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“Oi! Omen!” bellowed a man down below, and Carolina leaned overboard to look at him. “Is your helmsman blind? I don’t care who you are, you wreck the docks and Mr. Granger will have you in the gallows!”

He was riding a draken, a stout breed of sky dragon that soldiers patrolled with on Sovereign islands. It had a big, feline head, with two of its top teeth longer than the rest and extending several inches past its bottom jaw. This one’s thick body was the dark purple of a charoite stone, and its eyes were an empty white. Its hard scales were sleek and shimmering in the sunlight everywhere except the short mane around its neck, where they stood on end, shielding and sharp, and extended down the length of its spine under its rider’s saddle. It had broad feathered wings with rows of scales along the leading edge, and they tucked into its body on land as closely as its legs did during flight. This breed was built for endurance over speed, and domesticated or not, it was a creature whose presence sent a chill down Carolina’s spine.

“Overexcited about the sight of land,” she called down. “I’ll take care of it.”

The man waved her off, and she turned to meet Berkeley, who was all but strutting down the deck. “Better than last time!” he said happily.

“You’ll get us banned from port altogether,” she told him.

He set both hands on the high railing to lean half his body overboard. “Dock’s still intact,” he announced. “They’re overreacting.”

“Get off my ship,” she chuckled, “before you break something else.”

“You got it, Captain.” He flicked her playfully on the cheek and turned back around for the ramp that was being extended from deck.

“Hey,” she called, and he stopped to face her again. “You remember why we’re here?”

“To get drunk?” he asked. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I remember, C. Bring Alan to you and then go get drunk.”

“Ariane…”

“That’s what I said...” Berkeley smiled cheekily.

“I should throttle you,” she threatened.

“Ah,” he tossed her a salute and turned to leave, “you’d miss me too much!”

She followed along behind him, trudging halfway down the ramp and stopping. Crew passed her on their way, carrying cargo and coin pouches and already singing tavern songs, but she didn’t take another step. Instead, she turned away from the dock to inspect the damage Berkeley had done to her ship .

There was none. The smooth, dark, metal-infused wood that made up Omen’s hull was so dense and hard it may as well have been entirely metal, but even that wood wasn’t as rare as its heart. The mining companies that operated around most the world harvested islands of the antigravity minerals at their cores, and those minerals formed the hearts that made their ships fly. The stellarite alloy heart of Omen was as mysterious to her as the ship’s origin and the oak tree symbol on the main mast with a round gemstone on the trunk, but no ship flew as fast, and none were as sturdy.

In a world where options were limited, where she could’ve been a soldier for a system that turned everyone else into indentured workers, or an indentured worker herself, she’d chosen the freedom of a ship. But as much as she loved Omen, the ship had never felt like more of a prison.

“Coming, Captain?” asked the youngest of her crew as he bound down the ramp to catch up with his guardian.

She turned as he stopped at the beginning of the docks, forcing a smile. “Not now, Otis.”

The twelve-year-old disappeared, and someone else coming down the ramp stopped at her side, near enough that they were standing shoulder to shoulder. “How long are we staying?” Rue asked.

“At least till morning.” Carolina looked over at her sister, who was younger by seven years and had her same sun-kissed, light brown skin but with curly, mahogany-colored hair, and nodded toward where Berkeley had disappeared. “Berkeley headed that way if you want to catch up.”

“Meh,” she answered, stepping away and walking backward while she said with a smile, “I think I’ll do a little window shopping. Maybe find a looker for a poke.”

“Just don’t steal anything...”

She pouted. “Me? Steal?”

Carolina rolled her eyes and watched Rue disappear into town. Once all but the watch crew had disembarked, she made her way back up the ramp and into the captain’s cabin below quarterdeck. Her animal companion, Ribbon, pranced off her perch in the corner of the room, wings tucked to her sides as she dove onto Carolina’s shoulder. The talons on each of her four paws gripped Carolina’s clothes as she scurried down her chest, over her other shoulder, across her back and around again, emitting tittering chirps in excited greeting. On the third pass, Carolina laughed and caught the cat-sized creature, setting Ribbon to perch on her forearm so they were eye to eye.

“That tickles, little thing,” she said fondly.

She extended her face, and Ribbon stretched forward to rub the side of her hooked beak against Carolina’s nose. When Ribbon’s pointed, feathered ears tickled her nostrils, she pulled back and reached out with her other hand, caressing her fingertips through the brilliant white and cyan plumage along the whippon’s body, all the way down her long tail with an arrowhead of feathers at the end.

Carolina took her hat off and tossed it upside down onto the desk in the middle of her quarters, and Ribbon hopped off her arm, wings spread to land softly in the bowl of it, where she curled and lay down inside. Carolina strode across her large cabin and over the decorative burgundy rug that covered most of the floor, until she reached the rear wall set in the stern end of the ship. The view out the single, large square window wasn’t much — the same clear blue sky and distant clouds that followed them through much of their travels. It would be night in a couple of hours, but the only evidence of the sun setting on the other side of the island was the pale orange tint on her peripherals.

In the dim light of the cabin, she turned away from the windows and walked to Ribbon, nuzzling one finger against the top of the animal’s head, and then gestured to the candle on her desk. “Will you light that candle for me?”

Ribbon perked up, peeped at her, and then launched out of the hat. She went straight up into the air, twirling in a tight circle while she clicked once from the beak. A raindrop of fire shot from her mouth, hitting the candle with precision accuracy from that single spin as she let herself drop back into the hat with a gentle thud. She sat on her haunches, staring up at Carolina with bright round eyes.

“You’re a showoff,” Carolina accused, but she reached into a small, lidded box on the desk, pulling out a strip of smoked meat and giving it to Ribbon.

While Ribbon settled down again in the hat, Carolina traversed the cabin to the wall-set bookshelf on the left side. She selected an adventure novel and carried it back across her quarters, sat down at the desk, and kicked her feet up on the surface. Normally, a book with adventure and tavern brawls was enough to curb her growing desperation for life on land. But an hour passed in the silence of her nearly empty ship, and all it did was remind her of the life her crew was enjoying on Cinder. Of the life she’d unwittingly given up when she chose piracy over indenture.

As she tossed the book aside and leaned her head back in her folded hands, she tried to remind herself that this was still better than being indentured. Better than having the soul sucked out of her by Sovereign or a mining company. Even if it wasn’t the freedom she’d dreamed of as a child, it was still freedom. It was owing nothing to anyone, with the power to set her own terms and decide for herself what she’d do and when. And one day, maybe even soon, she’d be free of the manacle and have the world at her fingertips.

It was the peace of that thought that let her doze off until a knock sounded on her cabin door. “Carolina?” Berkeley’s voice called.

She stood and said, “Enter.”

He came in leading a middle-aged woman in a dark red cloak, with a satchel draped from one shoulder to the opposite hip. The hood of her cloak was down, and her blonde hair was secured in a knot with a black hair stick. She stopped inside the door and studied the cabin, taking in the books, and the desk, and Ribbon, before her eyes eventually fell on Carolina.

“Thank you, Berkeley,” Carolina said.

He took the hint, but cast a final, hesitant look at the witch before retreating out the door and closing it behind him.

Once he was gone, Ariane gave her a charming smile full of perfect teeth. “If it isn’t the renowned Captain Carolina Trace.”

“Thank you for coming,” Carolina told her.

Ariane strode to the table where Ribbon was still curled up in her hat, and extended one hand. “May I?”

“She decides.”

Ariane slowly reached out further, until Ribbon allowed a stroke down the length of her back. “Beautiful.” She pet Ribbon for a few moments before the anxiousness of their meeting was too much for Carolina.

“Can you remove it?” Carolina asked.

Ariane glanced at her, eyes dropping to the manacle on her wrist. “I can try. Did you bring me the left thumbnail of a Hawkeye?”

She pulled the vial out of her pocket, showing the nail that she’d removed from the scouting captain – or the Hawkeye, as Sovereign called them. Carolina handed over the vial, which was then placed into the satchel Ariane set on the table and exchanged for a bottle of blue liquid before they both took a seat across from each other.

“Let me see,” Ariane said.

Carolina offered her right wrist, and Ariane took it in her hands. She pushed the manacle as far up Carolina’s arm as she could to examine her skin, slipped a finger under the edge to feel beneath it, and spun it around to study every side with an interested hum, lingering the longest at the manacle’s only defect – a small chip in one edge.

“Does it frighten you?” Carolina asked. She’d met with lesser witches in the past to see if they could remove it, but as soon as they’d realized the intricacy of the curse, they’d refused to even try – apparently undoing a Caster’s work wasn’t always as easy as acquiring a potion, especially if it could backfire.

“No,” Ariane said with a smirk, “not yet anyway.” She dropped Carolina’s wrist to reach into her bag. “Tell me about the curse.”

Carolina glanced somberly around the cabin. “I’m bound to the ship. My wrist starts hurting the moment I leave, and takes hours to go away once I return. It’s bearable for a time, but it gets worse and spreads, and if I’m gone too long the pain becomes immobilizing.”

“How long?”

“A couple hours. Three if I’m feeling particularly tenacious.”

“And when the curse was cast? What do you remember of it? Of the Caster?”

“It was eight years ago…” Carolina murmured, but she remembered it clearly. “I had awful nightmares, flashes of her, this ship, the terms of breaking the curse myself. I woke with a migraine and,” she lifted her shackled hand and dropped it on the table again with a thud, “this. Less than a week later we found this ship, drifting.”

“Right,” Ariane confirmed, “curses require balance… more or less. You get an impressive ship, but you also get a nasty curse.” Carolina nodded, and Ariane glanced around the ship and murmured to herself, “This is quite the counterbalance, though, isn’t it?” But before Carolina could ask what she meant by that, she asked, “And you can’t meet the terms?”

The terms. A sacrifice at immense personal cost, that was the price set by her night terrors. But what was a sacrifice? What counted as immense personal cost? She’d tried everything she could think of over the last eight years. She’d given away so many dominions to the poor that she’d emptied the ship’s treasury. She’d borne unbearable pain from the manacle and risked sickness to help with an influenza outbreak on Cinder. She’d even kept her crew floating through the sky for an entire year because she desperately thought maybe, just maybe, putting a hold on their livelihood and not pirating would be enough. It wasn’t. Nothing ever was.

She shook her head.

“And this?” Ariane asked, reaching out to point to the chip in the manacle. “Did it always have this?”

“No,” she answered. “It appeared out of nowhere. I suspect…”

“Yes?”

She sighed. “I suspect just after my mother died, though I wasn’t there to know for sure.”

“Very interesting,” Ariane said. She inhaled deeply and hummed, her lips pursed tight as she stared thoughtfully, her index finger tapping the glass bottle of blue liquid that she’d pulled from her satchel. After a few more moments she inhaled again to say something, but let the breath out and said nothing.

“What?” Carolina asked.

“It’s just… Casters are extremely rare. You know how the magics go?” She listed on her fingers, “Alters are a dominion in ten thousand. Most Summoners can perform some manipulation in addition to conjuration, but there’s far, far less of them.”

“The Phoenixes,” Carolina said knowingly.

“Right,” she agreed, “all Summoners train at the Phoenix sanctuary, and all us Casters start our training there. I taught at the sanctuary for fifteen years before I left…”

“And?” Carolina asked curiously.

“I only know of five. One’s the Fortuna, one has been in hiding for longer than you’ve been cursed, another is male, and then there’s myself.” There was a pause as she let Carolina digest that, and then she said, “I knew your Caster.”

Carolina sighed and whispered, “Devina.”

“Devina,” Ariane confirmed. She looked Carolina up and down. “Eight years ago… I must’ve deserted before the fallout. Did you kill someone she loved?” Carolina shook her head. “Did you make a deal for this ship?”

“No,” she answered.

“Then you stole something from her,” Ariane guessed, and the wince on Carolina’s face betrayed her. “What was it? ”

She swallowed down as much of the resentment and regret as she could while she held her shackled wrist in her hand and traced the edge of it with her thumb. “Her heart.”

Ariane inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly, and then lifted the bottle she was holding, wiggling it so the clear blue contents splashed around inside. “Before I destroy your hope, let me see if there’s anything I can do.”

“What’s that for?”

“It will tell me what element the bracelet is made of,” she said, uncorking the bottle.

“It’s not brass?” she asked.

“Likely not,” Ariane answered.

“You can’t tell by looking at it?”

“I have my suspicions,” Ariane said, and then whispered to herself, “and I hope I’m wrong.”

“And what will the element tell you?”

Ariane reached out and traced the broken beveled edge of the manacle. “Whether or not I can get it off. Some minerals are easier to manipulate than others, and that can leave holes in curses.”

Carolina nodded, and though she didn’t ask, she wondered if leaving Sovereign and choosing honor over freedom had been worth it for Ariane. By leaving the order, she faced execution for desertion if she was ever caught, and a life in hiding didn’t seem much like a free one. But she’d chosen that over aiding a corrupt empire, and Carolina wasn’t sure whether to admire or pity people who made that choice. Of course, the irony that she herself had picked freedom over honor and now possessed neither wasn’t lost on her.

“Ready?” Ariane asked. Carolina nodded again. “This may hurt.”

She let the steel of her expression respond for her, and Ariane extended the bottle over her wrist. She spilled a single drop onto the metal of the manacle, and for several long seconds it sat there, like a drop of water on wax. Then tiny bubbles formed between the liquid and metal before it began to sizzle. The metal beneath the potion burned red, and that heat seeped through to Carolina’s skin. She could handle the sting of a single spot, but soon the liquid separated, vibrating across the metal and fanning out in veins that made the manacle glow. She gritted her teeth as the searing sensation spread, but it grew until it felt like fire was charring her to bone .

She leapt out of her seat with an agonized yell, shaking her hand so vigorously it jolted the joints in her elbow and shoulder. The sizzling drop hit the floor and cooled, and though the molten redness in the manacle faded, the stinging remained. She grimaced as she pushed the manacle up her forearm to reveal the vein-patterned burns in her flesh.

“ May hurt?” she growled through a clenched jaw.

Ariane had her hands steepled over her mouth and nose and was shaking her head. “Laibralt,” she mumbled, “that is why I couldn’t sense it. Good lord, Devina.”

“Laibralt?” Carolina asked between grimaces and blowing delicately on her seared flesh. “The same kind of laibralt that makes the explosive shells Sovereign uses against the Yonder Territories?”

Ariane nodded. “I knew we kept some at the sanctuary but… I’d never seen it...” She shook her head once more. “It comes from the horn of a blackfire dragon. You can imagine how rare it is.”

“So she stole it,” Carolina breathed in exasperation, and Ariane gave an agreeing half-shrug. “Well, she did always know how to make a point. Can you remove it?”

Her lips pursed briefly with a cringe. “No one can.”

“ Excuse me? ”

“Honestly, Captain Trace, with a curse like that, you’re lucky you can leave the ship at all.”

Between the frustration at just how hopeless this was beginning to seem and the scalding pain in her wrist, she growled, “Elaborate.”

Ariane cast a sympathetic look at her wrist and held out her hands. Carolina paced forward, sat back down, and delivered her wrist to the offer, and while Ariane wrapped her hands over the burn without touching it, she explained, “The curse she put on you is very powerful, but eight years ago she was still early in her curse training, especially because I deserted before it was finished. It’s weak for what it is, is what I’m saying, and likely why you can enjoy even mere hours of freedom.”

The pain from her wrist began to fade as Ariane’s healing magic took effect, and with the pain went the anger, until all that was left was regret. “She didn’t like talking to me about her training,” Carolina said dejectedly.

“You didn’t know she was a Caster?”

“I knew she was a Caster,” she answered. “But I never realized how far your magic could go. ”

Ariane removed her hands, revealing burn-free skin that was scarred but no longer agonizing. “I wish I could help you, but this,” she tapped the laibralt indicatively, “it’s a powerful catalyst.”

Carolina took in a deep breath, hoping it would ease the flair of despair that stirred in her chest. It didn’t. She stood and stepped away from the table. She paced to the window at the back of her cabin, staring out at the starry sky while she willed away the sting of tears in her eyes. She watched the stars twinkle between sets of clouds for several minutes until she’d regained control of her emotions, and then she sighed and dropped her forehead against the thick glass.

It was hopeless, and it wasn’t because she’d never heard of any way to undo the curse. She’d heard of one in all the years she’d tried searching, when a witch once told her that curses like hers were tied to the Caster’s energy. It was why Casters didn’t just go around cursing people for anything and everything – as long as a curse was active, it drew from them, and was a constant but steady drain on their stamina. And so, the one way she’d heard wasn’t something she’d ever considered, not even for a moment, because as much as she resented Devina for what she’d done, she didn’t deserve to die for it, and Carolina certainly wouldn’t be the one to kill her.

So she stayed like that with her forehead against the window for half a minute more until Ariane asked quietly, “Have you ever heard of being Ascended?” Carolina shook her head. “There’s only one account of it in our history, but she was the greatest witch our empire has ever known.”

She turned from the window to face Ariane, saying halfheartedly, “I’m listening.”

“Well… it’s such a well-guarded secret that most witches I’ve ever met think it’s a myth, but there are rumors of it all the same. A fountain. A catalyst for ascension that gives any witch access to unlimited energy for magic.”

Carolina’s brow furrowed. “Is that all that makes it special?”

“No, because it’s not just unlimited,” Ariane answered, “it’s cost-free. No counterbalances. No consequences.”

“So, you’re saying an Ascended witch could remove it?” Carolina asked.

“ If the story is true and if you could find it.”

“I’d need a witch,” Carolina observed, to which Ariane nodded. She considered it for a few seconds and then lifted both eyebrows at Ariane.

“Oh no, not me,” she replied instantly. “No. ”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t just get access to power like that for nothing,” she said. “There are risks.”

“You said no consequences.”

“No consequences to using magic. But you might not be able to handle it, or a witch who’s never experienced infliction magic like we do could lose control and hurt people – a lot of people, with that kind of power.” She held Carolina’s gaze for a moment and then shook her head. “And if your heart isn’t right, if there’s darkness there… I can only imagine how quickly power like that would corrupt you.”

“You’re a Caster,” Carolina said, “and you chose honor over freedom. I’d trust you.”

Ariane gave a grateful smile even though her eyes fell to the table. “There is hatred in my heart,” she said, gently setting her hand against her chest, “I’m not the witch you’re looking for.”

Carolina sighed, but nodded anyway. “I understand.”

Ariane glanced up again and offered another small smile, and they both sat there for a minute in silence before she reached into her bag. She pulled out a single round bullet with illuminated markings and set it on the table. “Here, a shadow purge. In case you meet a Summoner on your travels – it’ll kill any entity they summon.” She tapped her fist against her chest once more. “Shoot it in the heart, but only as a last resort, do you hear me? If you kill the entity with this, you kill the witch, and not all of them would’ve chosen this.”

“I know,” Carolina said, nodding. “Thank you.”

Ariane stood and slipped the strap of the satchel over her shoulder. “If you can get into the archives on Clerwood, you might find everything Sovereign knows about Ascending. That’s the best place to start, if you want to try. Go to Setting Sun, it’s a tavern in Breezeport. There’s an archivist named Henry Marsh who used to go there frequently, if you can find him and you tell him I sent you, he’ll get you into the archives.”

Carolina stood and held out her hand. “I’m grateful to have met you.”

Ariane nodded and shook with her, said, “Good luck, Captain Trace,” and left.

For several minutes after she excused herself from the ship, Carolina stood there, fighting with her own hopelessness while she considered whether it would be worth it to even try getting into the archives. If most witches believed Ascension was a myth, then what were the chances that it was true? What were her chances of even finding it if it was ?

After a minute more of standing there and staring at the wood grains of the desk, she decided that it didn’t matter if it was true or not, because what were her chances of ever getting the manacle off if she chose not to investigate? Though she hadn’t seen Devina in almost a decade, she could never kill her, and she knew it. Nor could she ever meet Devina’s terms, because short of giving up her freedom, she’d given everything she could. So she’d never meet the terms, because she valued her freedom over everything. Even if her ship felt like just as much of a prison as any indentured life, it was the prison she chose, and she’d never choose anything over it.