“How?” asked Niya.
Bree shrugged above her. “Water seems to feed his gifts, so I guess why wouldn’t he be able to control it enough to walk on?”
Realizations slammed hard into Niya then. Water seems to feed his gifts.
By the Obasi Sea, of course!
How had Niya not put this together before? His magic was always so cold, wet, especially as it came out to block her heat whenever she tried to hit him with a spell.
Alōs was also said to have come from Esrom, the hidden underwater kingdom; it would make sense his gifts would be connected to something that surrounded his people’s land. Interesting, thought Niya. Did all the gifted from Esrom power their magic the same way? What would happen if he were in a dry landscape? Would he become weaker in his magic, as Niya did when she could not move?
Niya’s mind reeled at what this could mean.
Leverage, her magic cooed.
Yes, she agreed, a genuine smile creeping across her lips.
So happy was she with this new information that Niya slipped into a peaceful sleep for the first time since stepping onto the Crying Queen, momentarily forgetting she was surrounded by deadly pirates. Especially two who were watching and waiting in the dark.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wake up! hissed her magic into the depths of her mind, just as the creaking of floorboards interrupted Niya’s dreams of a dark kingdom hidden inside a cave, the splendor of costumes and familiar laughter.
Niya snapped her eyes open as a large shadow passed overhead, a subtle wind from an arm rising.
Niya caught it on the downfall. She struggled to hold a jagged dagger a few hairs above her chest. Burlz grunted and ripped the knife out of her grip before swinging down again.
Niya twirled out of her hammock, falling past Green Pea’s, before hitting the ground in a crouch.
On her way to stand, she kicked out the legs of a second attacker who was standing nearby.
He fell against the floor with a grunt, and Niya instantly recognized the reedy figure—Prik.
The two pirates had approached her from either side of her bunk as she slept.
The scrawny worm was scrambling to his feet just as Burlz squeezed through the break in the hammocks to lunge toward her.
She twirled away, her magic swirling at the ready in her gut, but she pushed it down. Not yet, she thought, backing down the alley that was made from the rows and rows of sleeping pirates in their bunks. Niya wanted to feel the satisfaction of punishing Burlz and Prik with her bare hands.
“I said I’d be gettin’ you back for disrespectin’ me,” sneered Burlz as he stalked toward her, his gaze glassy from drink but no less burning with his loathing. “Might as well not make me chase ye, deary. It only gets me goin’ more.”
“Then that makes two of us,” said Niya, ducking to enter a new row. “Playing with my food always makes it taste sweeter.”
Pirates beside them began to stir and wake. Bree’s small head peeked above her hammock behind Burlz’s shoulder, eyes wide. In the next breath she had crawled from her bed and scurried up the far stairs leading on deck.
So much for bunkmate loyalties, thought Niya as none of the other crew moved to intervene. In fact, most told Niya and her assailants to shut up and let them sleep.
Burlz ducked into the same row as her. “You seem the type of gutter trash that needs nightly remindin’ of their place.”
“And you seem the type of swine whose prick is so small they need to hurt others to feel big,” countered Niya. “Or perhaps you have no prick at all, which is why you need this one to feel like you do.”
Sensing his sidekick approaching from behind, Niya threw back an elbow.
“Oof,” grunted Prik as he doubled over, dropping a wire rope he had been angling to wrap around her throat.
Niya punched him in the face, blood splattering from his lips as one of his four teeth was flung free.
“You bitch!” he spat, dropping to his knees and searching for his tooth as though he could put it back.
Niya ignored the man on the ground as she ran straight toward the charging Burlz. Using a beam for leverage, she kicked off it, spinning and knocking away the dagger in his hands. She swung against a hammock, a crew member growling in protest at being jostled from sleep, before she threw herself up and onto Burlz’s shoulders, wrapping her legs around his neck and locking her ankles together.
She squeezed.
Burlz growled and clawed at her legs for release.
She didn’t give him a sliver.
Yes, purred her magic, harder. It vibrated in her veins. Her hands heated with her gifts, and she pressed them against Burlz’s face.
He howled, the smell of his burning flesh filling Niya’s nostrils, and she grinned.
Burlz smacked them up against another beam, over and over, but Niya just grunted through the pain. Nearby lanterns flared along with her magic, which she pushed to feed into her muscles and reinforce her strength to tighten her legs, tighter, tighter, until—
Crack.
Niya jumped from her perch as Burlz toppled to the floor, dead. Neck broken.
The crew’s quarters were drenched in silence as Niya took in deep breaths, her magic crackling around her, hungry for more movement, for her to dance. Those with the Sight would have been able to see the red haze pulsing from her skin. She looked from Burlz’s lifeless body to Prik, still bent over at the far end of the row.
Niya picked up the dagger that she had kicked to the floor. “All right, lover boy,” she crooned, stepping over Burlz and toward Prik. “You’re next.”
“You’ll stand down now, girl,” Kintra’s voice commanded from the stairs behind Niya.
Turning, she found the quartermaster’s dark gaze, a small Bree by her side. Kintra glanced over the scene, from Burlz’s body and the sniveling Prik to the pirates who watched on from their hammocks, before her hard eyes landed back on Niya. “You’re to come with me,” she said. “The captain wishes to see you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Niya would be the first to admit that murder was often a tedious business.
And despite the lore surrounding him, the Thief King was a lenient master, considering the heathens he allowed to make up the majority of his kingdom. To lose favor with him meant you had done something very terrible indeed.
Niya would always remember the first life she and her sisters had been ordered to send to the Fade. She’d been fourteen, young, but old enough to respect the power she had been given at birth.
Despite it being winter in most of Aadilor, Niya was warm within the Thief Kingdom, tucked into her bed beneath the palace. Her sheets were silky against her skin as she stretched, letting out a yawn. Her night had ended only moments ago, but it had been a night like many others here. She and her sisters had been entertaining the court members for the past year, their performances consisting of spinning a roomful of guests into slobbering animals. Yet Niya could always feel the potential for more as she danced, tempting whispers within her magic. More desperation from the crowd, more twisting of pain into desire. The potential to make puppets of the giftless and hypnotize the less powerful. It called to Niya, just beyond the surface of her skin, buried in the center of her flames—hot, consuming, greedy. Take, it crooned to her. Consume.
Niya turned over, eyes resting on the dancing flame of the candle beside her bed. She had felt all these emotions earlier tonight. But Arabessa was always there, with her guiding notes and perfectly played instruments keeping Niya from walking forward into that dark, Larkyra from twisting her voice sharp. Arabessa, their conductor, who kept the Bassette sisters contained.
A knocking at her door brought Niya’s thoughts back to her chambers.
Who could that be?
It was absurdly late. Or rather way too early, a time when not even the thieves and gamblers kept court. But the knocking sounded again before a servant entered, one who’d been born without sight.
“The king orders an audience with the fire dancer,” they explained.