Page 2 of A Wrecking of Salt and Fire

Even Kohl did not know all the details of her time aboard the nameless ship. Her Fated. Her savior. Her love. Once they were married, when they were truly intimate, she would need to tell him. Right now, he would not understand. None of them could.

Tiny stars began to form in Katrin’s sight, her tongue circled her mouth, dry as the sand on the beaches below. A slight tremor ran down her skin when the dusty air of the stone passageway hit her nose. Cobwebs clung to her while she made her way back up to her chambers.

Approaching the end of the passage, a faint tapping reverberated off the damp stone walls. Her hand slid to her thigh, steady and soundless she unsheathed the bronze blade, peering through a crack in the worn out wooden door. Someone was sitting in a chair facing the opposite wall, their booted foot drumming against the floor. A large hand was almost hidden against the bronze of the chair’s arm, save for the white knuckles that sent a pang straight to Katrin's gut. The other hand raked through brown, waved hair.

Silently pushing the door open, the princess slipped behind him. One hand slid down his muscled chest, the other dragged the tip of her dagger along his arm. “You realize I could have stabbed you,” Katrin whispered, lips grazing his ear. Turning, the man met her gaze with eyes as black as the caves in the Triad.

“You could have tried.” A feral grin crossed his lips before Kohl took in what she was wearing. “Please tell me you were not outside the castle. Before dawn. Alone.” Calloused hands gripped her wrist as he spoke.

“Alright, I won’t tell you that.” Katrin resheathed her dagger and moved around to the other side of the chair as Kohl loosened his grip, brows knitting together.

“It’s not safe for you to be out there, Aikaterine.” His hands slipped around her waist, pulling her onto his lap. “Nexos—”

Willing her eyes not to roll, Katrin looped her arms around his neck. “Nexos will always be a threat.”

Kohl was there, the one to lift her from the seas as she clung, barely lifeless, to a piece of driftwood. Saw her sunburnt skin and bruised bones and the look of defeat in her amber-flecked eyes as Katrin wept knowing she almost did not escape the clutches of that man—the ruler of Nexos.

Stroking Katrin’s back as she lay her head in the crook of his neck, the prince shifted underneath her. “You know I’d never allow anything bad to happen to you again, Katrin, but you have to promise me you won’t go out between dusk and dawn alone again. Wake me up if you need to, I’ll go with you.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you there, it’s just—”

“That you’re having nightmares again? The guards can hear them, the screams you try to muffle with your pillow. The walls may be made of stone, but the men are well-trained.”

Deep ebony eyes met hers once more, fine lines protruding from them and between where his brows were still furrowed together. Shallow breaths escaped through his clenched jaw that looked as if it was carved by the gods themselves.

“I was going to tell you, Kohl. I just didn’t know how. You have so many responsibilities already, with your father’s arrival and managing the Morentian fleet from an isle away. I didn’t want to add to that burden.”

“How long has it been happening?” Kohl’s tone was deep, with a chill about it Katrin rarely heard from the prince.

“Two months—”

“Two months? We are supposed to be partners, Katrin. You need to tell me when these things happen. Last time—last time you became barely a shell of yourself. I refuse to let that happen again.” Heat spread across the bridge of her nose as his rough palm cupped her cheek. “I love you, Aikaterine, even after the gods take us.” He pressed his lips to hers in the lightest of kisses.

“Even after the gods take us,” she whispered.

Chapter Two

Katrin

Tingling still caressed her lips, her chest still fluttering, as Katrin headed to the bathing chamber. Kohl left to attend to some morning business—what exactly, she forgot to ask. Most likely something to do with his father’s impending arrival.

Even after the gods take us.

She could not remember when they started saying it to each other, but every time they parted they ended with that line. Salty tears stung the rims of Katrin’s eyes. The Grechi would come and turn his mortal body to ash and dirt, but their love would remain. For those who were Fated, a bond stretched past time itself, to a realm beyond. A tether that binds even in death.

Katrin bonded to Kohl from the day he pulled her out of the swirling dark seas, from the day he fulfilled the prophecy that was told at her birth.

A newborn royal was always given a prophecy, especially one born of the gods. An old seer from the isle of Delphine came to her blessing in the temple of Alenia, the namesake of their isle. The seer reached out their frail and leathery hand, stroking Katrin’s forehead, leaving a thumbprint of black ash between her brows. They spoke, in a voice that was not from this earth, neither male nor female, both old and young, ever-knowing. Thin, wrinkled lips hardly moved as they whispered the words that would haunt the princess. Mark her until she came of age.

The first daughter descended from birth and death,

From sun and stars,

Will be taken by those who only seek to destroy.

The serpent lurking in the sands will claim the maiden as his own.

Only if the man from seas and shadows

---