“I’ve got her!” the man bellowed. “Take her tae the ship! Kill the rest!”
Panic flooded her veins like ice water, sharp and chemical.
Nae, nae, NAE?—
The ship lurched.
Not the usual pitch and roll of the waves, but a massive, violent shudder that sent everyone—attackers, guards, Claricia herself—stumbling across the blood-slick deck. Wood screamed in protest. Something massive had struck them, the impact reverberating through the hull like a death knell.
And then she saw it.
A third vessel bearing down on them like vengeance itself. Sleeker than the others. Faster. A longship with a dragon’s head carved into its prow, painted in faded colors that had seen years of salt and storm. Warriors crowded its rails—not armored like knights, but wild-looking men in leather and mail, their weapons raised, their faces fierce with battle-hunger.
Vikings!
“Brace fer impact!”
The warning came too late. The longship slammed into the attacking vessel with a bone-jarring crunch of splintering wood. The collision vibrated through her bones.
At their head stood a man who made something in Claricia’s chest twist despite her terror.
“With me!” he roared with a Norse accent, and his warriors answered in howls that had terrorized these waters for generations.
He was tall—taller than any man she’d ever seen—and broad through the shoulders in a way that spoke of brutal strength. Long blond hair whipped around his face in the wind like a lion’s mane. His eyes, even at that distance, burned cold and gray-blue as winter ice. And in his hand, he held a sword that caught the dying light like frozen lightning.
Och fer the love of… now’s nay the time tae be noticin’ how bonnie he is!
He raised that blade high, roared something in old Norse that made his warriors howl like wolves, and the longship crashed into them with the force of divine wrath.
Viking warriors poured across the gap in a living tide of violence and fury. Their war cries split the air—guttural, inhuman sounds that raised every hair on Claricia’s body. The man holding her released his grip, shouting orders to his comrades, trying desperately to rally them against this new and overwhelming threat.
It was chaos. Pure, bloody chaos.
Steel rang against steel in a chorus of death. Men screamed—some in rage, some in agony, some with their last breath gurgling through cut throats. The smell of blood grew thick enough to choke on, mixing with brine and sweat and the acrid stench of fear.
Claricia backed toward the rail, trying to escape the carnage, her mind spinning.
Friend or foe? Because at this point, me luck with ships is spectacularly terrible.
The blond warrior moved like death given form. He cut through the attackers with brutal, efficient precision—no wasted motion, no hesitation, just pure and deadly purpose. His blade opened throats. Shattered bones. Painted the deck in fresh crimson with every swing. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t understand how something so violent could be so terrifyingly graceful.
Then his eyes found hers across that blood-soaked deck. Gray-blue, storm-cold, and utterly inhuman in their focus.
For one single heartbeat, the world narrowed to just that gaze. Everything else faded to nothing.
Then the ship tilted again, harder this time, groaning like a dying animal. Claricia felt the rail press hard against her back, felt theentire vessel listing dangerously as water rushed through the breach in the hull.
One of the attackers saw his chance. He broke free from the melee and rushed straight for her, desperation written in every line of his blood-splattered face.
Claricia had nowhere to go but up.
She grabbed the rail and hauled herself onto it, balancing precariously above the churning water that looked black and hungry and utterly lethal. Her eyes darted frantically. There—a smaller boat tied to the attacking vessel, just a few feet away. If she could jump, if she could just?—
The ship lurched violently.
Her foot slipped on wood made treacherous with blood and spray.
Time seemed to slow as she fell. The cold autumn air rushed past her face. The dark water rose up to meet her like an open mouth. And in that frozen moment, every childhood nightmare came roaring back—the fear that had lived in her bones since the day she’d seen a village child pulled from the loch, blue and lifeless. The terror that had kept her from ever learning to swim, kept her from the water’s edge, made her freeze at the sight of deep water.
