Page 96 of The Stolen Crown

Tait slashed at a final knot around his wrist. The ribbon of sand broke off.

The surface of the beach rippled like a new onslaught was preparing to take hold.

“Hurry, go!” I gripped his hand and aimed for the water’s edge.

Blood hammered in my skull. I felt sand grains shift under my feet, pulling back like a wave. I didn’t look behind me, didn’t stop.

Tait’s grip tightened around my arm. In the next heartbeat, I was yanked off my feet and tossed into the waves. Tait’s arm encircled my waist and pulled me toward the skiff. On the water’s edge, sand flailed like it crashed into an unseen wall.

Whatever lived beneath the sandy shore did not seem to follow us into the tides.

Even with one arm, Tait was a powerful swimmer. He had me positioned next to the skiff in a few moments.

“Get in,” he said, voice rough.

With a nudge, he heaved me over the rail. I turned at once to help draw him in.

The vessel jerked violently.

“Tait! It’s dragging us back!”

Little by little, the rope keeping the skiff tied to the shore was being reeled in as though a cog clicked and turned, pulling us closer and closer. Tait, still half in the water, tossed me a knife he had sheathed on his upper arm.

In a frenzy, I cut into the rope, sawing until the fibers split and frayed. My heart battered my ribs, and my body hummed with a strange fear.

All this time, the need to leave the isle kept fading, day by day. There was something here, something dangerous. A curse? A haunt? What did it matter? I simply wanted to be free of it.

The final strand of rope split. Tension snapped and the skiff dipped into the tide, free at long last.

Tait hauled the lower half of his body into the skiff, hurried to the bench, and took up one oar. “The oars, Mira! Oars.”

Damn the hells. Tait’s voice spurred me into action. Over the last few nights, he’d schooled me on strategy to break free of the wave line and sail into open water. Oars. Wind. Currents. Breaking through the tops of the waves, not allowing the whitecaps to crash over us.

Never did I anticipate the damn isle would be part of the snare keeping us from sailing through the waves.

I locked my feet into the notches on the floorboards and took hold of my oar, Tait manning the other side. On his count, I measured his strokes as best as I could. No mistake, he was stronger, but I’d been raised on longships and was taught how to sit at an oar before I met my fourth turn. I could row for longer than the time it would take to get us through the surf.

Then again, I’d never launched a longship into crashing waves.

Water whipped my back.

“Pull!” Tait shouted and carved his oar deep into the waves.

I bit down on the inside of my cheek, blinked through the endless splashes of salty water, and rowed. And rowed. Muscles in my wrist ached. Healed well enough to survive on the isle, but the motion of rowing drew out tension and pain from my fall out of the tree.

The first swells were hardly a challenge, small rolling tides we carved through.

Over a long reef of stone and sea plants, Tait shouted to keep rowing, to not stop. A cry of unease broke free when a wave covered our heads. The skiff shot through the other side.

Tait shook water out of his face and spared a look at me. “A little longer, Vicious. Brace. Row. A little longer.”

I nodded and grunted through a long pull of my oar.

The next swell was taller, more violent. We lost one pouch of berries when the curl landed on our supplies. Still, we sliced through to the other side. Breath burned in my chest as though I’d swallowed hot ash, and my shoulders throbbed and clicked with each long pull.

“Mira! Hold on.” Tait’s voice roared over the fury of the sea.

I made the mistake of glancing behind in time to see a vicious swell rise higher, higher, until I was certain it would snap the whole of the raft into dozens of pieces.