The pirate couldn’t help himself. He loved to talk. I forced a smile over my mouth, gazing at the blurred colors of his face. “I couldn’t be happier for you. Did you buy Demyan a summer home?”
Kriska laughed, his eyes full of malice. “Something about sirens and pirates. I almost want to abandon the deal I made. Buy that summer home and lock you inside. Then I could listen to your jests the rest of my life.”
“It wasn’t in jest. I think you’d make an adorable couple.”
Kriska chuckled as he leaned in. The tip of his knife slid down my dress, peeling the fabric away with his blade until the edge of a folded paper emerged, tucked against my skin. Kriska plucked it out.
I trailed the red wax glob as it flitted into the air. “Where do you plan to take me?”
“Is that why you stole this? Thought it might tell you?” He smiled, scratching idly at his beard with his knife. “Thought it might explain who hired me? A pirate doesn’t kiss and tell,malá ryba.”
I clenched my jaw, wondering how to keep him talking.
Manipulating humans wasn’t in my skillset. Not without the use of a song.
“I don’t need you to tell me,” I lied. “I figured it out on the ship. Aleksei gave it away.”
His smile dissolved, the flat edge of his knife disappearing under his whiskers, and he held me in a stare so hard and still something squirmed in the base of my stomach.
We remained there, locked into each other against the wind, until a sound called our attention away. Two horses slowly rode uphill toward us. I straightened, focusing on the details of their shape, though neither was Kye. My intuition told me that well enough.
Beside me, Kriska frowned, then stood. He left me sitting in the roots, long grass shifting behind his calves as he met the two of them, body rigid with unease.
I scooted into the base of the tree an inch at a time, then leaned my pounding head into the bark, listening to the sound of them speaking in Kravan. Their volume grew until their words became thunderous across the dead canyon air, and someone grabbed my boot, yanking me away from the tree.
I stared into the face of a man marred with scars, raised claw marks across an eye that had gone white in the weeks since I’d last seen him.
Burian smiled at me. “Thought you’d left me dead in the sea, didn’t you?”
Part II
THE SCREAM
29
Maren
Fingers twisted through my hair, yanking my head to the side. A tongue slid across my neck.
My breath came and went in knots, stuck in my lungs then out in a fevered gush of air. The ship rocked to the side, and I leaned with it, chained with my hands over my head. Waves lashed at the cerlerite, voices tossing shouts and orders from the deck above, muffled through the wood.
Wooden walls on every side, pulsing, shrinking, closing in—
Burian laughed as he patted my cheek. I opened and closed my hands, searching—begging for water to answer my call.
“Burian!” Demyan’s voice came sharp and impatient, thick with his Kravan accent.“Prestante hovorit s rybami.”
“Len sa znova spoznávat,”Burian answered, stroking my hair as he would a dog. He turned away to rejoin them, leaving me bound in the roots of the tree, my heart thrashing in my ears.
Demyan and Burian—that’s who Kye had been fighting when I’d run into Kriska. But they were here. And Kye wasn’t.
Dead,Kriska’s voice echoed in my head.
No.No, no, no—
The three men continued their argument as I slowly spiraled. My imagination tore loose from my control, and visions of Kye stripped me to the core. Laying in the grass, bleeding, unable to walk, light fading from his eyes—
Something between a snarl and a wail ripped from my raw throat. The pirates paused to glance at me, then continued their discussion, their words rapid and agitated. I sat heaving for air, for my heart to slow, for the gnawing pit in my stomach to fill enough for me to think.
