Page 36 of By the Flames of Her Fury

We sat in the quiet for a few minutes. That was one thing that had gotten better since she arrived—the silence. Before, it was always filled with dread. The passing of time between moments where I’d feel more pain. But now, sitting in silence with her on the other end made it not seem so bad.

“He said something about a birthday present,” I said slowly. “Is that today?”

“Mhmm,” she hummed. “My sixteenth. Mama was planning a party. Nothing fancy, of course. We aren’t allowed to have much to ourselves. But she was so excited.” She cleared her throat, but it didn’t hide the sound of her tears.

Another beat of silence. “What did you do last year? For your birthday?” I asked.

“I went flying.”

“Flying?”

“Yeah. My Shifter form…” She paused again, the way she always did when we talked about her magic. “I’m a type of bird, like my mother. Scarven wouldn’t let us leave the property, but I got to fly around in the nearby fields last year. It’s the most incredible feeling.” She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “What about you? What’s the last birthday you did something for?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I was thirteen. My mother made the pear and vanilla cake I asked for, and friends from the village came over to race rowboats at the shore.” I pressed my lips together, desperate for a taste of that cake or to see my mother’s smile again. “That was back before the epidemic.”

“The epidemic?” she asked. “Is that what killed your parents?”

“Yeah. It hit fast, too. Wiped out so much of Iluze. They think it was some sort of pollution in the seawater we all used, but I guess I’ll never know for sure. Sometimes, I—” I cut myself off and scratched the back of my neck. She was so easy to talk to that I forgot I was speaking out loud, letting words I’d never voiced before come to the surface.

“Sometimes, you what?” she prompted.

I straightened my back. “I wish—I wish I’d died with them. It would’ve been better than this.”

Silence. The awkward, heavy, stretched-too-thin kind that made me wonder if I said something wrong. And then her finger appeared in the hole, barely sticking out past the stone in my cell. I blinked, slowly raising my finger to touch the tip of hers. Warmth spread over my arm from the point of contact.

“Well, I’m glad you exist, Swift,” she murmured. “Whether it was five years ago, today, or a decade from now. I’m glad you existed at all.”

16

Vera

The six-day journey from Saltmourne to Shipwreck Cove had mostly fair weather, although we hit a rough patch where the water threatened to pull us off course and into choppy waves. I didn’t even have to look at the map to know it had been in the same area where we’d encountered the whirlpool.

I shared a knowing look with Odessa, who Starke had asked to come this time. She spent most of her adolescence sailing around the Triad Realm, so even though she was content with her books, she was also more well-traveled than most of us.

Other than that small incident, there had been no whirlpool, no sudden storms, no mysterious, hidden creature. And now the mist thinned to reveal the Blackwake Territories, a sprawl of craggy black islands. Starke told me they were remnants of old volcanoes and reefs, strung together by crooked piers, dilapidated docks, and bridges made by the Fates only knew what scavenged materials.

Shipwreck Cove was the nearest of the group of islands. The air was thicker here. It smelled like salt mixed with smoke and iron. Lanterns flickered along the docks in the fading sunlight and cast reflections on the water as we bobbed closer. Pirates loitered everywhere, perusing goods, sharpening daggers, and drinking from dirty canteens. In the distance, I could’ve sworn I heard cannon fire ringing across the island.

The Blackwake Territories were the one place I hadn’t yet visited, and it thrummed with a dangerous, impulsive energy that made the hair on the back of my neck rise. Passing over the dark fog of the docks, my eyes found a little pocket of shoreline with tan sand, a few green trees, and white-foamed water lapping at the beach. Every time I arrived on a new beach in the Triad Realm, old memories swam to the surface.

“The best part is standing there right when the water rushes over your ankles. It’s cold at first, but then it feels good. The sun always warms it up. And then you just look out to the ocean. The waves go on forever, straight into the sky.”

Everett’s words coasted over me like smoke from the deckhands below. It had been seven years since that moment, but every beach I saw never failed to make me think of it.

I took a deep breath and nearly choked on smog. Men readied the gangway for us, with torn hats on their heads, pipes between their lips, and rusted daggers strapped to their waists. Odessa stuck close to my side, adjusting her spectacles with wide-eyed wonder. Passersby and sailors alike finally seemed to notice us as we descended to the grimy dock, but it wasn’t Odessa or me they paid attention to.

It was Starke.

A pair of pirates with gold teeth nudged each other’s shoulders. Someone else whistled, his tricorn so low, it blocked his face. An older man leaning against a broken post straightened and squinted at Starke. “By the Fates,” he muttered, stroking his braided beard.

I glanced back at Starke. “What’s that about?”

“No idea.” His face was unreadable as he stepped around Odessa and me to take the lead. “Keep moving.”

Karye, Lenny, and the other crewmembers stayed back on the ship. My shoes crunched over wood chips and broken glass as we walked. The stares of strangers burned holes in my back, but I ignored them and kept following Starke. We’d almost made it out of the port when a gray-haired man with a fish’s eye strung to a necklace came out of nowhere. He clapped Starke on the shoulder, giving him a one-toothed smile.

“Well, if it ain’t little Alexander,” the man croaked. Starke stiffened, and I shot him a sharp glance. He knew these people?