Forty-Four
Selene braced at theEntia’s bow, the wind whipping her hair into ropes that lashed her cheek. Salt stung her lips, and the air carried the heavy promise of rain—but that storm was hours away. Their storm would break much sooner.
Around her, the Triarius Fleet floated in a crescent formation, sails furled, decks hushed. To any outside eye, they were ghosts adrift among the rocks and fog. But beneath that quiet, hearts beat, blades waited, and vengeance breathed.
Beyond the cove’s jagged mouth of rocks, Thorne’s fleet floated arrogantly in the open. Thirteen ships, their decks crawling with figures too far away to name, but close enough to count. Secure. Certain. Blind to the reef’s hidden crescent and the narrow opening to the cove.
A fatal oversight.
Little Gus shivered on Selene’s right shoulder, then gave a little squawk.
“I know, I’m anxious too,” she said.
Overhead, gulls wheeled and screamed, while the crew worked in silence behind her. No sound outside the scrape of whetstone on a blade, or the clink of chains. All of it muted by the breathing of the sea.
Selene filled her lungs once more with the salt air and waited.
Oskar Dahlin crouched in the shadows of Thorne’s cramped gun deck, inhaling old powder and the cold tang of metal. Lanterns swung on thick ropes overhead, casting restless yellow light across the cannons. The ship swayed faintly beneath him. A warm draft pushed through the gunports now and then, but it did nothing for the seawater clinging to his skin and soaking his clothes.
Fish—neverRamon—dripped water beside the forward cannon, bare chest gleaming in the lamplight. He wore his tightly coiled black hair beneath a dark bandana, and checked the fuse with the easy, restless hands of someone born to the sea.
“You ever get used to this part?” Fish whispered.
Oskar leaned back against the hull, his bandolier of knives resting across his chest. “What part?”
“The waiting.”
“No.”
Waiting was when the ghosts came to sit with him, breathing down his neck while the world held its breath for violence.
Above, the sounds of boots moved in steady patterns. Oskar followed the sound to the murmur of the crew speaking. It was all normal. No one suspected a thing.
He prayed the same was true for the others. If Omar’s other grandkids were half as lithe as Fish, and the Blades and Drynopians were keeping close, then maybe—just maybe—they were all where they were supposed to be. Hidden. Waiting.
Fish peered outside and huffed out a breath. “Soon, yeah?”
Oskar nodded and glanced out to where he knew the fleet was hidden. “Soon.”
Blaze ducked behind a scrubby bush, palm loose on his blade hilt. He wasn’t planning to use it—unless the herd of Sandstone Elk spooked. And then? Every man for himself.
The herd grazed in loose knots across the saltgrass flats, driftwood-colored antlers swaying like branches. Occasionally, one would raise its head, scenting the air for predators.
Roslyn knelt beside him, peering over the sharp drop of thecliffs and into the cove below. She put a spyglass to her eye and aimed it at Thorne’s fleet. “Think this’ll work?”
Blaze stared over the other side of the narrow strip of land, the white sand dunes, and the graveyard of Thorne’s making. “Has to.”
To their left, Luc crouched low in the grass, one hand on the ground to steady himself. Xavier eased around the herd to the far flank.
Below, red spilled, quick and brutal, as Thorne’s men opened throats. Augustus fought his way free and, for just a moment, it looked as if he’d make it. But the swarm crashed over him. Pinned him in under a minute.
Blaze squeezed his blade hilt until his knuckles went numb. “Damn it, Augustus,” he whispered. “It’d be just like you to die before we can rescue you.”
Roslyn lowered the spyglass. “That’s the last signal.”
Standing, she pulled a square of glass from her leather coat and flashed sunlight into the cove.
Selene caught the flash of light from the corner of her eye, high above the cliff face.
