The days pass by, storms ravage the sea.
I toss in my sleep, as he calls from the deep.
My love, my love, return to me.
There were shapes bobbing on the swells. I squinted, trying to make out what they were. Distracted, I kept singing, my voice little more than a whisper.
How could my love be lost to me?
His ship was swallowed by the sea.
I feel him close, but it’s only his ghost.
My love, my love, return to me.
Splintered pieces of wood washed in on the waves. I plucked one from the water, running my thumb over the smooth lines of a carving; the design looked like scales. The next piece I grabbed was covered in swirling knots.
This was wreckage from a ship, but I’d heard nothing of missing vessels or fishermen.
Something splashed in the water. It looked like a floating pile of rags, but then it moved. I could just make out the shape of a man struggling toward shore. I waded out to help him, taking hold of his flailing arms and dragging him onto the sand.
“Are you—” The sentence died on my lips. The man flopped onto his back, and I saw what was left of his body. His right leg was missing below the knee. His left foot, too, was gone. The sharks had made a meal of him.
“Mordir,” he said. His eyes were open, but he didn’t see me. He stared at the sky, mumbling the same incomprehensible word. “Mordir.”
I leaned in, studying his weathered face. Black markings decorated the skin of his right eyelid, stretching up to his brow and down to the corners of his eye—reptilian scales, like the design on the ship’s wreckage. Likely the warrior-mark of his clan, but it was no clan I knew of. I doubted he was even from our island. His accent was heavy and rough, and the word he repeated was nonsense.
Mordir.
Could it mean …
“Mother,” I said with sudden understanding.
That’s what he kept saying in his strange language. He was crying out for his mother. I’d heard tales of bloody battles, of men holding their injured comrades. Dying warriors often called for their mothers as the end came.
There was no point fetching a healer; the man would die before we returned. His hand reached out for something unseen. I clasped it and held on.
“Mordir,” he cried, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “It will be over soon.”
His eyes dulled moments later. His cries fell silent.
“The god of death has claimed you.” I set his limp hand on top of his chest. “May Gwylor accept you into his palace.”
Up ahead, the harbor curved around a rocky cliff edge, hiding the shore on the other side. There could be survivors. I let go of the dead man and splashed around the barrier.
My stomach sank like a stone.
The harbor was littered with broken planks from a ship. And bodies … so many bodies, lying on the sand, bobbing on the waves.
Dead. Every last man.
I made my way from one shredded corpse to the next. They were nothing more than husks, faces bleak and withered, all of them bearing the same black scale marks around their eyes. These men were ripped apart, every body missing arms or legs. Some were headless. Others had chunks torn from their torsos, their guts spilling onto the sand. Whatever attacked them had left wide, deep bite marks from teeth far bigger than any shark’s.
Only one monster caused such carnage.
“The Brine Beast.” I fell to my knees. My fingers went to my ankle, tracing the ring of scars where the Beast attacked me all those years ago.
I glanced at the cliffs above, at the stone watchtower that was manned at all times to keep an eye on the harbor. Where was the sentry? The Beast could be out there now, waiting to attack the next Glasnithian ship to cross its path. And who were these dead men—were there more of them out there, other ships that hadn’t sunk? I had to alert Father.
On my way back to the village, a flapping of wings startled me. A massive raptor glided over my head, alighting upon the broken section of a spar stuck in the sand. The raptor had feathers of black, gold, and crimson, and eyes that were bloodred. It was a lammergeier, the largest bird in Glasnith; they were vicious, known for knocking lambs, goats, even men, off sea cliffs to the rocks below so they could feast upon the broken bodies. Because the Immortal Scriptures said the Great Betrayer used to transform into a lammergeier to spy on the dealings of mortals, the raptors were feared as harbingers of ill fortune.
The lammergeier lowered its head. As if compelled, I followed its gaze.
Sprawled across the spar was another body.
I moved toward the corpse, the lammergeier’s inquisitive eyes following me. It opened its curved beak and unleashed a poignant shriek.
The man lay on his stomach, water lapping at his legs. His hands clutched the spar, as if it would ferry him to the otherworlds. I knelt beside him and let out a slow breath.
A shock of golden hair, smooth skin—he was young. From what I could see, the Beast hadn’t touched him. He must have drowned and washed ashore.
The scar on my wrist tingled.
There was a sweet boyishness to his features. Grief tugged at me. I pushed a wet mesh of hair out of his face. “I’ll make sure your body is burned, your spirit cleansed,” I promised.
His lashes fluttered. Blue-gray eyes stared back.
I yelped, scrambling away. The dead man watched me.
Not dead. The man is not dead.
Looking into his eyes was like gazing at the ocean—swirling shades of deep cobalt and steel gray. Fathomless.
Familiar.
“You?” I choked, wondering briefly if I was actually asleep in my bed and this was all a dream. Because, as impossible as it was, I knew this man.
I’d seen him once before.
It happened when I was twelve, on the third anniversary of my mother’s death. Every year, when that hateful day came, I snuck away in the night, took a horse from the stables, and rode to the northern bluffs. Alone on the bluffs, I prayed and wept and let myself remember her, releasing all the pain I tried to bottle up and smother the rest of the year.
On this night, I heard something as I rode home from the bluffs. I’d grown up in these woods, and I knew them as well as my own skin. The strange sound that slunk across the land was not one that belonged. I dismounted and crept nearer, searching. Several shadowy figures gathered, speaking with grunts and snarls that barely resembled language.
I felt the man watching me, like his eyes could burn holes in my flesh.
He was behind me. Before I could turn, his arm closed around my chest, his hand covered my mouth. My nerves crackled where his skin touched mine. I couldn’t see his face, but his breath was hot against my neck, his voice a purr in my ear, making threats I couldn’t understand.