Eleanor stared up into the darkness, utterly still. I couldn’t tell if she’d even heard. Only Dennis raised his hands. He gritted his teeth, lips curled back as he struggled to get control.
“Why isn’t anything happening?” shouted Alice.
“Dennis is trying,” I yelled back.
The Guardians were stumbling onto the deck now as well, but they could barely stand in the face of the wind.
“Please, Eleanor.” Alice sounded desperate. “We can’t do this without you.”
Reluctantly, Eleanor reached for Dennis’s hand. Bodies connected, they set about controlling the wind. I couldn’t see what was happening, but a moment later I heard the winch spinning.
Alice leaped up. “Now the foresail.”
Dennis followed her, but Eleanor remained rooted to the spot, eyes fixed on the mast rising high above us.
Rose took Eleanor’s hand. “Come on. They need you.” She tried to pull the older girl toward the bow, but Eleanor wouldn’t move.
There was a lever to lock the wheel in place, so I activated it. I didn’t know if we were on the right course anymore, but we needed all hands on deck. So I grabbed Eleanor’s arm and forced her to move, even made it a few yards before her father, Joven, held me back.
“Leave her alone!” he yelled.
“We need her.”
“Look around you. What have you done to us?”
I pushed his hand away. “Given you a chance to live.”
“Does she look alive to you?” He cupped Eleanor’s chin in his hand. “You know you can trust me, don’t you?” he asked her coaxingly. “Just me.”
Eleanor shrugged all of us off and staggered toward the bow. Together once more, she and Dennis combined their elements, easing the pressure on the sail. For a moment, her face relaxed, as if she was remembering what she was capable of. Who she was.
It didn’t last. Before Ananias and Griffin could spin the winch handle, the sail filled with a sudden gust. The ship lurched and we lost our footing. Above us, the ropes whipped against the mast.
When the wind eased again, the winch wouldn’t budge. “Rope must’ve caught,” shouted Ananias.
Before the words were out of his mouth, Eleanor had begun to climb the rope ladder. It swung from side to side, but she moved swiftly.
On deck, Rose spread her legs wide for balance and closed her eyes. Channeling her element, she tried to calm the water around us, to make it easier for Eleanor to climb. But it wasn’t working. The ship continued to rock as funnels of water rose high on either side. Her element was as unpredictable as the storm itself.
Eleanor was nearing the top now. I could just make out her white tunic against the dark mast. “Be ready to move that winch,” said Ananias. “I’m going up to help.”
He grabbed the ladder and climbed, grunting with every step. He hadn’t even reached the top when the tangled rope eased.
“Eleanor’s done it,” said Alice. “Turn the winch.”
The handle was heavy, but we got it moving. We were working so hard that I didn’t even hear Ananias yelling. It was only when Rose screamed that we stopped.
I followed her eyes to the top of the mast. Ananias held the ladder with one hand while he produced a flame with the other. In the glow we had a clear look at Eleanor as she hung precariously from the rope. She was at least a yard from the ladder.
“What happened?” Dennis’s voice was small. “Why isn’t she on the ladder?”
Alice was already running toward the mast. She flew up the ladder as Ananias leaned farther and farther out, trying to reach Eleanor. Finally he extinguished the flame so that he could make a grab at her. The ladder stopped shaking as Alice reached the top too. Then there was silence.
“What happened?” repeated Dennis helplessly.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Please,” murmured Rose. She took my hand and held tight. “Please, please, please . . . pl—”
Something crashed onto the deck in front of us. The planks splintered under the shock. Screams filled the air, but they came from above us.
I took a tentative step forward. Eleanor’s white tunic looked the same as it had only a moment before. But everything else about her was all wrong: twisted, mangled limbs and bludgeoned head. I knelt beside her and placed my fingers against her neck, but I knew I wouldn’t feel anything. My element wouldn’t bring her back from the dead, either.
Everything passed in a blur. Tarn collapsed beside her daughter. Ananias appeared beside me, sparks erupting from his shaking hands. Alice shook her sister as if she might somehow wake up. There were screams, so many that my skull vibrated from the noise. So many hands working feverishly, believing they might still help her, this battered girl bleeding out on the deck.
The only person who wasn’t crying was her father, Joven. He simply turned his head and directed a shaking finger at Alice. “It should’ve been you,” he muttered. “You!”
He thrust a hand around Alice’s neck. She tried to fend him off but couldn’t.
Using both my arms, I pulled his hand away. “It was an accident.”
His fist flew up and caught me across the face. I crashed against the deck. My already swollen cheek flared with a pain like liquid heat.
“This is your fault,” he yelled. “You and Alice—always plotting.” With each word, spittle landed on my face. His breathing was heavy and uneven. “You brought us here and you killed her.”
“It was an accident,” growled Ananias.
“Just like Kyte, I suppose. An accident that you drew him into the open, where your uncle’s snipers could take aim.” He turned on Alice again, but before he could unleash a blow, Ananias pounced. My brother gripped Joven’s fist in one hand and produced fire with the other. Tears streamed down his face.
Joven seemed amused. “Got plans for those flames, Ananias? Think you can hurt me?”
Ananias was shaking. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Then get out of my way.”
“Stop!” cried Tarn. She was kneeling, hands pressed together. “What are you doing, Joven?”
“What I should’ve done years ago.” He lunged at Alice again, one strong hand wrapped around her neck. I saw it all in the light from Ananias’s flames. Saw Joven strangling her. Saw Alice’s eyes growing big. And then flames erupting from Ananias’s hands as I grabbed my brother and poured all my energy through him and into the fire.
Ananias pushed me away and the connection was broken. For a moment, I couldn’t understand why the fire was still burning, moving across the deck. But then a horrific figure emerged—a man engulfed in flames.
Ananias ran to him, tried to tackle him so that he could extinguish the flames, but Joven swung his fists, keeping him away. Rose ran to the side of the ship and engaged her element, searching in vain for the funnels of water she’d accidentally summoned only moments before. Now they wouldn’t come. All the while, Joven staggered backward, gasping staccato cries that were more animal than man.
In the moment before he hit the rail, he stopped moving. It was only an instant, but through the flames I saw his eyes drift once more to Eleanor’s body. And when he tipped backward and fell overboard, I would’ve sworn it was deliberate.
I don’t think I was the only one who thought so, either. Only Rose stood beside that rail and scanned the ocean for his body.
She said he never resurfaced.
CHAPTER 9
Mid-morning, and the entrance to Charleston Harbor opened up before us, just a gap between low-lying islands. The clouds were gone now. The wind had passed. Only the bloodstains on the deck remained.
The storm had died out as suddenly as it had arisen, and a night of drifting hadn’t knocked us badly off course. Tarn had taken the wheel at sunrise and we’d lowered the sails. Alice had given instructions, we’d followed them, and if I hadn’t known better, I’d have said that they were both all right. But then mother and daughter left us, and no one dared to follow. Alice wasn’t the kind of girl to grieve with an audience.