“It’s possible, though,” he says, his voice turning more desperate.

I shake my head. “It isn’t a good idea for me to talk to him, Heron,” I say. “But if you ask—”

“I tried. He won’t talk to me,” he says. It feels like someone dropped cold water down my back. Heron has visited S?ren? Ignoring my surprise, he continues. “One of his guards told me that he hasn’t said a word since we brought him aboard.”

“He’s being held hostage,” I say. “That doesn’t usually make people like S?ren very chatty. I doubt he’ll talk to me either.”

Heron looks at me like he can see through straight to my deepest thoughts.

“He’ll talk to you,” he says. “Please. I know it might be a dead end, I know that chances are Leo is already in the After, calling me a fool right now, but if he isn’t—if there’s even the slightest chance that he’s still out there—I need to know. If anyone can understand that, you can.”

My mother is never far from my thoughts, but now she overwhelms them and I can’t help thinking about what might have happened if I hadn’t seen her killed with my own eyes, if I hadn’t felt her hand around mine go limp as the life left her. If there was a sliver of a chance that she was still alive, what would I do to find her?

The answer is simple: there is nothing I wouldn’t do.

“We’ll visit him tonight,” I tell Heron.

* * *

—

Blaise has a late-night shift but agrees to stay with me until I fall asleep. Though I’m grateful for the company, my conversation with Heron weighs heavily on my shoulders. I don’t mean to lie, but I also can’t bring myself to tell Blaise about going to see S?ren tonight. I don’t want to know what he’ll say about that.

“If we get to Sta’Crivero and Dragonsbane still tries to push this marriage business,” he says, keeping his back to me as I change into a nightgown, “we can leave. There are plenty of other ships in Sta’Crivero. You, me, Heron, and Art in the kitchens.”

He doesn’t mention S?ren, which only affirms my decision not to tell him about my plan. In his mind, S?ren is Dragonsbane’s problem now and nothing more. He wouldn’t understand. He would only wonder if there was any truth to the rumors that are swirling about our involvement.

“We need Dragonsbane for more than her ships,” I remind him with a sigh, pulling the cotton nightgown over my head. “And she knows that. You can turn around, I’m decent.”

He does, and his eyes dance down my body before working their way back up to meet mine. He smiles slightly.

“You’re never decent,” he tells me, making me smile back. It’s another fleeting glimpse of a simpler, more playful life we could have had. His smile fades too quickly, though, and we fall back into the life that’s actually ours. “And you can’t really be considering her proposal.”

“Of course not,” I scoff. “But it isn’t as easy as leaving, you know that. Anyone else we accept help from will want something. Everyone wants something from me.”

I don’t realize how true the words are until I say them out loud, but once they are said, they are undeniable.

I stretch out under the covers and turn to face the wall my bed is pressed up against, hearing him shuck his own boots off before the mattress gives as he crawls in next to me.

I still feel the lie hanging uncomfortably between us even as he fits his body to mine, his chest pressing against my back, his bent knees curling behind mine, his forehead touching the back of my head. Tentatively, his arm comes around my waist, his skin hot.

He smells like Astrea, like spices and hearth fire and home.

“I just want you,” he whispers, the words tentative.

I trace the tips of my fingers over his arms, words that I want to say back lodged in my throat.

I PRETEND TO SLEEP UNTIL BLAISE leaves for his shift, trying to ignore the pool of anxiety that has taken up residence in my gut. I’m going to see S?ren tonight, and though I’d like to pretend my biggest worry about that is being caught, that’s not the whole truth of it. The last time I saw him, I had betrayed him and he had told me he loved me anyway. He doesn’t. He can’t love me. But something tells me this meeting won’t be any more comfortable.

I did what I had to do, I tell myself again, and though that might be the truth, it doesn’t ease the guilt that’s worked its way under my skin.

Luckily, I don’t have long to think about it before Heron arrives with a knock so soft I almost miss it. I push Blaise’s words out of my mind and throw off the blankets, climbing out of bed.

“Come in,” I call out, slipping my boots back on.

The door opens wide and then closes again, and I’d think it was only the wind if I didn’t know better.

“Did you tell Blaise what we were doing tonight?” Heron asks, shimmering into view. The Air Gem chandelier earring I stole from Crescentia is now hooked through the material of his shirt, just above his heart like a badge. In the aftermath of its use, the tiny, clear gems glow in the darkness for a moment, giving enough light to see Heron’s face, creased with worry and a grim kind of hope.

“Would you have?” I reply, tying the laces of one boot, then the other before pulling on my cloak over my nightgown. “We both know he would have tried to talk me out of it. No one can see me go down there.”

Heron holds a hand out to me to help me stand up, and when I take it, our joined fingers begin to fade from sight, leaving behind a tingling feeling, like they have fallen asleep. The feeling travels up my arm, erasing it as it goes, along with Heron’s. Our shoulders, torsos, heads, and legs all disappear, until the room looks empty and my whole body is buzzing.

“I won’t be able to hold it over both of us for long, so we’d better get moving now,” he says, shifting his grip so that our fingers are linked before pulling me out the door and letting it slam behind us.

I stay close to him as he hurries down the hallway, nimbly sidestepping the handful of skeleton crew members bustling about.

A couple of them must feel us as we pass: they look around uncertainly, a shiver of fear dancing down their spines as they imagine ghosts and tell themselves it’s only the wind.

I have only a vague idea of where S?ren is being kept, but Heron knows the way well enough, twisting and turning down passageways and rickety spiral staircases. I only have to follow along and try to keep my thoughts from lingering too long on S?ren.

I am only going to ask him questions, I remind myself. We aren’t going to talk about his suggestion that Blaise was mine-mad or how he insinuated I might have real feelings for him.

I don’t. Maybe I did once, but that was before he’d led his men to butcher thousands in Vecturia. That was before I saw him for who he really was. But even as I think that, I know it isn’t the full truth. No, I don’t love him, but I do care for him. I don’t want to see him in chains. I don’t want to know that I was the one who put him there.

Two men stand guard outside a door at the end of the final passageway, both holding crudely made spears at their sides and looking sleep-drawn. Seeing them makes my whole body tense, though I should have expected them—there’s no way Dragonsbane would have left S?ren unguarded.

Heron feels my panic and he squeezes my hand before uncurling his fingers from mine and moving my hand to his forearm instead. He keeps walking toward them, so I imagine he must have a plan. Stepping out of the shadows, he lets his invisibility fade so that he comes into focus before the guards, startling them.

I wait for visibility to come over me, too, a bevy of poor excuses flying to my lips, but my invisibility holds. I cling to his arm tightly, my heart pounding in my chest.

“Evening,” Heron says, nodding to each of them in turn.

“Looking for a shot at him?” one of them asks.

I’m not sure what he means, but Heron only nods. “I’ll be ten minutes,” he says.

The two guards step aside and let Heron pass, me half a step behind him, trying to puzzle out his words.

A shot at him. It doesn’t mean what it sounds like. It can’t mean that. Dragonsbane would never allow—but as soon as I start to think it, I know she would. Heron would have told me if he knew, though. He would have tried to stop it. That much I am sure of.

But when the door closes behind us and my eyes adjust to the dimly lit room, my stomach sinks.

S?ren is slumped against the far wall, an open porthole the size of my hand above his head the only source of fresh air. Heavy, rusted iron manacles are clasped around his wrists, old and new blood on the skin around them. He’s wearing the same clothes he wore the last time I saw him, though now they’re tattered and bloody. He doesn’t look anything like he did only two days ago; his close-cropped hair looks more crimson than blond and his face is covered in bruises and open cuts.

He doesn’t lift his head when he hears us enter, though he does flinch away from the sound.