Page 4 of The Dark Sea Calls

The Dark Sea yawned like a Kraken waking from a deep sleep. One eye cracked as it noted my presence.

A voice echoed through my head.

Before I could answer, two arms broke the surface and dragged me from the sea’s blissful embrace. Air rushed into my lungs, burning my nostrils.

“What do we have here?” Toothless said as I coughed and spluttered on the deck of the rowboat.

“That’s a gilded Fae if I ever saw one.” Knifey’s bored expression changed to one of greed. “Those pearls must be worth a fortune.”

My lip curled as I bared my teeth.

“Gonna beg for your life, girl?” Toothless snickered, shaking the water from his hands.

“I don’t beg,” I told him.

I said nothing else as the rowboat bobbed on the waves to the ship in the distance.

As a child, I had seen boats on the water's surface above Cruinn, with their brown bellies as they floated above. Always small, like a bloated walrus.

I was wholly unprepared for the pirate ship as we drew closer. Larger than an island, dark as if burnt to a crisp, with a dozen grubby sails flapping in the wind. The shorebirds had made themselves at home on the tall wooden pole stretching to the sky. People rushed around, winding up anchors and shouting orders to one another.

Several legs extended from the wooden behemoth, floating on the water surrounding the ship. Each leg was supported by a long barrel which I could only assume helped the distended creation remain afloat.

I eyed the dark water lapping at the edges of the rowboat with longing akin to hunger. A hole in my chest that I needed to fill as I slowly felt myself bleed to death.

My dip into the ancient waters of the dark sea had only prolonged the inevitable. I’d had a sip of water, but I needed more. I needed sleep and food; to be wrapped in the cradle of Belisama’s waves.

Tiredness tugged my brain like a healer sewing stitches into the seams of my mind. I would not last much longer—but I’d be damned if I died on that wooden beast of a ship. With my pearls ripped from my skin and sold to the highest bidder.

I had become stone.

I didn’t have time to wallow in fear.

I couldn’t stop until I was safe, until I had reached the far edges of the dark sea and got as far from Tarsainn as possible.

I didn’t intend to let some landling pirates take me for whatever nefarious purpose they could think of. I’d rip out their throats with my teeth. The broken and dirty part of me that the High Throne used to poke and bleed ruffled its feathers.

I reached for the Cruinn curse inside of me, my way with the water—the part that had killed Lady Bloodtide—but found nothing but apathy in the darkness of my soul.

A bronze mermaid sat on the front of the ship, pointing forward as if commanding the vessel, and underneath her sat the glittering letters that spelled out the ship's name.The Stalwart. Not exactly what I had expected from a pirate ship—but then again, what I knew about pirates could fill a seahorse’s shoe.

Liam used to wax on and on about the pirate stories his birth father told when he was a child, but it had been something mythical to me. A child’s imagination running wild.

I hadn’t expected pirates to truly exist.

I hoped the less savory parts of those stories were fiction, even if the rest wasn’t.

Someone onboard spotted the rowboat and pointed towards us on the waves, shouting out.

Our boat docked on the side, the wood thumping against the bloated body of the vessel as someone threw down a woven rope ladder.

“Ladies first,” Toothless gave me a gummy grin.

I resisted the urge to shudder and eyed the ladder as if it would bite me.

“What’s wrong, lass?” Knifey raised a brow. “You ain’t never seen a ladder before?”

I didn’t dignify them with a response, but how hard could it be? I lifted my hands to the rope and clasped it, but the moment I tried to pull myself up, I was too weak to even get my feet off the ground.

---