Page 148 of Liar Witch
I watch, slightly awestruck, as a beam of pure moonlight shines down to where she kneels. So bright and clear that everyone for miles will be able to see it.
But it’s not the light I’m staring at. Nilsa, kneeling at the bottom of it, looks absolutely transcendent. Her lips are upturned in a beatific smile so different from the fear of minutes before as she raises her face into the light. Her sodden hair falls down her back in a dark waterfall that seems to soak up the glow, and her eyes are closed in bliss rather than scrunched shut in fear.
This is her in her element. Surrounded by the Goddess, who’s an intrinsic part of her.
It feels strangely like I’m seeing her for the first time.
I’ve never been a religious man—mages rarely are—but Nilsa makes it pretty hard to be sceptical.
Just as abruptly as it started, the light shuts off, leaving us blinking away the darkness.
“Do you think they saw it?” she asks.
“I think everyone this side of Fior saw that.”
She nods, then slumps. “Now all we can do is wait.”
I shuffle up the beach so I’m closer to her, and she surprises me by collapsing sideways until her head is resting in my lap. I’m not even sure if she meant to do it, or if she’s just so tired after everything that’s happened that she just can’t hold herself up anymore.
“I’m sorry they tried to shoot you,” she mumbles. “I know you were kind of friends.”
I snort. “You’d think I’d be used to betrayal by now.”
She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t pry.
Yet the words fall from my lips, anyway.
“My father was a bond mage.” She stiffens slightly, but I don’t stop. She’s put up with enough of my shit. She deserves to know. “But even then, the mutation is so rare he and my mother had good reason to hope I wouldn’t inherit it. Bond mage children are destructive. They draw objects to them without meaning to.
“Eventually I did it often enough that it couldn’t be dismissed any longer. At age nine, I was too powerful even for my mother to handle. Waiting until I was fifteen for me to choose my own tether in the traditional way wasn’t an option. Every day, I was getting more and more dangerous. At one point, I almost stabbed my grandfather by summoning a knife from the kitchen.”
I hear her slight indrawn breath, and my hand slides into her hair without thinking, soothing away the noise.
“My father was a mercenary, bonded to a sword. He chose one for me as well. Set up the ritual. Drew the glyphs for the tethering. But I was too young to focus like I needed to. I wanted to go and look at the new ship in Ilya Bay. I could see the sails from the window of his study. All billowing and white with military pennants flying from the masts.”
I stare out at the waves, still stroking her hair without meaning to. My mind is stuck repeating the instant my father realised what I’d done. The look on his face as his only child started to sicken before his eyes. My mother’s sob as they raced from the house to try to save me.
“I wasn’t focused on the sword. I focused on the ship, and I bonded it.” I take a deep, shuddering breath. “It should have killed me. But I was so fucking powerful.” For so long, I blamed the power in my veins for what happened next. “My father ran from the house towards the ship. He knew I’d die if he couldn’t get me on board. He was a strong mage. So was my mother. Between the two of them and my aunt, they managed to take out the full crew. But my parents died in the attempt.”
She opens her mouth to say something, but I shake my head, shushing her. “I was unconscious. I have no memory of the fight or anything that happened after we left the house. My aunt Ellandra had to explain everything to me when I woke up beside their bodies on the blood-soaked deck. She and my two cousins took everything from our house and piled it onto the ship, and I sailed us out of there as fast as a boy with no naval training could.”
“They must have loved you very much,” Nilsa whispers. “Your parents and your aunt.”
“My aunt loved power,” I correct. “Two years later, she realised she couldn’t do much with her newfound influence over the heir to our family’s seat on the Council of Mages if I was stuck on a ship with no way to govern. She and my cousins came for me while I slept. They tried to break my tether to the ship with an improvised ritual.”
I hate the understanding in her eyes. But her words aren’t pitying. “Do you need me to kill the bitch?”
Snorting, I shake my head. “No. It was excruciating, but my power saved me. I was stronger than all three of them, and somehow I turned their ritual back on them. I ended up severing the bond between them and their magic, and the loss of it killed them. I dumped their bodies overboard and sailed as far from Ilyani as I could go. A few months later, Cirio found me. A starving eleven-year-old, floating on a ghost ship, surviving on whatever fish came close enough to the ship’s hull for me to catch.”
“He saved you.”
“Fucking raised me,” I correct. “Left his own ship, theParlance, to teach me to sail my own for almost ten years until I was ready to captain theDeadwood. I learned everything from him, and it kept me alive until I met Kier and Ry a few decades later.” Forcing my lips up into the smallest of smiles is a huge effort, but I manage it. “Never looked back.”
“We’ll find him,” she promises, pushing up from my lap with a deep breath. “Someone will know where he is.”
“Tobias told me Cirio took the fae dust to get my attention,” I mutter, processing. “Why would he do that? He’s supposed to be honeymooning, for fuck’s sake.” She doesn’t have any answers, and neither do I. “Where the fuck is my ship?” I growl at the ocean. “I can’t find anyone if I’m stuck—Stop giving me that look.” Her eyes have gone soft with sympathy, and I hate it.
“What look?”
