Page 5

Perhaps the prisoner was hallucinating, seeing a bride in Silk’s white veil and gown.

But the idea was disturbing, and I steadied myself against the closest wall.

The wood was rough and damp. This was not a cabin suitable for passengers; from the yeasty, sour scents, I guessed kegs of ale had been stored here.

The table and chair were for the acolyte assigned to the accounting, probably of the ale, and my gaze lingered on the table while a memory of my father flashed through my mind.

The late nights he spent bent over his ledgers, entering numbers in neat rows.

Documenting every expense before presenting his research to the king.

We’d had no mage lights, and the precious candle had flickered to a mere stub with the thin ribbon of smoke trailing into the dark. But my father had hummed while he worked, and…The air I drew into my lungs now felt slow and painful.

Mage lights illuminated the prisoner’s face, the strands of silver hair falling across his forehead. The rest of his hair was tied back or loose around the shoulders. But even with the unkept appearance and smeared blood, his face was startlingly masculine .

Not beautiful the way Tarian Ardalez was beautiful, with perfect features that glowed at the edges.

The prisoner’s features were imperfect, but I still stared, measuring the shape and curve of his bruised cheekbones, his mouth, the lips crusted with blood.

His eyes were a shattering blue, glittering with starlight—and I was drowning in it, that light.

Drowning in this enemy I was here to interrogate.

My stomach twisted. Sometimes I dreamed of all the men I’d condemned, those who had done heinous things.

The others, who merely offended the king.

They would circle around my bed, ferreting out my secrets, then ripping the lies apart and calling it justice…

while their blood dripped like crimson rain, drenching my hair, my face, my gown.

I needed to grip the chair. It was bolted down and too far from the table to be comfortable, but by sitting sideways, I could steady myself and face the man.

“Your heart is racing,” he said. “Is it from anticipation or fear?”

“And what of your heart?” I challenged.

“It stopped the moment you walked through the door.”

His voice held depth, mystery, and the urge to press my palm against my chest turned alarming. Instead, I said, “I should not be pleased by that.”

His answer was just as soft. “I should not have revealed a weakness.”

The conversation was otherworldly, while the shadows hovered and I couldn’t see his face unless he tipped toward the mage lights. I smoothed the white material of the gown. Felt the veil brush my cheek. Resisted the impulse to push aside the annoying sensation.

“Your veil,” he said. “Why do you wear it?”

“The women where you’re from don’t wear veils?”

“They aren’t afraid to show their faces.”

He’d angled his head, and with the mage light, his stare turned bold and unforgiving, marking his features with brutality. I grimaced behind the veil, refusing to argue while I searched for an emotion I could use, a thread into his mind where I could convince him to believe…

I wanted this interrogation to be over. I wanted to be off the ship and back at the castle before the storm hit.

But I found nothing I could use to slip into his mind.

Despite the earlier banter, the prisoner was remote, controlled.

Perhaps with conversation, he would relax enough for me to invade his thoughts.

I worked at putting a smile in my voice. “The veil protects me.”

“You hide behind it.”

“It is as the king decrees.”

“Ah.” His head pressed back against the wooden bulkhead. His eyes slitted half closed, while that strange smile played around his lips. “You are Silk, the king’s justice speaker.”

My head tipped. “You know of me?”

“The guards mock you behind your back. They fear what you do.”

“They prefer torture.”

The prisoner shifted his weight as he asked, “Is your torture gentler than the priests? ”

“You don’t look like a man who asks for gentle.” He’d grunted in pain, and the emotion gave me an opening into his mind. But then my magic feathered into nothing. Maybe I was still exhausted.

He laughed softly, dryly, as if he’d somehow felt me probing, failing. Then he said, “Take it off. The veil. Let me see my bride’s face.”

“Hardly your bride, if you cannot perform.”

“Did the boy think you were his bride? Did he die believing you were there to save him?”

I stiffened.

“The guards talk,” he murmured. “Is that why you’re here? Because they’re angry with you for doing it?”

My fingers dug into the chair. “I’m here to find the truth.”

“Truth has many versions.” His gaze narrowed, and I wondered what he saw through my veil…if he could see what no other man had ever bothered to see.

I would resist whatever this was…his effort to plant doubt. I’d promised the king I wouldn’t fail. Wasn’t this man here because he was a rebel, skilled at hoaxes and delusions?

Light streamed from the mage balls that rose and fell exactly the way seabirds floated on the swelling tide, and the prisoner murmured, “I am condemned, then?”

For an enemy, his voice was restful, but I didn’t want the soothing. My chin lifted, and I said, “You are a rebel, aren’t you?”

“What else could I be?”

Regret, now, lowering his voice and forcing me to consider the impossible—that he had invaded my mind the way I’d invaded others without ever once apologizing.

Had he changed my perception? Created an illusion?

And if he had, what lie now appeared as the truth?

Even with him sitting in front of me, tied to the wall?

Despite the regret in his tone, I was his enemy, and he was mine—the proof was in the silvered medallion he wore on a leather thong, half-hidden by his shirt. The red priests had overlooked it or it wouldn’t still be there. But I understood what that medallion represented.

“You wear a curse tablet.”

His lips twisted. “It means nothing.”

“Perhaps to the red priests,” I agreed. “But not to me. My father was interested in history, and old books tell tales. You failed to submit to the will of Orm.”

“ Cursed, cursed, cursed ,” he quoted. “ Cursed by Orm. Cursed by failure. Cursed you will surely die. ”

Those were the words engraved on the folded metal tablets illustrated in the antiquity books. I’d also identified the seal, and said, “The dragon lords carried curse tablets.”

“They had the curse inked on their skin.”

“You don’t have the same commitment?” I asked. “Willing to put the curse on your skin?”

He remained silent.

“They say the dragon lords dedicated their lives to the dragons, and curse tablets hold the penances they’ve promised to perform. Is that the belief where you come from?”

“Every culture has beliefs,” he said.

“But you come from the Faded Lands, don’t you? ”

Those brilliant eyes glittered in the mage lights. “Why do you ask?”

“Orm is the dragon-god,” I said. “Forbidden in the Southern Lands, but prevalent there.”

“So they say.”

“Do you believe in dragons?”

Again, he kept silent.

I pressed with my magic, and it was like feeling along a wall in the dark, trying to find a crack to let the light in. “Do the red priests know what you believe?”

He turned his head away. “You’re here, aren’t you? Probing for the confirmation.”

“We’re simply talking.”

“And where are the priests?” He turned back to stare at me. “Why is no one here to listen to what I say other than you?”

I shifted my position on the wooden chair. There were no witnesses. We were alone, locked behind a door while the minutes ticked away.

But the king might have ordered privacy. To keep what I learned away from the red priests.

Was it possible that Tarian didn’t trust Ildoran any more than I did?

From high overhead, voices echoed, and the rough sounds startled me.

I hadn’t expected to hear the shouting so far below the top deck.

Perhaps someone left a hatch open, and I longed for the freshness of a breeze.

For an end to the closed-in feeling of being trapped with no view of the starry sky or the lights from the pier.

A connection to Thales that I suddenly needed .

The constant lift and fall of the ship had become drugging, although the movement brought comfort. I wanted to close my eyes and do nothing.

But that would be dangerous, and to distract myself, I said, “We know very little about the dragon kind.”

The prisoner didn’t answer. Perhaps he felt as drugged by the dark and easy swaying as I did. As exhausted by the torture as I was by the overuse of magic.

Perhaps he just preferred the silence.

Finally, he said, “Calling someone dragon kind is a slur. No one calls you mage kind, or human kind. I bleed the same way as you. My people love and die the same. They have two arms, two legs, one heart, one mind which you feel entitled to enter and violate with your games.”

His certainty about my magic was stark. But if the guards talked about what I did, the mage talent I had as the king’s justice speaker…was that how he’d resisted my mental intrusion? Because he knew how to shield himself from psychic magic?

Wood creaked. The pikes in the passageway clanged—the same leaden sound as Ildoran’s boots against the stone street.

I struggled for calm. “I don’t play games.

The mage priests question prisoners with their own methods.

Compared to their preference for blood and torture, what I do is considered a mercy. ”

“What is mercy without understanding?” he argued. “One man’s mercy is another man’s punishment, and the third man doesn’t care because he believes in deceit. ”

I smoothed the gown with unsteady hands. “The threat to my world comes from people like you.”

“And people like your king tried to exterminate my world. Did you never worry that we might resent it? Want justice?”

My mouth dried. “You want revenge?”

The prisoner jerked his wrists, a furious, involuntary movement that tightened the rope around his throat. “Call it what you will.”

What I called it was confirmation. Sevyn spoke the truth when he said the mage magic was weakening.

Dragon kind were slipping through the Wall, agitating, supporting the rebels, and the mage priests had wanted Sevyn dead because of it.

Now they had this prisoner and were taking him to Deimos, to the prison in Iduma.

There would be no return for him, only agony.

No return for anyone with that knowledge—hadn’t the priests been snatching people off the streets for saying the wrong things?

The ship lurched, throwing the prisoner sideways.

I slid on the chair, held the rough table.

A raging patter came from all sides—the thrumming of gusting rain, followed by the crack of thunder.

The deck rose, then dropped with the sharp turn in direction.

The three masts groaned beneath the strength of the wind, a low shuddering that sent the air rushing from my lungs.

Was the ship already sailing for Deimos? How much time had passed while I’d been locked in the dark with this prisoner? Time enough to leave the harbor and reach the open sea without me ever noticing ?

Had I allowed the constant rocking of the ship to lull me into believing it was a normal tide and that we rocked against the pier?

The unfurled sails when I boarded had seemed…accidental. As if the men on the mast were scrambling to contain them.

But if they weren’t accidental?

The questions connected like frost forming, and I stumbled toward the door.

My weight crashed against the solid barrier.

It didn’t give. I found no release handle, and over the storm noise, my pounding fists were little more than thuds, with the sound lost beneath the riotous clanging of pikes and the drumming waves against the ship’s hull. The shouting from the deck above.

“There’s no point,” the prisoner said. “No one can hear you.”

I slammed my palms against the door. “The priests don’t realize I’m still here.”

“They know where you are.” He did not say it kindly. “Who locked the door?”

I turned to glare. “They locked it because of you.”

“Me?” Skepticism choked his voice, and I hoped it was the rope, tight around his throat. “I’m tied to the wall like a fish waiting to be gutted.”

“The king sent me here.”

“And what side of the door are you on? The one granting freedom, or the side that locks you in here with me?”

“It’s a mistake,” I insisted.

“The ship is wreathed in mage magic. We sailed the moment you were on board.”

“But the king… ”

The prisoner’s head tipped back, the silver hair sliding across his bruised cheek and glimmering in the mage light.

“You think your precious king was unaware that the ship would sail before the storm? His interests are not the same as yours. Perhaps he questioned why a mage priest killed the boy when they’d argued over torturing him. ”

“I faltered and broke the rules.”

“Or you covered up your own disloyalty. Killed him before he could say more of what you already know.”

I jolted as if he’d hit me. “I offered mercy.”

“You don’t know the meaning of mercy.”

And I thought about what he’d said: one man’s mercy was another’s punishment, and the third man didn’t care because he believed in deceit.