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N YX PACED THE length of the Fyredragon ’s cavernous wheelhouse. She watched the storm through the arc of bow windows. Winds continued to batter and shake the moored wyndship. It felt as if the large craft were struggling to break loose and fly away.

It matched her own tense mood.

“We’ve been grounded here too long,” she muttered to herself.

The complaint was heard by Hyck, a defrocked alchymist who served as the Fyredragon ’s engineer. “Not long enough, by my reckoning, lass. I would happily take another full swing around the sun to get this old bird in shape before venturing off into the burning Barrens.”

The bony older man lay on his back, half buried under the ship’s maesterwheel, working on adjusting the controls. His occasional sharp curse reminded Nyx of his presence—and of the patchwork condition of the Fyredragon.

The wreckage of the centuries-old wyndship had been discovered in an ice cavern back at the Crèche. It had taken the skill of Darant’s crew, along with the help of the Pantheans, to resurrect the large ship from its frozen grave. To patch and repair the Fyredragon had required scavenging the blasted remains of their own smaller craft, the Sparrowhawk. Even the maesterwheel that confounded Hyck at the moment had come from their former swyftship.

Other cranks and control levers, original to the Fyredragon, flanked to either side. Yet these also needed constant adjustments and modifications. During the long journey here, Hyck had continued to repair the wyndship as it flew across the Wastes, and the work was still ongoing.

“It’s those infernal forges,” Hyck sighed out. “While they got us here, their new fuel is far more powerful than ordinary flashburn. This old bird wasn’t built to fly so fast. Such speeds keep shaking feathers loose, and I keep having to hammer them back into place. Can’t have that continuing.”

Nyx understood. An alchymical mix of flashburn and whelyn flitch —a flammable oil harvested from the great sea beasts of the Crèche—fueled the Fyredragon ’s modified forges. The unique concoction was fivefold more powerful than the regular flashburn used in the Crown’s forges.

“A problem or not,” Nyx warned, “we may soon need that speed.”

“Aye,” Hyck conceded. “That be true enough.”

They all knew their only hope lay in staying ahead of their enemy.

And if word has truly reached the wrong ears…

Nyx resumed her pacing. She had crossed the breadth of the wheelhouse twice more when muffled shrieks—panicked and distraught—echoed up from the lower hold of the ship.

She froze in place.

The raash’ke.

Something had riled the beasts up. She also discerned the shrill keening of Bashaliia among the frightened chorus. She took a step toward the wheelhouse door, determined to go to their aid.

But another had already discerned the source of their distress.

Hyck, still on his back under the maesterwheel, shouted to her. “Hold fast, lass! We’re gonna get shook hard!”

Only then did Nyx note the trembling of the planks underfoot. Before she could take a breath, the ship jolted, bucking her off her feet. As she crashed down to a knee and a hand, a loud twang drew her eye to the starboard-most arc of windows. Outside, a mooring line lashed wildly in the rain, ripped loose by the quake.

A glint of metal flashed at the rope’s end, marking the steel screw that had secured its hold. The line whipped back at the ship. The screw struck the window and shattered through it.

Nyx lunged to the side. Steel speared past her in a shower of glass. The screw cracked into the planks and impaled itself. A shard of glass drew a line of fire across her upper arm.

She gasped and rolled farther away.

The ship shook through another few small tremors, then settled again. The writhing mooring line went slack, leaving its screw still impaled.

Hyck ducked out from under the maesterwheel, but he kept to his knees. He scowled at the new damage. “Are you all right?”

Nyx wasn’t sure if he was inquiring about her welfare or his ship’s. She checked her arm. The glass had sliced through her sleeve and grazed her skin, but nothing worse.

“Just a scratch,” she assured him.

Hyck sighed. “That’s the worst rumbler so far,” he said. “It’s like this sardin’ island wants to toss us off of its shoulders.”

Nyx nodded. She also wanted to be free of this island. The escalating number and severity of these quakes reflected the slow approach of the moon and warned of the doom to come.

Knowing this, she came to one firm conclusion.

We must leave now.

B Y THE TIME the next bell clanged throughout the ship, Hyck and a team of crewmen had cleared the wheelhouse and set about boarding up the broken window to keep the rain out.

Still, another storm blew into the wheelhouse.

Nyx turned as the door banged open behind her.

Jace shoved through, his face even redder than before. He tugged at his beard, a sign of his consternation. The source of his aggravation followed him.

Graylin sy Moor growled a complaint as he stomped inside. “You’re certain no one in Bhestya knew you came from this ship? That none of your inquiries could be construed as suspicious, to draw eyes this way?”

Jace frowned back at Graylin. “Do you take Krysh and me to be fools, to speak out of turn? During our investigations, we were as guarded as necessary, without seeming to hide anything. We walked a knife’s edge. We couldn’t seek knowledge of the Barrens without asking pointed questions. Otherwise, we would’ve learned nothing. We certainly would not have recovered the old map.”

Graylin frowned with consternation. Still, his expression softened as he spotted Nyx amidst the chaos of repairs. The deep creases around the flint of his ice-blue eyes eased.

Nyx looked upon him stoically. The man’s clothes were soaked to the skin, his dark hair wet, making the aged silver strands shine all the brighter. He limped on his left leg, likely from the dampness plaguing his old injuries. Decades ago, he had been beaten and tortured after he betrayed his oath to the Hálendiian king. Graylin had broken his vow for the love of a woman, Marayn, a pleasure serf of the same king. Graylin’s attempt to escape with her had led to his capture and the eventual death of his beloved. Only the result of their forbidden union had survived, birthed and abandoned in the Myr swamps.

Nyx searched the knight’s face for the thousandth time. She sought for any resemblance to this man who was her father. Scars mapped the hard planes of his cheeks, but that chart remained unreadable, speaking only to the pain he endured for daring to love someone bound to another. After his failed escape, Graylin had believed his child with Marayn had died in the swamps—until fourteen years later, he discovered how wrong that assumption was.

Nyx had survived. She still had hazy dreams of that time. When she was a babe, abandoned and mewling in the swamp, she had been taken in and nurtured by a massive she-bat, but that succor had come at a cost.

She touched her eyes, remembering when her sight was only a blur of light and shadows. The suckling milk of her foster mother had inadvertently poisoned her, clouding her eyes, all but blinding her. Still, in return, she had been granted another gift, another sense. During that most tender time, enfolded within the constant chorus of bridle-song that bound the winged colony together, her own innate talent was melded and molded into something uniquely powerful.

Yet such a fostering could not be sustained. The milk-poisoning had risked her young life. Perhaps recognizing this danger, the she-bat had left Nyx in the path of a swamper, a kind man who adopted her, loved her as much as he did his own sons. They were all dead now, sacrificed to keep her alive after another near-fatal poisoning returned her sight and instilled a feverish dream of the moon crashing into the Urth.

That memory, that loss, still wounded her, leaving her breathless at times.

Still, in the ensuing horror and chaos, she and Graylin had been reunited. At first, neither was sure if the knight was truly her father. Then, back at the Crèche, an elderly Nyssian seer had recognized the blood-heritage shared by the two, confirming Nyx’s parentage. And while Nyx had no reason to doubt such a reading, knowing the powerful gifts of such blessed women, in her heart she still found it unfathomable.

She knew who her true father was. She pictured the kind eyes and swamp-worn features of her dah. She felt no such warmth or connection with this flinty, hard man who now stalked into the wheelhouse. In fact, any affection toward him felt like a betrayal of her dah.

The only real family she had left was Bashaliia. While Nyx had lost her two brothers, she had been reunited with another—for when she was a babe, another had nestled alongside Nyx in the care of the she-bat. A dozen years later, that winged brother came to her aid, filling a void she had not known was there until he swept back into her life, thrumming with bridle-song, awakening a connection buried deep in her blood and bones.

That’s my true family.

Graylin seemed to read her coldness and turned away, merely offering her a nod.

Another greeting was more exuberant.

From behind Graylin, Kalder came trotting forward, tail held high, shaking the dampness from his thick fur. The massive vargr, whose haunches reached Graylin’s waist, hailed from the cold twilight forests of Rimewood. His dark coat, stippled with shades of tawny gold, was made to hunt such a shadowy glade. Amber eyes glowed warmly toward her, while his tufted ears swiveled, ever alert, taking in every tick and groan of the storm-swept ship.

Kalder brushed his muzzle across her thigh, while she let a hand drift down and ruffle his mane. At the same time, her throat hummed with notes beyond hearing, casting out golden strands that touched the wildness of the vargr’s savage heart. While Kalder shadowed Graylin, seemingly tamed to the man, Nyx knew the beast was no hunting dog. The two were more brothers, bound not by command and subservience, but by hardship and tragedy. For the two had once been three.

Aamon—Kalder’s brother—had died protecting Nyx.

Even now, she could hear the echoing howl of that kinship, the ghost they carried with them. She read how it bound the hearts of beast and man. She sang to acknowledge that sacrifice, to burnish that memory. She felt the warmth of a shared bed, the thrill of a hunt, and the blood-tang of a fresh kill on the tongue.

Kalder rumbled his contentment, bumping her again before returning to Graylin’s side. The traceries of Nyx’s bridle-song wisped away, but not before she caught the vargr’s sense of the knight next to him, the kinship the two shared. Through Kalder, she read the beast’s respect and hard affection for his two-legged brother.

She eyed Graylin in this light, struggling to feel that same kinship—but again she failed. While she accepted that she and Graylin shared blood, her heart remained untouched. It was too full of grief for all she had lost, leaving room for little else. And if she were honest with herself, it wasn’t just sadness, but also a measure of resentment—unfair or not—that he had abandoned her, that he had never sought to confirm what he could only suspect.

Many nights, her thoughts drifted to a different fate.

What if he had found me back then? What might my life be like?

She shook away this reverie, accepting the path before her, before them all.

Graylin’s eyes narrowed upon her, finally noting the rip in her sleeve, edged by drying blood. He stepped abruptly toward her. “You’re hurt.”

It wasn’t a question, but a statement, one that he thought required his immediate attention. She backed from him. “It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure? Let me check.”

He reached for her, but she pushed his arms away, ignoring his wounded look. She did not need him doting on her, not when they had far greater measures to address.

Her gaze slid to the door. “Where are Darant and Glace?” she asked, having expected the Fyredragon ’s captain and his daughter to accompany these two to the wheelhouse. “We must discuss leaving here.”

“They’re installing the repaired forge,” Graylin said, and glanced over to Jace. “If we’re truly exposed, we must make haste in departing.”

Nyx heard her own worry expressed by the man. She nodded in rare agreement with him.

Jace searched the vast wheelhouse. “If we’re going to set off, we need to show Fenn the map we found. I thought he was already up here?”

Hyck answered with a hammer in hand from repairing the window. “The lad’s taken to his bed. Upon my orders. He’s barely slept since arriving here. Got circles under his eyes so dark that he looks like a masked bandit.”

“We need him back up here,” Graylin said.

“I was waiting until everyone had gathered before rousing him,” Nyx explained. “No need to wake him any earlier.”

Graylin nodded, but he turned to Jace, bringing up another concern. “You and Krysh, were you able to glean anything else in Bhestya? Any word about the fighting spreading across the Western Crown?”

Jace winced. “Skirmishes continue between Hálendii and the Southern Klashe. But after last winter’s battle, both sides are hunkered down, seeking alliances from other regions to bolster their resources. They’re forcing neighbors to pick sides. In doing so, the war is slowly circumscribing the breadth of the Crown. In fact, emissaries from both Hálendii and the Klashe arrived in Bhestya a few days ago, petitioning the king for support.”

Graylin growled under his breath. “Has King Acker been swayed either way?”

“Rumor is that he plays one against the other, with no firm commitment as of yet.”

“That’s good—at least for now. But if emissaries have landed here, then spies must have, too.”

“No doubt,” Jace agreed, tugging on his beard again. “And if they heard the same rumors we did—about a dragon-helmed ship carrying winged beasts—it won’t be long before they’ll be looking this way.”

“If they aren’t already,” Graylin intoned dolefully, then added with a sigh, “I had hoped we’d have more time.”

Threat or not, Nyx was done waiting. “I’ll go and stir Fenn.”

Jace stepped to follow. “I’ll join you.” But he offered Graylin one last warning. “The fear out there is that tensions are reaching a fevered pitch. And when war does erupt, it will likely burn across the Crown.”

“Then we must not be here when that happens.” Graylin waved them toward the door, while trailing with Kalder. “Fetch Fenn. I’m going to check on Rhaif and Shiya. See how their work on the ta’wyn coolers is going. We can’t cross into the Barrens without them.”

Nyx understood. Back in the Frozen Wastes, at the citadel of the Spider, Shiya had recovered massive cooling units from that ta’wyn stronghold. She and Rhaif had been struggling to get them fitted and running—but so far, their efforts had failed. Without those coolers functioning, their group dared not travel into those sunblasted lands, where the heat would blister skin and sear lungs.

Until those units were fixed, they all knew the truth.

We’re trapped here.