It was easy to lose track of time with noorestones. With the regular ones, I usually was surprised by how much time had passed, because using them was so easy, so natural. With these stones, however, minutes seemed endless, and I forced myself to count out the seconds to keep myself from asking over and over if an hour had passed.

An hour had not passed.

Three hundred seconds.

Five hundred.

A thousand.

I bit off a scream and kept counting.

At two thousand four hundred and forty-two seconds, someone gripped my arm. “Stop!”

I didn’t ask questions. I let go of the noorestones as quickly as I’d have dropped a venomous slug, and the ships all jolted back to their normal speeds.

I doubled over, the rail catching my stomach, and heaved up the breakfast I’d forced down earlier.

Hands touched my back and shoulders as I spit out the rancid taste and caught my breath. Every muscle in my body trembled, but as the crew started to shout, I pushed myself up just enough to see what happened.

Evidence of the Great Abandonment spread out before the ship: bodies on boats, driftwood, and floating wreckage.

Some were dead, their corpses bloated and sunburned. Others clung to their small rafts, waving as we approached, begging for help. And still others were harder to tell; they might have been unconscious, or they might have slipped away moments before.

All the ships lowered lifeboats, and crewmen spent hours pulling the living aboard. As far as the dead, we couldn’t take bodies onto these ships, not with space so tight, so they lashed the wreckage and rafts together and pushed them away from our small fleet.

When we were sure the wind wouldn’t blow smoke back at us, I followed my threads to the seven big dragons and asked them to burn it.

It was better than letting them float out here forever.

The Star-Touched was silent, save the rush of fire in the distance. It seemed like we ought to have said something meaningful, a eulogy of some kind, but I couldn’t make myself speak as the flames consumed the pyre. The grief was too much.

And the horror.

Because new nightmares loomed on the western horizon:

1. The now-familiar shape of Idris hunched over, waiting for the other gods to join him.
2. A muscular figure, standing straight up, mace lifted, and dripping with immense chains meant to bind him to the seabed.
3. A man, tall and graceful, reaching for something—someone—still in the water. Waiting for her to rise.
4. A woman, round with late pregnancy, cradling her belly in her arms.
5. A slice of ink blacking out the sky. Indistinct but terrifying.

Only two gods were left in the ocean.

One day until the eclipse.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

BY LATE AFTERNOON, WE’D FISHED DOZENS MORE people out of the ocean.

They were sick and sunburned, eyes crusted over with salt. Some clutched small personal items—jewelry or bags or dolls—but most had nothing at all, beyond the ragged clothes they wore. A few didn’t even have clothes; they’d given them to the children, to shield them from the unforgiving sun.