Page 150 of Silverbow
Maia Trakbatten smiling at her in the milky mirror as she called her daughter.
Her father tortured in a cell.
Maia sobbing into a leathery blue wing.
Originally recorded as dark of hair and eye.
The queen’s foretelling.
Pallas’s bargain with the witch.
A great golden eye opening in the dark.
Enough flame to burn all of Elaria to rubble.
A blue eyed girl with Maia’s face.
Liam, beaten and stabbed in an alley.
A white haired girl with violet eyes.
A pleafor sanctuary.
A bronze skinned woman sobbing in her arms over a body beneath a golden shroud.
Holding the clutch in her hands.
Corpses on a battlefield.
A heavy, silver crown.
Glassy eyes staring up at her, unseeing.
A pine box for a child.
She felt it all as a terrible, crushing pain in her chest. But it was nothing compared to the flash of silver that opened her throat.
She heard thetwangof a crossbow, and sat up, gasping.
Oryn
Oryn had hired the captain’s cabin, or rather, Colm, on his behalf, had threatened the man within an inch of his life and paid him enough gold to buy the gods damned boat. Still, Captain Bailer might have tried reclaiming it if not for Bade’s vigilant glowering. Oryn mostly left his companions to it, not trusting himself to keep the man aboard if he had to deal with his grumbling.
No sails chased them on the southern horizon, and only once had Oryn had to whip up a wind strong enough to push back a mist that wandered too close. Some of the mists in the Bay of Mists were as deadly as the beasts that lurked beneath the calm waters of the Bay of Beasts. The only problem was, sailors didn’t know if it was an ordinary mist or the deadly kind until they were in the thick of it. That he could wield them away should have been enough to buy their passage, but he didn’t mention that to Bailer or his men.
When he left his companions to mind the mists, he closeted himself in the cabin, sitting vigil beside Enya’s still form for three days. Morning, noon, and night, he wielded air, water, and spirit, probing the wound and placing another patch. It wasn’t doing much more than his initial healing, but he hoped it was easing some of the pain. Her heart had returned to its normal rhythm, and the hum filled his ears, but the longer she slumbered, the more he worried. His form of healing drew on the body’s own strength and if she could not support it, the recovery would be more difficult.
Liam sometimes occupied the stool beside the bed when he didn’t. Oryn begrudgingly lingered on the deck when the stable boy took his watch, but he hadno claim on Enya Silverbow. Still, Liam never lingered long. He seemed to turn a bit green whenever he was in the cabin and Oryn wasn’t certain if it was the rocking of the ship or the gruesome shade of gray she’d gone.
On the third day, he settled back on the stool after Liam reappeared on the deck. Seeing the blankets disturbed, he pulled them back up to her chin. He never had liked sailing much. There was little to do on a ship but wait. They would make Tuminzar in record time with the wind he kept in the sail, but still, as he watched her chest rise and fall, it felt like all of immortality. She stirred, batting the blankets down as she shifted.
“Enya?”
She settled without answering, but when she stirred again, Oryn called out onto the deck for Aiden. The fire wielder appeared wearing a lopsided grin. He rolled his eyes at Oryn’s request to heat a pot of tea, but he did it with a wry grin.
“What?”
Aiden quirked a brow. “You’re fussing.”
