Tor watched as Vesper shook. The ocean began to boil with her rage—her sadness. He wondered if she would drown them all with one close of her fist. If she would crush them from above with a tidal wave.
But then the sea went still.
Vesper lowered her hands. The scale burned brightly in her grip, the ocean held her in a high throne.
She lifted a single finger.
And what was left of the Calavera fleet vanished.
22
The Prophecy
No—not vanished. Vesper had made the Calavera so small, they could fit in a fishbowl.
And that was exactly where she put them. Engle watched, eye almost pressed to the glass, as the Calavera sailed the seas within the bowl, complete with tiny islands. They shot a cannon right at him—and it bounced off of the glass in a pathetic thump. Tiny yells roared from inside. Engle grinned wickedly, taunting them.
“No chance of them ever rising again,” Tor said. Engle had agreed to keep the pirates at his house, locked in the orb.
The Calavera were gone.
Estrelle was safe.
Once the ice had started to crack, his mother had moved her people to the nearby Troll Tunnels—with plenty of light. They had planned to go to the friendly Cristal Town for refuge, if the Calavera had succeeded in taking the village.
Luckily, that hadn’t been necessary.
A chill slithered across Tor’s shoulders as he wondered what would have happened if they had been just a few minutes late.
What would have happened if the Calavera captain and spectral had gotten the pearl? He had seen its power firsthand—wielded by a villain; it could have meant the end of Emblem Island altogether.
The pearl had been more useful than they could have imagined. After shrinking the Calavera, Vesper had used its power to shield Estrelle’s coast, enchanting the waters to block danger. She had shifted the current, so it didn’t lead directly to the village, and created special whirlpools just outside of its borders, that would only appear in the face of danger. Though they had stopped the deadly pirates, there were surely many more perils to be endured.
Vesper had also used the pearl and its power over the sea to cloak Swordscale once more, healing the safeguard the Calavera had destroyed.
“We’ll be off then,” Captain Forecastle said, wincing a bit as he stood. Mrs. Herida had healed his wound, but told him he needed bed rest for at least a week. It didn’t seem as though the pirate would be following those orders, however, as he hobbled toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Engle asked, frowning.
Captain Forecastle smiled down at him. “We think we’ll go try to find Bluebraid and her crew,” he said. Melda blinked at him, surprised. He shrugged. “Nearly dying puts things in perspective. We’d like to take a crack at breaking her curse.”
With a final nod at Engle and promise to all of them that they would meet again, the pirate left.
Vesper was standing in the center of Tor’s house, staring at the tree trunk that stood in his living room. He supposed she hadn’t ever seen a tree before she had washed ashore. “I’ll be going as well,” she said quietly.
Engle approached her first. “Thanks for the snacks,” he said. “And also, for saving us…a few times. Definitely makes up for the times you almost got us killed.” He tucked the Calavera fish tank under his arm, the water sloshing violently from side to side, then waved goodbye.
Melda stepped up to the waterbreather, her expression grave. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For not trusting you. And…for everything else.”
Vesper lifted a shoulder. “You were right not to,” she said.
“Here.” Melda pulled a gift from her pocket. “To match your hair.” It was a silver ribbon.
Vesper blinked down at it for far too long. “Thank you,” she said softly.
Tor led her out of his house. A few people were in the streets now, only vaguely aware of how close they had been to losing everything they had known.
Like Vesper, who had lost so much.
Tor offered to see her back to the sea, and they walked to the beach in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. It had been the longest day of Tor’s life. Though Estrelle was always warm, he still felt shards of ice in his chest.
They reached sand, and Vesper turned to him. “I don’t think the prophecy was ever about you,” she said.
He hadn’t expected that. “What do you mean?”
“I’m the one who ripped the paper, and I knew what it meant when I saw the words: Your quest will prove useless, and one of you will perish.” Her breath was shaky. “I knew it was meant for me… My quest to save my brother would prove useless.” The last word cracked, and she looked to her feet, tears spilling freely. “I knew when it said one of us would die, it was either him or me.”
She took a deep breath, filling the entirety of her lungs with air. When she breathed out, her shoulders shook with a silent sob. It took a few minutes for her to meet his gaze again.
“I know it was cruel not to tell you. I could see that the prophecy weighed heavily on you and your friends. But I just hoped it was wrong. Speaking the truth of it would have felt like fate was locked in place, like I couldn’t change it…”
“That’s why you took the skull,” Tor said softly.
Vesper nodded. “I used up every inch of its paper tongue, hoping the prophecy would change.” She turned to face the endless horizon. “But it never did.”
She took Tor’s hand. In it, she placed the pearl; they had agreed to hide it somewhere no one else could find. It was Tor’s job to get it there. She added the anchor, attached to the Night Witch’s ship, no bigger than his thumb.
Before she could hand him the sundrop salmon scale too, he stopped her. “We want you to have it,” he said. “To
