Page 54 of The Isles of the Gods
I’m at the helm when the sun climbs slowly behind me. The horizon lightens to a pale silver, and then the gold creeps in, lighting the way back to Alinor and safety. The first moon sets, the second lingering in the sky, then fading out as daybreak arrives.
A little while after, the chill of the night begins to leave my bones—my shirt starts to dry where it’s stretched across my shoulders, the fabric hardening as the salt bakes in.
I slept a few hours in the night—Keegan woke, and I gave him the best lesson I could. He listened to me gravely, nodding from time to time. I’d figured he’d be snobbish about learning from someone who never set foot inside a school a day in her life, but he just kept on asking questions.
Our makeshift sail is fastened to the top of the mast and tacked down to the gunwales to port and starboard in a ragged triangle—it’s about as rustic as it gets, and there’s no way toadjust it in a hurry. It’s fixed, and we have to handle the boat around it, rather than the reverse. We’re vulnerable, liable to be picked up by a wave and spun around, tipped out into the sea as the boat lies over on her side—and I don’t think we could get her up again.
So instead, we need to correct our course just as each wave reaches us from behind, picking us up to carry us along, surfing on top, almost weightless, before we gently slide down the back and wait for the next.
It’s a quiet, lulling thing to do, and it’s something to concentrate on. A way to escape my thoughts. My mind keeps tugging me back to theLizabetta.To her crew. To the sight of their bodies burning.
We haven’t woken Leander, and he didn’t move a muscle as Keegan and I talked quietly through how to sail the shore boat.
“I’ve never seen a display of magic like it,” Keegan said softly, gazing up at the stars to mark our direction. He was practicing what I’d just shown him, and our conversation had shifted to other things. “I was at school with him for years, and all I ever saw was idleness. Theysaidhe was powerful, but when was someone not flattering him? To conjure a wind like that, though, to speed theLizabettaalong for hours and hours, and then somehow still manage to keep me afloat and tame the fire? That’s more than simply powerful. I didn’t know it could be done.”
“He’s a royal magician,” I murmured, watching Leander as he slept. It seems impossible that this boy who let me grouch at him, tuck a flower behind his ear, could be as powerful as he truly is.
“Even for a royal magician,” Keegan replied. “Musteringthat much magicwitha sufficient sacrifice would be extraordinary. Without…”
He paused and looked at me, a question in his eyes, and I remembered he’d caught a glimpse of my marks when I fixed his porthole. But I kept my gloves on, and my mouth shut. I wasn’t in the mood for questions about magic, or to talk about all the teachers who failed to help me find my own magic.
So we let Leander rest, and once I was as sure as I could be that Keegan knew what he was doing, I took my turn at snatching a few hours of sleep as well.
Now the scholar is asleep once more, and I’m greeting the sun alone. Which means I’m watching when our prince finally yawns and rolls over onto his back. The morning light hits him full in the face, and I have a front-row view as he screws up those handsome features in irritation, tries to shift away, and encounters Keegan’s damp back.
His eyes fly open, and I watch as it all comes back to him. What happened. Where he is. His jaw tightens, his eyes close again, squeezing tight against reality. And then he schools his features, relaxing them into the half smirk that must be instinct.
His black hair is stiff with salt, his eyes still shadowed with exhaustion, but he looks better than he did as the sun set.
In the plain blue shirt and dark brown trousers Keegan found for him, clothes that are well made but unadorned, he’s nothing like a prince. I can’t picture him in his tailored clothes, can’t imagine him at his parties at the palace.
Instead, he just looks like a boy. Like someone I could know.
When he glances across, I flick my own gaze up to the sail, but I’m sure he knows I was watching him.
“Morning,” he murmurs, pushing up on one elbow, then pausing to cough.
“Try an apple,” I say quietly, nodding to the small pile sitting near him. “You should have some water, too, but the apple’s better against the salt in your mouth.”
He reaches across for one and shifts to sit as he takes a big bite. “Thank you.”
We sit in almost companionable silence for a time.
“How long until we make land, do you think?” he asks eventually.
I puff out a breath. “If this keeps up? I don’t have a fix on exactly where we were on the charts, and I don’t know how fast we’re going—we’re just lucky we can use the sun for a rough direction. But if we keep up this pace, I’d say we’ll sail all day today, overnight, and with any luck we’ll make Port Naranda by nightfall tomorrow.”
“Another day and a half. Did you sleep yet?”
I nod. “Keegan took over for a little. We let you rest.”
“I could have sworn we never stopped snuggling.” He glances back at the other boy with a hint of a smile. “He’s all elbows.”
“Well, those elbows let you sleep through the night,” I point out. I meant it as a tease—something to draw out more of that smile, as a shield against the grief that keeps trying to push its way back up my throat. But it comes out sounding like a jab.
It’s enough to silence Leander, and we crest a few more waves before he replies. “One more thing to add to my tab,” he says quietly.
“Why doesn’t he like you?” I ask. “I thought everyone did.”
