real.”
“Most dreams do. But they’re just dreams.”
Maeve shrugged. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
Nevis gritted his teeth. “I’ll go.”
She crossed her arms, frowning. No doubt, Nevis didn’t appreciate being her babysitter. He was a colonel in the army, after all. But she didn’t care for this situation, either.
A light rain began, and with a muttered curse, Nevis excused himself and went back to his cabin. Maeve followed more slowly, recalling how it had rained in her dream.
Two hours later, the ship dropped anchor in the bay of the port town of Luna. The capital of the Isles of Moon and Mist, it was named after the larger of the two moons. The rain had stopped, so Maeve brought her bag up on deck. Luna looked much the same as the last time she’d seen the town. Queen Esther’s castle, named Lessa Castle after the smaller of the two moons, sat on a hill overlooking the port. The gray stone castle looked a bit dreary compared to the surrounding cottages, which were painted in shades of peach, shell pink, green, and blue.
On the ship, sailors worked around her, stacking the crates she would take to the convent and the packages Nevis would present to the queen. They lowered the boats so they could row the packages ashore.
Nevis met her on deck, looking much better now that he’d combed his hair, shaved, and put on his uniform. “All right, this is the plan.”
She sighed. Instead of Luciana bossing her around, now Nevis was doing it.
“After we go ashore, I’ll hire a wagon and take you and the crates to the convent,” Nevis explained. “Then, I’ll go to the castle to meet the queen. About midday, I’ll pick you up and bring you back here for the voyage to the Isle of Mist. I just have one question. Do you think the nuns would feed me lunch?”
Maeve snorted. Nevis definitely had his priorities. “Yes, I’m sure they will.”
“Excellent.” Nevis clapped his hands together. “I’ve already checked with Captain Shaw. He’ll be ready to sail this afternoon.” He turned to the sailors and told them to start unloading the packages.
Using ropes and pulleys, the sailors lowered half of the packages into one rowboat and the other half into a second one.
Maeve leaned over the railing to watch and grinned when a seal broke through the turquoise water and barked at her. Was it one of her seal friends? Or perhaps . . . “Brody, is that you?”
“It’s just a seal,” Nevis muttered.
“I have good reason to suppose it could be Brody,” Maeve insisted. “He sometimes takes the form of a seal.”
Nevis shrugged. “I thought you said he was on the Isle of Mist.”
True. Maeve smiled to herself. If her dream had been correct, she would see Brody this afternoon.
* * *
As Brody set the last rock on top of the pile of stones he’d laid on the Seer’s grave, another wave of grief crashed over him, doubling him up. It had started raining earlier, and he could no longer tell whether it was tears or raindrops that slid down his cheeks to splatter on the ground.
The stones were gray. The sky was gray. They were as bleak and cold as the hard knot of pain lodged in his heart. The old man had been a father to him for fifteen years. Longer than the ten years he’d had with his real father. And his older brother.
Brody’s mother was still alive, but she’d wept so much when he’d told her about the curse that it had ripped his heart to shreds. He’d realized then that he couldn’t live at home. He couldn’t subject his mother to the pain of seeing him trapped in the body of an animal day after day. So, he had sworn to her and himself that he would find the witch and undo the curse. Only then would he be able to return to his mother and sister.
But he’d lived with the curse now for fifteen years. More than half of his life. For the last nine years, he’d hunted for that witch. And he’d failed.
He was a human who couldn’t be human.
He fell to his knees, then looked up at the heavens as more tears ran down his cheeks. “Why? What have I done to deserve this?”
There was no answer. There never was.
With a sigh, he wiped his face. Was this what the old man had seen in his third vision? He’d seen Brody by his