Page 8 of Children of Anguish and Anarchy

The Silver Skull mutters something to his men as he holds a torchlight to our faces. It passes over mine with disdain before stopping in front of Zélie’s. My heart constricts when the Silver Skull raises a leather-clad finger and points.

It’s happening, I realize.

We’ve run out of time.

“No!” I bang against the iron bars. I don’t know what to fear more. If they take Zélie now, she’ll never return. And what will happen to Orïsha if the Skulls find what they’re searching for?

Zélie throws herself to the back of her cage. The other Skulls open her cell door. Though she struggles, they unlock the shackles around her neck, waist, and ankles. Two Skulls lift her up, and Zélie thrashes in their arms.

“Inan!” Zélie cries out.

A new set of shackles clamps shut around her wrists. I rage against the bars as they drag her away.

But the door to the hold swings shut, keeping me locked in this cage.

CHAPTER FOUR

ZÉLIE

GODS HELP ME.

My insides freeze. Inan’s shouts die in the hold below. The Silver Skull yells orders at his men, and we follow close behind, ascending the wooden steps in the cramped stairwell.

The Skulls’ meaty palms dig into my arms. Their hooded eyes gleam in the dark. A sulfur scent rises from the pouch bombs strapped to their animal-skin belts. Brine coats their fair skin and their chestnut hair.

Where is he taking me?

The human bones embedded in the Skulls’ masks glower in the flickering torchlight. Even without my magic, I sense the torment soaked into the crushed skeletons. I hear the cries of their dead.

The fight that started to light in me before withers away. The hope of escape strangles me, restraining me like my chains. Everything Inan shared with me swirls in my mind.

If I’m the one they’re after, I die tonight.

They’re searching for a girl.I hear Inan’s voice.A girl with the blood of the sun.

I think back to the sunstone that shattered in my hands the moment I brought magic back. I remember the power that surged through my form, the force that crashed through my very being, threading deepinto my heart. In that instant creation swirled before my eyes, the birth of man, the origin of the gods. Is that power what these beasts hunt now?

Do I even hold that power if I can’t feel my magic at all?

I have to break free.

I ball my fists. Escape is my only hope. But what can I do with my hands in chains? How can I fight when I can’t even move my legs?

As we move past yards of rope and tarp-covered cannons, I search for a weapon, anything I can use to escape. The broken shards of wood that hang overhead, the rusted harpoons mounted on the walls. I look down at the Skulls’ waists and shift, wondering what it would take to snatch one of their knives. A few daggers hang from each of their belts, but they pale in comparison to the crimson hammers and axes strapped to each Skull’s back.

Something about their weapons feels alive.…

When we reach the top of the stairs, I’m hit with a familiar stench. The cells I shared with the others when the Skulls first locked me on to their ship hang with the bite of death. Flames pass over rows of cages, revealing broken bones and gaunt brown faces. There are nearly a dozen young girls per cage. They cower as the Skulls near.

“Zélie?”

I hear Amari’s hushed whisper before I see her emaciated frame. The sight of my former ally takes me by surprise—her hollowed cheeks, her sunken eyes. A ripped kaftan hangs over her skeletal shoulders. Her bones protrude from her copper skin. Grime and dirt mat the curls in her hair. She withers from within.

Hold on. I mouth the words. Instinct to protect overpowers our former war. I can’t bear the sight of her in enemy chains. Her slender face, twisted in pain.

Across from Amari I spot Nâo, the elder of the Tider clan. Alwaysone of the most powerful fighters in our group, I hardly recognize the scrawny figure who stares back.

Cropped white coils pepper her formerly shaved head. She looks at me like she’s crawled back from the dead. Nâo reaches her tattooed arm through the bars of her cell as we pass. The Silver Skull is quick to react.

---