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By the time she is done, I’m filled with reluctant admiration. And hard as stone.

Finally, Madinia is forced to admit defeat, her shoulders slumped, her expression weary as she walks toward me.

“Nothing,” she says.

“You said this was one of the first places you docked.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes hold such a deep sadness. It makes me feel claustrophobic. Uncomfortable.

It makes me feel like I have failed somehow.

I take her hand. Shockingly, she allows it. “You were taken in Sylvarin waters. I find it unlikely that the pirates would have returned here as they searched for you.”

She peers up at me. “You think they searched for me?”

I search her face, but there’s no sign of the confident, occasionally arrogant woman I know so well. This is a deep insecurity. A fear that she is somehow not enough.

Fury roars through me with such strength, it leaves me shaken. Fury and powerlessness.

I want to turn back time. I want to find her father and make himsufferfor creating this insecurity. The insecurity that makes her wonder if those she would do anything for have abandoned her.

And yet…they have.

Whereareher friends from Eprotha? Where are Prisca and Asinia and all the others she fought with?

“Calysian?”

“Of course they would have searched for you. We’re traveling south, and we’ll continue to ask about their ship each time we stop.”

With a nod, she straightens her shoulders and mounts her horse. I lead her toward the southern gates of Nyrridor, following the call of my own power.

Madinia is quiet, but I know her plans. Our minds are surprisingly similar, and I can’t deny the satisfaction I feel when I outmaneuver her.

She believes she can beat me to the grimoire and hide it somewhere I will be unable to locate. I’m not sure how she thinks she will achieve this, since I can feel it calling to me even from half a continent away.

But her attempt will be interesting all the same.

Madinia

We leave the dock, traveling in silence as we make our way to the city gates. Calysian sends me the occasional concerned look, but seems content to leave me to my thoughts.

I glance over my shoulder one last time, watching as the city begins to shrink behind us. Twice I’ve passed through this place—once while on my way to the Blightmere Swamp—the grimoire tucked away in my cloak—and now again, my chest still aching faintly from the arrow that nearly killed me.

One day, I’ll return. I’ll take the time to lose myself in the maze of tangled streets, to wander through the vibrant markets. Perhaps I’ll even paddle my feet in the sea, just as I saw a group of young women doing earlier, their laughing shrieks piercing the salt-soaked air.

The city gates loom ahead, the shadowy expanse of towering oaks and tangled underbrush waiting beyond them. We pass through, the noise of the city fading. Almost immediately, Calysian’s shoulders relax. I bite down on the impulse to ask him about Eamonn. He’s been very careful not to mention his friend, and I haven’t caught sight of Eamonn in any of his forms since I woke to their argument.

We stop after just a few hours. My time searching the dock cost us, but Calysian insists on an early night, seeing to the horses while I set up camp.

He doesn’t say a word when I place our blankets several footspans apart, but I feel him watching me as I close my eyes, and again when I open them the next morning.

The moment I’m awake, Calysian gets to his feet, and I can almost feel his desperation to reach the grimoire. The forest thickens as we travel south, trees pressing in closer, while a thick mist clings to the ground until the sun finally rises above the highest branches.

By the third night, the chill has deepened. And it takes all of my self-control to ignore the hot invitation in Calysian’s eyes and curl up on my own sleeping mat on the other side of the fire.

I want him. I can admit that much. I’m torn between accepting the inevitability of his naked body pressed against mine and denying that such a thing can ever happen.