Page 4 of The Sun God’s Prize (Child of Scale and Fire #3)

I have a chance to get back to it, though.

When I look up, I note that the light no longer shines through the cracks above my head. Night has fallen, then.

There’s a rattle of metal, a chain being handled, then a thud and the flash of a lantern as the hatch is thrown wide ten feet or so from me.

I watch carefully as a sailor, barefoot and grimacing, grunts his way toward us with a small cask under one arm.

He drops it inches from my toes, glancing at me as I stare up at him.

I don’t flinch. But he does.

He turns and runs back the way he came, climbing the three steps up to the deck, then returning with a bag of something that he again dumps, this time on the surface of the cask. When he retreats, he slams the hatch closed again, the chain again clanking, ending in an abrupt click.

No one moves or speaks, but the tension vibrates through the air toward me from the others.

It takes a moment for my dark vision to return, to adapt to the lack of light now that the lantern is gone.

It’s the scent of something that catches my attention, that cuts through the vile smells seeping into my very pores.

“Water,” I croak out loud. “It’s water, isn’t it?”

They still hold back while I crawl forward, feeling the cask. It’s warm, but wet, and though I barely have the strength to crack the top open, my thirst suddenly doesn’t care that I’m weak.

It’s selfish, but the moment the thin, wooden lid is lifted, I plunge my face into the water and suck a large mouthful, the warm, sour stuff a bounty, better than the finest wine, the richest mead.

I surface, gasping for air, and take another long drink, slower this time, before I fall back, belly stuffed with fluid, collapsing against the curve of the ship’s hull to wait and see if my body rejects what I just so greedily ingested.

They move then, slowly, creeping forward, taking their own turns at the cask.

I can feel their eyes on me, watching as they drink, like forest creatures anticipating the attack of a predator, but I’m far too busy listening to my shrunken stomach gurgle, fighting the urge to throw up the precious water I will not lose.

I will not .

My gut finally acquiescence with a final grumble, my desperate body softening, easing, cramping in my middle extending out to my limbs and into a distinctly painful jabbing sensation in my head that goes away, too.

When I sit up once more, I’m even stronger than I had been, reminded of my drakonkin blood when I make a fist and feel my muscles bunch and release.

Lucky. Were I fully human, I wouldn’t be here to recover at all.

I completely ignored the sack in my desperate thirst, but my fellow captives don’t, hovering nearby, not retreating.

Something touches my foot. I flinch, but lean forward a moment later.

A hand presses something into my palm, and I take it, bringing it to my face.

The strip of some dried meat forces saliva I find I can generate to stir and sluggishly fill my mouth.

This I take my time with, tiny bites, not hungry at all, far past that point.

But despite the nibbles that taste like death, I force down every single morsel.

Whatever comes next, I’m going to need my strength.

“Thank you,” I whisper into the darkness. “You could have eaten all of the food. Thank you for leaving some for me.”

No one answers, though I feel a sigh as much as I hear it, and that terrible razor wire of anxiety seems to ease, our shared cage no longer crackling with terror.

I sleep again.

Waking is easier, bright outside once again, and there’s water left, so I help myself when the others don’t come to take it. I don’t finish it, even if I would love to, leaving enough for a mouthful for each of them, settling back against the curved hull.

I could despair. It’s tempting. This is the first real moment of clarity I’ve had, and when it sparks, I’m sitting up straighter, catching my breath. Atlas. Zenthris. My loves. The kinspark—

A surging hope hits so hard that I smile as I reach for them. Atlas! Zenthris!

The silence of feeling, of mind, is so profound that it takes time to sink in. I wait far too long for a reply before I accept that one isn’t coming.

And then I’m crumpling sideways, sobbing that betrayal into the revolting straw beneath me.

Not their betrayal. I will never believe they abandoned me.

It’s my betrayal, or that of the kinspark, somehow broken, that has cut me off from them.

The bond that had begun with the rogue, that linked me to the Overprince and then he to Zen, that tie that bound us, let us feel what the other felt, was meant to be forever, or so I was told.

Where has it gone? Why did it forsake me?

When I sit up again, wiping snot and tears from my crusty face, my hands come away with flakes of old blood that have me prodding my scalp just past my hairline.

Memory joins the touch, where a healed-over wound reminds me of the night I was taken onboard this ship.

I struck my head, was pulled out of the water.

I heard them then, didn’t I? Or was that before, with Vivenne?

It doesn’t matter now. I do know I tried to tell them where I was. The drug—

It cut me off from them. So much so that I’m only now remembering. How much else have I forgotten? I’m desperately combing through my memories when it strikes me that I’m being a fool. How will I even recall what I can’t recall if it’s not there anymore?

Breathe, child . Mother’s voice is soothing, even though in life she never would have used that tone with me. Panic serves no warrior .

If it’s only my own mind protecting me, I’m not arguing with it, drawing several shaky breaths, pushing myself up and out of despair again.

Breathing. Which leads me to the one thing I can do. That I need to do.

Meditation is normally easy for me, trained into me from childhood, a practice I’ve always treasured.

Now? I fight distress that the quiet of the mind evades me, eludes with shouting fear, creeping despair, the hammering pulse of my heart palpitating as it strains to recover, physically and emotionally.

Only to remember why it is that I meditate in the first place.

And this lesson is not from Vivenne, either. It’s from Mother, from the southland people she came from, taught by her father to her and to my aunt.

Passed to me. I’ve never been so grateful.

This practice is not meant to swallow your thoughts , she’d said. It is to show them to you, so you might master them and yourself .

My mind is loud and angry and scared and afraid. And it deserves my attention.

Inhale for a five-count, Remalla. Hold the breath until your chest aches .

I make it to three and have to let it go, try again.

It takes several attempts before I’m lost in the rhythm of my breath, the memory of my mother chanting the lesson.

But it comes back to me, it all comes back, and I’m sinking, this time of my own accord.

When I push to find the kinspark, I almost lose my place.

Only to breathe again, just breathe, to feel the hate for Vivenne, for Portuk and his betrayal, to blame Fethest and allow sympathy for her passing, nonetheless.

Dichotomy is part of the process. The image of the healer dead, neck broken on the dock where I was taken, is still crisp, complete.

There’s so little left to me of the time inside the monster of the drug, though, that the spiral of distress ending faster than it might have normally.

I’m calm, level again, myself at last, in short order, too.

It’s the muttering of voices that brings me back out, surfacing from the quiet that finally settled around me, in me.

I hold it close as I open my eyes and realize that I’m hearing someone overhead, through the decking, voices speaking in that language I don’t understand.

It irritates me suddenly, not being able to decipher their words.

That much I can do , the voice in my head whispers wearily, out of the blue, like she’s been there all along.

Who are you? I remember her, from the Landlow Isles, from my time in the drug.

I lunge for her and lose her a moment later.

She’s lost to me, though now I recall everything about her.

The voice that spoke to me after I accepted the so-called dragon magic from my father, that same magic that was meant to spark my own, to wake the power of drakonkin since I was ever so special.

Sarcasm isn’t helping, but I embrace it anyway.

That’s what I was told, wasn’t it? According to Ustervoth, I’m his heir, the real princess of his fantasy kingdom of dragons and power.

I’m not being fair, and the anger is taking over despite my meditation. Which means I’m again closing my eyes and breathing and retreating back into myself to center.

“Captain said two more days,” someone says. “I’m getting off. Done with this shit.”

“Liar,” the other laughs at him. “Pay’s too good. Who’d rather dig in the dirt?”

“Fuck off,” the other laughs back.

“Rather fuck your sister…” their voices drift away like there’s distance growing between us.

It takes me a moment to realize that I can understand them, a sharp inhale following that, my chin rising before I turn and stare down a dark-eyed man who sits closest to me. Was he the one who shared the food? It doesn’t matter, but I think kindly of him for it.

“Your name,” I say as gently as I can.

His gaze widens. “Somu,” he says in a quiet tenor.

You’re welcome , the voice whispers as though from far away. Hurry, Flame .

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