different as truedark was from truelight. But each of them, all of them, had one trait in common.
They were mortal. Flesh and blood and bone.
How in the Goddess’s name am I supposed to fight this?
“I SHOULD GO,” Tric said.
“Go?” Mia felt a stab of fear in her chest, despite Eclipse. “Where?”
The boy looked at her sidelong. Even with the pain between them, the blood and years, she could see a wry amusement gleaming in those midnight eyes.
“FORWARD.” He motioned to the bow. “TO PRAY.”
“O,” she smiled. “Aye. I understand. Will that help?”
“WE DWEYMERI HAVE A SAYING. PRAY TO THE GODDESS, BUT ROW FOR SHORE.”
“Meaning we can’t rely on her at all.”
“MEANING WE ARE STILL A LONG WAY FROM TRUEDARK. AND THE MOTHER’S POWER HERE IS SLIGHT. BUT THEY ARE HER DAUGHTERS.” Tric shrugged as a peal of thunder cracked the skies. “PRAYING CAN’T HURT.”
“All right,” she nodded. “Just be careful not to fall over the side, aye?”
He smiled, sweet and sad.
“I’LL NOT LEAVE YOU,” he said. “NO MATTER WHAT. NEVER FORGET I LOVE YOU, MIA. AND GODDESS WILLING, I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER.”
He turned and trudged down the stairs, his shirt plastered to his skin, the lines of muscle etched in black velvet and leather. Mia’s chest hurt as she watched him make his way down the bow and plant himself like some ancient tree, black hands raised to the sky, head thrown back. Thunder rolled and lightning flashed, the rain coming down in freezing sprays, like arrows of ice shot at Banshee’s black heart. Her sails were stretched and straining, her hull groaning, her shrouds and lines humming in the growing gale. The waves were building in height—not the terrifying towers of water Mia had seen aboard the Maid, but she knew they were on the way. There was no sign of land on the eastern horizon. They were still turns away from Ashkah. Turns of a war she didn’t know how to fight. A war she couldn’t wield a blade in.
Helpless.
Useless.
One of the wulfguard looked at Mia and made the warding sign against evil.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have called them bitches, Eclipse,” she whispered.
“… NO FEAR…,” came the reply from her shadow. “… I AM WITH YOU…”
Mia dragged her sodden hair from her face, shook her head. “I wish…”
“… I KNOW…,” the shadowwolf sighed. “… STRANGE AS IT SOUNDS, I MISS HIM, TOO…”
“Do you think he’s all right? Wherever he is?”
The daemon turned her not-eyes to the horizon.
“… I THINK YOU SHOULD SAVE YOUR WORRY FOR US, MIA…”
Mia looked to the black gathering above. Listening to her ship creak and groan and sigh. The song of the lines and sails and the men above and below, a tiny splinter adrift on a hungry sea, surrounded by fangs of water and bone.
She ran her hands over the black railing, whispered to the ship around her.
“Hold tight, girl.”
* * *
Lightning, splitting the skies in two.
Rain like spears hurled from heaven’s heart.
Thunder shaking her spine, like the footsteps of hungry giants.
Absolute
fucking
chaos.
They were a full turn into the storm, and the fury was like nothing Mia had ever seen. If she’d been impressed by the tempest that had hit the Bloody Maid in the Sea of Swords, the sheer power on display now left her near blind and dumb. The clouds hung so black and heavy, she felt she could reach up and touch them. The thunder was so loud, it was a physical sensation on her skin. The waves were like cliffs, towering, glowering faces of water, filled with whitedrakes. Taller than trees, dropping down into valleys so deep and dark they could almost be mistaken for the Abyss itself.
Each drive upward was akin to climbing a mountain, each drop was a moment of awful weightlessness, followed by a barreling rush into a bone-breaking impact in the trough below. They’d already lost four sailors in the storm—ripped from the masts by the clawing wind or dragged by the waves into the deep. Their cries were only whispers in the tempest howl, and the mouths waiting from them in the water silenced them quickly. The black roiled above them, ragged claws of lightning ripping at the sky. And there seemed no end in sight.
Mia had retired to her cabin—she’d stayed up top as long as she was able, but with no skill at sailing and nothing else to contribute, she seemed only to be in the way up above. Tric seemed immovable on the bow, but the waves crashing over the Banshee’s deck would