The Boundless Read online

  Readers should be advised that this novel includes subject matter related to forced marriage and grooming, violence against children and child soldiers, and content that may be triggering to readers with emetophobia. For fuller details, see www.annabrightbooks.com/novels.

  Dedication

  To Momma and Daddy, who taught me how to be kind,

  and how to fight hard

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Sunset

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Midnight

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Dawn

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Anna Bright

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Sunset

  Wie nun Rotkäppchen in den Wald kam,

  begegnete ihm der Wolf.

  Rotkäppchen aber wußte nicht, was das für ein böses Tier war,

  und fürchtete sich nicht vor ihm.

  —Rotkäppchen

  . . . Just as Little Red Cap entered the wood,

  a wolf met her.

  Red Cap did not know what a wicked creature he was,

  and was not at all afraid of him.

  —Little Red Cap

  1

  THE BEHOLDER

  A storm was building. Dark birds circled the crow’s nest. Cold salt water surged around us, crashing against the Beholder’s hull and the rocky Norsk coast at our back.

  They were ill omens, all.

  My stomach lurched as the ship rolled, the deck dozens of feet below me, little but mist and trembling ropes between us. Clouds hung low in the sky, gray as pewter, heavy as lead. They threatened to smother me.

  Everything looked different from the crow’s nest. Everything looked different in the aftermath of their deception.

  When we’d left England, after everything that happened at court in Winchester, I’d been relieved to find myself aboard ship again. I’d felt safe out on the ocean, my path ahead clear, the Beholder my home away from home.

  But I’d been wrong about everything. Lang was a liar, and the Beholder was no haven for lost girls.

  I knew the truth now. With every gust of wind, every wash of water over the Beholder’s sides, our route would carry us farther away from my father and my home and the stepmother who had wanted me gone and toward Shvartsval’d and its tsarytsya. Toward the rebellion Lang and the rest had been seeking since before we left Potomac.

  But now we traveled east on my orders. Alessandra would never have dreamed of such success when she expelled me from Potomac to search for a husband.

  From this height, too, the crew looked different. It wasn’t just that I’d never seen the top of Basile’s head and broad shoulders before, or noticed quite how gracefully Jeanne loped across the deck; from the towering height of the crow’s nest, I could keep eyes on all of them at once.

  I hadn’t felt I’d needed to in weeks, since I’d come to trust them.

  I’d been unwise.

  I leaned back against the mainmast and tried to let the salt wind soothe the betrayal that still burned in my gut. The fear that ran cold up my spine when I thought of how far I was from home. How far I had yet to go. How every moment, Asgard and Torden slipped farther behind me.

  Lang stood outside Homer’s quarters, hands in his pockets, chin lifted as he listened to Andersen. The older sailor was arguing with him about something, his hands waving dramatically as he tried to make his point, his gray-gold hair drifting around his thin face in the breeze. Lang settled his hands in his pockets, arching his brows at Andersen as he rattled on.

  But his dark eyes darted up to me, as if they couldn’t help seeking me out.

  Talk to me, they seemed to plead. Let me explain.

  Lang was my captain. My friend. The boy with the sensitive face and the wry laugh and lean, ink-covered hands, who I’d come to trust so easily. But I wasn’t interested in his explanations.

  He’d talked on and on after we’d left Norge the night before, justified himself and his choice to smuggle the zŏngtŏng’s weapons to those resisting the Imperiya Yotne and waited for me to say that I understood.

  On and on he’d talked. I’d said nothing.

  I refused to set him at ease. I wasn’t happy or comfortable; why should he be?

  The crow’s nest shifted beneath me. I sat up straight, tensing, then slumped again. “Cobie, you scared me.”

  “Well, you’re scaring a lot of people. You really shouldn’t be up here.” Cobie glanced at me sidelong, pushing a lock of shiny, dark hair out of her eyes. “Not that I care.”

  “I don’t care, either,” I said, staring straight ahead. “What are you doing up here, anyway?” Cobie Grimm was our rigger; the maze above deck was her rightful place, and I was an interloper. But I didn’t care about that now.

  Cobie squinted at me. “You’re aware there’s a purpose to the crow’s nest beyond your need for a spot to brood, right?”

  “I’m not brooding,” I mumbled.

  “Well, you’re not keeping an eye on the horizon for obstacles, either,” Cobie said wryly. She arched an eyebrow. “Are you all right?”

  I stared down at my hands clasped in my lap, at the ring Torden had given me. It felt heavy on my finger, but that was nothing to the weight of my heart inside my chest.

  I missed Torden. I felt every mile between us, stretching taut and painful.

  I was brooding.

  Fury bubbled in my veins when I thought of Lang and Homer and Yu and the way they’d treated me like a bit of porcelain. Breakable, easily set on the shelf and out of the way. Entirely ornamental to their true purposes.

  Torden had never treated me that way. I’d felt strong and free when he looked at me, his eyes steady as the flow of the Bilröst.

  Lang hadn’t so much acknowledge
d my fury as tried to smooth it over, tried with explanations and excuses and repeated protests to convince me I wasn’t really angry with him.

  “You have to understand—” Lang had begun again as I’d walked away from the helm.

  “Who knew?” I’d demanded, whirling on him.

  Lang had swallowed hard but lacked the good grace to look guilty. He’d eyed me carefully, long lashes shadowing his dark eyes. “Some did, some didn’t.”

  “That’s not a straight answer,” I’d spat. My gaze had darted between the faces of the crew, uncertain where to land. Uncertain which of them were safe.

  They stared at me, expressions strained, nothing like the family who’d sat with me at dinners in the galley, telling stories by lamplight. Homer, who’d felt like my guardian. Vishnu and Basile and Will, who’d been so kind to me. Skop, whom I’d defended to Konge Alfödr of Norge, when he’d fallen for his ward Anya.

  I’d thought he was my friend. I’d thought they all were.

  And yet, there I’d stood on the deck again, feeling just as I had on the day I’d left Potomac, the water choppy enough to throw me off-balance, friendless and alone and an utter fool.

  Except this time was worse. Because my place beside Torden and my place aboard the Beholder were homes I had chosen for myself.

  They were all in ruins now.

  “Say something,” Lang had said, voice low and soft as moonlight. He’d drawn near to me, as if he had any right to lay a hand on my arm, to touch me like a friend.

  I’d pulled away.

  “I don’t know what I can say to you right now that I won’t regret,” I’d answered tightly. I’d hardly recognized the tone of my own voice.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I’d noticed a rope ladder swinging loose and uncertain from the mainmast, leading to the crow’s nest. I’d stomped across the deck and taken the rope between my hands, gulping down my fear.

  “Selah!” Lang had dashed after me and wrapped a hand around the rope, just higher than my shaking grip. “Selah, stop. What are you doing?”

  “I need to clear my head.” I’d suddenly been dying to get away from him, dying to find a quiet space above all the noise, though my palms were growing clammy at the prospect of the climb. The crow’s nest was a dizzying height above deck.

  “Selah, don’t be silly.” Lang’s cheeks had been pale as the clouds overhead, his bowed mouth shadowed by his upturned nose, his eyes dark, dark, dark.

  “Silly?” I’d demanded, my anger rising. “Is that what I am? A silly girl, too occupied with falling in love at court to notice you lying and lying—”

  “No!” Lang had burst out. “No, it’s just not safe for you to be up there.”

  “Not safe?” My words had been bitter as bile. “Not safe—like sailing a powder keg across the Atlantic? Like not knowing who my crew members are really working for?” Another step toward him had put us mere inches apart. “Like navigating the English court blind while you hunted for rebels, or passing Asgard’s gates not knowing my crew are smugglers?” I’d studied him, desperate for some hint of remorse in his face, but I’d found none. “I’ll do a better job looking after myself, if that’s the best you can do.”

  With that, I’d turned away from him, grasping the ladder again in my hands, and begun to climb.

  “Selah!” Cobie had called from the deck. “What are you doing?”

  I hadn’t been able to answer her and climb and keep breathing. So I’d chosen climbing, and breathing. I’d concentrated on the rough feel of the rope between my fingers and not on the way the ladder twisted and swung in the wind blowing straight through my clothes, sharp as my own anger.

  My ears had told me that all movement on deck below me had stopped. I hadn’t paused to look down.

  The landing at the top of the mainmast was about six feet by six feet, a square with a small lip at its edge. I’d hoisted myself up onto it, out of sight of the crew, feeling it pitch beneath me like the mist swirling in the fjord.

  But the roll of the sea and the fog had been nothing to the rage churning in my stomach. To the angry tears dripping sideways across the bridge of my nose and pooling beneath my cheek as I huddled on my side.

  I lay that way now, curled up toward Cobie, studying the ring on my finger. Its cluster of stones was as blue as the Bilröst and the Asgard boys’ eyes, its rose-gold band the color of Torden’s lashes.

  I’d left him behind. Torden. The only thing I’d been sure of in months.

  How I loved him. How I longed to feel his hands in mine, to feel him at my side, close as breathing.

  But Asgard was at our stern, not our prow. And Torden had promises to keep. To Asgard. To his father, whose only concern was defending their home against the Imperiya Yotne. To his stepmother, who had lost one child to death and another to exile.

  I had promises to keep, as well—to my crew, as they searched for the resistance, but also to Potomac and my father, whose sadness and sickness weighed constantly on my mind. I’d marked the days as they passed in the back of the book my godmother had given me before I’d left; the marching army of tick marks never failed to make my chest grow tight with worry.

  Time loomed vast and substantial behind and before me. So many days, so many miles, and my father’s fate still unknown.

  I thought of the bones that pressed at Daddy’s skin, of the tremors that ran through his limbs. Of the heaviness that had seemed to weigh on his heart for so long.

  I believed he would want me to help others defend themselves. I hoped I would get home in time for him to tell me so.

  Always seems to be so much noise, he’d said to me the night of the Arbor Day ball.

  Only the crow’s nest seemed to be above all the clamor.

  “No.” I shook my head. “No, I’m not all right.”

  Cobie wet her lips. “It won’t kill you,” she said. She crossed her arms and leaned against the mast, black shirt flapping in the breeze.

  My head knew she was right. The fear and the pain and the emptiness: they would not be the death of me.

  But the depth and the breadth and the height of my loss felt as boundless as the ocean I’d crossed to reach this place. And my heart found it hard to believe her.

  2

  Fat drops of rain began to fall as I climbed down from the crow’s nest. My movements were clumsy as I crept toward deck, my palms still sweating a little over the rope.

  I couldn’t stay up top forever. But I wasn’t ready to talk to the crew. I made for the galley instead and found Will soaking dried beans and kneading bread.

  “Can you take this over?” he asked with no preamble as the galley door swung shut behind me. “I need to go to the storeroom below.” He laughed. “Need. Knead. Get it?”

  Did Will know? I wondered.

  My mind rejected the idea. Will was too comfortable, too kind. Too focused on working hard and feeding the crew, surely, to occupy himself with scheming.

  But Yu was a doctor; he’d cared for me when I felt unwell. Andersen had made me paper ships and dragons, just to make me smile. They’d lied so easily. Could Will?

  I huffed a laugh at him, but it sounded tense and unnatural. “You’re silly. Go.”

  Will left me alone in the galley. Lanterns creaked from the low-beamed ceiling overhead, and dishes shifted gently in the copper sink. The smells of yeast and fat drifted on the air. I closed my eyes and tried to let them comfort me. But I couldn’t help thinking of the guns and gunpowder stashed right near the flour and the salt and everything else we needed to survive.

  I tied an apron around my waist, shook out my hands, and began to work the bread. As rain pattered on the galley roof, I pushed the heels of my hands into the dough, trying to stretch out the anxious knots in my neck and shoulders. I let my muscles lead, let my mind wander, drifting across the sea and across time. From my godmother to Bear to Torden to Daddy; from Fritz, my waiting suitor at Katz Castle, to the Waldleute rebels we were on our way to aid.

  The galley d
oor swung open again, feet crossing the floor in time with the thump of the dough as I worked. But it wasn’t Will I saw standing over me when I looked up.

  “Should I expect an end to the aerial performances anytime soon?” Lang asked.

  I stiffened. Stilled.

  Always more talking. He was so clever with words. I should’ve known he wasn’t going to give me space to think.

  I shook my head and resumed my work. “I’m not playing games with you, Lang.”

  “You’re still angry at me,” he said quietly. “And I don’t like it.”

  He leaned against the counter, hands tucked in his pockets. Golden lamplight slanted across his cheeks and his upturned nose; his hair and his shoulders were spattered with rain.

  I bent back toward my bread, pounding the last of the unincorporated flour and salt into the dough, wincing as the salt stung a shallow scrape on my wrist.

  Lang passed me a damp cloth. I didn’t look at him as I took it.

  “You have to accept the consequences of your choices, Lang,” I said, wiping my smarting skin. “I’m angry at you, and I don’t trust you, and it’s because of your own decisions.”

  He made a noise of frustration. “Come on, Selah.”

  “No, you come on,” I snapped. I thought of Daddy, all patience, all gentle listening. Of Torden, of the night he’d told me he couldn’t follow me back to Potomac. Of how he’d presented me the truth and then waited quietly while I decided what to do with it. “You think the answer to everything is words and words and more words. You can’t wait even a day while I figure out how to cope with this, you’re so obsessed with your own agenda.”

  “Everyone has their own agenda,” Lang shot back. “Even you.”

  “Me?” I demanded, tossing down the cloth.

  “Yes, you! As far as your suitors know, you’re walking into your courtships with the aim of marriage. None of these poor saps know they don’t have a chance. That you’re just passing the time with them until you can turn tail and race home.”

  “I’m trying to protect my father and my country. You know what’s at stake.”

  Lang held up his hands. “And I’m trying to protect millions of innocent people. You’re lying for a good reason, just like I did. Are we really that different?”