I immediately pick it up, denting the sides of the map she wrote on.
Soren,
Perhaps some will see this as reckless. Cypress has given me a task, and it’s one that I was not allowed to share with you. Your involvement— or any of the others— would have lead to death and I could not risk it.
I don’t know where they’re taking me. Only that I can hear the siren’s song deep within the jungle and that it will lead me straight to them.
Which means they’re here.
So, I will go.
You should know that she put a ruby under my skin, right at my neck. It will prevent anyone from reading me, including Misery. Including you. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.
If something happens to me, just know that I, too, now have someone to think about in this suffering. Thank you for that gift.
With more love than I can describe,
Jane
With more love…
The weight of that statement, beautifully unbearable, crashes into me.
A sound escapes me—a low, guttural growl of pain and fury, the kind of noise that tears out of a man when the world has ripped away what matters most.
My breathing morphs into panting, my body full of so much energy and yet nowhere for it to go. “I’ll find you,” I whisper, staring at her name, my voice breaking, barely more than a rasp. “I swear to all the fucking sirens in the ocean, I’ll find you, Jane.”
The tears threatening to spill are held back by sheer force of will, and my eyes burn with something far fiercer than grief.
Whoever took her will suffer a reckoning so complete they’ll wish they’d never been born. Even if that means I have to find a way to ruin a god himself.
Iwilldo it.
I’ll even give Cypress whatever the fuck she wants. I’d do whatever task she had given Jane, and I’d even hold back on the bitching.
Jane is being used. Cypress put a fucking ruby in her skin.
Peering out the open window, now assuming she climbed out here, I lift my gaze to the ocean. That’s all that separates me from the Order of Ash.It has to be where they’re going; it’s where I can feel Anya’s very faint pulse of life.
I reach at my side, touching my mask before lifting it off of my hip to examine it. The chipped away pieces are still there, and for a moment, absolutely nothing exists inside of me; no fear, no love, no emotion, no rage. I simply exist, staring at a mask I earned through blood.Others’blood.
Only allowing clarity to guide my mind, my sole purpose is to unwind what happened, and figure out how to best proceed.
Lifting my gaze and staring out at the ocean, I put on my mask, the clay morphing until it’s like a second skin. Immediately, I can feel Bones out there, and somewhere, in the distance, I can feel Anya, too. She’s faint, though. More like remnants of her essence rather thanher.
Jane isn’t anywhere.
I’d behead a thousand men for her, if she asked.
I have a feeling I’ll have to, no matter what.
It’s notclear to me how long I’m there before I sense Basilisk’s presence, the man entering the shanty, strutting in with hands in his pockets like he has all the time in the world. “You just sat there,” I remark. “When I sensed something was wrong.”
His golden eyes flick up lazily. “I know better than to go near a trap set by Misery.”
“Care to elaborate, at all?” I ask, my voice full of tension. Out of all the people present, aside from Ritter, Basilisk might be the most useful, and instead, he’s like wielding a sword with no hilt.
All the time on the ship, Basilisk hardly moved. Came out only to exercise and refused to speak to another. I left him alone at his behest, because it didn’t feel right to go near him.
