Scavenge the Stars (Scavenge the Stars #1)(93)

All this time, he had been an unwitting pawn. He had decided not to use her for her money, when all along she had been using him for her plans.

“Did you kill that man?” he asked when she was done. “The former captain of the Brackish?”

She paused long enough that he had his answer. Still, she replied, “Not directly, but I might as well have. He was a bad man, Cayo. He tortured children.”

He understood that—he did—but the reminder of that lifeless arm swinging off of the stretcher turned him cold. She was stained with blood.

“We’re going to find Boon and pay him back for what he’s done,” Yamaa—no, Amaya—said. “And we’ll do whatever it takes to help your sister. It’s the least I can do, after…everything.”

Cayo didn’t speak for some time. During her story, he had taken the jade ring from his pocket and fiddled with it, its weight insubstantial yet unbearable. When she looked over at what he was playing with, she stiffened.

“Where did you get that?”

He turned at the sudden change in her voice. Her dark eyes were wide, as if she had encountered a specter.

“It’s not mine, it’s Soria’s.” Cayo held out the ring in the palm of his hand. “Although I doubt she’ll want it any longer.”

Amaya reached out, then shrank back. Shaking her head, she took the ring from his palm, the graze of her fingertips white-hot against his skin. She cradled the ring in both her hands, one of them wrapped in a bandage, staring down at it as if it were a bird with a broken wing. She drew in breath to speak but released it as a shuddering sigh as tears fell from her eyes.

“It was my mother’s,” she whispered, brushing a thumb reverently against the band. “The day she sold me, she came home in tears, and her ring was missing. The ring my father gave her when they married.”

Revelation opened a pit in his stomach as he thought back to the story Soria had just told him. “I…I think there’s something you have to hear.”

He related Soria’s story to her, watching as her face hardened, then went slack with shock. She clamped her hands over the ring and held it to her chest, staring at the deck with overly bright eyes.

“This man, this debt collector, was told to bring you to my father for some reason,” Cayo said. “But the debt collector sold you off to that captain instead, Zharo, because he had a debt with him. The debt collector tried to give my father that ring, saying that the mother…your mother…had given it to him in exchange for smuggling you out of the city.”

“My mother didn’t sell me,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and let her tears fall. “I knew it. I knew he was lying.”

“Do you know why my father wanted you? Why he would pay a debt collector to bring you to him?”

Amaya heaved a breath and wiped her face. “My father. He’d collected blackmail on Kamon Mercado and was planning on using it. But then he died, and I was the only one who had access to his Vault, being a blood heir. Mercado must have wanted to use me to gain access to all that blackmail, to destroy it.” She shook her head and peered down at the ring again. “He got exactly what he wanted.”

Cayo swallowed, hardly knowing what to say. Every secret that was revealed only seemed to turn his father more and more into a monster, into a man he couldn’t even recognize.

“Well, you can keep it,” he said, pushing away from the railing to return to Soria. “My father might be a thief, but I’m not.”

“Cayo.”

He turned to her. The way she stood there, her fist held to her chest, her hair loose and waving in the sea breeze, made his throat tighten. He had first seen this girl in the inlet, sad and stubborn and strong. To see her again now, when he knew the truth, made him mourn for all the time they could have had together, if only they had both been honest.

His mother’s songs had been right: Nothing could stay, and everything was temporary. You could never trust what you had, only what you were capable of.

“Can you forgive me?” she asked softly. “It doesn’t have to be now, but someday?”

He thought about it. But nothing made sense anymore, including whatever feelings he had, or thought he had, toward her.

“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.

Then he descended the stairs, disappearing into the dark.





She searched, but her magician had vanished. Neralia wept, for again she was alone, trapped in the cradle of the ocean’s dark and all the stars gone cold.

—“NERALIA OF THE CLOUDS,” AN ORAL STORY ORIGINATING FROM THE LEDE ISLANDS



Amaya stood at the railing of the quarterdeck, watching the lights of Moray grow distant. She had already lost sight of the Brackish, still docked with its pennants waving in the wind and its purple sails furled.

The last time she had watched Moray disappear on the horizon, she had been ten years old, and her name had been Silverfish. She had wept then, but she didn’t weep now.

Because this time she was leaving nothing behind.

Cicada would take care of the Water Bugs, make sure they got home to their families. And by the time the Port’s Authority caught wind of the strange events of this night, they would already be far out at sea.

Amaya looked down at the ring in her hand. Proof that she hadn’t been betrayed, that her mother had done all she could to try to save her from Mercado. She remembered how well it fit her mother’s slim finger, how the jade perfectly complemented the light brown of her skin. She tried to slip it over her fourth finger, but it was too small; she had inherited her father’s broad hands.