Princess Elodi's Arc

Chapter 32 of 55

The griffin climbed into the clouds. Cold sea wind cut across Elodi's face. Below her, nothing but gray water in every direction. She spread her father's maps flat against the griffin's warm back and pinned them with both hands. The lines meant nothing out here. No coast. No islands. No mark for the green water the sailors feared. "We don't even know which way," Elodi said. Her voice shook. "These maps stop at the last shore. Everything past it is blank." Damon looked back over his shoulder. His dark curls whipped in the wind. He reached one hand behind him and found hers. "Have hope," he said. "Have faith. It will work out. We get to adventure together. We'll make the best of it." His warmth steadied her, but hope was not a direction. Elodi pulled the letter from her cloak. Her father's words. She had read them a hundred times. She read them again, hunting for anything she had missed. Then she saw it. Near the bottom, one line she had passed over as sorrow. He wrote of watching the same star each night, low over the water, always at his right hand as he sailed out. "Damon." She leaned forward and shouted over the wind. "He followed a star. He kept it on his right going out." She looked up. Clouds hid the sky, but she knew where the sun had set behind them. If her father sailed with that star on his right, he had gone one way and one way only. The otter chirped on her shoulder, sensing her change. Elodi twisted in the saddle and pointed hard to the left of their path. "That way. Not straight. There." Damon studied the gray line where sea met sky. "You're sure?" "No," Elodi said. "But it is more than blank. It is his own hand telling me." She folded the letter and pressed it to her chest. For the first time since the harbor, she was not flying blind. She had a bearing. Damon grinned and pulled the blue reins. The griffin banked hard. Its tan wings tilted, and the whole sea swung beneath them. They turned onto the new heading. Elodi's stomach lurched, then settled. They flew that way an hour. The clouds thinned. And then Elodi saw it, far ahead, a smudge on the water that was not water. Dark. Solid. Land, or something built on the sea. It sat exactly where her father's star would have led. "There," she breathed. "Damon, look." But as they drew closer, the shape grew wrong. Too straight. Too many sharp lines rising from the waves. Not an island. Ships. A dark fleet, anchored across the only path forward, flying colors she did not know. Elodi had found her direction. Now something waited in it, and there was no way around.