I blinked against the sting in my eyes, from the sea spray or something else, I didn’t know. Softly, I murmured the final line in time with the Draven bone crafter, as though we were more alike than different for a moment, Min sála, min sála. My soul.

It was harrowing and true. Soon Stonegate would own not only my life, but my very soul.

“Crafters, pay attention.” At the dawn, the bone crafter stood a few paces from the stempost. Her braids looked silver in the early threads of morning.

The second ship was spotted in the mists, distant from ours, but remained the only other sight. No land. No villages. Only Stonegate lay ahead.

Roark leaned against the coiled neck of the sea serpent stempost, arms folded over his chest, and faced the inner ship.

With my focus on Kael most of the night, I’d hardly taken note of the Sentry. Now he was a wash of somber, wretched beauty. Something cruel and hard, save the few moments of interaction he had with the Draven woman.

When she spoke to the Sentry, his features softened. The longer she whispered to him, the less tension seemed to stack on his taut body.

She mattered to him.

A lover, perhaps? I shuddered to think any sort could love a man like Roark Ashwood. Hate her as I did for the pain she’d caused Kael, the bone crafter had healed his fever. Without her rancid herbs, Kael might’ve faded from the infection and wounds.

“We will reach the shores of Stonegate by the morrow’s nightfall,” she announced, turning her back on Ashwood…as he turned to me.

The weight of his gaze spread an unnerving heat up my arms. A dozen stinging thorns on my skin. I kept my focus trained on the distant sea mists.

“The fortress is in the hills and will be reached by foot,” she said. “Until then, you are under the watch and protection of Sentry Ashwood.”

“We view protection as vastly different things, then.” A low rasp jolted my heart.

My arms had long gone numb, locked in place around Kael’s shoulders, but I shifted to peer at his face. He cracked one eye, and a weak smirk played in the corner of his mouth.

“Gods.” The word slid over my tongue in a kind of plea. I hugged his back to my chest and practically throttled him from behind. “I think I hate you, Kael Darkwin. Don’t you dare come so close to dying again.”

“As you say.” He let out a soft chuckle and gingerly rubbed my forearm around his chest.

A cinch of guilt tugged in my belly. “Kael, if I knew they planned to hurt you, I would never have argued with the Fox. Baldur knew what I was, and I…I tried to keep the lie too long.”