But her hope felt fleeting, a fish believing it was the hunter to the dangling worm. Not the hunted. Not the caught.
“I must know,” came a deep voice from behind her. “Do you feel standing in the blazing sun all day will have them find you sooner?”
Niya had sensed Alōs drawing nearer, but she had hoped it was to speak with one of his nearby pirates.
She took in a calming breath before meeting his turquoise gaze as he stopped beside her. His dark hair was loose around his shoulders, his angular features made softer in the morning light. “Why, Alōs, that is so kind of you to be concerned at all with how I feel.”
A lilt of an amused grin. “It is my duty to care for all my pirates.”
“I am not one of your pirates.”
“Not yet.”
Niya clenched her teeth together, anger flaring as she turned back to the endless sea before them. Just ignore him, she thought. If I ignore him, he’ll go away.
“Speaking of becoming one of my crew, you know you cannot continue to sleep in that private cabin after today,” explained Alōs from where he annoyingly remained beside her. “You’ll be bunking with the rest of the pirates below deck.”
“After today I will be back home with my sisters.”
Alōs tsked. “All these years, and you still have not learned that optimism is a fool’s step forward. It will always have you falling into a ditch.”
“Well, I’m glad we can at least both agree that this ship is a real pit.”
“This ship,” said Alōs, a rare edge entering his tone, “is the fastest and most sought-after vessel in all of Aadilor.”
Niya blinked up at him, a stir of elation that she had found a weakness in the mountain of stone. “Are you sure? I had heard that the Wild Widow was the fastest in Aadilor. It certainly is bigger.”
“Which is precisely what makes it slower,” countered Alōs. “The Wild Widow could never keep up with the Queen.”
“Care to wager?”
Alōs met her gaze before his eyes traveled to her crooked grin. “Gladly,” he began. “But it won’t get you out of the bind you’ve once again tied yourself in.”
Niya’s smile dropped.
“I see the reality of your predicament has returned,” he continued. “Good. Now, do not torture yourself further, fire dancer, by standing here getting burned. I invite you to take a reprieve. We can sit in my nicely shaded quarters and discuss what your role will be here. I’ll even pour us a bit of whiskey as a peace offering.”
Niya was astonished she had not tried to throw him overboard already.
“So long as I remain on this ship,” said Niya, hating how her voice shook with her rage, “there will be nothing peaceful between us, pirate.”
Alōs studied her a long moment. His smooth features remaining a placid lake. “Very well,” he said at last, “but know it is you who has set the tone of your new beginning here, not I. And be warned, no matter how difficult you may think you can be, I promise, you have no idea how difficult having me as your captain can become.”
With that, Alōs strode from her, his movements those of a graceful king returning to his throne beside the wheel.
Niya growled in frustration as she spun around to grip the banister.
Kill him, her magic replied to her fury. Burn him to nothing but bone.
I wish, she thought, glaring down at her binding bet. Once this blasted thing was off her wrist, by the stars and sea, she would certainly try.
How dare he act as though the results of their bet were already cemented.
The pompous arse!
He’s only trying to get into my head, she reasoned, attempting to calm herself.
But sticks, where were her sisters?
This was its own form of torture, standing still. Waiting.
Niya was not used to waiting.
She took matters into her own hands, but what could she do presently?
Niya tensed as an idea gripped her. Spinning her hands, she sent a burst of her magic into the air. And then another. Forming orange clouds of smoke to float higher and higher.
Signals.
Any with the Sight had to see them, even at a far distance.
Why hadn’t she thought of this before?
For the rest of the day, she remained exactly where she was, sending her colorful magic into the azure sky. She desperately pushed past the ache in her body as her magic became exhausted, depleted.
Rest, it whimpered. Rest.
But she couldn’t. Her time was almost up.
But in the end her gifts decided for her, when she was only able to produce the smallest wiggle of steam from her fingers.
Niya slumped against the banister, breathing heavily, wanting to lie down, to sleep. By some miracle she didn’t. She kept staring at the empty horizon. Hoping, wishing, that anyone had seen her magic. Hoping and wishing even when Kintra came to give her bread and water; it remained untouched and became sullied in the heat and salt air. She remained as still as the horizon in front of her as the sun began to set, throwing out a dark blanket of stars.
Niya stared and waited, strangling her growing panic. She became unmoving, unfeeling. She could almost believe herself becoming a statue, the kind that lived on in myth.
The girl stood so long unblinking that she did not notice when the wood of the ship grew up, over, and around her, claiming her soul. If you look carefully, my child, at every passing vessel, you might see a woman carved into the bow, forlorn in her frozen scream. For that is indeed the Crying Queen.
As if the lost gods had heard her fears, eventually a sliver of light cut across the dark water, a slowly ascending knife dragging across her heart as the sun rose.
Nonononononono.
Niya’s final plea thrashed wildly in her mind, raked down her skin. She stood on the deck, captured in her disbelief, her nails cutting into the banister, her breaths all used up.
Her left wrist began to tingle, but she would not look down, would not watch the black band of her binding bet inking its last stretch and filling in completely. Her debt, her chains. A year, it whispered. A year.
Niya stared into the center of the sun as though she could force it back beneath the surface.
It did not yield.
The sun rose, proud and defiant, above the Obasi Sea. Niya’s free will swallowed up by light as her eyes began to throb and water.
Tears of pain.
The first light of the fourth day awoke bright, new, and calm—an utter nightmare.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Niya remembered little of how she’d come to be blindfolded, hog-tied, and then bound and secured some more in a holding cell that sat deep in the belly of the Crying Queen.
There had been a lot of screaming.
She remembered that.
As well as quite a bit of blood, none her own, of course, dirtying her face and clothes further.
As soon as the fourth day had broken fully, Niya had lost all reason.
She had to get off this blasted boat!
Present binding bets be damned.
As she stared down into the churning sea cutting against the bow, she barely batted an eye at the prospect of the Fade taking her if she did not survive the dive toward her escape. Alōs could find her in the land of the dead to serve her sentence. Sanity was a thing of the past now.
Unfortunately, her plans were quickly foiled. Before she could get a foot up on the banister, she felt them approach, ten of the strongest crew.
“Come to take in the view with me?” she asked the group, inching closer to the ledge.
“We have instructions to take ye below,” said a hulking man, eyes narrowed beneath his stringy hair, which was pasted over his brow, as he calculated her stance.
“Thank you,” said Niya, gripping the railing. “But I prefer it up here.”
“It ain’t a request,” explained a woman, gray braids hanging to her waist. Niya sensed she was one of the few crew members who held the gifts.
Niya’s own magic jumped alive then, ready to fight.
“Captain’s orders,” another added.
Niya’s scowl deepened.
It did not sit well that Alōs had predicted her next move.