Memory after memory flipped by. He experienced her receiving a plethora of fine jewels, from other kings and queens, from subjects and scoundrels like himself. Alōs did not know how long it was before he got to the red stone that gleamed like fresh blood, dangling from a long chain. He clung to that memory’s thread until it led them to travel through a portal door to a hilltop on Hallowed Island. She was there to help the valley’s alchemists collect rare herbs. As she bent over to pluck lavender berries into her basket, the chain’s clasp came undone, and the necklace slipped into the thick brush.
If Alōs weren’t specifically looking for the moment the necklace had become lost, he would have missed it entirely. Especially since immediately after, a muffled roar of a far-off beast had the old queen glancing up, her pulse quickening. Her guard’s hand came down on her shoulder. “Time to go, Your Highness,” they said.
As quickly and silently as the group had entered through their portal door, they slipped back through. But before the portal had closed, the old queen had looked back at the hilltop on Hallowed Island to watch a giant, green skin with rippling muscles, bend down to retrieve the glowing red stone from the grass. The gem’s strong gleam had distracted the beast from the scene of the group vanishing with a snap through the portal door, retreating safely back to the Valley of Giants.
The screeching of rickshaw horns blasting nearby, the drivers weaving precariously through the clogged streets, returned Alōs to where he stood within the Thief Kingdom. The Gazing District was a distant tangle of structures now blocks away.
His eyes met Niya’s beneath her brown eye mask.
Well? her gaze seemed to say.
But Alōs wasn’t about to divulge the particulars with Larkyra and Arabessa nearby. Finding all the pieces of the Prism Stone was getting more and more impossible, and he didn’t need what was left of the Mousai to compete with. He could picture it now, the pair running back to their king to give him a clear path of revenge for Alōs blackmailing him and his precious pets.
“Perhaps your dear sisters could give us a moment?” He lifted a brow.
Niya shared a glance with the two girls, each puckering her lips in displeasure before retreating to the far corner of their sidewalk to wait.
“So what are we going to do?” asked Niya.
What indeed? thought Alōs as he scratched his chin. He felt the scruff he had been too preoccupied to shave on their final leg to the Thief Kingdom. “I’m not entirely sure yet,” he admitted. “I see no way around visiting Hallowed Island to search for the stone.”
“We’ll have to search the entire island? That seems an impossible task. Especially with these cannibal giants lumbering around.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that. In the old queen’s memories, she saw a guard find the necklace. If my knowledge serves regarding their kind, they are extremely loyal to their chief, who is a collector of rare and beautiful artifacts. The guard would have brought it to him.”
“So we are to infiltrate another royal’s home?”
Alōs frowned. “This is the difficult part. Hardly any who make port on Hallowed Island ever make it out to speak of it. Over the years the giants have made it quite clear that they do not enjoy visitors or being disturbed.”
Niya crossed her arms over her chest. “Then why, by the stars and sea, was Queen Murilia even there?”
“The island is rumored to be ripe with rare but strong healing herbs,” explained Alōs. “It appears the people of the valley went there on a foraging mission.”
“Still, that seems like an awfully foolish place to go to snag some berries,” Niya pointed out. “If I had a grandmother, I would never let her step foot on such an island.”
“If she was anything like you,” Alōs found himself saying, “you’d have little choice in where she went.”
“If she was anything like me,” Niya added, chin tipped up, “she would have known the exact moment such a precious gem fell from around her neck. Then none of us would be in this position to begin with.”
Alōs smiled down at the fire dancer before catching the scrutinizing eyes of Arabessa and Larkyra, who had slowly slunk closer. They now stood a couple of paces away.
They did not trust him.
As well they shouldn’t.
Alōs was beginning to not trust himself.
Especially around Niya.
He had always enjoyed her company, of course, even when she outwardly despised any breath they might have shared, but since the valley . . . since that kiss and her burning determination to keep looking for this stone, something had fissured open in Alōs’s chest.
Something he had made sure to drown at sea.
Compassion.
The word coiled with disgust through his mind.
But he could not deny it was now being resurrected, though Alōs was not yet prepared to face what that might mean.
“It seems your sisters are over waiting.” Alōs nodded toward the girls. “We can discuss what’s to be done about the other part of the stone later. You can call them back over if you’d like.”
As he watched the three women regroup, immediately chatting animatedly about what was happening in Jabari and a recent trip Larkyra had taken with her husband, he saw a spark in Niya’s eyes return, a spark that he realized had been dimming these past months.
Thoughts of his younger brother filled his mind. He and Ariōn had not been given the gift of growing up together. Their time had been stolen early by the inevitable injustice of this world. But he knew the power behind a chance to one day remedy their lost past. To build a relationship that should exist among siblings. The idea almost left him breathless, a painful, sharp-as-a-knife yearning in his chest.
It hit him hard then just how happy Niya was to be reunited with her sisters and just how unhappy she must be aboard his ship. The true weight of being chained to him, of all the bargains she was fighting to win. Though she stood strong, he caught the signs of tiredness in her worn clothes, which were stained and wrinkled compared to her sisters’ well-sewn disguises. She even had a bit of dirt on her cheek peeking out from beneath her mask.
His crew was all having a night off; she deserved one too.
“This might be a fool’s question,” he heard himself say before really thinking about the consequences of saying it. “But what are the chances the Mousai would be performing tonight?”
Three sets of surprised eyes landed on him.
“Excuse me?” asked Niya.
“I know these events usually are planned farther in advance,” he went on, “but given how long it’s been since the kingdom has had the pleasure of the Mousai’s talents, I’m sure the king could arrange it.”
“You . . . want to see the Mousai perform?” Niya regarded him suspiciously.
“It was not lost on me how quickly the crew fled our ship,” he explained, wanting to clarify his intentions. “And given the heavy amount of sailing we must push through next, I know they’d be a less disgruntled lot after such a night as one fueled by the madness of the Mousai. But if you do not think it possible—”
“Anything is possible,” Arabessa cut in. “It only depends on the price.”
“I have plenty of silver to help pay for—”
“I refer to the price a particular dancer would owe for slipping out of her duties to you, even for a night.”
“I ask for no price,” said Alōs. “I think we all deserve a bit of revelry tonight.”
The girls seemed to consider him a moment, Niya’s gaze the most curious, the most questioning.
What new scheme is this? her silence seemed to ask.
Alōs pushed away the discomfort of asking himself the same question.
“Well.” Larkyra rocked back on her heels. “Let’s not weigh a gifted pig and all that. We have to see about getting the Mousai back together.”
With that, the three ladies set off immediately, Alōs remaining to handle a few other pieces of business, like acquiring a map of Hallowed Island.