The Duke’s Demon by Iris Foxglove
Sneak Preview of The Prince’s Vow
The Starian Cycle continues in The Prince’s Vow…
Adrien de Guillory, crown prince of Staria, stood on the docks of a smuggler’s haven and stared into the dark water swirling under his feet.
“She’s seaworthy,” said the Mislian behind him, shifting under a pile of netting as thick as a lady’s skirts. “All you need to do is whistle the right notes, and she’ll get you there.”
Adrien tore his gaze from the water. A small sailboat bobbed off the side of the dock, its dark gold sail rolled up in an ungainly mass, worn wood sloping to a cabin Adrien could probably fit into, if he folded up his legs. There was always so much of Adrien. He tended to spill over the edge of wherever he happened to be, too lanky for polite company, but too obvious to disappear.
“Does she have a name?” he asked.
“What? No. She’s just the boat. We don’t name our ships—It’s bad luck.” The Mislian worked swiftly over the ropes, mending cuts and frayed edges, but her fingers were black as ink, and her movements were jerky, mechanical. Her eyes were too black as well, dark pits without even a sliver of white around the edges, and Adrien wondered if his mother’s ancestors had looked like her, stained by magic.
“It won’t go away if you stare,” the Mislian said. For a smuggler who refused to give Adrien her name, she was remarkably chatty. “Trust me.”
“Oh.” Adrien turned back to the boat. “Sorry.”
“You probably shouldn’t, though,” she said. “Go to Mislia. Try somewhere nice, like Thalassa. Less trouble.”
“Aren’t you from Mislia, though?” Adrien asked.
“Yes. And now I’m in Staria,” the Mislian said. “Where your king has people like me killed. This was the preferable option, and that really should be all you need to know.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Adrien said. He shrugged his heavy bag off his shoulder and into the boat, which rocked slightly. The water stirred against the hull, and Adrien winced as he saw a face flicker across it, a boy with black eyes and a heavy robe, blinking hard. Then he was gone, and in his place was a woman with a loom, tearing the threads to pieces. A child in a snow bank, watching the clouds. His father, sitting on his throne with a cloak made of needles, blood rolling over his skin.
Adrien dragged his gaze away. His magic had been getting worse, lately. He always saw it in water, glimpses of a future he didn’t always understand, faces in his water glass, dark forests spilling like ink over the surface of his bath. They were even starting to bleed into his dreams, pools of clear water with black-eyed Mislians drifting just beneath, watching him, evading his touch. But here Adrien was, about to sail into a sea of water, endless visions flickering like mirrored glass out of the corner of his eye.
He had to go. He wasn’t much use anyways, in Staria, even without the visions. His father’s council ignored him, certain that as soon as another, dominant heir was named, Adrien would disappear to a country estate for the rest of his life. No one believed Adrien would ever be king, least of all Adrien himself, but he couldn’t just sit around and wait for his visions to consume him.
Mislia was the only option. His mother’s family came from there, and half of Adrien’s visions had been of a cold, lonely island full of people with slate-black eyes. There was something waiting for him there. Answers, hopefully. A way to make the visions stop.
He climbed into the boat. It rocked under him, gently, and he reached up to touch the little mast.
“There’s a water distiller in the cabin,” the Mislian said. “Empty the bottom of it twice a day and you won’t get sick. Whistle twice to unfurl the sail, three times to get to Mislia. If you want to go back, whistle once.”
Adrien whistled twice, and the ropes on the mast whirled to life, drawing up the golden sail. It startled a laugh out of him, and the Mislian smiled.
“That’s your magic?” he asked. “Are there many Mislians, like you? Sailors?”
“Used to be,” she said. “Not much anymore. The kind of demons who like the sea are forbidden, there.”
Adrien shivered. “You have one. A demon.”
“Sure.” She was still smiling, working on her nets. “Do you want to see? He has an old name, but he goes by Sam, now. Hey, Sam. Come out and say hello.”
“Oh, no,” Adrien said. “I don’t really—“
The Mislian held her hands to her mouth, and Adrien’s flesh crawled as something uncoiled out of it, spilling over her hands and twining around her arm. It was a snake, black as her eyes and horned like a deer, and he raised his head to look at Adrien.
“He says hello,” the Mislian said. “He doesn’t speak out loud. Too small. Well, you are,” she said, when Sam whipped his head around to stare at her.
“H-hello, Sam,” Adrien said. “I. I really should get going.”
“Yeah, probably,” the Mislian said, stroking the snake under the chin. He shook out his antlers and glided up her arm, twisting about in her long, dark hair.
A faint breeze rolled over the docks, and Adrien stared out over the water, which flickered and glittered with patches of color, movement he couldn’t be sure was a vision or just a flash of the sun on a wave.
“Right,” he whispered. “Time to go.”
He whistled three times. The sail groaned as wind twisted round to fill it, and the boat pushed forward before it jerked roughly, still caught on the dock by a rope. The Mislian laughed.
“Wonderful,” Adrien muttered, leaning over the edge to untie the rope. As he did, the Mislian looked up and pushed aside her nets, staring down the docks and past the jagged slope of rock hiding the smuggler’s cove from view. She frowned, and her demon rustled in her hair, hissing faintly.
“Someone’s coming,” she said. “Were you followed?”
Adrien followed her gaze. A figure walked in the shadow of the rocks, broad-shouldered and dressed in the Starian royal uniform. “I thought I wasn’t.”
“Lovely.” The Mislian whispered something to her demon in another language, and the demon slithered back into her mouth, disappearing with the flick of a tail. Her eyes went wide, wider than any human eyes had a right to, and just as the figure at the other end of the dock broke into a run, she dove off the edge and into the dark.
“Wait!” Adrien fumbled with the ropes. “You can’t just—you can’t leave me here—“
The ropes fell loose, and the wind caught the sail again, slowly dragging the boat through the water. Adrien fell back into the boat, whistling frantically, but the wind remained steady and the boat trundled along, only a few paces away from the dock, well within reach.
On the dock, the figure burst out of the shadow and into the light of the midday sun, and Adrien grabbed the edge of the boat in horror.
“Adrien de Guillory,” said Isiodore de Mortain, Adrien’s father’s second in command. “What the hell have you done?”
* * *
Isiodore de Mortain had been in the middle of tying someone up when the king of Staria strode into his bedroom, uninvited and unannounced, to tell him that his son was missing.
He’d hired Gwydion, a courtesan from the House of Onyx, simply so he could spend a few hours making the ropes just so, doing it precise and perfect and exactly how he wanted it. Gwydion, he’d found, was amenable to being stripped, spread out, and tied up without much conversation or even much touching, other than what was necessary to bind him.
Isiodore liked a challenge, sometimes. But helping Emile bear the weight of the crown was enough of one, most days, and he found himself only hiring courtesans when he was arguing with the King’s council and trying to stop—or set in motion—any number of plots. He’d always liked his position as the stalwart advisor who controlled things from the shadows, but Emile’s shadow was never an easy one in which to hide. There were times he burned too hot for there to be any shadows at all, and times he was still and silent like a forest, with more shadow than light.
And then there was the time he walked unannounced into Isiodore’s bedroom, took one impassive look at the whore on Isiodore’s bed strung up in lovely red rope and went, “Do let him out, my son has done something foolish. Again.” With barely another look, Emile had turned on his heel and left, the implicit command of his dominance affecting even Isiodore, who was no submissive.
“Could I stay and wait, maybe,” Gwydion had asked, shifting catlike and smiling at him from beneath his lashes.
“I would think you’d grow bored, but yes, if you like.” Isiodore had made a note to send along some extra crowns to the House for his trouble, though Gwydion seemed content enough to nap, drifting and under, while Isiodore attended to the king.
Although he’d had to send word to Laurent de Rue to come fetch his poor courtesan, because Isiodore had time only to free him from the ropes and hand him a pricey bauble before dressing and heading out to attempt and find Adrien. Gwydion likely didn’t mind the ropes and being under, having a nap in a soft bed and earning more money than he would otherwise. Perhaps a courtesan liked a night off. And Isiodore knew well enough he was a sought-after dominant, but anything else, well, there were nobles better suited to fuck a willing partner than Isiodore. He’d been in love, once, a long time ago. Perhaps it had been different, with him.
Isiodore wished that Emile would, at the very least, avail himself of a courtesan—or someone—who liked pain the way Isiodore’s partners like to be controlled. Emile had been nearly celibate, as far as Isiodore knew, since his queen died in his arms—he’d been almost fanatically devoted to her, from the start—but the least he could do was hire someone and siphon off some of that dominance of his, which would keep him from showing up, perhaps, wild-eyed and feverish, in Isiodore’s bedroom.
That look never heralded anything good, in Isiodore’s experience. It was the same one Emile had worn when he’d told Isiodore that Xavier de Sartre, their friend who’d been in love with Emile since childhood, had chosen exile when Emile married Lianne. He wore it the night Isiodore found him with his beloved queen’s blood on his hands. Then again on the hunt where Adrien almost fell to the last remnants of a desperate conspirator’s plot to take the throne, when he’d told Isiodore to round up Chastain and his sons and hang them all.
And then most recently, when he’d told Isiodore that his son had sailed to Mislia. Which he only knew, because Sabre de Rue had waltzed up to the palace and told him so. Adrien had left him a letter, discussing some kind of violent dreams he’d been having and how he’d seen in his visions that the answers were with his mother’s people in Mislia.
“His mother’s people,” Emile raged, in his rooms, knocking something off a table just to hear it break—a vase, Kallistoi, and one Isiodore had given him on Longest Night when they were seven and he didn’t know what you would get for a prince who had everything already.
Isiodore had sighed. Emile’s temper always had been dreadful, and even he could feel that Emile had gone far too long, again, not attending to his dominance urges.
“Her people were not Mislian, what is he thinking, the first time that boy does something without asking permission from six people and it’s this?”
Lianne de Guillory’s people were Mislian, despite Emile’s refusal to admit it. And personally, Isiodore had always thought Adrien was saving up all his rebellion for one spectacular display of it. “You have been distracted of late, Your Majesty,” he’d said, eying the vase. “And I gave you that. Break someone else’s gift to you, next time. Haven’t you any of those glass paperweights de Sartre was always giving you?”
You already broke that man’s heart, why not his gifts? He’s been gone for years.
“Distracted, yes, if you have not noticed, Izzy, there have been multiple attempts to murder my son and myself, it does tend to make one a bit unsettled.”
Emile always had been dramatic. He and Lianne both, honestly, Isiodore didn’t know why Emile was surprised. Adrien was their son. He was bound to do something stupid, at some point.
“I’ll collect him, Emile,” Isiodore had said. “But it might not be a bad thing, having Adrien...occupied, with something, for a spell.” A poor choice of words, and Emile’s glare might have melted gold, if Isiodore wasn’t well used to it by now.
“I am not entirely in disagreement there, and I had thought to send him to Gerakia, the university there. Kallistos, perhaps. But not to the very breeding ground of the people responsible for his mother’s death.”
Perhaps Lianne should not have dabbled in the magic she was not strong enough to wield, Isiodore had thought, not for the first time. He’d been as fond of Lianne as anyone, and mourned her death sincerely—mostly because of what it had done to Emile, and what it would mean for the kingdom—but to say she was innocent in her own demise was a bit much.
Isiodore always had been too practical for his own good. And certainly his friends—Xavier and Emile were moody and unpredictable, and Arthur...well. Blind optimism and a tendency to trust too easily wasn’t the same as moodiness, but it had been exhausting to deal with all the same. And now it was only Isiodore and Emile left of the four of them, and Emile’s son, who was finally starting to act exactly as Isiodore always knew he would, some day.
“Do you remember, Izzy, what happened when Lianne and I took that boy to the lake near my hunting lodge? He stayed atop the raft for all of three seconds before he fell in the water, and you assume he can handle a boat ride to Mislia? Do you know how far away that is, or do you wish to consult a map?”
Isiodore, long-practiced in weathering the storm that was Emile, had said only, “He was three, Emile, and yes, I daresay I do know where Mislia is, let us not forget I was always the better student, between us. You could not spell Katoikos correctly until you were thirteen. Now,” he continued, while Emile narrowed his eyes at him, “I will send someone to clean up the vase you so thoughtlessly shattered, and perhaps someone you could smack about a bit and who would like it, unlike my gift-giving sensibilities, which you have completely offended.”
“You were seven, and your mother stole it from the de Valois’ country estate, don’t think I’ve forgotten.”
Emile had a terrible memory for some things, and a terrifying one for others, and the ability to hold a grudge until the world met its inevitable end.
“Regardless, you are throwing dominance at me like you used to as a teenager, and do recall it never worked then and shan’t, now.” Isiodore had bowed, again, and promised to fetch back his son.
He’d thought it would be easy enough to find Adrien, who wasn’t timid as much as he was distracted, easily—like his father—and perhaps not terribly good at geography, also like his father. But Adrien’s friendship with Sabre, while an old one, now included unsavory characters from the pleasure district and the lower city, and he must have learned how to elude and evade his father’s advisor because the task that should have taken Isiodore a day at most had become four, and now there he was, staring at the crown prince of Staria sitting in a boat and looking at him as if Isiodore was a wave about to topple him.
“You can’t stop me,” Adrien said, and gave him a look of pure stubbornness that was so familiar, Isiodore wanted to scream or perhaps throw himself in the water of the harbor and sink into it, rest at the bottom until the situation absolved itself without him.
“Get back here,” Isiodore said, putting all his dominance in his voice, and watched in a combination of fury and grudging respect as Adrien did nothing but drift away, closer and closer to the open waters, where Isiodore would be unable to catch him.
“I don’t actually think,” Adrien called, “that I can. Sorry?”
“You’re not, you brat,” Isiodore muttered, and then did the only thing a self-respecting, dominant, advisor and friend to the king could do...and ran toward the end of the docks, launching himself into the air and cursing as he tried to hit the boat and not the water.
* * *
Adrien never did see visions of his own life in the water. However, as Isiodore de Mortain went crashing full-force into the sea, Adrien thought that perhaps, just this once, he might be watching it flash before his eyes.
“Oh, no,” he breathed, as Isiodore broke the surface like a raging sea-serpent dressed in a nobleman’s clothes. “Oh, no. Oh no.”
He half considered grabbing one of the oars and pushing Isiodore away like an errant seal, but the downside of that was Isiodore might grab the oar in question and drag Adrien out instead. So Adrien did the only thing he could have done, which was to scramble to the bottom of the boat, slide under the bench by the rudder, and grab on for dear life.
Isiodore dragged himself over the side of the boat.
“Adrien.”
“Look,” Adrien said, a full grown man clinging to a wooden board. “I know you’re under considerable pressure right now—”
“Not as much as you will be,” Isiodore said, dripping sea water all over the boat.
“But Mislia’s the only place I can find answers,” he said, desperately, as Isiodore started forward.
“You can get answers at home. You’re a prince.”
“I can’t,” Adrien said. He curled up his lanky legs as though to kick out, and thought again when Isiodore gave him a grim look. “It’s this or I die.”
Isiodore just stared at him, dripping, and reached down to grab him by the collar of his shirt.
“It’s this or I end up like my mother,” Adrien said, and Isiodore paused, half lifting Adrien out from under the bench. Adrien’s heart was racing too fast, like it always did when Isiodore so much as looked at him. “I opened my eyes in the bath and Father was there. He was on the throne, putting. Putting needles in his eyes—”
“That isn’t a true vision,” Isiodore said, carefully. He didn’t let Adrien go. “Was it?”
“I don’t know. It seemed symbolic. Like when I saw the Mislian with a dragon under her skin.”
“With a. You.” Isiodore closed his eyes for a breath. “You’ve had these visions before.”
“Not like this,” Adrien said, softly. “The nightmares are getting worse. And I…I’m worried even if I. Even if I blind myself, I’ll still see them.”
“You aren’t blinding yourself,” Isiodore said.
“Yes,” said Adrien, gesturing towards the ocean. “Obviously. Which is why I’m going to Mislia.” He glanced over Isiodore’s shoulder. They were almost out of the harbor, moving fast. “Why we’re going, I guess.”
Isiodore turned to look, cursed, and promptly dropped him. Adrien yelped and disappeared under the bench again. “Turn this thing around, Adrien. It’s clearly a. A witch thing.”
“A witch craft,” Adrien said, in the safe shadow of the bench.
“No.”
Adrien crawled out from under the bench. Isiodore was still soaking wet, his long, dark hair falling out of his tie, his perfectly tailored clothes clinging to the muscles of his arms. He had a swordsman’s body, not like Adrien, who was just a beanpole, or the king, who was a little too broad at the shoulders, and Adrien realized, with mounting horror, that at some point soon, he would have to take off his sodden clothes and let them dry.
“Adrien, pay attention,” Isiodore said, snapping his fingers.
“What.” Adrien forced his gaze away from Isiodore’s chest. Oh no.
“If you can’t turn this blasted boat around, we’ll just have to signal the first safe vessel we see, and hope they won’t try and hold you for ransom,” Isiodore said. “Unless you have heretofore unknown skills as a sailor?”
“I don’t have skills in anything, honestly,” Adrien said.
Isiodore cut him a quick look at that, but thankfully didn’t push. “All right. Tell me you have enough food, at least.”
Adrien looked at him. “For one, maybe.”
Isiodore groaned.
Honestly, if Adrien weren’t facing down the barrel of a gun marked Isiodore May Soon Be Naked In Your Presence, he would have been almost bemused. Isiodore always held himself with so much dignity in court, somber and reasonable when Adrien’s father let his emotions run away with him, and it was interesting to see him groan and sigh and cover his face with a hand like an ordinary human being. Adrien sat down on the bench by the rudder, which was moving on its own, and watched as Isiodore dug through their supplies and peeked into the cabin.
“At least we’ll have water,” he said, darkly.
“Sorry,” Adrien said. He looked away when Isiodore started undoing the buttons of his shirt. The sea was dark this close to Staria, but he’d heard of places where people could see all the way to the bottom, reefs full of coral and bright fish, slender serpents following the wake of ships near the Thalassan resorts.
Out of the corner of his eye, Isiodore took off his trousers. Adrien looked down at the water rushing past, instead, and flinched at the image of a man standing in the quarries, talking to a woman while a shelf of rock slowly cracked apart above him. He turned aside just in time to see Isiodore lay out on the deck, looking like a wet cat desperately trying to sun itself.
“I know…” Adrien stared at the sail, billowing in the wind. The sail was safe. “I know you think I’m not equipped for this.”
Isiodore grunted. “What were you planning to do, when you got to Mislia?”
“Find a local,” Adrien said. “Say I’m from another part of the country. Isolated. Look for fortune tellers.”
“There are fortune tellers in Diabolos, you know,” Isiodore said. “Not that we’re going there.”
“I saw too much of Mislia to think I was supposed to go anywhere else,” Adrien said. “I don’t see myself, in visions, but when a vision repeats itself, I know it’s important. Like the vision I had of Sabre in the woods, when he killed those people who were trying to…”
“Kill you,” Isiodore said. “And do you think your father, whose son was attacked by assassins, would take news of your disappearance without batting an eye?”
“So long as he can lock me in a country house somewhere when it’s done, yes.” Adrien watched the sail ripple and sway. “Everyone knows I’m just a placeholder until he finds a suitable heir.”
Isiodore didn’t make any overtures to comfort him, which was all Adrien needed to hear, really. He turned to look at the water again, and gripped the edge of the boat tight. A Mislian woman stood on a beach—It was hard to tell where, with the water moving so swiftly—holding her hands out. She was old, her fingers bony and thin, but her hair was black as pitch, and there was a creature hovering over her, an almost human figure, with long, curling horns and a snake’s tongue.
She spoke, and Adrien leaned closer, trying to understand the shape of her words. A warning, maybe, or just another glimpse of another person’s life, another person’s future.
A firm hand landed on Adrien’s shoulder and pulled him back from the edge.
“Don’t fall,” Isiodore said, standing over him. Adrien shivered, unsure if it was a chill wind or the look in Isiodore’s eyes. “If you fall, this boat will keep going, and we’ll both die.”
“But you won’t—” Adrien said, frowning.
“I’m not returning to Staria without you,” Isiodore said. “You should head in. This much water, it can’t be good for you. Take the cabin—I’ll be fine outside.”
“Yes,” Adrien said, watching this last attempt at doing anything on his own slip through his fingers, as always. “Of course.”
The cabin was impossible. Adrien had to contort himself just to fold into it, and wriggling his way out was worse. He finally managed to clamber out on his hands and knees, landing with a thump next to Isiodore, who was still decidedly, gloriously naked. Isiodore gave him an arch look.
“Perhaps a bit cramped,” Adrien said. His nose was about on level with Isiodore’s thigh, which was deeply unfortunate. He twisted around, his long legs whacking the side of the boat, and lay safely on the bottom, where he was slightly damp and cold but otherwise out of viewing distance of Isiodore’s dick.
“I mean, it felt nice, I guess,” Sabre had told him, when Adrien asked him about their brief, one night liaison while Sabre was still in the House of Onyx. They’d been sharing breakfast in the top floor of Sabre’s old house, which was full of laborers and architects, turning family bedrooms into schoolrooms and the ballroom into a stage for the first acting school in Starian history. Sabre was dressed for work, sleeves rolled up and his hair tied back, looking as though stripping all signs of the de Valois family from his home was precisely what he always wanted.
“Yes, but. Details,” Adrien had said.
Sabre shrugged. “Hard to remember, honestly. I was already under—it could’ve been two inches long and the width of my finger and I would have thanked him for it. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Asa. As I said. It was fine.”
Well away from the chaos of Sabre’s old family home, Adrien sat up on his elbows and let his gaze slide over to Isiodore.
He narrowed his eyes.
Not two inches, then.
Isiodore shifted, and Adrien collapsed on the bottom of the boat again, hands clasped on his chest.
“How are you even going to talk to the Mislians?” Isiodore asked. “They have their own language, don’t they? Morrey. Sort of sounds like singing.”
“It’s not that hard to figure out, actually,” Adrien said, thankful, at least, to have a distraction from the presence of what was, to the slight wounding of his own pride, a considerable gift. How Sabre could call it fine was beyond him. “Before they were chased out of the outskirts, I used to go to the border of the city on feast days and listen in on them. I made a primer—It’s in my bag, somewhere…”
“You left the city on feast days,” Isiodore said, in a distant voice.
Oh. Right. Isiodore had always been a presence in the palace, but he was more of a shadow in Adrien and Sabre’s early years, a handsome statue standing next to the king, or disappearing on his more discreet missions for the crown. “Well, I tended to frustrate my tutors,” Adrien said. “I’d stare at them until they thought me too dull to teach, and while they were off commiserating, I’d book it before the next guard rotation changed. It was easy, honestly.”
Isiodore placed a hand over his eyes. “How often.”
“You can’t ask me to count. Look, I preferred to study alone, and the tutors were trying to teach me subjects I’d learned on my own years before. It was better for everyone, that way.”
“With you outside the city. Unprotected.”
“Learning what city life was like,” Adrien said. “Yes, awful.”
Isiodore glanced at him. “You sounded eerily like your father just now, you know.”
“Should I take that as an insult, or a compliment?” Adrien propped his feet up on the edge of the boat. “The fact is, Izzy, there’s nothing any of us can do about it, now. When I come back to Staria, Father will just put an extra padlock on the door to the country estate I’ll spend the rest of my life languishing in. The details won’t change anything.”
Isiodore was still looking at him. “You made a primer,” he said, slowly, “just from listening to people speak.”
“Yes, well. It’s amazing what you can get up to, when you’re a crown prince without a crown.” Adrien couldn’t help the bitterness that crept into his voice. “I’m like a well-bred sponge.”
“A sponge with no sense of self-preservation,” Isiodore said. “Or impulse-control.”
“I had Sabre for that,” Adrien said, and smiled to himself as Isiodore cursed under his breath. “And now, it seems, I have you.”
“This family,” Isiodore muttered, and Adrien looked up at him, bemused. This was a side of him he rarely had the opportunity to see. “All of you.”
“Yes,” Adrien said, with as much sympathy as he could muster. “We’re just terrible.”
The sea was still cool that time of year, but the sun was blazing, and Adrien had to eventually flee the shadow of the bottom of the boat to hand poor Isiodore the bar of medicinal lotion he’d brought for the trip, preferably without having to look at Isiodore’s just fine cock. His clothes were stiff with salt and the silk still damp, so Adrien busied himself with rinsing them out with distilled water and soap, sitting cross-legged on the roof of the cabin while clouds scuttled about over the sea.
“No sails so far,” he said, when he caught Isiodore staring out at the endless stretch of sea. The water flickered with visions, but they were overwhelmed by the violet and gold of the sunset, streaking across the water like paint.
“Don’t press your luck,” Isiodore said, and the firm tone of his voice, with that hint of dominance just under the surface, made Adrien’s hands slip. The bar of soap—their only bar—went tumbling off the side of the boat and into the water, where it floated dismally off into the distance. Adrien bit down a curse.
“You never know,” Adrien said, praying that Isiodore couldn’t see the suspicious patch of bubbles in the ocean behind them. “Maybe we won’t see anyone, and we’ll just have to go to Mislia after all.”
“At which point,” Isiodore said, standing to take his sodden trousers out of Adrien’s hands, “we’ll put this boat back in the water and sail it back to Staria. That is, if a wind doesn’t knock it off course, or if we aren’t devoured by sea serpents.”
“Sea serpents don’t eat people,” Adrien said. Probably. “And try not to worry so much, Isiodore. The Mislian who rented this boat to me said she’ll take us there, no problem.” He slapped the boat on the side. “She’s perfectly seaworthy.”
(Coming soon from Belladona Press)
