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For a moment, Joron’s daughter seemed to battle with joining the fight—if only to experience something new—and taking to safety. Only after the urging of a siren with dark braids to her waist did Avaline take to the staircase to the upper floors.
Erik paused at a window. “The isle, it’s here as we thought.”
Off the shores of the royal city, dark mists billowed from peaks and forests. In the early morning light, water flowed off the isle’s shores, glistening like starlight crystals as the land rose from the sea. It would be beautiful were it not for the rows of shields, the burning tipped arrows that spread over the parapets and shorelines.
Larsson had his army.
“We expected this.” I spun to a palace guard. “Send word to Tavish of the House of Mists, tell him the lands have risen. Those words precisely. Tell him to set to breaking any new spell casts they may have placed. Now. Go!”
The guard dipped his chin and abandoned the palace, racing for the sea.
“Think we’ll get on without some nasty spell business like the day you were pulled off?” Jonas whispered.
“My removal broke those wards, and Arion needs his battle,” I said. “They’ll want blades, but it would be foolish to anticipate there would be no spell work against us. Fione will be cowering on those shores.”
My lip curled. With how deep her role had gone, I looked forward a great deal to meeting the sea witch again.
From the edges of the isle, black sails rose against the sunrise like a blight in the dawn. The ship was unlike any I’d seen in the Ever. A sleek hull, like it might be half formed into the longships back home and the larger decks of sea fae ships. There were open decks where folk could walk near the rails but drop belowdecks to take cover.
Long, powerful, the laths seemed made of iron, but the nearer it came it was the same black oak wood I’d seen across the fading isle.
A ship of shadows that cut through the sea in a frenzy, as though the wind mattered little. Gods, doubtless they would have poweraboard, weapons, magic. I flexed my fingers, swallowing against the sour burn creeping up from my insides.
Larsson did not have the Ever Ship, but this was no weak foe. Even now, there was a torrent around the keel that looked much like the royal ship as it claimed the sea. Like the Ever’s waters sensed its royal blood.
It would truly be a battle of which son was chosen to win the games of the tricky Norns today.
The king shouted for his household to take cover, to seal up their chambers, to guard the doors. He gripped a palace guard’s shoulder. “Call out the palace ships. Take to the wind. Go,go, you bastard.”
The guard crashed through a door, disappearing down a spiral staircase.
His crimson eyes blazed when he faced me. “You are my queen, my equal, but this fight is mine, love. The choice to stay—”
“Gods, I hope you are not telling me to stay behind, Erik Bloodsinger.” I trapped his face between my palms. “And do what? Watch from the window as you risk your damn life? By your side, that is where I stand. Your battles belong to me, like mine belong to you.”
Erik let out a rough breath; his brow pressed to mine. “Then make ready to sail, Queen.”
Ferocious cries, wild and strange, rose beyond the palace. It was a sight—the sea fae taking to the water.
White tides thrashed from merfolk launching out beyond the gates, protecting their land from beneath the tides. Palace guards dressed in silver and blue, marked towers and every lower level of the city. They lined the cobbled roads, they took to the towers of the palace. With great heaves they arranged long iron shields, half a head shorter than their own bodies, adding another barrier against Larsson’s attack.
A strong hand took hold of my shoulder. My father gave me a small grin. “Face it without mercy, little love. Win your kingdom.”
My brow furrowed when I embraced him, taking a bit of comfort from the arms that’d always been there, that still were.
“We take to the sea,” Erik shouted. He held out a hand for me without a glance, as though he knew I would be close, and stepped through the wide doors.
The bells rattled through the city. A warning, dire and urgent. Crewmen abandoned their homes and families, sprinting toward the palace gates. Men on the watchtowers along the shore spun heavy cranks. Gates with spiked tips slowly rose from the depths of the sea like an underwater army, and sea plants draped over the brutal pikes like bits of flesh as they tore toward the sky.
“King Erik!” Gavyn drifted toward the edge of the walls. The bone lord offered a lazy sort of salute off his brow. “Meet you on the waters.”
Gavyn was gone in the next breath.
At the gates, Alistair, chin lifted, hands clasped at his back, stood stalwart.
“My King.” The old steward faced us and dipped his chin. “My Queen.”
“Alistair.” Erik paused. “Defend this house.”
