The sea stretched out in a tangled mass of blues and greys, empty and endless. The sky was low and swollen with storm clouds, and the wind blew in sharp bursts, brushing across her hair like the jagged edge of a knife. The ship—a little thing, barely more than a carcass of splintered wood and rusted nails—drifted forward, carried more by the will of the ocean than by any direction of its own.

  Eve stood at the bow, one hand clenched around the wooden railing, the other wrapped tight around the cold metal of her compass.

  It laid still in her palm, its needle twitching like a dying thing. It wasn’t broken, not completely—but it wasn’t right either. It never pointed north, not really. It wavered, hesitated, second-guessed itself, much like she did.

  Ahh...

  She exhaled slowly, watching as her breath curled in the air before vanishing. Somewhere below deck, their companion—what was left of him—was sleeping, or pretending to. She hadn’t checked. Couldn’t bring herself to. Not yet.

  She tilted the compass, watching the needle jerk violently, trying to find its place.

  It never settled.

  She turned her gaze back to the horizon, where the sky and sea bled into one another. A storm was coming. She could feel it—not just in the air, but in the way the waves seemed to breathe, in the slow, aching groan of the ship as it rocked beneath her. The boards were soaked through, swollen with seawater, splintering in places where the ocean had bitten too deep.

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  They weren’t supposed to be here. Not like this.

  “Full speed ahead,” she muttered under her breath, to no one in particular.

  And as if the sea had been waiting for her command, the first drops of rain hit the deck.

  She sat hunched beneath the torn sail, knees pulled to her chest, fingers wrapped tight around the rusted compass. The wind had died down, leaving the air thick and heavy, the only sound the slow, rhythmic groan of the ship as it drifted forward.

  Her thumb ran over the cracked glass, absent, repetitive. The needle inside twitched again.

  How long have I been following this thing?

  It should have been easy to answer. But when she tried to think back, it was like staring into fog. Blurred shapes, half-formed memories, all dissolving before she could grab hold of them.

  She frowned, tilting her head back, eyes scanning the sky. The stars weren’t out yet, just a thick sheet of clouds stretched from one end of the horizon to the other.

  Where was I before this?

  She should know. She had to know. You don’t just wake up on a ship in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a broken compass and no sense of direction. That’s not how life worked.

  Right?

  She swallowed hard.

  Had she always been here?

  No, that didn’t make sense. There had to have been a before. A reason.

  Maybe if she thought hard enough—

  Pain shot through her skull, sharp and immediate, like something was pressing down on her mind, forcing her to look away. She sucked in a breath through her teeth, gripping her temples. The ship rocked beneath her, and for a moment, the sensation was wrong. Too solid. Like she wasn’t on the sea at all. Like—

  Gone. The thought slipped through her fingers like water.

  Her hands shook.

  She looked down at the compass again, watching the needle flicker, always pointing forward, forward, forward.

  Had it always been hers?

  She tried to picture herself getting it, holding it for the first time. Nothing came. Just a blank space in her memory where an answer should have been.

  But that didn’t matter, did it?

  The compass was pointing.