ARC: The Wizard's Promise by Cassandra Rose Clarke Page A

whistled around the Penelope , and it sounded as if it were weeping, too.
    I thought I heard voices, droning with a low murmuring panic.
    Sweat prickled over my skin.
    Someone shouted.
    I couldn’t stay here. Isolfr had warned me about this. He had chosen me for whatever stupid reason, and now that the time had come, I just stood in my room and cried.
    Kolur and Frida were hurt or dead, and I was left alone on the Penelope to die, too.
    I snatched up the bracelet. It was cold, but it didn’t make me see anything, thank the ancestors. I took a deep breath and eased open the cabin door. I leaned against the frame. I listened.
    Voices.
    As quick as I could, I darted into the storeroom and grabbed the big straight knife we used to clean fish. It still glittered with scales from the last time I’d used it. I held the knife close to my chest. My bracelet burned me, it was so cold.
    I slid forward, cautious, terrified.
    The boat rocked with the weeping wind.
    I finally reached the ladder, but my fear had me paralyzed. Voices drifted down from the deck, fevered and distorted from the wind. One of them sounded like a woman’s. Frida. Maybe she was hurt. Maybe I could save her. I’d never saved anybody. But Mama had. And Papa, too. Maybe there was a first time for everything.
    I clutched the ladder and heaved myself up, the knife sticking out at an awkward angle from my right hand. The cold wind blew over me. It smelled of the sea, and it smelled of blood.
    I peeked my head up out of the hatch. All the lanterns had burned out and everything was cast in silver from the moonlight. Two figures were hunched over at the bow of the ship. A woman, a man: Frida and Kolur.
    Frida’s long, dark braid swung back and forth in the wind.
    “Kolur?” I gripped the knife more tightly.
    Kolur turned toward me. Something lay at his feet. “Hanna, get down below.”
    “No! What’s going on?” I scrambled the rest of the way up on deck. Frida looked at me as well, her expression unreadable. “What is that?” I pointed with the knife at the lump at their feet. It didn’t move.
    The deck was smeared with brightness.
    “Well?” I moved forward, faking a bravery I did not feel. “What is it? What’s going on–”
    I froze. The sails snapped in the wind.
    The thing at their feet was a body.
    A body on the deck. A body that bled light.
    Isolfr. In the moonlight, his body shone like alabaster. I shook and trembled and a bile rose up in my stomach. The boat seemed to tilt on the waves.
    But then Kolur moved toward me and no longer blocked the body’s face, and I saw its features twisted up in an expression of fear.
    It was Gillean.
    Gillean of the Foxfollow.
    The knife clattered to the deck. I stumbled backward. My foot caught on the edge of the hatch. Kolur grabbed me and pulled me forward. The sudden movement made my head spin.
    “I don’t know what’s going on,” Kolur said in a low voice. “I woke up, and I found–” He nodded his head in Gillean’s direction. “You probably shouldn’t see it.”
    I yanked away from him. The world seemed to have less air in it, like we were all underwater. Gillean stared blankly at me in the moonlight. Light smeared on his face, and there were ragged tears in his jacket, all soaked with that same bright blood. Bite marks. Slash marks.
    From sharp, curving claws.
    Frida put her hand on my shoulder. “Kolur’s right,” she said. “You should go down below. It’s safer. We don’t know how this man got here, but he’s from–” She hesitated. “He’s from the Mists. You can tell from the way he bled.”
    “I do.” The confession erupted out of me. “I know how he got here.” A tear streaked down my face. Another. Another.
    “You what?” Kolur stomped up at me and looked me hard in the face. “What? How could you possibly know–”
    “I have told you!” I shouted. “Isolfr, the boy in the water! He introduced me to– to–” I couldn’t say Gillean’s name. My voice trembled.