Joss just aft of him, face pale but focused.
Bridge clipped and low, exactly where Fly’d put her.
The wind howled, and the water surged. Fly closed out Hollis’s screaming. “Turning to shore,” he said. “Brace.” He swung the bow into the wind.
Valor lurched hard, the hull slamming as the first true swell rolled under them, steep and chaotic, the kind that came when wind and tide began fighting each other.
The timing was wrong, and the angle unforgiving.
Joss screamed, voice cracking.
“Rogue wave!”
Fly saw it then. Not a wall. A heave. Water rising where it shouldn’t, the surface folding in on itself as two sets collided.
The bow lifted violently.
Everything went weightless.
Than lunged for Mei just as the wave hit. The wall of water hit them sideways.
Valor heeled violently, rail buried, the mast whipping as the sail snapped like a rifle shot and water exploded across the cockpit, then another wave lifted beneath them, and another.
For a moment the boat hung there, balanced on the edge of control. Then she slammed down again.
Fly saw the tether snap, sharp and final, the line parting under strain. Mei’s hands flew free as the mainsheet jerked. She was there, and then she wasn’t.
Fly threw his weight, hauling the tiller, forcing Valor to meet it head-on instead of letting it take them broadside. Water slammed over the deck, cold and crushing, filling the cockpit in an instant.
Than’s tether gave, and he slid. Fly’s hand closed on Than’s vest by instinct alone. He wrapped his arm, locked it, and held.
The world went white and roaring.
Water rolled over them, heavy and endless, crushing breath from lungs, tearing sound away. Valor staggered beneath him, shuddering, then fighting back, the hull clawing for balance instead of flipping.
He didn’t let go.
When the water finally tore past them, draining away as fast as it had come, Fly dragged in air that burned like fire.
Than was still there, choking, coughing, alive in Fly’s grip.
Fly’s eyes snapped to the space where Mei should have been, heart slamming, mind already racing ahead.
She was gone.
“Mei!” he shouted, voice raw against the wind.
There was no answer.
The bay rolled on, dark and indifferent, as Valor struggled upright beneath them, battered but not capsized.
Fly held Than and stared at the water. He couldn’t see twenty yards, rain hammering the bay so hard it erased the surface.
Fly didn’t let the noise take him. “Check in,” he shouted, voice cutting clean through the wind. “Now.”
“Bridge,” came first, breathless but steady. “Here. Tethered.”
“Joss.”
