PÁGOS DRAWS NEAR, AND with every league the air grows thinner. We feel it each night, our bones creaking with the ship as she sweeps through water that will soon turn to sludge and ice. It doesn’t matter how much farther we have, because Págos is something that is always felt from within. More and more with each fathom, it looms somewhere deep inside. The final part of our quest, where the Crystal of Keto waits to be freed.
Rycroft is as much a ghost now as he has ever been, hidden belowdecks with barely enough gauze and meds to stay alive. The minimum necessary to make the journey with us. I haven’t been down there, delegating that responsibility to Torik and other members of the crew who can handle him well enough and show restraint even better.
Madrid can’t be trusted. Not when it comes to one of her own countrymen. Her memories tend to taint her morals and I can understand it. Kye, equally so. There isn’t part of me that trusts him to watch over Rycroft and deliver food that isn’t laced with poison. And then, more than any of them, there’s me. The person I trust the least.
Lira may be alive, but that doesn’t put an end to things. The relief has layered over my anger like a film, masking the rage well enough that it can’t be seen, though never enough for it to disappear. But whether I go down there or not, Rycroft can sense the fate that awaits him. Even he can hear the slow wolf call of Págos. From the depths of the crystal cage, where Lira once was, and where he will remain until I give him over to the ice kingdom. He can catch the whistles in the wind, in a room as dark as his soul. And when we finally arrive, he’ll live with them as he rots in a jail as cold as his heart.
“You’re not drinking.”
Lira hovers on the ladder steps to the forecastle deck. A blanket is wrapped loosely around her shoulders, and when it slips, she shrugs it higher. I try not to notice the wince as she moves her arm too quickly, stretching her side and jarring the wound.
I reach out my hand to pull her up, and the look Lira gives me is nothing short of poisonous. “Do you want me to chop it off?” she asks.
I keep my hand hovering in the space between us. “Not particularly.”
“Then get it out of my face.”
She pulls herself up the rest of the way and settles next to me. The edges of her blanket skim my arms. It’s always so cold these nights, enough that sleeping with my boots on seems to be the only way to keep my toes. But there’s something about being up here, with the stars and the sound of the Saad swimming for adventure. It makes me feel warmer than I ever could be bundled up in my cabin.
“I’m hardly an invalid,” Lira says.
“You are a little.”
I don’t need to face her to see that her eyes are burning through the air between us. Lira has a way of looking at people – of looking at me – that can be felt as much as it can be seen. If her eyes weren’t such a surprising shade of blue, I would swear that they were nothing more than hot coals for the fire within.
I finger the Págese necklace, which hangs from my neck as Lira’s seashell hangs from hers. The key to everything. To ending a war that’s lasted lifetimes.
“If you get shot,” Lira says, “I’m going to treat you like you’re incapable of doing the simplest tasks.” She cradles her arms around her knees to keep out the cold. “See how you like it when I hold out my arm to help you walk, even though you’re not shot in the leg.”
“I’d be flattered,” I say, “that you would look for an excuse just to hold my hand.”
“Perhaps I’m just looking for an excuse to shoot you.”
I give her a sideways glance and recline on my elbows.
The deck of the Saad is littered with my friends, splashing drink onto her varnished wood and singing songs that knock against her sails with the gusts. Seeing them this way – so happy and at ease – I know nothing could ever be thicker than the ocean that binds us. Not even blood.
“Madrid said that you are going to hand Rycroft over when we get to Págos.”
“There’s been a price on his head for some time now,” I say. “But the services of the Xaprár were too valuable for any kingdom to warrant attacking them. Now that the shadows have been decimated by us, I don’t doubt he’ll be a wanted man. If nothing else, it’ll be some extra sway to make sure the Págese king grants us access to their mountain so we can get the crystal and finish this whole thing.”
Lira leans back so that we’re level. Her hair is more unruly than ever, and the wind from the approaching storm does nothing to help. It blows into her eyes and catches across her lips, clinging to the freckles of her pale cheeks. I clench my hands by my sides, resisting the impulse to reach over and push it from her face.
“Do you really hate the sirens that much?” she asks.
“They kill our kind.”
“And you kill theirs.”
My eyebrows pinch together. “That’s different,” I say. “We do what we do to survive. They do it because they want to see us all dead.”
“So it’s revenge, then?”
“It’s retribution.” I sit up a little straighter. “It’s not as though the sirens can be reasoned with. We can’t just sign a peace treaty like with the other kingdoms.”
“Why not?”
The distance in Lira’s voice gives me pause. The answer should come quick and easy: because they’re monsters, because they’re killers, because of a thousand reasons. But I don’t say any of them. Truthfully, the idea of this not ending in death never crossed my mind. Of all the outcomes and possibilities I considered, peace wasn’t one. If I had the opportunity, would I take it?
Lira doesn’t look at me and I hate that I can’t figure out the expression on her face.
“Why are you questioning this?” I ask. “I thought the Sea Queen took everything from you and you wanted to use the Crystal of Keto to end the war. You want revenge for your family as much as I do for Cristian.”
“Cristian?” Lira looks at me now, and when she says his name, it freezes in the air between us.
“He was the prince of Adékaros.”
I run a hand through my hair, feeling suddenly angry and unfocused. For a man like Cristian to die while a man like Tallis Rycroft gets to live is more than unjust.
Lira swallows. “You were friends.”
Her voice sounds wretched and it distracts me. I can’t remember her voice ever sounding anything short of pissed off.
“What was he like?” she asks.
There are countless words I could use to describe Cristian, but a man’s character is better seen in his actions than the laments of his loved ones. Cristian was full of proverbs and sentiments I never understood and enjoyed mocking as much as I enjoyed hearing them. There wasn’t a situation we found ourselves in that Cristian didn’t think warranted an adage. Love and madness are two stars in the same sky. You cannot build a roof to keep out last year’s rain. He always had something ready to settle the rampant parts of me.
I think of what Cristian would say now if he knew what I was planning. Any other man would want revenge, but I know he wouldn’t see the crystal as a weapon. He wouldn’t even want me to find it.
If your only instrument is a sword, then you will always strike at your problems.
Instead of telling all of this to Lira, I clasp the Págese necklace and say, “Do you think she’ll feel it?”
“Who?”
“The Princes’ Bane,” I say. “Do you think she’ll feel it when the Sea Queen dies?”
Lira lets out a sigh that turns to smoke on her lips. The air is thin and perilous. Wind cuts between us like daggers while a storm rumbles closer. I can smell the rain before it’s here, and I know within moments the sky will come weeping down on us. Still, I don’t move. The night flashes and groans, thick clouds creeping toward one another and merging into an infinite shadow that blocks the stars. It grows darker with each moment.
“I wonder if she can feel anything at all,” Lira says. She shifts, and when she turns to me, her eyes are vacant. “I suppose we won’t need to wonder for long.”