Page 5

Nox

“Are you sure about this?”

I look at the circle of faces gathered in my cabin. Poet and Eyal. Bowen and Evelyn. Lizzie and Maeve. Siobhan. Some of the most powerful people I’ve ever encountered, and I still don’t know if it will be enough.

It has to be enough. “I’m sure. There’s no way to do this secretly, so every single one of us will be branded as traitors. You’re all here because you believe in a better Threshold, one not ruled by the Council and the C?n Annwn. If Bastian is taken to Lyari, then we’ll be hunted. If we save him, then we’ll be hunted.” It should be Siobhan giving a rousing speech, but this is my ship and my crew. “I recognize that you didn’t sign up for this, so if you want to sit this one out, I won’t hold it against you.”

Everyone gathered exchanges looks. Evelyn is the one to speak first, the adorable little witch with curves for days and a wicked wit. “It’s really cute that you think we’re going to fuck off now , as if we haven’t discovered exactly how terrible the C?n Annwn are.”

Bowen wraps an arm around her shoulders and tugs her back against him. “What she means to say is that I’m deeply invested in righting the wrongs committed during my time as captain of the Crimson Hag . We’re with you.”

I expected nothing less from Bowen. He’s not exactly on a holy mission of redemption, but it’s damn close. Evelyn is one of those people who seems like she was looking for a cause to believe in, and she’s chosen the rebellion as hers. She’s got good taste.

Maeve opens her mouth, but Lizzie speaks first. “She’s in, so I’m in. Can’t let my selkie get killed in your war.” The vampire’s droll tone almost makes me smile.

Maeve shoots her a sharp look. “I can speak for myself.”

“I’m aware.” Lizzie nudges her with her shoulder. “But we both know you were going to make a grand proclamation. I saved us both time.”

Maeve rolls her eyes. “Fine. Yes. We’re in. There. Nice, succinct. Happy?”

“I’m with you.”

Gods, they make me sick. I much preferred the Lizzie before she went and fell in love with one of the sweetest women I know. The vampire was a necessary counterpoint to Bowen and Evelyn constantly making eyes at each other. In the days we’ve spent sailing toward the sandbar, it’s become clear that while Lizzie will never be a ray of sunshine, she’s deeply in love with Maeve.

Exhausting, honestly.

I wave a hand at Siobhan. “We already know you’re invested in this suicide mission. Eyal?”

Eyal hesitates, looking around the room with his serious eyes. “I would heartily recommend coming up with an actual plan to minimize the chances that we all die horribly.” He shrugs his shoulders. “But you already know my answer, Captain. It’s the same it’s always been.”

From the time I was a small child, orphaned in Lyari by parents I don’t even remember, all I wanted was to replace the gaping hole inside me. First with the group of street kids who watched each other’s backs…and that’s as far as their loyalty went. Then with Bastian, certain that I would always find a home in his arms. I had learned enough hard lessons by the time I joined Hedd’s crew to know not to expect community there , but when I became captain, that desire, as hearty and annoying as a weed, sprouted again.

In reality, all being captain has done is make me increasingly aware of how much responsibility rests on my shoulders. I might have a true community now, but that community’s safety is my responsibility. I lose sleep worrying about them. I am constantly considering different angles of approach to each battle we face in order to minimize the chances of them being hurt. I would rather take a hit than allow a single one of them to fall under my watch.

I can’t help the fear that rises inside me at the war we’re currently facing. Not a single battle with a definitive end point. An overarching conflict that only ends one of two ways: with them dead…or with us dead.

With that in mind, I turn to Poet. As quartermaster, she is the voice of the crew. “Surely you have thoughts, Poet.”

She shifts from foot to foot. “I’m aware that you don’t want to hear this, but every single crew member will follow you to the depths of whatever underworld you lead them to. We owe our lives to you—and the rebellion.”

The pressure in my chest increases until I can barely breathe around it. I’ve spent my entire life searching for this, only to discover what a poisoned wish it is. Every time one of them is hurt, it hurts me . I worry. I…I swallow hard. “Okay.”

Poet nods at Siobhan. “We know the cost of the C?n Annwn maintaining power. We’re with you.”

I’ve become adept enough at hiding my emotions that I simply give them all a rakish grin instead of demanding they all jump ship and find their way to the nearest portal until this is all over. “In that case, my darlings, you have work to do and I have plans to plan.”

They file out, one by one, until it’s only Siobhan left. Instead of following them, she closes the door and leans against it. “That was a rousing commendation of your leadership. You’ve done good work putting your crew together. They trust you implicitly.”

“Shut up, Siobhan.” I turn away, the effort of appearing cool and collected too much to maintain. “This is what you wanted. We’re sailing into certain death at your behest. No need to rub it in.”

“Nox.” She sighs. “If I thought it was certain death, I wouldn’t ask it of you. If there was any other choice, I swear I—”

“No, that’s not what we’re going to do.” I spin back to face her. “What we’re not going to do is pretend that you would make any other choice than the one you’re making. You want Ba—” My voice breaks, and I mentally curse myself for being so affected, even all these years later. I clear my throat. “You want Bastian. You’ve always wanted Bastian.”

“It’s not the way you’re making it sound.” Siobhan shakes her head slowly. “There’s never been one key to everything.”

“Wrong. You are the key to everything.” I finally make myself— allow myself—to look at her. She’s beautiful in the way that mountains are, tall and broad and exhibiting the kind of remoteness that people can kill themselves crashing against. Not that she looks particularly remote right now, with her dark eyes lit up by an internal fire.

I know better than to let myself wonder what would have happened if I’d met her first. I know better, but I wonder all the same.

To distract myself from the toxic thoughts, I do my best to focus entirely on what comes next. “You shouldn’t be on this ship when we get to the sandbar. We can risk me and the crew and even…Bastian. We can’t risk you, Siobhan. Your strength is in your secrecy. If no one knows you’re alive…”

“It’s too late for that.” For the first time since I met her, she actually looks defeated. “I came to you because you’re the best shot we have. That doesn’t mean we have a good shot, Nox.”

I’ve never known her to be one to let impossible circumstances beat her down to dust the way they do to us mere mortals. When the rebellion was first getting off the ground about ten years ago, Siobhan and I worked together quite a bit. I try not to think about those days often, because we were so damned young . The very idea of the rebellion was exciting and filled with possibility, and I certainly didn’t have any concept of what it would cost in pursuit of a better way.

Now look at us, worn to the bone and as weary as people twice our age.

Before I can think of all the reasons it’s a terrible idea, I take her shoulders and shake her. “What did you tell me after our first fight?”

My shake barely moves her. She stares down at me. “How am I supposed to remember that? It was a lifetime ago.”

No reason for that to sting. Just because she’s been a figure who looms large through my life doesn’t mean she feels the same way. She obviously doesn’t. “We had gotten word about an entire family who ended up in Threshold by mistake. Hedd had his orders to scoop them up, and we were only days out from their location.”

The memory lights up her eyes. “The Tu family.”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t think I could make it there before the Audacity .” She speaks slowly, her gaze distant. “You were afraid to risk me.”

“I was.” I still am. I drop my hands. “You told me that hope wins more battles than pure martial prowess. You told me that despair kills.”

Her full lips curve, just a little. “That was rather clever of me.”

“I certainly thought so. And you were right. You got there before the C?n Annwn and were able to see them home.”

“I almost killed myself to make it happen,” she murmurs. “I don’t know if that’s the moral we should cleave to.”

If she were anyone else, I would use this opportunity to flirt, to distract with sex as much as with words. But she’s not anyone else. She’s Siobhan.

And she’s in love with Bastian.

I just hope he treats her with more care than he treated me. A hope that dims as I consider how he could have possibly been so foolish as to be caught after all this time. Everything else has changed in the last fourteen years; surely Bastian has changed as well. I shove the worry away. We’ll rescue his goofy ass and then I’ll get my answers.

For now, I have to inspire hope in the woman who’s inspired me from the very beginning. I clear my throat. “It’s time to bring the rebellion out of the shadows and change things once and for all.”

“Easy to say. Significantly more impossible to pull off.”

“One step at a time.” I don’t exactly know how we so effectively reversed roles from when we were young and fearless. I frown. “Are you manipulating me right now?”

Her smile, small as it is, disappears. “It’s a fair question, and I’m not above doing so, but not this time. It’s just…” She starts to turn away. I don’t think, I just catch her biceps and keep her in place. Siobhan raises her brows. “It’s been a full decade, Nox. And we haven’t moved the needle even a little.”

“We’ve saved countless people.”

“Yes, and the Council has harmed countless more.” This time, when she pulls away, I let her go. She walks to the massive window overlooking the wake of the Audacity . “Remove the current Council and the noble families will just elect new representatives. It changes nothing. We have to make an example of them and purge the rot that exists in the C?n Annwn.”

It’s nothing more than I’ve considered in the past…and no less impossible. “Even if that was the plan, how do you decide who to purge and who to pass over? The crews have spent years fighting monsters and terrorizing the population. One ship isn’t an easy mark, let alone the whole fleet.”

“I know.” Siobhan’s shoulders drop. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. The C?n Annwn—the originals—hunted monsters, regardless of the skin they wore. The monstrosity was the intent to harm, not what they looked like on the outside. This whole thing is wrong.”

“I don’t know if it matters what the originals did. They’re gone. They’ve been gone for so long, we don’t even have written history about them.”

“I know.” She drops into the chair in rough proximity to my bed. “But we have stories. I have stories.”

Best not to think about the bed now. Certainly not in relation to Siobhan. I thought I had locked away my disastrous desire for her, but the longer she’s on my ship, the harder it is to deny the truth. The desire never disappeared. I was simply lying to myself about it. The lie only worked as long as I didn’t see her, and now it’s crumpling around me.

I cross my arms over my chest, my tone snappish with my internal thoughts. “And those may be lovely bedtime stories for children, but what the originals may have been doesn’t change what the C?n Annwn have become. They’re more monsters than the creatures and people they hunt.”

“Yes,” Siobhan says slowly. “They are.”

I frown. “I know that look. You have a plan. Why do I think I’m not going to like it very much?”

Siobhan laughs, the sound low and melodious. “Nox, you just spent all this time talking me out of a pit of despair and now you want to object?”

“Well…yes.” But I find myself smiling a little all the same. “As for saving Bastian, it will be simple enough.” I don’t even stumble over his name this time. “Evelyn will create a shield around our ship—she’s rather impressive at it—and the rest of my crew will be ready with fire, water, and air to defend the ship as we get out of there. Bowen will be standing in position to help with the extraction or the getaway, depending on how things go. The vampire and I will take the Bone Heart . We pulled off something similar saving Maeve a while back.”

“Yes, I’m aware of how that went.” Siobhan grimaces. “But the Bone Heart is not the Drunken Dragon . Morrigan is dangerous.”

“I’m aware.” Each ship sailing under the C?n Annwn runs like its own little territory, answering only to the Council. Some captains interact more regularly for coordinated hunts, but that’s never been something I’ve opted into—and not only because I prefer to work without oversight.

Hedd, the last captain of the Audacity , felt the same way for similar reasons, though he wasn’t worried about oversight preventing him from helping people. More that it would prevent him from doing whatever the fuck he wanted, usually in as bloody and violent a way as possible.

Even with all that, Morrigan’s reputation is such that even Hedd avoided the waters where she’s known to sail. She’s vicious and inventive and the only Council member who actually has a crew and a ship.

Siobhan shakes her head slowly. “I know what Lizzie is capable of, but Morrigan sails with Ace and Bull now. Even without those two, she’s the scariest person I’ve ever met.”

I know all this. I just smile, projecting the bravado that’s gotten me out of no small number of scraps over the years. “Honestly, Siobhan, I’m hurt. You don’t think I’m scary?”

Siobhan clears her throat. “You’re terrifying in an entirely different way.”

It’s tempting to read into that, but we’re in the process of sailing to save her partner of ten years. I may be nursing something of an infatuation with the fearless leader of the rebellion, but I’m not fool enough to offer her my heart.

I stretch my arms over my head. “Well, she’s not as good as I am. Guess I’ll have to prove that to you.”

I just hope it’s the truth and I’m not about to get every one of my crew killed.