Prologue
Seventeen Years Ago
The day Tristan Thorne lost everything, the sun shone like an unyielding torch held to his body.
He’d stopped feeling the burn and cracks in his skin days ago. Or weeks? He’d lost track. It was about the same time he’d last had the strength to fight back—they’d needed three men to drag him to his knees then.
Today, only one man was necessary. A man they called “Creed.” A last name, maybe. Tristan never cared one way or the other.
Creed was the reason Tristan slept in small bursts.
Creed fed him live crabs and laughed when they pinched the insides of his mouth.
Creed stepped out of the room when his drunken crewmates took turns violating Tristan until his screams and pleas turned into silent resolve.
Soon. Soon, it would finally be over. He would finally be with the others. Tristan would cross into the Valley and be with his wife again. With his mother, father, siblings, friends—everyone in the village they’d taken over the long weeks—all the familiar faces no one ever saw again.
Surely, they were dead.
Surely, they didn’t suffer further once the torture—their fun—was complete.
Surely, Jasmien was at peace, and soon, he would hold her again.
Those were Tristan’s thoughts as the pirate dragged him up a hot, sandy dune. He would die on the two miles of white sand or in the turquoise sea. He would die somewhere beautiful. Somewhere he loved.
What met him, instead, was smoke, soot, and rot.
The green sails of the Gallagher Fleet ships appeared first. Then the sea with its strange, murky color—this wasn’t how he remembered it. The shoreline was so dark that Tristan didn’t realize he was already seeing it. The beach, those sparkling white sands, were blackened by soot. Where had all the wood come from? Were those…?
Gods.
Those were the remains of ships—scattered, splintered, and charred.
“What happened here?” Tristan asked, his throat ravaged from screaming.
“You’ve not seen my favorite part yet,” Creed said, a dark laugh in his tone. He dragged Tristan farther up the dune, revealing the rest.
Plank boards in various states of wear and tear had been erected in the sand. Sticking up like husks of dried grass in the winter.
The wind carried the sounds of lapping water and what he’d thought were bird cries, only there were no birds.
Creed paused to breathe it all in, his clutch on Tristan’s arm a vice. “Cap’n likes to make sure everyone understands who he is before they come threatening to take what’s his. Give ‘em a chance to turn around, so to speak. A kindness.”
Acidic bile climbed up Tristan’s throat.
Bodies.
Those werepeoplenailed to those boards. The cries were the screams of the dying. Pleading calls for mercy. Men, women, children—all the missing faces he’d long believed dead.
A sound that was part laugh, part sob jumped from Tristan’s chest. To think he’d envied them. The earlier victims hadn’t had to witness their entire lives tossed into the streets and burned. They hadn’t been forced to endure the continuous rape or tortured out of sheer boredom.
And,gods, Jasmien was down there. His beautiful, raven-haired wife. How long had it been since she’d been ripped screaming from his arms?
Creed dragged Tristan closer.
Those closest to the shore had begun to rot, and their lower extremities were gone. Likely eaten when the tide came in at night. The sun cooked away the rest. There was no telling how long they would have suffered. And they would have suffered—hands nailed above their heads and bodies left to dangle in the open sun.
Jasmien was in the back, alongside the others who had disappeared with her. Her long hair gave her away, even though it was wind-tangled and dusted with sand. The rest of her was unrecognizable. Her face was bloated, while her slim figure was emaciated from hunger. Someone had cut away her eyelids, and her eyes were sunbleached.
