“Not a word, girl,” he whispered, and she felt her weak body lower to the chilled forest floor. Brambles and little pebbles jabbed into her ribs. She tried to shift, but those leather-wrapped fingers curled around her chin, tilting her head back. “This’ll sting, but it won’t last long. Don’t make a sound.”

A hiss slid through the girl’s teeth when a sharp bite of pain lanced across her throat. Through hooded lashes, she watched the faceless man pull back a knife. He mumbled strange words and brushed his fingers through something wet and hot on her neck.

She trembled, keeping still, terrified he might use the edge of his blade to finish her off.

In the next breath, her eyes fluttered, heavy with fatigue, and his sturdy arms scooped her up once again.

The fear burning in her veins faded to something gentler, something calm. Enough, the girl thought she might fall into a deep sleep.

Until her body shifted and she was handed over to new arms, thicker and smellier.

“She going to talk?” A smoke-burned rasp of a new voice broke the darkness.

“I’ve made certain she won’t recall much of anything about this night. See that she’s forgotten from others’ memories.”

“With what you be payin’, I’ll bury her in the realm of souls if you want. Won’t be found, this one. You’ve my word.”

Her pulse raced, her mind grew frantic, but her body kept still when heavy steps thudded across wood, and somewhere beneath it all was the lap of the tides and the smell of brine and rotting scales.

With a grunt and a breath of smoking spices in her face, the girl was nestled beside rigging and damp linens.

“Blessed little barnon, you are.” The man spoke in common tongue, a dialect known throughout the three kingdoms and over the Night Ledges where feral folk claimed no king. Doubtless he was a tide wanderer, a soul without a land to call his own. “They coulda torn out your skinny little throat.”

His thumping steps plodded away over wooden boards—a longship—she was on a boat.

No, she couldn’t leave. There were people she was leaving behind. But…who?

As though the thick mists of the wood dug into her skull, the girl could not recall the fading faces in her mind. It was merely a feeling, a sense there was something—someone—she was forgetting.

Before the weight of exhaustion drew her into a murky sleep, the girl saw a darkly clad figure on the water’s edge, a glow of flames at his back.

Across the breast of his leather jerkin was a double-headed raven. The emblem of Dravenmoor—the enemy kingdom. The land behind the raiders.

By the gods, they’d found her and the curse in her eyes had finally destroyed her entire world.

1

Roark

The boy’s death was my fault.