Four days. That’s all the time we would have in Threll.
I was given two weeks total for my mission. Fourteen days. Five would be used to travel there, and five to travel back — maybe less, if we were lucky, but I couldn’t plan for luck. As the days and hours and minutes ticked by, I found myself cursing the sun for rising too many times and the sea for moving us too slowly, even with the help of Zeryth, Nura and I moving the wind as much as we could to get us there faster. We were, after all, moving more than twice as fast as I did when I first came to Ara. Still, it was not fast enough.
The days ticked by.
We gathered to solidify the plan when we were less than twenty-four hours from shore, the misty outline of the Threllian continent barely visible in the distance. Once we landed, we could get to the Mikov estate very quickly, thanks to the Stratagrams that Zeryth had laid out over the course of his — apparently extensive — travels throughout Threll. We would not, I instructed, use force — not immediately. Not until I saw Serel and I had him in safety. I could not risk striking too early and having him suffer the consequences.
“And after that?” Max had asked, arms crossed as he leaned back against the mast.
“The whole purpose of this trip was to see what Reshaye is capable of,” Zeryth added with a sharp smile.
I resisted the urge to correct him, or to allow myself consider the fact that Reshaye still had hardly spoken to me since the sparring incident. Instead, I returned his grin with grim determination. “They will not let the slaves go easily. I’m sure that we will have our chance to fight. And to make sure that the estate will never hold slaves again.”
“Excellent,” Zeryth replied, sounding pleased with this answer, but it was Max’s eyes that met mine across the room. Together, we dipped our fingers into a pool of nervousness and hunger and fire.
That night, our shoulders brushing as we watched the sunlight paint the sea with splashes of blood red, I could only think about time and our lack of it. I was stupid. I should have asked for more.
I did not voice that thought, but Max said quietly, “With the right kind of relentless brute force, four days is more than enough time to topple a Threllian Lord or two.” As if, as always, he heard my buried doubts. And even though I didn’t totally believe him — not completely — I still let out a slow exhale of relief, just to hear that hope solidified into words.
“It will have to be.”
 |
I COULDN’T SLEEP that night. I was so nervous that I could hardly breathe. Nervous just to exist in that space again. Nervous that I would fail. Nervous that I wouldn’t. Nervous to see Serel again, after it had taken me so long to come back for him. And nervous that he wouldn’t be there.
Throughout this trip, I had been constantly aware of the web of my own thoughts, forever conscious of Reshaye’s cold darkness. I’d felt it moving and shifting and whispering, but nothing more, not even when Max was near me.
For a while, that had been a relief. But now, on the eve of our arrival, my own fragility loomed. I had one shot. Just one. And without Reshaye, I was nothing.
And so, alone above deck, I stood beneath the milky moonlight darkness. In the distance, I watched the outline of Threll grow closer and closer.
And I did what I never thought I would: I tried to wake Reshaye up.
When I touched it, I was hit with a wall that sent me staggering — a wall of white and bright, unforgiving light, a flash of golden hair, the bite of fingernails into flesh. And, above all, terror, like I had reached into the thick of someone else’s nightmare.
When I opened my eyes, I was on my knees, and Reshaye curled around my thoughts, scaling the web of my mind like a spider leaping from thread to thread. The remnants of its fear twined with mine in my veins. I forced my own back as I whispered quiet comforts to the quivering presence in my head.
Shh. You are alright. You are safe.
A growl rippled up my spine. {Never.} You’re safe.
{They did such terrible things.}
I wondered who “they” were. Zeryth? Nura? Max, even?
Or were “they” dozens of people spread over decades or centuries, the collected aggressors of a million fragmented moments? Perhaps Reshaye didn’t even know.
I fed it my forced calm. Many people do terrible things. But we can either eat our anger and make it fuel us or we can let it eat us alive.
Reshaye inhaled the memory of my mother, her stern and beautiful face as she told me those words, then blew it back to me like smoke through its nostrils. I felt its unspoken question.
That is my mother. She told me that, many years ago.
{She is gone.}
Yes. She died a terrible death, just like the rest of my family.
I let it see the ropes, the chains, the wide-brimmed black hats. I let it see the broken bodies I saw come through slave marketplaces, people too old or weak to work in the mines to be sold off for scrap. I let it see the scars.
I felt it pick up and inspect each image like a curious child examining a new toy, intrigued but unmoved.
Fine. New approach.
Tomorrow, we go back to my homeland. And I want revenge. That was a concept I knew it grasped. It killed Max’s family to punish him. It understood anger, even if it wouldn’t understand my love. Is that what you want, too? You know what it is to be angry.
A skittering chuckle. {Yes. It is the only solid thing that remains. Everything else has rotted away.}
My memories withered like Max’s flesh beneath my fingers. I had to fight my revulsion.
Then help me. I’ll need you, when we get there. Only you. When I call for you, will you come for me?
And Reshaye shivered, shuddered, writhed, sinking further and further into my terrible memories until it hit the sharpest one of all: Esmaris’s face, his sneer, the blood flicking his cheeks. It watched the images again and again, agonizingly slowly, as if dissecting them.
{You were betrayed by someone that you thought loved you.}
I could not bring myself to voice my confirmation, even though I knew, in a terrible, twisted way, it was true. Instead I asked again,
Will you help me when I call for you?
A long consideration.
{Yes,} it whispered, and slithered back into darkness.
