“Alōs,” she began slowly; “he’s not actually as he may seem.”
“What does that mean?” asked Larkyra.
“It’s complicated to explain, but the intentions of his actions are far more similar to our family’s than at first glance.”
Niya watched Arabessa and Larkyra share a look.
“I think you have a lot more to tell us, then, dear sister,” said Arabessa.
“Yes.” Niya nodded. “A lot more, but—”
A gasp burst from behind them, and Niya spun to find Alōs sitting up with a start.
He bent over, wheezing to catch his breath, glancing about with frantic eyes, as if unsure when and where he was.
Niya rushed to his side. “Breathe through your nose,” she advised.
“Niya?” Alōs whispered, unfocused gaze landing on her.
“Yes.” She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, a flutter in her belly at hearing the vulnerability in his voice. “And you are Alōs Ezra, remember? Infamous pirate lord. Captain of the Crying Queen. You are in the Thief Kingdom. You also owe me six silver.”
He sat farther up with a grunt, clarity returning to his features. “Nice try.”
“Every word is true,” she assured, hiding a smile. “It’s the side effect of the drink. Short-term memory loss. You’ll remember the bit about the six silver soon.”
He looked back at her then, his expression growing strangely soft with his amusement.
Something in Niya’s stomach twisted as they regarded one another, and she stepped back. “Did you find anything?”
“I did.” Alōs rose to his feet, raking a hand through his hair.
Niya’s pulse jumped with hope. “And?”
His brows knitted. “I know where the last part is.”
“That’s great!”
“It is and it isn’t.”
She watched him carefully. “Don’t tell me it’s back in the Valley of Giants. I’ll pawn all my precious jewels in Jabari to buy us a portal token before I sail through those storms again.”
“It is not in the valley,” he assured.
“All right, then, what’s worse than that?”
He let out a tired sigh. “Hallowed Island.”
“The land of the cannibals?” asked Larkyra from where she stood behind Niya.
“Giant cannibals,” clarified Arabessa on her other side.
Niya’s shoulders drooped. “Wonderful,” she grumbled.
She should have known better than to ask.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Alōs needed a drink, and fast. The bitter flavor of the forgotten memory clung to his tongue like needles on a bramble bush. Only a strong whiskey could clear his palate as well as his fogged mind. Stopping at a corner illuminated by a single streetlamp, Alōs took a moment to breathe in the cool caved air. He felt Niya and her sisters at his side, sensed the inquisitive gaze of the fire dancer as she waited for him to elaborate on what he had seen. But he still needed a moment to collect himself.
Being inside the old queen’s memories had not been pleasant. Her thoughts were erratic, distracted, and slow compared to his own. It had felt like an eternity for him to focus on what he had come to search for. A gifted necklace. The old queen, it turned out, had been given many.
Memory after memory flipped by. He experienced her receiving a plethora of fine jewels, from other kings and queens, from subjects and scoundrels like himself. Alōs did not know how long it was before he got to the red stone that gleamed like fresh blood, dangling from a long chain. He clung to that memory’s thread until it led them to travel through a portal door to a hilltop on Hallowed Island. She was there to help the valley’s alchemists collect rare herbs. As she bent over to pluck lavender berries into her basket, the chain’s clasp came undone, and the necklace slipped into the thick brush.
If Alōs weren’t specifically looking for the moment the necklace had become lost, he would have missed it entirely. Especially since immediately after, a muffled roar of a far-off beast had the old queen glancing up, her pulse quickening. Her guard’s hand came down on her shoulder. “Time to go, Your Highness,” they said.
As quickly and silently as the group had entered through their portal door, they slipped back through. But before the portal had closed, the old queen had looked back at the hilltop on Hallowed Island to watch a giant, green skin with rippling muscles, bend down to retrieve the glowing red stone from the grass. The gem’s strong gleam had distracted the beast from the scene of the group vanishing with a snap through the portal door, retreating safely back to the Valley of Giants.
The screeching of rickshaw horns blasting nearby, the drivers weaving precariously through the clogged streets, returned Alōs to where he stood within the Thief Kingdom. The Gazing District was a distant tangle of structures now blocks away.
His eyes met Niya’s beneath her brown eye mask.
Well? her gaze seemed to say.
But Alōs wasn’t about to divulge the particulars with Larkyra and Arabessa nearby. Finding all the pieces of the Prism Stone was getting more and more impossible, and he didn’t need what was left of the Mousai to compete with. He could picture it now, the pair running back to their king to give him a clear path of revenge for Alōs blackmailing him and his precious pets.
“Perhaps your dear sisters could give us a moment?” He lifted a brow.
Niya shared a glance with the two girls, each puckering her lips in displeasure before retreating to the far corner of their sidewalk to wait.
“So what are we going to do?” asked Niya.
What indeed? thought Alōs as he scratched his chin. He felt the scruff he had been too preoccupied to shave on their final leg to the Thief Kingdom. “I’m not entirely sure yet,” he admitted. “I see no way around visiting Hallowed Island to search for the stone.”
“We’ll have to search the entire island? That seems an impossible task. Especially with these cannibal giants lumbering around.”
“Hopefully it won’t come to that. In the old queen’s memories, she saw a guard find the necklace. If my knowledge serves regarding their kind, they are extremely loyal to their chief, who is a collector of rare and beautiful artifacts. The guard would have brought it to him.”
“So we are to infiltrate another royal’s home?”
Alōs frowned. “This is the difficult part. Hardly any who make port on Hallowed Island ever make it out to speak of it. Over the years the giants have made it quite clear that they do not enjoy visitors or being disturbed.”
Niya crossed her arms over her chest. “Then why, by the stars and sea, was Queen Murilia even there?”
“The island is rumored to be ripe with rare but strong healing herbs,” explained Alōs. “It appears the people of the valley went there on a foraging mission.”
“Still, that seems like an awfully foolish place to go to snag some berries,” Niya pointed out. “If I had a grandmother, I would never let her step foot on such an island.”
“If she was anything like you,” Alōs found himself saying, “you’d have little choice in where she went.”
“If she was anything like me,” Niya added, chin tipped up, “she would have known the exact moment such a precious gem fell from around her neck. Then none of us would be in this position to begin with.”
Alōs smiled down at the fire dancer before catching the scrutinizing eyes of Arabessa and Larkyra, who had slowly slunk closer. They now stood a couple of paces away.
They did not trust him.
As well they shouldn’t.
Alōs was beginning to not trust himself.
Especially around Niya.
He had always enjoyed her company, of course, even when she outwardly despised any breath they might have shared, but since the valley . . . since that kiss and her burning determination to keep looking for this stone, something had fissured open in Alōs’s chest.
Something he had made sure to drown at sea.
Compassion.
The word
coiled with disgust through his mind.
But he could not deny it was now being resurrected, though Alōs was not yet prepared to face what that might mean.
“It seems your sisters are over waiting.” Alōs nodded toward the girls. “We can discuss what’s to be done about the other part of the stone later. You can call them back over if you’d like.”
As he watched the three women regroup, immediately chatting animatedly about what was happening in Jabari and a recent trip Larkyra had taken with her husband, he saw a spark in Niya’s eyes return, a spark that he realized had been dimming these past months.
Thoughts of his younger brother filled his mind. He and Ariōn had not been given the gift of growing up together. Their time had been stolen early by the inevitable injustice of this world. But he knew the power behind a chance to one day remedy their lost past. To build a relationship that should exist among siblings. The idea almost left him breathless, a painful, sharp-as-a-knife yearning in his chest.
It hit him hard then just how happy Niya was to be reunited with her sisters and just how unhappy she must be aboard his ship. The true weight of being chained to him, of all the bargains she was fighting to win. Though she stood strong, he caught the signs of tiredness in her worn clothes, which were stained and wrinkled compared to her sisters’ well-sewn disguises. She even had a bit of dirt on her cheek peeking out from beneath her mask.
His crew was all having a night off; she deserved one too.
“This might be a fool’s question,” he heard himself say before really thinking about the consequences of saying it. “But what are the chances the Mousai would be performing tonight?”
Three sets of surprised eyes landed on him.
“Excuse me?” asked Niya.
“I know these events usually are planned farther in advance,” he went on, “but given how long it’s been since the kingdom has had the pleasure of the Mousai’s talents, I’m sure the king could arrange it.”
“You . . . want to see the Mousai perform?” Niya regarded him suspiciously.
“It was not lost on me how quickly the crew fled our ship,” he explained, wanting to clarify his intentions. “And given the heavy amount of sailing we must push through next, I know they’d be a less disgruntled lot after such a night as one fueled by the madness of the Mousai. But if you do not think it possible—”
“Anything is possible,” Arabessa cut in. “It only depends on the price.”
“I have plenty of silver to help pay for—”
“I refer to the price a particular dancer would owe for slipping out of her duties to you, even for a night.”
“I ask for no price,” said Alōs. “I think we all deserve a bit of revelry tonight.”
The girls seemed to consider him a moment, Niya’s gaze the most curious, the most questioning.
What new scheme is this? her silence seemed to ask.
Alōs pushed away the discomfort of asking himself the same question.
“Well.” Larkyra rocked back on her heels. “Let’s not weigh a gifted pig and all that. We have to see about getting the Mousai back together.”
With that, the three ladies set off immediately, Alōs remaining to handle a few other pieces of business, like acquiring a map of Hallowed Island.
Though he had many tasks to accomplish in the next few sand falls, he found himself remaining on the corner of the street, watching the group’s retreating forms, eyes always seeming to fall to the redhead in the center.
With unease, Alōs realized he was beginning to feel a strange kinship with the fire dancer. One that existed beyond attraction or goals but came from an understanding that each had a tether to a duty they’d been born into rather than chosen. A duty to family that, despite the weight it often placed on their shoulders, they could not and would not walk away from. And while he believed this to be a weakness in himself, he found he admired it in Niya. She did not hide what she cared for but burned hot and in the open for her convictions. How freeing that must be.
Something nagged in Alōs’s gut. Careful, it whispered, his magic stirring in agreement.
Careful.
What Alōs wasn’t sure of, however, was if the warning might be too late.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Alōs glided through the halls of the dark palace, senses on high alert at walking in a space where he knew very well he still was not welcome. His banishment might have been lifted, but his presence at court was far from reinstated. He was only allowed entrance tonight through a personal invitation from the Mousai. With attention locked forward, he ignored the red gaze of the stone guardians standing sentry as they turned their heads, following every one of his steps.
The palace was busy tonight. Court members lined the high-ceilinged space, tucked between protruding onyx spikes that rose from the ground or dangled dangerously from above. Their disguises dripped their usual extravagance. Exotic fur-lined coats, suits of scales, and woven silk lace over plush feathered gowns took up all corners.
Yet despite how opulent they appeared, all eyes were on him this night as he strode through the crowd.
Here walked the man who had been hunted by the Thief King and survived.
“Captain Ezra.” A stout bloke in a silver-studded mask slid to his side, hurrying to keep pace with Alōs’s long strides. “We did not think you’d grace these halls again.”
“And why was that?” he asked, not stopping to give this man, or anyone, his full attention.
“Because of the bounty on your head, of course. Are you here to talk with our king?”
Alōs held in a long-suffering sigh. He had no desire for peacocking tonight.
“That depends,” he began. “Are you willing to hear the answer in exchange for your tongue?”
The man laughed as though Alōs had told a great joke. “As always, you surpass your colorful reputation, my lord.”
“And as always,” Alōs replied in kind, “you have no reputation for me to recall at all.”
Alōs left the frowning man behind, staring down any other brave fools who might dare approach.
The cavern where the Mousai usually performed was in the lower bowels of the palace, and Alōs could hear the roar of attendees before he pushed through the doors.
The space was already ripe with a heady mix of debauchery. Overperfumed bodies moved like a school of fish, rhythmically twisting from the tables of steaming food to the chairs and lounges to grope one another as strong spirits were poured in mouths through holes in their disguises. The circular balconies overflowed with a similar scene.
It appeared the rumor of the Mousai performing after so long had spread quickly and was greeted ravenously.
Alōs recognized the disguises of most of his crew amid the crowd, already heavy in their cups. They gorged themselves on plates of decadent treats, sprawled over furniture as companions of every shape and size rubbed up beside them.
He caught a glimpse of Achak on a balcony above. The twins were surrounded by an adoring audience. A young man tipped a goblet to their lips before licking away a bit of wine that spilled at the corner of their mouth.
Alōs pushed through the mass toward where his quartermaster stood, tucked away in a corner. Kintra wore an orange-beaded eye mask and long-sleeved tunic, which covered her markings, but he would know his friend anywhere.
“Tell me good news,” said Kintra as Alōs came to her side. She snatched him a goblet from a passing server.
“The old woman lost the jewel on Hallowed Island.”
Kintra was quiet for a beat. “I suppose that is good news.”
“Giant cannibals are good news now?”
“You could have told me you didn’t find anything in her memory.”
Alōs took a sip of his drink, savoring the sweetness against his tongue. “I never knew you to be such an optimist.”
“A trait that appears to have rubbed off from our redheaded friend. The dedication that one showed in the valley was rather reassuring. I might
even be beginning to trust her.”
“A dangerous idea,” muttered Alōs, more to himself than to her.
“Really? And here I thought you’d be pleased to hear it. After all, you seem to put a great deal of trust into her. Where is she anyway? I assumed she would have arrived with you.”
Before Alōs could reply, the lights dimmed and a spotlight lit up the center of the room. Guests began to clear out of the way.
“My cue to leave.” Kintra drained her drink before setting it aside. “I’ll see you later on the Crying Queen?”
“I do not see why not.”
Kintra left him standing among the gifted to take a spot with the giftless, who were strapping themselves to the wall.
Alōs handed his cup to a server as his magic swirled awake in his veins. He had been to many of the Mousai’s performances, but even he was hard pressed to contain his thrill of anticipation.
The trio always had a different spectacle to perform, disguises to astonish. It left so many starved to take in the next overwhelming delight they had in store for the crowd.
His attention held to the center of the room, which now lay empty, as the low hum of male voices filled the cavernous space.
Guests shifted beside him, angling their heads for a better view as a group of large, fur-clad creatures pushed a stage to rest under the spotlight, chanting all the while.
In the middle of the dais stood three forms, dressed head to toe in tassels. Beastly fanged headdresses sat like crowns above their golden masks. They were wild even in their stillness, with a circling of drums around the tallest.
The chanting grew in height, the fur beasts stomping their feet until abruptly stopping.
The cavern rang out with anticipatory silence as the attendants slunk into shadows, leaving only the Mousai in the light.
Alōs watched, vibrating with the same tense energy that filtered across the crowd as the tallest Mousai lifted a hand, angling for the drums before her.
Thump thump.
She began to beat out a rhythm.
Thump thump.
The spotlight shifted from white to orange.
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