Tor was silent.
“Because it wants to offer it as a temptation, in order to get them to also sign a contract. The Calavera captain. Or even the spectral. Or someone worse!” She ran her hands through her hair, face red with anger. “The Night Witch told you how dangerous her power in the wrong hands would be. And you’re so quick to go off and trade it? Just because you don’t want its responsibility anymore?”
Tor’s hands were fists by his sides. “To save Estrelle.”
Melda laughed in his face. “You would do it to save yourself.”
Tor fumed. His face felt hot, though the sun hadn’t yet peeked over the horizon. “I didn’t ask for any of this! It was forced on me, and I’m supposed to accept it, just because it was given?”
There was a moment of silence, and Melda looked at him as if she didn’t believe what she was seeing.
Tor swallowed. He had never seen her look so disappointed.
She breathed out roughly. “Fine. Sign whatever you want, Tor. It’s your lifeline. Forgive me for caring about it.”
* * *
Once across the island, Vesper enlarged the ship. Tor boarded and made no move to return to his cabin. He sat on the deck, listening to the waves.
He had been so close to signing it—he would have signed it, if it wasn’t for the pirate.
Tor heard a creak behind him and whipped around.
Vesper stood there, eyes bloodshot, as if she couldn’t sleep and was looking for the same peace the ocean brought him. She turned to leave when she saw him.
He shook his head. “Don’t leave. Not on my account.”
She looked like she might leave anyway. Then, she carefully walked toward him and rested her elbows against the rail.
“Nightmares?” Tor asked her.
She shook her head. “I don’t get those. Not anymore.”
“Because of your mother?”
Vesper nodded. “She made all of my nightmares into dreams, until there was nothing left to be afraid of.”
Tor looked at her sidelong. “You aren’t afraid of anything?”
She gave him a look. “Of course I am. I just don’t lie to myself about it.” She shrugged. “I find you only get nightmares about things you haven’t admitted to yourself you fear.” Vesper stared at him, moments ticking by. “I understand, you know. Not wanting something that’s been thrust upon you.”
Tor said nothing.
“When my parents died, my brother renounced the Swordscale throne. He didn’t want it—all he wanted was revenge. He would leave for weeks on end in search of who knows what. Planning to fight, when we’re supposed to represent peace.” She swallowed. “The crown went to me.”
Tor looked at her then. “But you’re…”
“A kid?” She laughed without humor. “The throne doesn’t mean much anymore. We have a council made up of elders that makes most decisions. But the throne represents the enchantments that have kept Swordscale safe all of these years. My ancestors made the original pact with the blood queen,” she said. “If my bloodline dies, Swordscale ceases to exist.”
Ceases to exist. That was worse than being born a leader. To have the fate of a people on her shoulders since she was a child… Perhaps she did understand his attitude toward the Night Witch’s inheritance. More than he would have ever thought.
“In my village, in Estrelle, my bloodline has ruled for as long as we can remember. We have the leadership emblem,” he explained. “I didn’t realize how important that was and wished it away. That’s what started all of this. That’s why the Night Witch chose me.”
She looked at him. “I didn’t ask to be born into the family I was in Swordscale. To have its future reliant on my family line. No one asked me.” She shrugged. “You might not have asked to be the Night Witch’s heir, but it happened. It’s real. You can either accept it and use what she gave you to change the world for the better, or you can continue to feel sorry for yourself and try to forget what you are.”
“I’m not—”
Vesper held up a hand. “That first day on the ship, those ropes held you like a puppet. Only when you decided to master the ship, and the powers that came with it, did it release you.” She squinted at him. “Are you going to keep being the prisoner of your own destiny, or are you going to stop complaining and become the person the Night Witch knew you could be?”
Tor blinked. He felt like he had been slapped across the face and embraced, all in the same moment.
Vesper shrugged. “Just think about it, Tor,” she said. They stood in silence for a long while.
And Tor made a decision. Vesper, harsh as she was, was right.
Whether he liked it or not, he had a dark power. He would continue to sprout new emblems. And he could hide them, the same way he had been hiding his waterbreathing marking, ashamed of what he had become, or he could accept that no matter what power he had been given, he was still Tor.
Nothing could change that.
The sky had turned blue with morning light, and it was cloudless. Tor motioned toward it, grimacing. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
Vesper nodded. “It means it’s going to storm.”
The Forever Storm
There once was a man half crazed from his time in the sun, who claimed to have seen a storm swallow a ship.
Not destroy, not demolish, not splinter, but swallow whole—in one quick swoop.
Ten years later, another man claimed to have seen the same ship again, in the center of a tempest, its sails tattered, but still holding together, riding a wave as tall as a tower. The men aboard shouted for help, but before anything could be done, the storm passed, and the ship was gone.
Once every ten years, the ship is seen, cloaked in clouds, winds, and rain, the men still looking the same as they did when their boat disappeared.
There was a riddler who claimed that those who free the ship from its storm would
