Nym’ellia tenses her brow and holds out her intricate gold compass for my perusal. All of the compass’s arrows are pointing inward toward this exact spot.

“The Kelts we arranged passage with in Issaan told us to wait and the boat would come,” Emberlyyn says. We turn to her. Her frail body is propped against one of the cove’s purple willow trees, their cascading fronds surrounding us.

The trees have gone eerily silent, a buzz of muggy energy on the air, birdsong nonexistent as the storm to our north draws nearer.

Emberlyyn fishes a black coin from her pocket and hands it to me, a world-weary look on her face. I turn it over, its gleaming surface embossed with the image of a trout. “We paid everything we had for this passage,” she admits weakly.

Risky. I palm the coin then hand it back to her. Paying for something back in the West, trusting it to actually be here in the East. But it’s clear that this is just one more choice in a long stream of dangerous choices for this small family. It’s also clear that Emberlyyn is nearing the end of her road. All the choices from here on in need to be good ones if she and her daughters are going to survive.

Please let their alliance with me be one choice they won’t regret.

I tug my sleeves low and then my tunic’s hem, my weapons well hidden, as Lukas and Valasca taught me. An ache tightens my heart the moment my thoughts slide to Lukas and Valasca, too, the need to find both of them like a fire burning deep in my core.

A rustling in the brush has my hands flying toward my blades. But it’s not scorpios or wraith bats or Vu Trin that emerge. It’s a Keltish man, ducking under the willow’s purple fronds as he moves purposefully toward us. He’s big and muscular with a rangy, weather-beaten look about him, his blond hair dirty and mussed.

His gaze meets mine, and my hackles go up. There’s a shifty look in his blue eyes, and I’ve the sense of being quickly and coldly appraised. One side of his mouth ticks up as his gaze roams quickly over me with disturbing interest. I keep my palm near the hilt of my Ash’rion blade, noticing that the Kelt has a rather large knife of his own sheathed at his waist.

No runes on it, though.

He leans down, fishes a dark rope from the dense violet brush, and gives it a tug.

A hidden craft slides from under the brambles by the shoreline’s edge, the small rowboat’s dark gray hue blending in seamlessly with the steely water.

“Looking for a boat?” His gaze catches on Nym’ellia and roves over her in a way that further spikes my unease.