Page 74 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Another person’s heartbeat was sluggish in my ears and getting weaker until I held my breath, waiting for it to stop altogether. Right before a piercing wail so loud that it felt like it punched through my head had me yelling and covering my ears, half bent over, almost mad with it in seconds. Before it suddenly cut out, everything did, except for Pritkin’s cursing.

And then Faerie skewed the scene, not letting me see anymore, not letting me hear. Except for what was happening in a corner where Rhosier was talking to Enid. And, suddenly, everything went from hazy to high-def.

“We have to go back for them!” Enid was in the cook’s face, or as much of it as she could reach. His height allowed him to tower over her, but it didn’t look like he was managing to intimidate her much. Possibly because he had to divide his attention between the furious redhead and organizing the chaos of what was essentially an overflowing emergency room.

A couple more people ran in, supporting a groaning man in between them, and Rhosier snapped his fingers and pointed to a space by a wall.

“Over there, someone will see him in a moment,” he said, right before Enid lost her shit and slammed a ward around them, cutting the two of them off from the rest of the room.

But not from us. Faerie didn’t get locked out in her world, so the only thing that happened was that our view rippled a little as we moved forward and through the shield. And then clarified with us up close and personal because the shield was small, Enid being low on power after that crazy chase.

“You know damned well why we can’t!” Rhosier told her, looking furious. “I won’t risk—”

“Anything!” she spat. “You never do! It’s always tomorrow, and wait, and be patient—I’m tired of being patient! If they hadn’t been there, Generys would be dead!”

“If they hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place. You forget why the guards came—”

“I forget nothing!” Enid snarled, those tawny eyes suddenly looking more like a tiger’s. “Nothing. Not the years of abuse, the constant fear, the certainty that nothing will ever change, no matter what we do. We get out a few hundred a year if we’re lucky. More than that are born each year, born into slavery and deprivation and pain—a lifetime of it.”

She dropped her glamourie and got in his face, and I had forgotten just how bad it was. That mangled visage stood out starkly white against the rest of her skin, the scar tissue no longer able to flush. And it was awful, ridge after ragged ridge of a jealous woman’s fury that nothing would ever erase.

“You think I forget when I have to look at this every day? You think they left me that choice?”

“I think you need to calm down,” Rhosier told her flatly, his voice hard. “Or risk angering our patron and cutting off anyone’s chances of getting out. Lady Bodil risks a great deal for us, and your fear doesn’t give you the right—”

“The right?” she laughed, and it was ugly. “What rights do you think any of us have? Even our pathetic excuse for a rebellion depends on one of them!”

She threw out an arm that passed through me, causing me to stumble back into Pritkin. And then to keep on going because we were suddenly snatched up by an impatient goddess and sent rocketing onward. Or downward since she’d just jerked us through the floor.

We passed through a succession of them, flashing by my disoriented eyes in an instant like we were riding an out-of-control, glass-sided elevator. I had a brief flash of more storerooms, of a bunch of guards in what I guessed was a wardroom, playing cards, of a boudoir where a woman was moisturizing her face and a man was walking out of the bathroom in his birthday suit, heedless of the Peeping Tom goddess and her posse. And then they started to slur together, blurring across my vision into a sickening sludge.

What happens if you throw up in the Common? I wondered and was trying to choose between that and passing out.

Or both—because they seemed an equal possibility right now.

I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I’d previously spent what felt like hours in the Common as Faerie caught me up on what was going on. As she wasn’t human and couldn’t speak, she’d had to show me instead and let me experience it myself. And I had, but not like this!

I writhed in her grip, feeling like my brain was liquifying inside my skull. But not so much that it couldn’t shoot me out a reason: Lover’s Knot. Or, to be precise, the absence of it.

Pritkin had given me the ability to access the Common through his fey blood while we were linked. But Mircea had invalidated that when he disappeared into another universe. So, how was I seeing anything?

I didn’t know, but whatever Faerie was doing to compensate, it wasn’t working. The corridor we were flying down darkened perceptibly, leaving me looking at a drunkenly skewed cell striped with dim light through the middle. It was a double exposure, as if two movies were trying to run simultaneously, each jostling for space and just managing to obscure the other.

For a minute, until they both grayed out, and I was left not seeing much of anything, with my vision going dark, my body going cold, and my heart thudding in my chest as if it was about to beat right out of it. And flop around on the floor, only it felt like it was already doing that. And getting ground under someone’s heel into a little bloody lump that was going to stop, just any . . . moment . . . now—

And then we were out, tumbling back into our cell as if dumped there. It left me sprawling on the rough stone floor, breathing hard and clutching the ground underneath me because the whole room seemed to be rotating. Exiting deep immersion in the Common was never fun as a non-fey, and judging by Pritkin’s breathing, for anybody else, either. But that had been especially rough, as if Faerie had lost her grip on me.

Or as if I’d nearly died, which. . . yeah.

And then, my body finally made its choice, and I passed out.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I didn’t know how long I was unconscious that time, but it wasn’t long enough. I wasn’t chilled when I woke because Pritkin was draped around me, but I still felt like hell. I decided to just lay there for a while.

“What did we just see?” I croaked when I could.

He didn’t answer for a moment, but when I turned over, he wasn’t asleep. He had that look on his face instead, the one that said that he was debating whether to reply, which wasn’t okay. I needed answers, and I’d been getting basically none of them all day.

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