Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 93948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93948 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
I don’t want to admit that Siobhan’s right, but she is. We can’t beat the Cŵn Annwn in a straight battle. They have the numbers, the firepower, and everything else in their favor. Without some kind of trickery, we don’t stand a chance.
Even with my crew on steady rotation running themselves into the ground, it will take well over a week to reach First Sister. Morrigan may not have as many air- and water-users on her ship, but she’s got all the power of the Council behind her. She’ll catch up with us sooner or later, and I’d wager everything I own that it will be sooner than I’d like.
I sigh. “So be it. To First Sister we go.”
Chapter 13
Siobhan
It’s been a very long time since I’ve sailed on a ship this size. Bastian and I spent time on a smuggler ship for about a year after leaving Mairi. It was in those months that the realization of how poorly things work in Threshold became clear. Because the Brune didn’t trade in alcohol or treasure or anything of that nature. They traded in freedom.
There are no laws prohibiting travel between the islands of Threshold. Each island is—theoretically—left to govern themselves. But while that might be technically true, the fact remains that the Cŵn Annwn have a tendency to bend the laws to suit themselves. Being caught out on open water with crimson sails in the distance is the stuff of nightmares for most citizens of Threshold.
And so we helped people—for a price. We would run circuits north and south, then east and west, through Threshold, transferring people to their destinations while under the relative safety of sailing on a Lyarian ship. Strange how the Cŵn Annwn never plunder the capital city to bolster their numbers.
In that year, the rebellion was born. I could see so clearly how much good we could do if there were more than one ship doing the work, if there were a network of safe people and safe houses to take refuge in.
During the first few years after leaving the Brune, Bastian and I spent a lot of time apart, carefully courting people to our cause. It was in that time that I met Nox and so many others. But as the years passed, it became clear how vital secrecy was in order to keep people safe.
That secrecy demanded Bastian and I isolate ourselves. Me more than him, honestly. Up until his arrest, he kept up the fiction of being the feckless second Dacre son. Publicly he oversaw his father’s interests in Three Sisters. Privately he used his connections to secure funding and all manner of support for the rebellion.
And all the while, I kept to the shadows. I got used to it over the years. Which means that, as nice as it is to be among Nox’s crew, helping switch over the sails to a mundane white, it’s a bit overwhelming. Everyone moves in a seamless rhythm that I’m a half step behind on no matter how hard I try.
The crimson sails are rolled up and deposited into a subsection of the deck that’s been magicked open. Not standing in the bloody shadow of the Cŵn Annwn sails helps the pressure in my chest, but I’m achingly aware of the fact that my sister catching us will result in the deaths of many of these people—if not all of them.
Morrigan isn’t the type to leave survivors to spread the tale of rebellion. Our parents taught her that lesson well; better to leave no witnesses than to risk exposure. It’s a lesson I internalized alongside her, but instead of killing anyone who witnesses me in my hound form, I simply…don’t shift. Not all the way.
My sister may be violent to the extreme, but she’s no fool. She doesn’t shift fully, either. All of Threshold would have heard about it if she did. A partial shift could be attributed to any powerful shifter, but our hound forms are not normal by any stretch of the imagination. We’re too large, too fluid, too uncanny. No one looking at us would mistake us for a normal shifter.
And the Council and Cŵn Annwn would never allow a symbol like that to exist, even within their control. They’d kill Morrigan, Council member, noble, or no. They’d certainly kill me.
A soft grunt has me looking over my shoulder. I immediately wish I hadn’t. Bastian is in the middle of the deck, helping Evelyn do something to the warding circle drawn there. In the heat of the afternoon, he’s removed his shirt and…
Longing hits me so hard, it roots my feet to the deck. His light brown skin gleams in the sunlight, practically begging to be touched. I know what the lines of his muscles feel like beneath my fingertips, how they flex when…