doors behind him, the whispers began. Malin’s voice cracked. Elinor gasped.
Bastian fought the urge to run back in and demand to hear the secret himself. His hands curled into fists. He had to trust Elinor. If the secret made a different to their quest, she would do her best to help them. He had to believe in her.
He had to start to trust again.
Chapter Forty-Three
Steady rocking woke Tressa. She rubbed her eyes, confused. Her mind felt mushy. Blurry. Unfocused. A strange smell of salt and rot assaulted her nose. Her eyes watered.
Tressa reached out with an unsteady arm, her fingertips drifting across rough wood.
"Where am I?"
She sat up. Her stomach lurched as the surface under her rocked back and forth. She grabbed onto ledges on either side of her, her eyes growing wide with horror as she realized where she was.
Adrift in a small boat, just big enough to hold her prone body. Tressa swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Water lapped against the side of the boat, licking her fingertips with salty tongues.
The sea stretched out in every direction, an unending flow of crests and wakes. Land was nowhere to be seen in the darkness.
Tressa sat frozen in fear. She'd never been around more than a harmless bucket of water or small stream. She didn't know how to swim.
Water was death for her.
She silently cursed Jacinda. She’d known the woman couldn't wait to be rid of her, but sticking her in a boat and pushing her into the sea while she was recovering from a miscarriage was beyond cruel. Jarrett claimed the dragon within Jacinda was strong. Where did her human will end and the dragon's wrath take over?
Tressa searched the tiny vessel for an oar. She came up empty. There was nothing in the wooden boat except herself.
Adara's leather clothes hugged Tressa's body, covering it as if it were a second skin. A few areas over her chest and legs were hugged even tighter by embedded armor. Tressa smiled. Those were the only clothes she had. The ones she’d worn to the Sands had been disposed of. She slipped a hand down her top, her fingertips touching steel. The small weapons were still there. When they'd dressed her, they must not have noticed the hidden pockets Tressa had asked Adara for.
She thanked every god she'd ever heard of. At least she wasn't completely helpless. If she could figure out a way to get to land, she'd have a fighting chance.
The waves continued to carry her, toward what she didn't know. The stars shone, reminding her of the night she'd spent in the silken tent with Jarrett in the middle of the desert. Before the yellow dragon had abducted her off her camel. Before she chose Jarrett over Bastian. Before she'd lost the child she didn't even know she was carrying.
She wished on the brightest star. "Take me to land. Please. That is all I ask. Any land."
Breathing in. Breathing out. There was nothing else she could do. Her eyes closed against the endless expanse of water and sky. She reached inside herself searching for the strength she kept buried there. It had served her in the foggy forest. It had served her when she fought for a place in the Black Guard. It had served her when a dragon clutched her in its talons and carried her across the searing desert. It had served her when she'd wordlessly severed her connection to Bastian after the kilrothgi invasion.
But her strength had retreated, hiding amongst the white caps of the water. Instead she felt a great absence. It wasn't hard to figure out what was missing.
Her child. The baby she didn't even know she was pregnant with. Though deep down she thought she had known. Somehow she knew she already loved that baby.
Her thoughts drifted to her time in Hutton's Bridge and her morning tea with Granna. It was the same tea she'd drunk just before her miscarriage.
A dull ache spread across her chest. She'd never conceived. All those times with Bastian and the other boys whose ribbons she'd pulled. Not one pregnancy. And not one morning without the tea.
Anger built until she was on the edge of bursting. She'd confided in her Granna. Cried with her over every monthly blood. She’d thought there was something wrong with her, but now she suspected another explanation.
Her beloved Granna had kept her from pregnancy and so had someone back at Risos. It wasn't her body that had betrayed her. Others had