And they both knew a time was coming when she wouldn’t get the luxury of choice.
“Outside,” Lore answered, same as she always did.
The smile on his face turned sharp at the corners. Martin advanced a step, out onto the flat rock where Lore stood. She fought the urge to step back, knowing it’d just send her toppling into the water—onto the rocks. The tide was going out.
“You think you’re too good for me?” He still spoke with that polite tone, and it made gooseflesh ripple up Lore’s arms. She’d had similar things spat at her before when she rebuffed an advance in a tavern or alleyway, but none of those catcallers had been in a position of power over her. “You think that because you were a Queen for two minutes, I can’t have you whenever I want? I keep asking because I like them willing, but I’ll be having some of what the King was having, deathwitch.”
Gods, she hated feeling afraid. She’d fielded many unpleasant emotions recently, but fear was always the worst, the most helpless. Lore’s fingers worked back and forth, metaphysically clawing at the rock below her, the dead driftwood on the beach, the stone of the lighthouse.
“Outside work,” Lore said again. Then, choking on it, “Please.”
Martin stood right in front of her, now. Still smiling, he shook his head. “No. I think you need some inside work today, Hemlock Queen.”
“What about a trade?” she said, quickly, the words racing her disgust so they couldn’t be overtaken. “I’ll do something for you if you do something for me.”
“Something,” Martin scoffed. “Say it. I want to hear it.”
The back of her throat tasted sour. “I’ll choose inside work if you get me a boat.”
Martin stared at her, near-colorless eyebrow raised to near-colorless hairline. Then he brayed a laugh. “You think you’re in a position to bargain?” His leathery hand closed around her wrist. Instinctually, Lore jerked backward, losing her balance—he used the moment to pull her to his chest, his breath in her face, hot and harsh and smelling like cheap alcohol. “Even if I gave you a ship all to yourself, you wouldn’t be able to get off this island. The prison galleys can barely navigate through the ash even with the steel guidelines. What makes you think you can?”
Nothing did, but she was desperate. Lore’s fingers worked and worked as she tried to pull away from Martin, weaving at magic that was no longer there.
She’d held all of it, every drop of Mortem left in the world. And now there was nothing.
It’d happened right as the barge approached the shoreline of the Second Isle, a deeprippingfeeling, something vital as an organ torn out. Lore had gasped, pressing a hand against her middle.Nyxara?
Something happened, the goddess had murmured, a thrum of anxiety in the back of Lore’s mind.
She knew even before she reached for magic that it was gone, her grasping hands gripping nothing. No darkness, no death, just the stale, smoggy air of the Isles.
What do I do?Panic made her heart race and her breath come heavy.
I don’t know, the goddess said, sounding as helpless as Lore felt.I don’t know.
The next morning, the gray stars on Lore’s palms had faded. She could feel Mortem, but she still couldn’t wield it. And though that was something she’d always wanted, now it felt like a punishment. One she couldn’t figure out what she’d done to deserve.
Especially since the damn Buried Goddess was still in her head.
Not now, though, as the sun burned high behind the ash, this awful man trying to haul her toward the door and not caring about anything but showing his own power. Now Nyxara was silent. Cowed once again by a man who looked at a woman and saw nothing but a vessel for his violence, a tool for his use. Lore’s feet fought for purchase on the rock, her hands pressing fruitlessly at Martin’s chest, trying to keep him away.
“Stop fighting,” Martin said, slapping the side of her face, the barely healed lines of her new scar. “I own you, Lore Arceneaux.”
And something about that—how it reminded her of Apollius, reminded her of how she was married to Bastian when Bastian had been locked inside his own mind—made Lore’s fear alchemize into rage.
She tore away from Martin, letting the momentum force her off the rock and into the churn of the sea. The currents pulled at her ankles, but she didn’t topple. “Don’t touch me.”
“Have you forgotten where you are?” He crowded her again, his face mere inches from her own, gaining extra height from hisposition on the rock. “I can do whatever I like, and then I can throw you in the sea, and no one will care. No one will come looking for you.” He smiled again, sour wine fuming into her face. “I’ll make you call me Your Majesty while you’re choking on—”
Maybe it was the reminders of Bastian. Maybe it was something that had been brewing ever since she set foot on the Isles, so near to the Golden Mount and the Fount the gods had broken.
Or maybe it was just plain desperation making her try something she wasn’t sure would work.
Part of her didn’t expect that she could use Spiritum anymore. Mortem had been pulled from her grasp when she arrived here; she assumed the same thing had happened to the power of life, especially now that she was separated from Bastian, their Law of Opposites sundered. Using magic didn’t really fit into her tentative plan to become an irrelevant face in the crowd, unmarked enough to someday, somehow slip away.
But when she reached for the threads of Spiritum lurking in Martin’s skin and bone and blood, they jumped to her like they’d been waiting.
Lore channeled it through her, second nature. She tugged on a strand, and Martin’s heart sped, galloping behind his ribs. He dropped back, hands pressed to his chest, his face turning red and his veins swelling like leeches.
