Hundreds of corpses.
In a panic, I leapt to my feet. I didn’t drop Atrius’s head—instead I clutched it to my chest, as if to protect him.
The clouds rolled in. Thunder roared. The first drops hit my head, hot and fast.
Of course it was blood.
This is a vision, I told myself. I can leave. I can stop this.
But no matter how many times I said it, I couldn’t bring myself to fully believe it. Nor could I bring myself to drop Atrius. I clutched him tight, in a gruesome embrace, and threw myself from the thread.
And together, we fell.
And fell.
And fell.
31
I was on my hands and knees, coughing violently, when my consciousness returned to my body. My chest burned. My stomach lurched. I gagged up a mouthful of stomach-sour salt water.
Atrius knelt beside me, his hand on my forearm. My clothes were soaking wet. I shivered violently.
“—tide is coming in,” Atrius was saying, as he dragged me across the beach. “I don’t want you to drown.”
Atrius.
It took a moment for me to come back to myself—to feel his presence, strong and forceful and very much alive.
He let go of me on a drier stretch of sand, and I had to resist the sudden, overpowering urge to throw myself against him.
“Here.” A heavy cloak fell around my shoulders. Atrius’s hands stayed there, on my arms, for a few seconds longer than they needed to. “Stay near the fire.”
I struggled to orient myself. “How l-long was I g-gone?”
I couldn’t keep my teeth from chattering. The moon seemed higher in the sky. I must have been Walking for quite some time, especially if the tide came in enough to reach me while I was under.
“More than an hour.”
Atrius settled beside me, watching me. He didn’t need to ask. The question was in his stare.
I should have been thinking about how to lie to Atrius. I had been commanded to kill him. Yet the thought didn’t even cross my mind. The truth poured out of me immediately.
“Something is wrong,” I choked out. “On the island. Something is wrong.”
Atrius’s aura went cold.
“Wrong how?”
“I don’t know.” Visions were difficult to decode. Rarely literal. What I had seen could mean many things. But I was so utterly certain that at its core, it meant: danger.
“But something is wrong, Atrius,” I said. “I’m sure of that.”
He didn’t question me. He knew better by now.
He rose abruptly, and I did too, holding onto his arm to steady myself. Together, we set back off toward camp.
Atrius didn’t want to wait for the Bloodborn ships to make it up the coast. He ordered ships be sent from the coastal regions of Vasai—the closest he had available. What arrived were little more than fishing boats, certainly not the warship fleet that he’d arrived on, but if Atrius cared he didn’t show it. He’d throw wooden planks on the water and paddle his way to Veratas if he had to.
There was no sleeping in the two days it took for him to arrange for the boats. Not for him, and not for me. I didn’t want to sleep when I knew what dreams would be waiting for me—and lately, the dreams I had alone were never welcome. Instead, I threw myself into helping with the preparations.
While Atrius didn’t share the reasons for his change of plans, the warriors knew that something was wrong. The mood over the camp was tense and uneasy. Among the most frantic was Erekkus, who pulled me aside the first free moment we had among Atrius’s flurry of orders.
“Is this because of your seering?” he asked me, his grip on my arm white-knuckled. “What did you see? What does Veratas have to do with this?”
Erekkus’s presence shocked me. The fear was so intense that his touch alone was painful.
“It’s a precaution.” The platitude tasted so disgustingly false on my tongue.
“Bullshit.”
I didn’t want to lie to Erekkus. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, either, especially when Atrius had decided not to.
“It was Atrius’s decision—”
“I have a child on that island!” Erekkus barked, his fingernails digging into my arm. “Fucking tell me, Sylina. Please.”
My mouth tasted ash.
A child. The thought left me reeling. Atrius had told me the island was full of his warriors’ families. The realization that Erekkus had a child—that the child was among those civilians—
The image of that village with bodies protruding from the sand seared itself into my mind, stubbornly.