Page 379 of Kingdoms of Night

Dame jerked free, her eyes nearly popping from their sockets. She stared down at her sleeve where Isa’s fingers had been.

Black marks in exactly the shape of Isa’s hand marred the fine fabric.

CHAPTERFOUR

ISA

Blinking, Isa stumbled back. “I…”

Lightning washed the darkness outside the window at the end of the passage, and thunder rumbled, a sudden storm rising.

Dame stared at Isa, her beady-eyes scratching over her face. Dame whispered something.

“What?” Isa’s heart hammered against her ribs.

Had she called her a witch? She went cold all over.

Dame pushed past her and hurried to the stairs leading to the upper deck. As she went, Isa heard Dame whispering a prayer to the Source.

Isa turned her hand over, but there was no ash from the iron grate fires or enough dirt to cause such a complete mark on Dame’s clothing. She shook her head.What just happened?

She swallowed. Then, watching to make sure Ursane wasn’t about to leap from the shadows, she hurried into her and Nico’s berth at the bow of the ship. The ship rolled and more lightning flashed through the portholes.

“Nico,” Isa hissed into the dark berth.

He coughed and her heart broke. His lungs had never quite recovered from that last ague, and his illness reminded her far too much of the way her parents had died.

“I’m here,” he said. “Sorry. I’ll get up.”

She set a gentle hand on his stomach and kept him lying flat on his poor excuse for bedding—a few rags and a plank of wood set into the ship’s wall. “Nah, you don’t have any work to do right now. This storm will keep them busy. I just wanted to check on that leg of yours.”

“It’s not too bad.”

Using the flashes of the storm’s light to guide her, she pulled the rag he was using as a blanket away from his skinny leg. At nine, he should have been bigger. He had the bones of a far younger child due to lack of food and ongoing illnesses.

“She’s broken the skin with that awful stick of hers.” Isa forced herself not to collapse under the weight of her impotent rage. “One day I’ll put her candle out with that very length of oak, Nico. You watch and see.” She knew very well she was full of dung, but it was fun to imagine revenge anyway.

His teeth were white in the dark berth, one missing in the front. “I’ll help you.”

She ruffled his floppy brown hair and looked into his blue eyes. The color wasn’t obvious in the dim room, but in the light, his eyes were the hue of the open sky, and somehow the goodness in him just radiated right through. The curse mark, as Ursane called it, showed just behind Nico’s ear. It wasn’t scary to Isa; it resembled a tiny rose and was just a birthmark with no magical connotations, good or bad. Plenty of people had them.

“I know you will.” She knelt beside him, tucking her threadbare dress under her legs to chase off the cold of the ship’s belly. “Very, very soon, our indenture will be up and we’ll sail away for our own adventures.”

“Where will we sail?”

This was their favorite thing to do at night—to imagine what they might do when they were free. Dame’s sharp words echoed through Isa’s mind, but she shook them off. She’d find a way to get them off this boat at the next docking. She’d make a break for it and they’d find some small jobs and save up…

“To the island of the dryad elves,” she said finally, “where fruit falls right into your lap upon arrival. It tastes like—”

“Like chocolate!”

Isa grinned. “Exactly. And the weather will be so fine that we’ll sleep under the stars. Every wish we make will come true.”

Nico stared at the top of the berth, his smile wide in the storm’s intermittent light and his dimples showing. “So many stars.”

“So many wishes. If you believe the old map in Seigneur’s cabin, we are close to the dryad elves’ island. What would you wish for first?”

He turned onto his side, wincing slightly. His leg had to pain him terribly and the rolling the ship had been doing the last hours wasn’t making things easier.

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