Page 43 of Siren's Treasure

This wasn’t a part of her nightmares.

“Father!” she gasped. Was he still alive? Please say this wasn’t the sea mourning his passing!

Clutching the blankets, she rolled over and found Raggon gone, the impression of where he lay still visible on the rumpled coverlet. He was out there where the danger was.

Above her, the chipped mural of the captured mermaid seemed to writhe in the fitful light, as if struggling against her painted bonds, a silent warning that sent chills down Thessa’s spine.

The nightmare bubbling beneath the surface had turned all too real.

Chapter nineteen

They were under attack! The dawn highlighted a backdrop of glistening shores extending from the Undine Isles, painting the sky in ribbons of violet and amber that stretched across the horizon like bruised fingers.

Raggon searched for his brother. The vivid colors swallowing the morning sky were nothing to the chaos erupting on the deck. Men shouted orders that were swallowed by the howling wind, their voices breaking with panic as they scrambled past him on the heaving deck.

“Morris!” Raggon called. He couldn’t find him in the din, either. Where had the man gone? “Tobias!” Dread tingled down his spine.

A terrifying blast of sea water cascaded over the sides with unnatural force. Raggon braced himself against the warm spray, grabbing the nearest coil of rope for support.

“All hands! Brace the port side!” The quartermaster’s voice cracked through the air before dissolving into a gurgle as he was swept overboard.

Tentacles, dripping with foul ooze and brine, clasped the ship on either side as if it would pull the frame apart as easily as the stuffing from a doll. Already he could hear the cracks from the wooden planks as they splintered, a sound as terrifying as bones breaking beneath a torturer’s mallet. His knees buckled, trying to keep his balance as the world shifted beneath him, the deck pitching violently with each monstrous squeeze.

“Circe’s fleet approaches!” a man screamed from the crow’s nest, his voice thin with terror before it abruptly silenced—the mast below him cracked like a twig. The sailor plummeted into the churning water below. Raggon shouted out, scrambling back from the shards, seeing the rigging tumble free from its confines, swinging with the force of a battering ram.

Circe’s ship had moved beside them with black sails billowing, the sea wings sleek and deadly against the brightening sky. The Land Witch no longer hunted them as a silent predator but had made her move against them. Scylla too, if he could believe what he was seeing! The worst that could happen was true—the two were working together. No longer plagued by Poseidon’s interference, she’d called the creatures of the deep against them!

That must mean the witch’s plan had backfired. He prayed it was so, anyway! Because he refused to retreat from his heart now.

A wave crashed over the side, drenching the deck and sending three men skidding across the slick surface. Letting out a shout, Raggon moved through the foam to reach them. His feet slipped out from under him, sending him flying straight into the jagged edge of a broken hatch.

The blinding agony was followed by the whip of a colossal tail, rising from the deep like a rising leviathan from the abyss. Thehorrifying glistening appendage shoved the starboard of the ship closer to the Undine Isles in one powerful sweep. And with a sickening crunch, their ship ground against the rocks, jarring his bones with its deadly crash. The impact threw Raggon from his precarious foothold and against the rail where his ribs collided painfully with the wood. He breathed in. Out. The world a dizzying blur before it snapped into place again.

The ship was stuck on the rocks… Oh, depths! Though he quickly grasped the implications. Circe couldn’t engage them without getting caught in the same treacherous reef. Was this done on purpose by these creatures, or just dumb luck?

Either way, he wouldn’t last long. The powers of the deep threw him easily about like a ragdoll caught in the teeth of a dog. Meanwhile, he couldn’t see Morris and Tobias anywhere. Not knowing who was enemy or friend, he turned to where he’d left Thessa in what he thought was safety in the hull of the ship. Screams echoed through the air, punctuated by the splintering of wood and the thunderous crash of waves against the stranded vessel.

He moved for her, disappearing through the space of existence, seeing the world warp around him in shades of translucent blue, and then a sound, a terrifying echo that gained clarity as he shifted back to his form. A roar like thunder rolling across a metal sky pierced his ears and sent him rolling over the deck.

The planks ripped apart from the first mate’s quarters, exploding outward in a hail of deadly splinters. Terrible black sinewy wings tore through the rising cloud of debris, snapping like canvas catching wind, followed by the scaled neck of an otherworldly being Raggon had only seen in the books of their ancient history.

A dragon! Its powerful twisting serpentine body shook free the pieces of his ship like sawdust from a carpenter’s table. This had to be one of Circe’s beasts!

So much for their marriage plans! The witch clearly wanted him dead.

His terrified men escaped the ship like cockroaches fleeing light, pouring out from the sides in a frenzied rush of bodies and panic. Screams echoed through the night air. Boats lowered into the water were quickly swallowed by the crashing waves.

Raggon cried out, fighting to his feet. A mainmast teetered, the foundation snapping as a massive wing unfurled to show a scaled ruby underbelly catching fire in the rising sun. The mast crashed down. Barely having time to do much else, Raggon dodged out of the way. The rigging slapped against his arm, cutting through his cambric shirt and lacerating the skin beneath. Hissing at the white-hot sting, he pushed himself painfully to his feet, seeing that the dragon coiled between him and the cabin where he’d left the sleeping Thessa.

His heart dropped like a stone. Was it after her then?

“Hey!” he shouted at the creature. The thing’s head rotated, birdlike, to stare at him with eyes like molten gold, pupils contracting to slits against the brightening day. “That’smymermaid!”

Rotating, the dragon let out another roar that sent Raggon back to his knees, the force of its horrific cry a physical blow to his chest. Apparently, the dragon wasn’t picky about his meals—prince, mermaid, dirty pirate.

A strange ticking noise behind its throat, like the opening of the dampers on a blacksmith’s forge, sent Raggon scrambling behind an overturned water barrel, seconds before a flame engulfed the deck, one so powerful that it consumed the air around it and extinguished itself, leaving only a blackened charred hole in its place.

Raggon choked, inhaling the acrid bitterness of burning pitch and scorched wood that sizzled with heat, the stench so strong he could taste it on his tongue.

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