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“How can you promise something like that?” I groaned.
“Because...because we need each other. We always have.” She reached forward and placed her arms around me, in a warm, comforting embrace. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt something like it. The strength in it. The reassurance. No one had given me that before.
She was right. There was some unbreakable bond between she and I, and ultimately, all three of us. I had to face the doubt clouding my soul. Some sailors would stop sailing in a fog and wait it out. But I was always known to sail through it till I broke through to the other side. And that’s what I had to do now. Even if things still weren’t the same, and never would be again. Milo still needed us both.
We’d only been at sea a couple of hours before I began to feel the sinking feeling creeping up on me. The rapid countdown of time running out. I hadn’t mentioned to Katrina that it would take a month to reach the waters where the Kraken roamed, maybe a little under three weeks at best if Katrina could miraculously carry us on a current again without stopping. But that would drain her. So I was busy trying to calculate how many more years that would mean for Milo.
When Katrina came bouncing over excitedly, I felt hopeful for a second. “This spyglass Bastian gave me,” she said, holding up the tool, looking through it. “He said it would help us find the Kraken. Look!”
I took the bronze tube from her hand, raising it to my eye to take a peek. I nearly stumbled backward at the sight. Instead of seeing the horizon in front of me magnified, I was met with the closeup of a growling sea creature underwater eyeing me like prey, as if I was swimming face to face with it.
“It shows us the Kraken!”
“If only it could take us to it,” I muttered, still trying to collect myself from the startling sight I saw through the lens. “Seriously...why would he give us this? It’s not like he’s known for making his deals easy.”
“Unless he’s really that confident we’ll die trying.” Katrina scoffed. I released a stiff laugh.
“Ha. Or unless he just really wants this Kraken dead. For what, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just that bored with his collection.” I turned the spyglass in my hand, looking it over, guessing that somehow it probably had some dark enchantment about it that allowed Bastian to watch us through it.
But then I turned the outer tube, adjusting it with a slight twist to focus the lens, and suddenly a pulse of energy emitted from it into the sea around us. For a moment nothing else happened, and Katrina looked at me with concern and confusion. Despite the absence of wind, I noticed a slow-rolling wave cresting far in the distance.
“What’s happening?” Katrina asked.
“I don’t know,” I stammered, wondering the same thing. The wave rolling in grew fast, more than doubling in size every second. I tucked the spyglass in my belt and raced to the helm, Katrina in tow. It was too late to outrun it, but I had to at least position the boat head-on to take a hit from a wave like that. “It’s a rogue wave,” I shouted as it sped toward us, now at least 70 feet high. “Brace!”
Katrina had no time to run for cover, so she gripped the railing and ducked down, squatting in the floor by my feet. The yacht rose up as the wave crawled up underneath us, lifting us to an angle that left me holding onto the steering wheel for dear life as we barreled just over the crest of the ever-growing wave. Sea spray as thick and blinding as a blizzard engulfed us, and water crashed over the sides of our boat. Katrina screamed, and I braced my leg against her in my best effort to hold her in place as our ship became airborne momentarily.
We rolled back down the other side, sliding down the great slope of water in a slurry of wind and salt. The ship nosedived, crashing bow-first into the sea as the rest of it slapped the surface of the water below, rattling our bones. I couldn’t hold on any longer, and Katrina and I both toppled to the slippery wet floor. Sea foam sloshed and spilled off the sides of the deck as the yacht righted itself. Once the ship finished tossing us around, I helped Katrina to her feet.
It was only then that the bitter chill of ice seized my skin and I realized the heavy heat dome of the Caribbean was gone. Katrina shivered, soaked from head to toe in frigid water the same as me. Our breath came out as white puffs in the suddenly wintry air around us.
“Get inside,” I chattered. “We’ll freeze out here.”
We hurried to the cabin, where we dried off quickly and wrapped ourselves in blankets from the beds, though there were few clothing items aboard the yacht fit for cold weather. We sat at a small table by a window to take in our surroundings without freezing our asses off. I didn’t care if the boat drifted for a minute. The sky outside was a heavy gray, but it did little to dampen the bright teal blue of the water around us. This was certainly no Caribbean Sea.
“The wave. The spyglass.” I rubbed my hands together, still not fully warmed. I hated being cold. “It somehow brought us here. See those cliffs far off in the distance. This looks like the Mediterranean.”
“I don’t know why I imagined it a bit brighter...and warmer,” Katrina huffed, hugging herself tightly after taking a sip of some hot chocolate we’d found in the ship’s kitchen.
“Not in January.” I tapped my fingers on the table, looking out at the blue water beneath the dreary sky.
“Bastian helped us.” Katrina shuddered. “Why?”
“This wasn’t just a deal for him. It was a mission. He needs this thing dead for some reason.”
“Well then so do I, if it means getting that crown.”
“Hmph,” I pressed my lips together with a sarcastic tone. “Then I guess you need to get your fish arse in this freezing water and lure it up here.” I grinned. “I’ve heard mermaids happen to be the Kraken’s favorite snack...and I’m sure it’s been a while since he’s tasted one.”
21
Eye of the Storm
Milo
The heat of the blood gushing down my arm was nearly enough to distract me from the pain of the blade carving into it. Nearly.
I bit down on the cloth between my teeth, gnashing my jaws as the knife sunk into my skin and peeled the top layer from my muscle. The ink stained down deep. Likely to the bone. I had to stop for a moment to catch my breath.
