Page 63 of The Queens and the Kings (The Isles #2)

PEDR

Jordaire’s jaw dropped.

“You want me to what ?”

Pedr sat on his deck, near the wheel. The arcane resisted Jordaire being too close, but didn’t prevent him from hovering. The sky and the land and the sea didn’t mix well, or willingly.

“Tie me down,” Pedr repeated. “I want you to use your land-based arcane to hold my arms and legs straight so they can’t retract.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It’s a side effect.”

“Of what?”

Pedr’s throat closed. Shite, but the arcane wouldn’t even let him talk about plans around the curse. Much longer, and he wouldn’t be able to speak at all. After the silencing effect passed, he said, “It doesn’t matter.”

Because I need to break the curse, he thought, by making it physically impossible for the curse to have an effect.

Not the best idea, perhaps, but his only one. The thing he hadn’t yet tried. His nose twitched. Heat from the curse filled his mouth and throat at the inspired idea. Inspired, or insipid. He had no idea if this would work, but he had to pose some form of rebellion.

“Tell me,” Jordaire demanded.

“I can’t.”

Jordaire scoffed. “Fine. It . . . seems . . . like you’re telling the truth. Himmel might have mentioned you had a curse by the Siren Queens.”

“Then stop asking, you bastid! You’re wasting time.”

Jordaire’s uncaring eye roll offered no apology. “Why can’t you tie yourself with your arcane?” he pressed, his brow a mess of wrinkled, livid lines. He cast his eyes to the left and right, fingers fidgeting. He’d always been a cagey little man.

“Because I won’t be able to focus on the arcane while I’m—” Pedr grunted, his wrists snapping inward. Already, he couldn’t control his curling fingers. “Just do it, Jordaire! You’re always giving arcane to humans and embroiling yourself in their problems. I know you can assist!”

With a roll of his eyes, Jordaire flicked his wrist. Umber ropes of hardened dirt looped around Pedr’s already curling hands.

His arms retracted, the elbows bending under the volition of the curse.

Sweat dotted Pedr’s forehead as four vines, thick as his forearm, encircled each wrist and ankle and tied to the gunwale and mast. He tugged, but they had no give.

Jordaire raised an eyebrow.

Pedr nodded once.

With a gusty sigh, Jordaire said, “Well? Tell me about your blasted curse, you insolent cow.”

Heat exploded through Pedr’s chest the moment he attempted to shout, the bloody Siren Queens! Fire occluded his throat. He couldn’t swallow past it. Jordaire stared, wide-eyed. Pedr must have looked like death as his arms resisted Jordaire’s arcane.

Pedr grunted out two words.

“I . . . want . . .”

The power of the Siren Queens rushed at him, making the truth impossible.

. . . to tell you everything about the Siren Queens and Mila.

An inferno baptized his throat, squeezed his tongue to ash. He made a guttural noise, air whistling through his taut lips. His body tried to give out, but Jordaire’s soil ropes held.

Panic built inside. The thought of speaking the truth and revealing the Siren Queens to the world made his blood warm with fear. Sweat broke out on his forehead. The muscles along his neck tightened when he said, “Fifteen years ago?—”

Full stop.

The contractions wrenched both arms to his ribs.

They ground painfully. He tried, with no avail, to stop himself from bending to their will.

Pedr panted, remembering the miserable night not long ago when he tried to tell Britt.

The fever consumed him. Destroyed him. The curse bound him in ways both emotional, spiritual, physical.

He loathed it.

His body tugged against the ropes as it attempted to curl in, in, in. The ropes creaked as his knees pulled higher.

“My arcane will pull your legs out at this strength, Pedr,” Jordaire barked. “This is madness!”

“Don’t stop!” Pedr shouted.

Noises gurgled from his throat as he assassinated the Siren Queens with his mind. Vile pieces of shite. They stole Mila! They cursed me to my ship, bound my tongue, and doomed me to roam five hundred years while they hold her hostage.

The words thrashed, nearly incomprehensible in their speed. All the torrents he’d suppressed for the last fifteen years spilled out. His wrists and ankles ached as the curse attempted to fold him. If he hadn’t been an Arcanist, the brawn would have broken his bones.

He resisted.

He silently shouted.

He shoved every previous ounce of pain into his resistance. His teeth gnashed, neck curled. Moans emitted that he didn’t control. Jordaire, silent, stayed true to his promise. The vines wrestled with the curse, locking Pedr in place while agony streaked through him. He focused on Mila.

Sweet Mila.

I’ll save you, he had promised. I’ll save you.

Her memory flared a spark of hope. A moment of reprieve that breathing in her warmth always provided. Mila .

The curse rebounded, straining the arcane ropes.

His eyes slammed shut and wouldn’t open.

A band wrapped his chest, screwing down like battening a hatch.

His heart threatened to explode. Sweat rained off his skin, beading on his neck.

The ropes strained to hold him apart, even as every muscle and sinew strained to pull him together.

Tighter.

Tightest.

When would it crack? How? What weakness could he find in the curse? There must be some. No arcane could be so powerful it bound a soul.

Jordaire cried out, “Have you lost it, man? What evil arcane did the Queens bestow?”

Pedr screamed incomprehensibly in his head.

On the curse twisted, wrenching, splitting, threatening.

Exhaustion swept him as wave after determined wave of cursed arcane poured over him.

It would win. Of course it would win. Hadn’t the Siren Queens always won?

His jaw sealed shut. He could move nothing, only tremble.

Too much.

He couldn’t do it.

The ropes shuddered. Despair threatened to drown him. It didn’t work. The calm, cold voice of the Siren Queen slithered into his mind, recalled from before.

Don’t waste your life on resistance, you fool. It is futile.

There was no solace in thoughts of his beloved. His heartspace. The portion of his soul abandoned to the darkest depths of the world. Mila, he cried. Mila, I’m sorry. I failed you again.

Pedr slumped. “Let me . . . go,” he begged through clenched teeth.

Jordaire obeyed slowly. The ropes lowered Pedr. As soon as their tension released, arcane snapped his knees to his chest. It locked him down, strapped him tight. He collapsed. His shoulders and body hit the wood with a thud, bundled. He couldn’t straighten.

“Ah, no,” Jordaire hissed. His voice came from farther away. “That’s not good, fool boy. Can you see it? ‘Course you can’t,” he muttered. “The bloody wyverns are loose! All . . . nineteen . . . of them.”

Pedr cursed himself. The Siren Queens. The Wyvern Kings. He’d failed to stop Britt from releasing them, which meant he’d have no leverage to convince the Wyvern Kings to save Mila. He couldn’t make it work . . .

An abject failure.

Again.

Panic thickened Jordaire’s frantic voice.

“You see what’s happened now? We’re doomed!

The wyverns are loose and there’s nothing we can do to stop the confrontation.

I must speak to the Ladylord and render what assistance I can.

You can save yourself, you daft bastid, for whatever you did to earn such a curse. ”

All fell silent.

Jordaire’s words blurred through his mind. Wyverns and doomed and confrontation didn’t make sense separately. Didn’t make sense together. Too ravaged to protest Jordaire leaving, Pedr lost himself to an unconscious swirl.

He could do nothing, for the Siren Queens well knew their special form of torture.

Time passed.

How quickly, how archaically, he had no idea. His taut muscles ebbed and flowed with tension, alternating between rolling and tightening. Light passed behind his eyelids, but the agony didn’t fade.

It wasn’t possible to endure more. Their power was too great, and what arcane he’d managed to pull to his side abandoned him.

Of course it did. Because what was this ship?

Nothing. Nothing against the Queens. The original evil.

The casters of curses and agony. The destroyer of love and land and kings.

The thought of the Wyvern Kings escaping to fight the Siren Queens invoked as much terror. He was too late. He didn’t fight harder. He’d lost courage. Because of him, Britt might even be dead.

He couldn’t bear it.

Then, a scent.

Wind.

Open sails.

Sky.

Himmel , he thought.

From the fires of agony came the lightest touch. A roving feather, a voice as quiet. The whispering breeze. “Pedr, you vagabond. What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

I failed , he wanted to say against his grinding teeth. I failed again, Himmel. It binds my throat, my body, my soul. They will always own me and everyone else. If the curse hadn’t bound his face, he would have cried.

Her silky fingertips expanded to a palm that she pressed into his arm. Warmth curled on top of his skin, swirling.

“You are capable of more, Pedr. You have not yet failed until you give up entirely. Fight,” she hissed. “Fight them, Pedr. What can a curse do? You are the Arcanist of the Sea.”

A pitiful response welled up.

No , he thought. I am not enough for this.

At the mere thought of rebellion, arcane returned. Had he been human, his jaw would have snapped from the pressure. Breath came rapidly, fluttering. Instinct, not necessity. Sweat soaked his fevered skin.

Himmel crouched, smelling like sunshine and spring and fresh flowers and unfurled canvas and sea spray and sky. The clouds rolled in her voice.