Page 84 of Of the Stars and Sea

I glance between the two of them.

Zaos straightens his spine and crosses his arms over his chest.

“Yes,” Grayson responds.

I rack my mind, trying to think of any special place I’ve seen along my ventures that might be worthy of housing Thaeto’streasure. Maybe it was dropped on the ocean floor to the west where the sun falls asleep each night. But the riddle speaks of the earth, not the water. So, that wouldn’t make sense.

“The earth meets the sky alongeveryhorizon,” Zaos interjects. “So, it could mean literally any body of land in the entire Southern Realm.”

He’s right. There are far too many places for us to spend the time going to every landmass in the Southern Realm in search of some dark space. But maybe . . .

I look down at the parchment and feel a thrum of excitement course through my veins when I read the first line of the riddle again. “The riddle says the earthreachesfor the heavens. Maybe that means it’s a mountain.”

“And within a mountain, there can be caves,” Grayson says, excitedly. He ambles toward the desk and points at the parchment with Zaos’s handwriting. “Deep beyond, in darkness you shall see. The treasure must be hidden within a cave system below a mountain.”

“But the mountains in Northern Esoros do not have caves,” Zaos says.

“No.” I shake my head and look at Grayson, wondering if he’s heard the same tales I have. “But there are other mountains. In the most southern part of the realm. Mountains that most would never dare to venture to.”

“The Solise Mountains,” Zaos whispers, his eyes growing wide in disbelief. “But they lie beyond Dead Man’s Passage. No one has sailed that far south and has lived to tell the tale.”

“Or maybe there are some,” I whisper, “who came back and chose to never speak of it.”

My father used to tell me stories of those who would sail to the unknown parts of the world in the hopes of discovering something new—of the great seafarers who knew the secrets of the Aelynthi Sea better than anyone.

I look up at Grayson and when his eyes meet mine, I know in my heart he is one of the few who has done it: sailed through Dead Man’s Passage and made it out alive.

“You’ve done it, haven’t you?” I ask. Zaos looks at Grayson, his chest doesn’t move as he holds his breath, waiting for a response.

The muscles in Grayson’s jaw flex; his lips form a firm line and for a moment I’m not sure he will answer.

“Tell us,” I urge.

Shadows gather around his shoulders as his eyes glass over. Lost to the distant memory, he finally says, “It was a very long time ago. When the world teemed with life and the marble city of Esoros was bright and gleaming. It was before King Renard’s blight moved across the city, darkening everything in its path. When there were a lot more free men and plenty of prizes to be won.

“But as the tides shifted and King Renard came into power, new players emerged on the board. King Renard did not like that there were people who cared little about his control. Our kind started to dwindle when bounty hunters from the city started sharing secrets.”

“Secrets? What do you mean?” I whisper.

Grayson’s chest rises and falls as he sighs. He doesn’t look at me when he continues. “King Renard ensured that pirates would not survive the new age unless they bent the knee to his will. When most of them did not, he sent out word to his spies to gather information on us—and not just pirates, but creatures of all kinds, who answered to their own rulers and not him.

“It didn’t take long before the children of pirate lords and creatures were captured or threatened—or some vital secrets were spilled, putting them in danger with their own kind. The king also placed bounties on all our heads for evading his reach.It was a dangerous time, not just for us, but for the people we loved.”

Something twists hard in my chest as I see the claws of pain burrowing into Grayson’s shadowed face.

. . .for the people we loved.

My father.

Could he have been one of those men?

He was a pirate, one of the most well respected amongst our kind. But once he fell in love with my mother, everything changed for him. I didn’t make much of it—how secluded we were from the world. How he always showed me ways to escape, or places to hide when we’d travel from Emerald Cove to the mainland.

When he’d sail on his ventures, he’d leave my mother and I for long periods of time, not knowing where he was going.

My mother always told me that everything my father did was for me—to protect me.

As if a stone was dropped into the pit of my stomach, I feel a heaviness settle at my core as I look at Grayson.

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