“Until what? You kill me?” I snort. “No wonder your wife left you.”
He whips toward me so fast, I press against the window frame preparing for him to slap me, but he seems to have frozen in the moment. Staring at me as if terrified of what else I might know. Of what I might say. Even through the hatred and aching bones and muscles and energy cracking inside me, I can’t help but feel the smallest flicker of suspicion. It stirs that hint of compassion blossoming without consent in my soul, swearing that the root of who he is still exists. Is that the betrayal that pains him? That he made himself different—better, in his mind—but in the end his wife couldn’t accept him?
I open my mouth. The realization abruptly pounds through my soul—she couldn’t accept who he’d become. My eyes connect with his and stumble across something there I don’t want to see. The smug awareness of how easily that could be me—not accepting the curse I was, always hoping for better. And didn’t I take the “better” when it was offered—by Eogan and then Myles? What if Colin or Eogan had suddenly decided they couldn’t tolerate me? I swallow and feel my expression soften.
The window frame behind me begins shaking. I look down and the quaking is from Draewulf’s hand shoved against the wall beside me as his body’s shivering, as if building into a rage. I stiffen and start to scoot away just as a beam of sunlight glances off his face. He doesn’t look angry, he looks in pain. What in—?
I reach toward him, but he utters a bark and bends over just as a black wisp uncoils around his feet and winds itself up his legs and around his chest. As if protecting him.
From what?
I look at my no-longer-gimpy hand. It’s pulsing, pumping with the blood hounding beneath my skin and bleeding black into my veins. I inhale and his wisps start to curl around me. And then my spine begins to shudder, then burn, and my head screams that now is the time. Now is my chance.
I could kill him before it’s too late.
I reach for him.
The horn overhead blares.
I shove my hand against the side of his neck.
“We’re nearly there,” Kel’s voice rings out beyond the door. It sounds strong and angry.
Draewulf spins and slams me into the wall. He snaps his fingers and the door flies open before he barks at the wraith waiting beyond. “Get her downstairs,” he growls. “Tie her up along with the princess, and if she even lifts an eyebrow, slit the half-breed’s throat.”
CHAPTER 37
LAPPED BY THE ELISEDD’S BLUE WATERS, TULLA’S CLIFFS shoot straight up on the horizon. The ship lurches and soars higher in the same way I’m lurching against the cords the wraith used to lash my wrists to the deck railing beside Rasha. It takes a second for my stomach to catch up.
“Where’s Myles?” I yell above the wind and airship’s drone.
Rasha squints and tips her head at the dining area as strands of her brown hair thrash about. “Still alive. So is Draewulf I’m assuming?”
I nod and don’t tell her that I tried to kill him. That I hesitated because I couldn’t do it just yet. “Eogan was already gone,” I choke out.
Her gaze whips around to meet mine as the sadness and fury pull at my gut. I can feel it spreading to my lungs. “Oh love,” she mouths.
I blink and look away. I’ll weep later.
The peaks we are approaching are covered in snow, but without any forest or greenery beneath. Just layers and layers of ice-dusted rock.
The few men and wraiths on deck are growing restless, and I can feel the dark whispers in my blood, in my ears. “Come to ussss,” the undead say. “Come to ussss. Come—”
I turn around. “Shut the kracken up!” I yell at them. But they don’t stop, and the only ones who seem to notice anything are the Bron soldiers who frown at me. The large one looks at me with an unreadable expression. I hope they haven’t gotten to him too. But no, his skin is still black as night, not gray, and his eyes are clear as day. Not that it will make much difference soon anyway.
The entire fleet of airships is flying twenty terrameters above the first peak when a spark flashes and a swell of smoke rises into the air. It’s followed by another, two mountains over, and then another, like a chain.
“They’re sending off warning pyres,” one of the soldiers calls out.
Good.
“Too bad there’s not enough warning time,” Rasha murmurs.
I frown and glance down. We’re flying over the peaks and pyres too fast, too soon. The snow-tipped mountains fall away beneath us, sloping into colorful canyons sun-spotted and mineral-painted in pinks and lavenders and bluish-greens. The airships around us shudder and dive down, too, approaching a series of jagged rock formations that dot the landscape in giant twisted spires and arches, hovering over dirt that is as red as the sun on a summer day and freckled with clay-looking houses. I wince. It reminds me of the hue of Colin and Breck’s skin.