs a thousand pounds in my shaky hands, and I drop it on the wooden boards in front of me, tugging it open as he nods at it.
“Take the hardtack. It might be easier to digest than the news.”
He is not wrong.
My stomach grumbles as the smell of dried meat and fruit climbs my nose, but I do as he says and pick up the small bundle of hardtack with my good hand.
The Crow studies me, wind ruffling the feathers along his arms. I want to ask him if he can fly with those, but I’m too busy compartmentalizing the pain in my hand the way I learned over the past months after they’d broken my wrist during the capture of the Wild Ray. My heart aches at the thought of the proud pirate ship I had once called my home. Eroth knows what the Tavrasian soldiers did with it, if they destroyed it as they did with its crew or made it a trophy for their king.
“I can take a look at that.” The Crow takes a step closer, making me hit my head as I shrink into the railing behind me. He is staring at my hand, and I am staring at his claws as they point at my bleeding palm.
“No thank you.” The words burn in my dry throat, and I yearn for the waterskin I spotted in the bundle at my feet, but I don’t dare move under the gaze of the predator before me, too scared that he will pounce if I as much as breathe wrong. Baring my teeth at the pain, I tuck my bad hand behind my back and inhale through my nose to steady myself. The world is swaying, and not only from the waves we’re gliding over. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation have made me dizzy.
“Drink and eat.” He steps back, glancing out at the ocean as if he can see miles ahead toward our destination. He probably can, but even when his focus is no longer on me, the sight of the monster’s outline gilded by the rising morning sun does nothing to put me at ease.
With cautious fingers, I shove a piece of hardtack into my mouth and chew until I start coughing from the dryness in my mouth, so I pick up the waterskin and barely manage to open it with my injured hand. The Crow doesn’t offer his help again, and I don’t ask even when it takes me several attempts before I finally get the cork out.
The first sip of water is like a dip in the ocean—cool and refreshing, and I want to close my eyes and savor the last of the fresh water as it lingers on my tongue for a heartbeat, two. Not having felt the wind on my skin and seen so much open water in months makes me keep my eyes open, directed at the glistening waves dancing around the boat. I empty half of the contents before setting down the waterskin and resting my back against the railing. My head swims a bit, and I wonder if it is from having hit it earlier or from exhaustion.
Before I come to a conclusion, a comfortable weight spreads through my body, making me smile at the metallic orb rising in the east, and my eyes shut as I drift off into a dreamless sleep.
Four
The soothing swayof the ocean’s arms has been replaced with a steady, suffocating softness threatening to swallow me up. In my head, a steel hammer is pounding on an anvil, and my eyes are sticky from too much sleep or too many tears, or both. What’s really killing me though is my bladder.
With a groan, I roll to my side, anxious that any change in position will be too much and I’ll end up wetting myself, but if I remain lying here—whereverhereis—it will happen for sure.
As I push myself up, I open my eyes … and need to do a double-take.
Was I worried I’d pee my pants a moment ago? That’s the least of my problems.
I’m sitting on a soft mattress, facing a dark stone wall, and by the narrow door a few feet off center of the dimly lit room, a Crow Fairy with a silver spear stands guard, his tall form clad in leather pants and feathers. His face is more bird than human, eyes so black I can see all the way to Eroth’s realm in them. He stares at me as if expecting me to attack.
Fear fights the need to relieve myself, and I groan again as pain spreads through my belly.
“Bathing room—” It’s all I get out as I leap to my feet and stagger toward the second door on the other end of the room, nearly sighing with relief as I find a toilet.
Nothing has ever felt as good as the moment I sit and let go. Then I remember I fell asleep on a boat and woke up in a foreign room on land. I have no idea where I am and how I got here, or how, by Eroth, I slept through all of it.
The pressure on my bladder is gone when I stand and pull up my pants, but that on my chest is heavy as a boulder. With shaky fingers, I grasp the edge of the basin and brace myself as I sway like my body hasn’t figured out I’m on land again.
“Are you coming out any time soon, or should I come in?” The voice startles me to attention, and my heart leaps into my throat as I scan the narrow bathing room for anything I could use as a weapon, finding little besides a bar of soap I could rub into someone’s eyes and a folded towel sitting next to the basin. I could use that to smother the Crow if I got it around his face.
My violent thoughts are interrupted by three slow knocks.
I hold my breath, heart racing so loudly I can barely hear the silence as the creature on the other side of the door waits for an answer.
“Are you still alive in there?”
The voice isn’t as hissy as the Crow who picked me up from prison. That alone is a riddle I can’t solve—especially not by staring at the broken mirror in front of me. One long crack runs through my face, splitting my features in half. Dirt covers my pale skin, my lips jabbed with thin streaks of dried blood running toward the corners of my mouth. My eyes match the gray of the stone walls, not granite dark, but not silver pale either. My cheeks are hollowed out from nine months in prison, and I don’t know how long the transfer to wherever I am now took.
“I’m coming in.”
