Quin cursed his feeble hands. He’d been clear in his head what he wanted, focused on bending his magic to his will. Why had it failed him?
Deep inside his chest, a wisp of relief wafted through like morning fog. Despite all he had done, all he had been forced to do, he had yet to take a human life.
He felt a scorching sense of shame. The relief belonged to the boy he once was. The good, gentle prince of the river kingdom who would never wish harm on anyone—and who had paid the price. Quin resolved to find every scrap of weakness within himself, every pathetic speck, and burn it down to ash.
Next time he aimed to kill someone, he wouldn’t miss.
Chapter 2
Overboard
MIA COULDN’T GET IT right.
She had struggled, tirelessly, to understand the mechanics. She knew that this type of boat, with its single triangular sail—a lateen sail, Nelladine had told her—could not turn into the wind. She’d scrutinized the delicate maneuver Nell did with the long coconut ropes, loosing the eucalyptus pole, leaping across the hull, and swinging the sail from one side of the mast to the other.
Mia knew all the right words. In theory, she could apply them.
In practice?
“I can’t,” she said, shoving the rope into Nell’s hand. “I’m a lost cause.”
Nelladine sat easily in the teakwood hull, face tilted toward the sun, black braids coiled in a regal bun atop her head. The hint of a smile played on her lips.
“It’s all right, Mia. It’s your first time on a dhou, you’re not supposed to know everything.”
Mia plunked down sourly beside her. She was gifted at most things, and on the rare occasion she didn’t understand a concept or idea, she picked it up quickly. If you couldn’t do something perfectly, why do it at all?
“It takes a while to get the knack with the ropes, really it does,” Nell assured her.
“Maybe she’s more useful as boat meat,” said a voice behind them. “But high marks for effort, Rose.”
Mia glanced over her shoulder. Pilar was tucked into the stern, her favorite spot, hugging her knees to her chest. Grinning as usual.
“I should never have taught you that term, it’s not meant to be an insult!” Nell shot Pilar a disapproving look, then turned back to Mia. “Those”—she nodded at the sandbags lining the hull—“are boat meat. I am boat meat. Every crew member is ballast when you’re on a dhou, the whole thing is about balance. You’re always shifting as the wind changes.”
“It’s called trimming,” Pilar said, maddeningly smug.
Mia resented how easy Pilar was on the water, how she seemed to have absorbed Nell’s sailing lessons with no difficulty at all.
“You’re hardly bigger than a sandbag yourself,” Mia sniffed. “I imagine we could trim you right off the boat.”
“Behave yourselves, you two!” Nell admonished, though she was clearly amused. “I did always want a sister.”
“Sisters are overrated,” Pilar said. “All they do is try to kill you.”
Mia couldn’t argue. Considering this whole sorry mess had started with her little sister, Angelyne, sending an assassin to put an arrow in Mia’s back . . . an assassin named Pilar d’Aqila, who had turned out to be the secret first daughter of their father, Griffin Rose . . .
“On Refúj I grew up with hundreds of Dujia who were supposed to be my sisters,” Pilar said. “My mother always said the bond of magic was even stronger than blood.” She grunted. “The only thing worse than sisters is mothers.”
Mia couldn’t argue with that, either. She’d journeyed all the way to Luumia to enlist her mother’s help, only to discover she had no interest in helping. Wynna had turned her back on her daughters and started a new life, a new family, with the Snow Queen. And she had paid for it. She, like everyone else in Valavïk, had been buried under the avalanche.
As Mia studied Pilar’s face, a gentler emotion stirred in her chest. When it came to rough edges, Pilar was practically a dodecahedron. But why wouldn’t she be? The people who should have protected her, including her mother, had done unconscionable things. Zaga made Wynna Rose look like a slice of strawberry cake.
“I do have a brother,” Nell said.
“Really?” Pilar unfolded her legs, leaning forward. “We’ve been on this toothpick for the last month, and now you decide to tell us about your family?”
“Not a toothpick, thank you—I’ll ask you to show Maysha the respect she deserves.” Nell stroked the side of her boat, thoughtful. “I haven’t seen my brother in four years, not since I left Pembuk. He’d be fifteen now.”
Mia felt a twinge of guilt. Why had she never thought to ask Nelladine about her family?
“He would like you,” Nell said to Pilar. “He’s a fighter, too.”
Mia felt another twinge. Not guilt. Envy.
Perhaps it was inevitable they were grating on each other. They had, after all, been stuck on a twenty-foot sailboat, on a choppy and capricious sea, subsisting on a diet of fish, fish, and—would nature’s bounties ever cease?—fish with a seaweed garnish.
Mia’s feelings toward Pilar were complicated. Her half sister was truculent and ill-tempered; she loved picking fights and wore her sarcasm like a second skin. Pilar lorded over Mia her superiority in sailing, magic—just about anything.
Mia had spent a lifetime trying to decipher the world and apply that knowledge logically, like any good scientist. But long before she failed at sailing, she had failed to understand her own sister, which meant she had failed to recognize the plots Angelyne had set in motion. Mia had failed to understand magic, including the magic in her own body. She had failed to save Quin, sweet, innocent Quin, the boy she might have loved.
As they sailed away from Luumia, Mia saw his smoldering green eyes more often than she cared to admit.
Now he and Angie were both dead, crushed beneath the snow palace. Pilar was the only family she had left. Sometimes Mia was struck by a tide of compassion so strong it knocked the breath out of her. She had seen Pilar’s past: not just the rape, but the aftermath. She knew that the whole Dujia sisterhood had turned against her. The island of Refúj, whose very name meant “safe haven,” had proven to be anything but.
Mia ached to be that safe haven for Pilar. She knew in the marrow of her bones that she could do it: be the kind of sister Pilar needed. Mia had failed to see Angelyne, and had thereby failed to save her. She would not make that mistake again.
“Mia, your face!” cried Nelladine. “Great sands, you’re reddening up like a roasted beet! What did I tell you? You have to apply the cream every hour—it absorbs fast.” She reached for the scooped banana leaf. “Apply evenly or it’ll streak.”
Grateful, Mia accepted the leaf. After a solid month of unrelenting sunshine, Nell’s deep brown skin had grown a few shades darker, as radiant and dewy as ever, while Pilar’s olive-gold complexion had tanned nicely. Mia, on the other hand, had sprouted a veritable pox of orange freckles and was burning to a well-seasoned crisp. No matter how many times she or Nelladine healed the sunburn, she’d be just as pink an hour later. The endless cycle of burning and healing, burning and healing had become almost comical.