can help me.’
‘Call her? She’s not a dog.’ He snorted. ‘Besides, I couldn’t find her. She vanished beneath the water.’
‘All the more reason for you to help me,’ she replied hotly. ‘What do you suppose will happen to her when whoever’s the victor of this little clash comes out?’
‘What do I suppose will happen to a siren capable of hiding anywhere in the limitless blue sea?’ He tapped his chin, her scowl deepening with each strike of his finger. ‘Goodness, maybe she’ll come out and ask for a hug?’
Her face grew red with the scathing fury building up behind lips twisting into a grimace fierce enough to spew it. Her left hand trembled at her side, burning angrily, demanding to be wrapped about the boy’s throat. If he noticed such a thing, however, he paid it only as much care as was required to wave a hand as though batting away a particularly irate gnat.
‘It may seem callous,’ he continued, turning to walk away, ‘but my solution is both logical and fair. They’d abandon us in a heartbeat and you know it.’
‘Being an adventurer isn’t about being fair,’ she snarled, tearing through the water towards him, ‘it’s about suffering every miserable person the Gods deem fit to throw into your company.’ She raised a fist angrily, his head a greasy black pimple waiting to be popped. ‘And dealing with it the best you can at the mo—’
The burning in her arm dissipated with such force as to be painful. Quietly, she lowered it, stared at it with wide eyes. It felt strange in its socket: no longer so heavy, no longer so hot. It felt exactly like her right arm, it felt . . . normal.
That, she thought, has never happened before.
But it paled in comparison to the sensation that followed.
A feeling straddling pain and ecstasy swept over her. Her flesh grew gooseskin beneath her robe, a chill crept down her back, wrapping about her spine like a centipede with icy, frigid legs. She felt her voice catch in her throat, unsure how to respond to the feeling. Then, with a suddenness that made her knees buckle, the chill twisted inside her body, becoming violently hot.
The sun seemed incredibly oppressive at that moment, as though it reached down with a golden hand to glide past cloth, flesh, muscle and bone. It seized her essence in a scalding, fiery grip and shook vigorously. She could feel it pushing down upon her, a great pressure forcing her skin in upon itself.
She would never have noticed Dreadaeleon’s hand clenching about her arm had she not spied his scrawny fingers. He seized her with a strength belied by his frailty, he stared at her with an intensity she’d never seen in him. Behind the dark orbs of his eyes, crimson light danced like a flock of agitated fireflies.
‘What . . .’ Her voice came reluctantly to her lips. ‘What are you—’
‘You feel it.’ He spoke with a firmness not his own.
‘Feel . . . what?’
‘It. Cold. Hot.’
With surprising strength, he tightened his grip on her left arm. She felt her heart leap into her throat. He knows, she screamed in her own mind, he knows, he knows, he knows. Of course he knows. He knows everything. He knows what it is. She tensed her fingers, the burning returning. It’s hot enough to torch him. He knows.
If he intended to act on that knowledge, however, he did not. At least, not the way she expected. Instead, he pressed his palm against hers. It felt freezing, then hot enough to rival even her own heat.
‘You can sense it,’ he whispered, ‘can’t you?’
‘Sense what?’ she asked, hysteric as she tore her hand away from his. ‘I don’t know what you’re—’
‘Venarie. Magic.’
The fireflies behind his eyes, the ever-present, if faint, mark of wizardry in his stare, went alight. His gaze became a pair of pyres, crimson energy seeping out in great flashes. He turned his scowl out to sea, the pyres becoming thin red gashes.
‘There is . . . a wizard out there.’
Her gaze followed his, towards the only thing present upon the sea.
The black ship drew into Irontide’s ominous shadow, blending into the darkness. But Asper could still see it, clear as a fire on fresh-fallen snow. Though she knew she stared into darkness, she felt the ship, sensed it as she might an itch between the shoulder blades. She felt it throb, felt it twitch.
And then she felt it stand up and stride to the prow