"My lord would be pleased if you brought him the assassin," she said. "He would grant you a boon." She smiled. "A hundred boons."
Her hand traced over the line of my forehead. She couldn't touch me, but it was still like walking straight into a typhoon.
And I got these pictures in my head. Me with my own ship, sleek and tall, with sails the color of blood. And that ship of mine, she had a crew that listened to me even though I was a woman, and together we sacked the coasts of Qilar and all the lands of the Empire. The Confederation fell cause of me and that ship. All Confederation pirates became part of my armada, and I ruled the oceans, the richest woman in the world. I took lovers more handsome than Tarrin of the Hariri, more handsome than Naji. I wielded Otherworld magic that put the seas under my control and gave me power over typhoons and squalls and sunshine and steering winds.
I became the most perfect version of myself, fierce and terrifying and even beautiful.
I wanted to take her up on it. I wanted to wrench that charm off my neck and stomp it into the ground and race through the woods till I found Naji crumpled up in pain in the shack. I wanted to, cause on the surface it was the most common-sense thing to do. Always take the money, Papa said. You can always doublecross on the deal later if you don't like the terms.
But I also wanted to do it cause Naji didn't see me, he would never see me, and for reasons I couldn't decipher, that bothered me.
I wanted to do it. I just couldn't do it.
I stepped away from her, my forehead damp from where she'd almost touched me.
"You liked that, didn't you?" she asked.
"It had appeal, ain't gonna lie." I took another step back, hoping my legs weren't shaking too bad. "But I think I'll leave you to it on your own. You don't need my help."
Echo's eyes turned flat as mirrors. Darkness roiled through the woods. The trees shook. The earth rumbled.
"You can't hurt me," I said, thumping the side of Naji's charm with my thumb. "I ain't afraid of you."
She bared her teeth, sharp and bright, and let out a low, snaky hiss. But I was right. She didn't move to attack. I was protected.
"Protected?" she sneered. "You think you're protected?"
"Course I do. You can't even touch me." I tried not to think about her reading my thoughts.
"Why do you think you threw your sword into the woods?" Her voice was nothing human. She glided up to me, and there was that cold dampness again, but I held my ground. "I can control you, I can force you to lead me to him–"
"Then why don't you do it?"
She snarled, her face twisted and wild. I was not going to flinch. I was not going to run away.
And then something darted out from the underbrush, something swift-moving and black as pitch. A sword flashed. It sliced through the woman and her dark mist, and this time there wasn't any starlight to splatter all over my clothes. She just evaporated. The entrance to the Mists dried up like it'd been left too long in the sun.
I sat down on the transparent tree leaves and the damp ferns.
A branch snapped off to my right. I didn't bother looking over. I knew who it was.
"I told you it was dangerous," Naji said.
"Is she gone?"
"For now." Naji paused. "Thank you."
"For what?"
He stood beside me, his sword hanging at his side. I kept my gaze down on the ground and tried not to think about tossing it off into the underbrush.
"For not telling her where to find me."
I kicked at the fallen leaves, splintering them into shards, digging a ditch in the soil with the heel of my boot. The forest noises had come back, the chittering and shaking and rustling of the rain, the crystalline chiming of the surrounding trees, but the silence between the two of us swallowed all that noise whole.
"I almost did," I said after a while.
"Almost did what?"
"Helped her find you." I couldn't look at him. "She showed me all these things that could happen if I did – amazing things. My own ship, my own crew." I stopped, not wanting to remember some future that wasn't ever gonna happen.
Naji got real still. I knew he was staring at me even though I refused to look up at his face.
"Why didn't you?"
"Cause."
"That doesn't answer the question." The hardness in his voice sliced through the liquid air of the forest. This time, I did look at him. Lines furrowed his brow. His eyes were sunk low into his face. "I can't keep doing this, Ananna, not if there's a chance you might turn me over to the Otherworld. Not if you're going to run away when I explicitly told you…" He took a deep breath. "What stopped you? Why didn't you help her?"
"Cause you're my friend," I said.
All the hardness in his features melted away. "Oh."
"I'm not going to turn you over to your enemies." I stood up, swiping the forest floor off my dress. "So you can stop fretting about that. But I'm thirsty still. That's why I left – you were in a trance and didn't bother to get water."
He didn't say nothing. I started kicking around in the underbrush, trying to find the water jar. I didn't remember dropping it, but that was probably just more Otherworld trickery.
"It's a few feet behind you," Naji said. "Beneath that tree there."
I glared at him and then fumbled around in the wet greenery until I felt the smooth cold stone of the jar. Naji waited for me, his arms crossed in front of his chest, and then we walked the rest of the way to the spring, our silence heavy with our unspoken thoughts.
The spring was waiting for us as though nothing unusual had happened. It bubbled and frothed in its usual place beneath the pine trees. I plunged the jar into the spring, and the water flooded over my hands, cold as ice and reminding me of Echo's almost-touch.
I know that Naji saw me shivering.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Naji paced back and forth through the chiming forest, knocking down tree branches and those sparkling, transparent leaves. I watched him from beside the spring and waited for the thoughts to stop jangling around inside my head.