Princess of souls, p.17
Princess of Souls, page 17
“Irenya’s new orange sweater means more to me than your life,” I say, twisting on my heel to head into the back room.
It doesn’t take long for me to slip the dress Irenya chose over my head, letting it fall down my waist and swing to a rest at my ankles.
It’s beautiful. Nothing as intricate as Irenya’s designs, but the rose petals catch the light, just so, almost making it look like they’re dancing with my movements.
And the color. Actual color against my skin, the same red as the cherries that sat on top of the cakes Irenya and I used to sneak.
Even with my green hair swinging by my chin, I no longer look like a witch, bound to the king. I look almost normal. How I imagine any other girl who walks these streets might look when they attend a ball or a celebration.
“Come out, then!” Irenya says. “I’m going to die of curiosity.”
I step cautiously from the back room and Irenya squeals in delight when she sees me.
“You look like a strawberry!” she says.
I blink. “That is not a compliment.”
“Strawberries are delicious.”
“I’m going to get changed now,” I say pointedly.
But Irenya pulls me farther into the room, circling me like a vulture as she examines the dress.
“How do you get the tulle to fall like that?” she asks Edlyn.
I sigh as the two of them begin talking fabrics, and turn my attention to Nox. He’s staring at me, lips pressed together, and a flicker of uncertainty passes across his face.
“Don’t tell me I’ve rendered you speechless,” I tease.
“Hardly,” he says. The frown smooths out and he gives me a knowing smile. “I’m just trying to think of the right words.”
“Let me guess, I look like me again,” I say to him, mocking his words from after we’d cut my hair. “Really, soldier, you must work on your compliments.”
Nox runs a hand through his dark hair. It falls back over his eyes disobediently. “You look like a princess is all,” he finally says.
I huff out a breath, irritated at the nickname.
“I told you, I’m not—”
“I know,” Nox says firmly. He clears his throat, skin flushed. “But you look like one.”
The earnestness in his voice catches me off guard and for once I can’t find a retort. Suddenly, I feel far too warm in this dress. Nox’s stare intensifies and my breath turns newly ragged with every moment our eyes are fixed to each other.
“I’m going to go get changed,” I finally say, shocked by the quiet in my voice.
Nox only nods and then turns quickly away, finally breaking his stare from mine. I swallow and head into the back room, but his words linger, following me.
You look like a princess.
I can’t help but smile.
25
NOX
I curse as I prick my finger yet again, trying to mend this damn balloon.
We barely have a day left until the death Selestra predicted comes. Until the king comes.
And our transport isn’t finished.
“I told you, go slow,” Irenya says to me.
“I don’t think he could go any slower,” Micah says, his needle threading easily through the fabric.
I scowl at him, then look over to where Irenya has worked her section of the balloon.
I knew she was skilled, but even I had underestimated her. Within just a single day she weaved nearly half the rips and tears our crash caused in the balloon fabric, stitching them back together with remarkable speed and delicacy.
I, on the other hand, have not been anywhere near as fast or delicate.
We work on the floor in one of the empty houses in the mourning street, where we have been staying for the past couple of days, leaving only for the rare food run and to gather any more necessary supplies for Irenya.
With the Last Army patrolling the streets, we can’t risk being seen too often. Even with so many women made up to look like witches, Selestra stands out.
She could be recognized easily by the wrong person.
I thread the needle through the fabric and then sigh when my carefully tied knot unties and the thread falls onto my lap.
“This is impossible,” I say.
I’m appalled at how Irenya could ever manage to weave dresses as perplexing as Selestra’s when I can’t even stitch in a straight line.
I’d thought fixing the balloon might take a few hours, but we’re on the third morning when Irenya finally holds up the last stitch with a satisfied grin.
“Fabric weavers across the Six Isles, bow down to me,” she announces grandly.
“It’s done?” I ask Irenya, a little too eagerly.
Not that anyone could blame me, when the next dawning of my death is only hours away.
“I present to you the gift of flight,” Irenya says, sweeping her hands over the last patch of fabric.
“Let’s hope Nox doesn’t crash this time,” Selestra says.
“You’re welcome to fly it yourself, princess.”
“And surrender the chance to see you fall on your backside again?” she says. “I wouldn’t deprive myself of it.”
“Enjoy looking at my backside, do you?”
Selestra gapes and I see the blush creep onto her cheeks, the red patching over her delicate freckles. It sends a rush through me.
How can she be so beautiful and yet so deadly?
I know I should focus less on the beautiful part and more on the deadly, but something in her seems to override all my sense. When she saw my latest future and fell to the floor, choking on my death, I wanted nothing more than to rush to her side. I was overcome with the urge to comfort and protect her when I know it should be the other way around.
After all, I’m the one on death’s list.
Yet when she blushes, tucking her newly cut hair behind her ears—when I saw her in that red gown—it set off a small fire inside me, catching me unawares.
She’s good at that: throwing me off-kilter and tilting the world so that things look different from how I’ve always known them.
She’s a witch. I repeat the mantra, but then another thought slips into my head.
Perhaps she wants to be more.
Not the evil witch who rules by the king’s side, stealing souls for him. Nor the princess who stays in her enchanted castle, enjoying life at court. I think she might want something else beyond all that.
I know because I want it too: freedom.
The chance to be more than the sum of our family’s pasts.
“With the balloon fixed, can we be off the island before nightfall?” Selestra presses.
Before the vision comes true.
I don’t nod, because something in me doesn’t want to lie to her.
The truth is, I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety. Not even my own.
Until we find the sword and kill the king, nobody in the Six Isles will ever truly be safe.
I’m quick to roll the repaired balloon into the large bag Leo provided and ready everyone to begin the walk back to the field where we crashed. The basket is still hidden there, far from any Last Army patrols looking for the king’s missing heir.
The walk is quicker than it was before. We’re all eager to leave Armonía before we’re caught. Selestra practically jogs halfway and even I struggle to keep up with her.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s more desperate than I am to get out of town and far from the clutches of my next death.
Her visions must be scarring.
I picture her again and how pained she seemed after seeing into my future. I’m not sure why the visions have such an effect on her. I’ve seen Theola recount countless people’s fates without even blinking, but with every death Selestra sees, it’s like she’s experiencing it for herself.
I haven’t quite worked out if it’s because her magic is still young or if maybe it’s because she actually cares.
It’s late afternoon by the time we reach the grassland and I nearly step into the back of Selestra when she stops abruptly at its edge.
“Is this it?” she asks, looking around the empty field.
I can see the skids and mud marks stretching for yards, marking our crash.
The tracks are there.
But now I see that the basket isn’t. I should have expected death wouldn’t let me escape this easily.
“Did it … move?” Selestra asks. She looks around the empty field, as puzzled as I am. “Where did it go?”
“Good question,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “Though I think the better one is who took it.”
An empty basket in an empty field isn’t exactly a popular prize in Armonía. Without the balloon, it’s useless.
“Who could carry something that heavy?” Micah asks. “It would take a dozen people. That’s why we left the damn thing here.”
“And what kind of person would want an empty basket to begin with?” Irenya asks.
Another good question and I can only think of one answer.
One type of person who’d take whatever they found and claim it for themselves.
Scavengers.
More specifically, pirates. And if Selestra’s vision of a dragon ship is anything to go by, I know exactly which one.
26
SELESTRA
The harbor of Armonía isn’t like the brief glimpses I’ve had of the boat docks in Vasiliádes. There aren’t any patrol guards, nor are there army boats and soldiers with swords as big as horses.
The piers stretch out like the rays of the sun, scattering from the semicircle of sand in wooden beams of bright yellow. The boats tied to them are an array of colors, with names inked in cursive. Some are as big as houses, others no larger than I am, with oars hooked over their sides.
“This is going to be a breeze compared to Vasiliádes,” Nox says smugly. “Not a Last Army ship in sight. It’s just leisure boats and pirates.”
“Are you forgetting that I saw you die on a pirate ship?” I ask.
“I guess I’m an optimist,” he says. “Besides, we need that balloon to get off this island and if it’s on one of these boats, we don’t have a choice.”
I sigh, frustrated at his flippancy.
I know we have to do this, but he could at least pretend to be worried. Nox doesn’t fear death as much as he should. I’ve told him it’s coming and how and that only makes him more confident that he can defeat it.
The only thing he seems to be wary of is the unknown, and without that he flourishes.
“Is it that one?”
He points to a boat.
No, not a boat, or even a ship. It’s a creature of the sea, exactly like the one I saw in my vision.
A great beast with sails like wings that are a translucent green curving upward to the sky in a flurry. The wood and rope holding them together are like bones and veins. Its wide, curved body is a deep jade and sharply forked like a hissing tongue down the center.
“That’s it,” I confirm.
“I knew it,” Nox says. He smiles like it only makes things more interesting. “If anyone in Armonía was to scavenge something useless to them, merely because it’s of value to someone else, then it’s the owner of that ship.”
“Who is it?” I ask.
“An old friend.” Nox’s brown eyes glisten with mischief, reflecting the waters of the crystal harbor beyond.
Micah snorts a laugh. “He’s going to be pleased to see you.”
“I bet,” Nox says, drawing his sword. “And that’ll make it even more fun when we steal the basket back.”
My jaw nearly drops at that. “Steal?”
Nox turns to me. “Would you prefer commandeer?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Can’t we just ask for it back?”
“Did you forget he was a pirate?”
“Did you forget that you just said he was an old friend?”
“Oh.” Nox nods, as though he’s only just realizing the lie. Then he shrugs. “He’s more of an enemy actually.”
“Is there anyone on the Six Isles who actually likes you?” I ask, because I’m not sure how it’s possible.
Nox nods over to Micah. “He likes me.”
“Anyone who isn’t an idiot?”
“Hey!” Micah says, at the same time that Irenya cackles a laugh.
“Look,” Nox says, holding his sword up to the light. He studies it for a brief moment—checking for blemishes—and then when he’s satisfied at its perfection, he continues. “If we want to survive, we need to get our transport back. I didn’t come this far to lose it all to a pirate.”
I’m all but jogging to keep step with him as he walks toward the ship.
“So we’re just going to steal this thing while nobody’s watching?”
“Don’t be silly,” Nox says. He looks at me with a roguish smile. “There will be plenty of people watching.”
I swallow and for some reason my mind draws back to the moment in the Grand Hall, when we first met. When I cut a piece of Nox’s hair—a piece of his soul—and a shock pierced through me.
Something like that courses through me now as he smiles.
Not a jolt, but a buzzing. A murmur deep inside, as the wind breezes ripples into the harbor.
A rogue sense of excitement, mixed with my fear.
Adventure.
I can’t believe I’m even considering it, but I think of the painting I drew when I was a child, of the girl locked in her tower with hair stretching out the window and toward the ground she never got to walk on.
The picture my mother burned, searing the king’s hold on me.
But she can’t burn this.
She can set a painting alight, but not a moment. Not an idea.
“How do we steal it?” I ask.
“Easily,” Nox says.
We come to a stop by the foot of a long plank that leads up to the boat.
“You and Irenya make sure the harbor guards at the patrol station are taken care of,” Nox tells Micah. “We can’t risk them getting help from the town guards if they notice what we’re doing. There should only be two or three and they’re almost always asleep at this time in the afternoon.”
Micah hesitates. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“I’m not alone, I have a witch,” Nox reminds him. “And in Selestra’s vision, it wasn’t a pirate who killed me. It was her mother. Look around, do you see the Somniatis witch anywhere?”
“Fine,” Micah relents. “But if you die, I’m going to be pissed.”
“I appreciate that,” Nox says.
“Will you be okay without me?” Irenya asks.
“Of course,” I assure her.
It’s sweet that she’s concerned for me, but I’m the one who should be worrying after her. I’ve put her in so much danger already.
I couldn’t imagine losing her like I lost Asden.
“Be careful,” I say. “And if anything happens, don’t be afraid to sacrifice Micah’s life to save your own.”
“Oh, I will use him as a human shield in a heartbeat,” she says earnestly.
“You guys are so sweet,” Micah says. “I’m glad we’ve become such good friends.”
Irenya only laughs and nudges him in the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s leave the heroes to their quest.”
“No dying,” Micah warns again, pointing to Nox. “I’m serious.”
Irenya rolls her eyes and pulls the reluctant Micah away.
He sighs and lets her lead him toward the harbor guard.
“Here,” Nox says.
He hands me a dagger.
I recognize it as the one he brought to my room when he asked for a second vision. The blade is as black as the Endless Sea, the handle bright enough to be carved from the Red Moon itself. A single thread of gold weaves delicately across its body.
It’s beautiful.
And it easily replaces the ear dagger I’d stolen before, which I’d been forced to return before anyone noticed.
“Risky business giving me this,” I tell Nox, holding back a smile. “I could use it to stab you in the back and take Leo’s butterfly for myself.”
Nox blinks. “Are you flirting with me?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m threatening to kill you.”
A lazy smile spreads across his lips. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference with you.”
I shake my head and twist the knife in my hand, unable to help but be dazzled at the sight of it.
A true fighter’s blade.
“Come on, princess,” Nox says. “Let’s go steal ourselves a butterfly.”
* * *
The ship looks even more like a dragon once we’re aboard. The floors of its forked body are awash with green, the same color of its winged sails, and ripple with blues and pinks, so each mark of the wood looks like scales.
The wheel deck sits elevated to the rear, and I spy Leo’s butterfly in its center, like a prize on display.
Beside it, a man sits with a lit cigar.
“Nox Laederic,” he says.
He spits the cigar into the water and slides down a long pole, bringing him to the main deck.
“What in the name of souls are you doing on my boat?”
He’s a good few years older than us, with black hair streaked silver and a beard that pulls across his throat. A scar slashes down his right eye and curves around his cheek, leaving his eye stained bloody.
“Meet Dray Garrick,” Nox says to me, sweeping an arm out to the man by way of introduction. “One of the richest thieves in Armonía. He makes his Chrim stealing jewels from the crumbled towers of the old royal families. And murdering anyone who gets in his way, of course.”
“That’s quite the introduction,” I say.
“He’s quite the criminal,” Nox admits. “Too greedy for a real crew.”
Garrick narrows his one good eye. “I asked what you were doing on my boat.”
“I considered bargaining with you, but I’m all out of gold and we’ve already resorted to selling our jewelry,” Nox says.
He nods up to the balloon basket.
“You have something of mine and I’d like it back. I’m assuming I’ll have to use force, but let me know if you’re feeling charitable.”
