Nevertheless, she did not wait long to act.
Niya turned and jumped onto the ledge, kicking away the outstretched arms she felt reaching for her, but there were too many limbs compared to her two feet. With a tug to her pants, the crew pulled her back to the deck, grasping tightly every inch of her body.
“If you value your lives, you will let me go,” she growled, twisting and thrashing as best she could. Her skin began to heat with her magic, intent to burn burn burn.
“That’s exactly why we won’t,” grunted the gray-haired woman, calloused hands only gripping tighter as a hard surface expanded from her palm, shielding her from Niya’s growing heat. Blue mist stretched out.
Magic, thought Niya.
“Cap’n’s bite is far worse than yers,” said the oily man from earlier, bending close to her ear.
“I can assure you,” said Niya, teeth gritted, “it is not.” With a headbutt to the man’s temple and a bite to the shoulder of the woman, Niya bent low before popping up to blast off the rest of the pirates’ grasps. Spinning, she swiped up two pirates’ blades from their hips, caring little as she slashed through skin, her breaths coming like cannon blasts in her desperation to escape.
Niya twisted and twirled, bent and skipped over limbs lunging toward her. She was nearly able to scramble back toward the ship’s rail when their numbers doubled. The pirates slid down from ropes and masts and poured out from below deck. By the lost gods, she thought, are there any left to sail the ship?
Niya had begun to pull forward her magic once more, too ready to char them all to cinders, but the next thing she remembered through her white rage was an anvil of weight knocking her to the deck. Bodies, dozens of them, piled above her as she wriggled and screamed. Crew members yelled as well, calling for more aid as she pulled in energy from their movement, a dizzying sensation as she transferred it into her gift, using it to singe them off. Their clothes caught her magic, eliciting flames before buckets of salt water and sand were thrown on top of them. The sizzle of steam. She coughed and wheezed as a cool presence was suddenly above her.
Alōs’s blue gaze was bone chilling but unmoved as he watched her growl and curse like the beast she was as his crew pinned her to the deck.
“Ensure she cannot move a pinkie,” his deep voice had rumbled as he’d thrown more ropes to one of his pirates. Alōs’s was the last face she had seen before a blindfold had covered her eyes and she’d been dragged away.
Niya growled from where she currently lay on the damp floor of her holding cell.
She felt like an animal, and not in a good way.
Her sight was taken by her blindfold, every stitch of her bound tight by rope and chain. Arms and legs bent painfully back behind her and bound together. Even her fingers were meticulously pinched into place.
Her awareness felt frazzled, the grace of her movements stolen.
“I’m going to kill you all!” she screamed, her voice hoarse, throat aching.
She was only met with the creaks and rocking of the boat.
With a groan, she managed to roll from her belly to her side.
How has this happened? How have I ended up here?
You have an anger problem. Arabessa’s words, which seemed so long ago now, slithered over Niya’s memory mockingly.
By the lost gods, how Niya hated when Arabessa was right.
Perhaps if she had not reacted so impulsively on deck, she’d be back in her small compartment, able to think more clearly to search for a way out.
Instead she had dug herself into a deeper hole, and now she was growing more and more resigned that she might never crawl out.
Her sisters had not come.
They had not come, and Alōs still held their identities in the palm of his hand, as well as her servitude for a year.
Niya had ruined everything.
She was a horrible sister.
A traitorous daughter.
She deserved every bit of pain she now suffered.
Tears finally ran hot down her cheeks.
Niya despised crying—she thought it a useless expense of energy—but she was no longer in control of herself.
With her arms beginning to tingle, the first sign they were falling asleep, she felt herself giving in to her fate, her fight leaving.
No, hissed her magic, twisting uncomfortably in her gut at sensing her resignation. We are most powerful. We are most deadly. We will have our revenge. We will!
“How?” she whispered, almost whimpered.
In tiiiiiime, her gifts cooed. When they least expect it.
“Yes,” muttered Niya, encouragement brewing. “Yes.”
Her magic was right. She was one of the Mousai.
I have melted flesh from bone, she thought. I have stripped smiles from the most ruthless.
“You will know my wrath!” screamed Niya into the compartment, her last push of energy, before she began to laugh.
It was an unhinged sound, even to her own ears, but she could not stop.
With her cheek pressed into the dirty floor, her limbs twisted and numb, she laughed and laughed and laughed.
Because though her sisters hadn’t come, they would.
Despite her current captivity, it would take more than this to break Niya and, more importantly, Niya’s faith in her sisters.
They would come.
And once reunited, they’d send more than a few new souls to the Fade.
CHAPTER NINE
Niya awoke to the sound of boots shuffling into her cell. Rough hands lifted her by her arms and hauled her up two flights of stairs. The air grew fresher with each of their strides, before she was deposited with an oof onto a hard floor.
“Cut her legs loose, but keep her arms and hands chained down,” came Alōs’s deep command.
“You sure, Cap’n?” asked a gruff voice. “She’s a crazy sort of bird, she is. Better to stuff or eat her lot than keep ’em as pets.”
Niya spat on the boots she sensed in front of her.
“OY!”
Niya’s face whipped back with the hit, the side of her mouth burning as the taste of blood blossomed along her tongue. Alōs barked an order for his man to stand down. “Her spit is the cleanest thing on you, Burlz. Now do as I say.”
With a muttered grumble, Niya’s wrists were tugged and bolted down behind her, to an anchor on the floor, before her legs were freed. She held in a cry as blood rushed painfully back into them and she was forced to kneel. Still blindfolded, all Niya could concentrate on was the agony lacing through her body, her muscles having been twisted awkwardly for too long.
Water was roughly poured into her mouth, and she gulped and spluttered greedily, the liquid warm as it ran down the front of her shirt.
With a tug, her blindfold was pulled away, and Niya squinted at her new surroundings.
She was in the captain’s quarters. Moonlight streamed in through a large paned window at her back. Standing candelabras lit the dim space, sending flickers of warmth along the bookshelves. Kintra and the man whom she now assumed was Burlz, the oily oaf whom she had fought with on deck, stood by one of the two closed doors in the room.
Niya knelt beside a large mahogany desk, Alōs peering down at her like some dark wildcat from his chair. “Two of my men are covered in stitches,” he began. “Three others are still in the infirmary with severe burns from your tantrum yesterday.”
“Is that all?” Niya attempted to sound bored.
“You will pay for your actions.” Alōs’s gaze was steady. “And I fear the sentencing will be decided by my crew.”
Niya glanced to Burlz, taking in his grin and the way his black eyes promised pain.
Try me, she wanted to snarl in return. His slap would not go unpunished.
“I vote they throw me overboard,” suggested Niya. “Anything to get me off this bloody ship.”
“It is too bad you feel that way,” replied Alōs coolly. “For that will make your next year here rather uncomfortable.”