“You know, in order for us to have a normal, civilized conversation, you might try acting normal or civilized.”
I’m not normal, she wanted to scream. I’m a Gwyrach.
“After all,” he said, “isn’t civilized discourse what husbands and wives do?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had a husband. Or a wife,” she added. “And I don’t now.”
He cocked his head. “Don’t you?”
“Surely you don’t call that debacle”—she gestured back toward the Kaer—“a success.”
“Even a debacle of a wedding can be efficacious.”
“Do you always use such big words?”
The river sucked greedily at the sides of the boat. Quin let out a long breath.
“You grew up here, didn’t you? On the river?”
“In Ilwysion, yes. We’re not quite at my part of the forest, but we’ll be passing through shortly. But I never cared much for the water.”
“Because of your hair?”
“What?”
“I was under the impression that ladies did not appreciate the water mussing their hair.”
“Who told you that?”
He cleared his throat. “I suppose I read it in a book.”
“Perhaps it’s time to reexamine your reading selection.”
She didn’t like the water on account of how quickly it could change. Placid one minute, fatal the next: crystalline in some places and opaque in others. It unnerved her that, no matter where you were, whether camped by a fresh mountain stream or sailing the Opalen Sea, cup water in your hands and you could see right through it, a transparent shimmer slipping through your fingers.
She didn’t like the idea that something invisible could kill you.
“I’m starving,” Quin said. “We haven’t eaten in hours.”
For someone who had been so taciturn in the castle, the prince was awfully chatty out in the wild. She watched him extract the pouch of food the village boy had given them. He shook out one purple snow plum and poked at a fuzzy white spot on the surface.
He sighed. “He gave us moldy plums. Of course he did.”
Mia looked at him, curious. “Did you know that boy?”
“I’ve seen him in the village.” He looked away. “Once or twice. A friend.”
She felt a curious sensation, her pulse quickening as the sound of sloshing filled her ears, viscous liquid coursing through a valve.
“Would he poison you?”
“Gods, no! He’s not that sort of friend.” Quin thwacked the bread against the side of the Sunbeam, where it cracked like wood on wood. “Though I suppose he’s not above giving us stale bread.” He chucked the loaf overboard.
“There goes our only food.”
“You weren’t going to eat it anyway. You’re more distrustful than I am.”
“I’m careful,” she said. “You could stand to be more careful yourself.”
As if to spite her, he bit into one of the plums. She could see him squirm as the mold furred his tongue.
“Please do not spew boat on the bile,” she said.
He grinned. Mia was so tired she wasn’t speaking clearly. She thought of asking Quin to take over so she could doze for a bit, but she didn’t want to ask him for anything. She was steering the ship now—quite literally—and she liked it.
Besides, if he’d never been on a river, he’d never even held an oar.
Quin was asleep, his head lolling, when Mia heard a splash.
She saw them from a distance: two girls facing off beside a swampy inlet, their long skirts tucked up into their undergarments, corsets discarded on the riverbank. They were young, no older than twelve or thirteen, the moonlight painting both their heads a sapphire silver. They wore no gloves. Their bare hands gripped two birch-wood sticks whittled into makeshift blades, laced with kindling and lit on fire. In the darkness, they looked like blue demons wielding stars.
Mia felt a clutch of fear. Were they Gwyrach? Or merely girls?
She didn’t know the answer, but she was drawn to them anyway.
Their faces were painted like warriors, though as the Sunbeam grew closer, Mia saw the war paint was mud and crushed blackthorn petals. The girls were fighting, rapturous as they roared and charged toward one another, brandishing their white torches in the air.
The taller girl took a bad step and fell sideways, landing in the sludge. When the other girl offered an arm to help her up, she took it—and wrenched her friend down with her. The bog gobbled them up greedily, and they sloshed around, giggling and filthy and glorious. In that moment, they were more than girls: they were creatures, wild and free.
The second they saw Mia, they went completely silent.
They watched each other as the boat slunk by, two mud-caked girls on the riverbank, one blood-caked girl in a boat. Mia softened. She had been like them once, out climbing trees and exploring Ilwysion under the cover of night. She and Angie had never sparred like this, though she would have liked to. Even before their mother died, Angelyne was always the fragile one, while Mia pushed the limits of herself and everyone around her.
She felt a twinge of shame. Of course she’d pushed the limits. She’d always had magic, and magic relied on a cruel, unruly heart.
As she passed the two girls on the riverbank, she feared for their safety. If the king’s spies caught them tussling in the forest, gloveless and behaving like boys, they would be whisked off to the castle, where all manner of horrors awaited.
But as the Sunbeam glided silently past, Mia saw they didn’t need her fear, and they didn’t want her pity. Their faces were flushed and furious, their eyes full of something she had forgotten how to feel. It was only Mia who felt frightened and ashamed.
How sick a place Glas Ddir was to shame girls for being wild. King Ronan patted himself on the back for keeping them “safe,” but it was all twisted lies. The ones he brought to the Kaer weren’t safe. As for the other girls in the river kingdom: what good was safety at the expense of freedom? Glasddiran women were still trapped in cages, whether that cage was a pair of gloves or a wedding gown.
“Mia.”
Quin’s voice startled her. She turned and saw him in silhouette, the moonlight laying jagged yellow patches on the river behind him.
“I can row now. You should get some rest.”
Had he seen the girls? She blinked and saw only blackness. The river had swallowed them whole.
“If you give me the oar,” he said, “I’ll man the boat.”
She frowned. “You said you’d never manned a boat before.”
“I said I’d never been on a river. In my royal bathtub hewn of gold, I steered small ships made of walnuts.” She didn’t laugh. He sighed. “I don’t know where we’re going, but as long as the river’s current takes us in the opposite direction of my attempted murderer, you won’t find me complaining. I’m no boatswain, but I know not to let us run aground.”
She was too tired to argue. She handed him the oar and crawled forward, tucking herself into the Sunbeam’s bow.
The warrior girls stayed with her: their ferocious triumph and their unabashed defiance. Angelyne had looked at Mia with the same defiance when they fought in her bridal chambers. Was that really only yesterday? She had packed whole lifetimes into a single night. Where was Angie now? Was she safe?
Mia was struck by a sudden epiphany. A royal wedding required a royal groom. At the moment, that groom was sailing down the Natha at her side, farther from Kaer Killian by the minute. Angelyne was at no risk of being married to the prince—as long as the prince was with Mia, and alive.
A blissful contentment enveloped her. She hadn’t abandoned her sister after all. She’d protected her.
The river vanished behind them like a line of disappearing ink. Mia felt, for a moment, happy. She reached for her wedding gown to ball it up into a pillow—and felt her mother’s journal. So much had happened, she hadn’t peeked at it in hours. She drew out the book, tracing the neat, straight grooves of the W.M. scars. For all her mother’s luscious curves, her initials were strikingly angular.
On instinct, Mia fit the ruby wren into the lock. She pivoted away from Quin and quietly opened the journal. The first page was dappled with starlight, but the right side was no longer blank.
The map had revealed more.
Chapter 18
Bait