I screamed as he scrambled to regain his footing. As his arm reached for shrouds that hung past his fingertips, toes sliding off the slippery edge of the rail.
He vanished from sight.
Demyan’s face came into view, hauling me to my feet. He turned me around, striking for the stairs.
I drove my heels into the wood as the sea tossed the ship onto its toes.
Then rocked in the opposite direction as the sea sent us down a swell. I called to the water as it lashed thecelerite—hard and strong—and it came with a rage that snapped and boiled as I pulled it up over the deck like a blanket yanked over a body.
The ship folded into the tide, a wave of dazzling gray devouring us into watery shadow.
Then it cracked somewhere below. The wood under our feet vibrated as water squeezed the ship into submission.
Joists popped. Trusses cracked. The masts broke in two.
The distant words of my father floated through my ears as I tumbled under heavy bodies and off the starboard edge—it would damage the ship’s structure to rent a hole through the framing of the hold.
But rent a hole I had, under the weight of the sea.
Cold water snapped my head back. Bubbles burst around my eyes and ears, a violent cloud of white. Arms and legs careened into view and out again, desperately pumping for the surface. But none of them knew where the surface was. Some swam up, some swam down.
Some simply let themselves roll through the turbulent chaos of a crew tossed to the sea like toys in a bath.
Head whirling, I transitioned. My powerful tail unfurled from my legs, hard and fast as a viper striking its prey.
Unlike the tangle of pirates around me, I didn’t need to wait for the bubbles to disperse before knowing which way was up. One call to the water, and I whipped myself around to face the sky, striking for air and wind.
Darkness's Hourglasslay on its side.
It groaned, a wooden scream that split my ears like a lightning crack over my head. The keel fractured as waves beat its broken body, inviting the cold water inside.
The sea was slowly tearing it in two.
Men found the surface around me, gasping for air.
Where was Kye?
Fingers encircled my wrist.
I turned to find Kriska on my arm.
Fury distorted his mouth and eyes. His lips shrank from his black teeth, his eyebrows slanted unearthly low over his thunderous stare, and madness seemed to explode from him as he clenched onto me, fingers digging hard enough to break my skin.
He unsheathed a dagger from his belt, yanking me forward in one fluid motion. I watched a decision crackle behind his eyes.
Revenge was worth the loss of whatever he’d been promised for delivering me. And he planned to exact it with the edge of cold steel. Here and now. In the water.
“That was my father’s ship, you little whore,” he ground out.
His body tensed. The hand holding my arm clenched, the muscles in his limbs tightened.
I knew the feeling of a body as it prepared for an attack with a blade.
I’d felt it before—in the swampy crop lines of Leihani.
Kriska drove the dagger forward. Water sloshed over his shoulders. I grunted at the impact—a sudden block of ice, cold and jarring against my ribcage.
The captain raised his brows in confusion, and I struck out, grabbing his jacket.
