“My sister,” Bastian answered, warning in his tone. “And very, very far out of your league.”
Understanding dawned on Finn’s face. “So you’re the one marrying the Emperor. The one that the erstwhile fire god here was so intent on saving, along with the Queen.” He waved a hand at Gabe, brow quirking as he noted his and Bastian’s clasped hands. “I figured it was because he held a candle for you, but it seems I attributed that candle to the wrong person. And where is the Emperor?”
“Dead,” Alie said evenly. “So tread lightly.”
Bastian’s hand jerked in Gabe’s, shock moving through him like a lightning strike. He turned to Alie, mouth open with a thousand questions poised behind it, but Gabe squeezed his fingers. “Later.”
Were the pirate captain of the Caldienan fleet not right in front of them, Bastian would say fuck you to thatlater. As it stood, he swallowed his half-formed questions.
The appreciative light in Finn’s eyes only got brighter. “I see.” With one last look at Alie, he turned to Bastian. “Now, what’s this about Apollius being gone? That seems to solve nearly all of our problems, doesn’t it?”
“He’s not in me anymore, but He’s not gone.” Bastian jerked a thumb toward the Burnt Isles on the horizon, his brain still spinning around the fact that Alie had apparently killed Jax. There was a tremor in his sister’s hands, a wavering behind the steely resolve in her face, but there was no time to address it now. “We have reason to believe He’s there. What with the sudden clearing of a smog that lasted centuries.”
“Fair assumption,” Finn said. “And your plan to deal with that is…”
“Kill Him,” Gabe answered, low and pointed. “However we have to.”
Low fire in his voice. Unease sat uncomfortably in Bastian’s middle, like the morning after too much wine.
Movement behind him. Bastian glanced back. Lilia was still next to the mast, and still silent. Her hazel eyes were wide, staring at Val and Mari, her pale hands working over each other, worrying at her nails. She hovered there, caught between moving forward and hiding herself away.
“Fine by me.” Finn looked back over the water, toward where his fleet waited. “Getting to the Golden Mount shouldn’t be terribly difficult. And that’s still where you want to go, right?”
“What happened to your plans on my crown?”
“Like I said, a pin in the coups.” Finn grinned. “We can discuss proper repayment for my help after the apocalypse is averted. Not much point in ruling a world where the God of Everything is trying to do the same. Fairly certain I’d lose.”
“Even if we can’t find where Apollius has gone, we can still restore the Fount,” Malcolm said. “That has to count for something.”
“There’s our plan, then.” Bastian nodded. “Go to the Mount, find Lore, restore the Fount.” He gave Finn a shrewd look. “Business between us can be resolved at a later date.”
“The pin in the coups can be removed then.” Mari’s eyes were flinty.
Finn didn’t respond, just gave Bastian a wolfish grin. “Well then, that’s settled. We’ll head back to…”
His words staggered, faded out; his expression changed to one of guarded puzzlement. Finn cocked his head toward the fleet. “Am I the only one who hears that?”
He wasn’t. Bastian heard it, too.
Screaming.
“Myriad hells.” Val leaned out over the railing, shielding her eyes as if shade could make her see farther. “What’s happening over there?”
“Maybe your crew decided to hold a coup of their own,” Gabe said darkly.
But then the sound of distant screaming was undercut by the slap of something hitting the hull, and a scream much closer than the waiting fleet.
Bastian half expected the ship to capsize, assuming that the slapping sound was some great beast of the sea. But when he turned toward the sound, back at the stern, there was no massive fin, no toothed snout.
There was a hand, rotting. Closed around the ankle of a crewman. It pulled him inexorably toward the side of the ship as he clawed at the planks, gouging runnels with his broken fingernails.
Gabe acted fast, running to the crewman, trying to haul him backward. Bastian went to help, but whatever pulled at him was too strong. With a tearing cry, the crewman went overboard.
Another hand slapped onto the deck.
Drowned bodies, eyes black and mouths yawning open, pulling themselves up out of the sea.
Looking just like the bodies Lore had raised in the catacombs, what seemed like lifetimes ago.
