Page 28 of A Blade of Blood and Shadow (The Ravaged Kingdom #1)

Chapter

Nineteen

C old salty water filled my airways as the waves pulled me under. I kicked and thrashed to keep my head above water, but it was no use. I was caught in the whirling tide like a rabbit in a snare. Helpless. Insignificant.

I was going to die in this pool. That was the thought that rang louder than every other.

I — was going — to die.

Cold misery swamped me as I fought to escape the merciless waves. The feel of it was almost too much to bear. Loneliness. Hunger. Madness. Despair.

The feelings weren’t coming from me, and yet they were me somehow. They drowned me as surely as the water pressing in around me, and my lungs burned as I fought the need for air.

I opened my eyes, but there was nothing but swirling darkness all around me — nothing but the iron grip of the sea. It held me in its unyielding claws, digging in more the harder I fought .

My head pounded from a lack of oxygen, and I could feel my limbs growing weak.

I needed air. I needed —

But just as my body began to give out, that mighty force seemed to expel me. My head broke the water’s surface as the churning tide belched me out, and I tumbled forward on a frigid wave.

My flailing limbs dragged over something cold and solid, and I could have cried with relief as I felt rough sand beneath my fingers. Instead, I just expelled a torrent of salty liquid, coughing and retching until my lungs ached.

Another wave surged behind me, crashing over my back and making me gag from the stench of death it carried with it.

As the water receded, I felt its power grip my legs — trying to pull me back to its depths. A low cry wrenched out of me as I dug my fingernails into the wet sand, willing myself to stay anchored.

Another breaking wave, and I shivered as the icy water spilled down the neck of my leathers and plastered my hair to my forehead. Again, those fingerlike tendrils of water curled around my ankles, tugging me back toward the frothing tide.

“No,” I growled, curling my fingertips into the sand.

But it was no use. My clothes were waterlogged, my muscles ached, and the pull of the tide was too strong.

Another wave crashed over my body, pulling me under, but then strong hands gripped the back of my leathers.

I yelped and turned to face my attacker, but it was only Kaden. In one rough motion, he hauled me out of the wet sand and half dragged, half carried me away from the hungry tide .

Over the rush of waves, I could hear his own gasping breaths. Then we both collapsed in the sand.

Warm, calloused palms gripped the sides of my face, and a pair of worried gray eyes met mine. “Are you all right?” he rasped, sounding both exhausted and alarmed.

I just swallowed and forced myself to nod, closing my eyes to banish the memory of the things I’d felt as we’d hurtled through the water.

Desperation. Despair. Bone-scraping hunger — but not my own.

No. As I’d been drowning in that murky water, I’d felt the sea’s own longing to take me for its own. Its need had seeped into my very bones, overwhelming in its intensity.

It took several minutes for my breathing to even out. When it did, I looked up to take in our surroundings.

We were moored on a miserable, rocky island that looked as though it might very well be the ends of the earth — the in-between, I supposed. The wet black sand was rough beneath my knees and held the same stench of decay as the churning sea.

Following the shoreline with my gaze, I saw nothing but flat land cloaked in an eerie silver mist and —

I blinked.

Angry gray storm clouds swirled overhead, but they were not where the sky should have been. They formed an uneven wave that churned back toward the sea, as though the landscape were folding in on itself.

Without warning, a silver bolt of lightning shot through the sky, striking the sand a mere hundred yards from where we knelt. I felt the tremor ricochet through my entire body, raising the hairs along the backs of my arms.

“What — ”

“I told you,” said Kaden. “The in-between is neither here nor there. It obeys its own laws of reality.”

I swallowed. The way those clouds curled back toward the sea, it certainly looked as though we were caught in some wrinkle in the veil. I followed the folding sky all the way to the horizon, and my stomach bottomed out.

The sea was pouring out over what looked like the very edge of the world.

Drawing my gaze back along the line of disappearing sea, I saw a jagged rock jutting out from the swirling mist.

“We should go,” said Kaden, his voice barely audible over the crash of waves. “Before he realizes we’re here.”

My insides clanged, and I didn’t have to ask who he meant. If what Kaden had told me was true, the Watchman was the only creature who could survive in this wretched place.

“H-how would he know we’re here?” I asked, staring around at the barren landscape. There was nothing but rock and sand and sea.

“He is bound to this place. Bound by the gods. No one knows the full extent of his powers — only that he is trapped here.”

I didn’t bother to hide my shudder. Who would ever choose to spend eternity that way, even with the promise of immortality?

I opened my mouth to ask Kaden how he planned to get off the island but stopped. A small dinghy now bobbed along the shoreline, its wooden hull black and rotten looking.

“All aboard,” said Kaden dryly, pulling the boat onto shore to avoid setting foot in that cursed water again.

Reluctant as I was to be at the mercy of the hungry sea, I was even less inclined to wait around for the Watchman to appear. Clambering over the gunwale, I perched on the edge of a moldy, waterlogged bench as Kaden pulled anchor and used an oar to shove us out to sea.

“I won’t be able to use any heavy magic once we’re inside the fortress,” he said. “Too much power will . . . alert him to our presence.”

A harsh breeze whipped across the water, peppering my skin in a briny mist. Kaden rowed us toward the jagged rock, though I could no longer see more than a few feet ahead due to the cold, silvery mist that seemed to engulf us.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and my skin prickled with electricity as another streak of lightning split the dark clouds. It had started to rain.

I peered anxiously up at the sky, and Kaden gave a dark chuckle. “Think we’ll be struck by lightning before we even reach the Watchman’s fortress?”

The way he said it — so light. A joke. It clanged through me with equal parts irritation and terror. “What would happen if we were?”

He shrugged, leaning backward as he rowed. “I suppose our souls would be trapped here for eternity.”

An icy shiver rolled through me.

“That reality is enough of a deterrent for most,” he said. “The souls of those caught in the in-between are how the Watchman feeds his power, which is why most creatures avoid this place.”

I shook my head, squinting through the drizzle. “Who would choose this for immortality?”

Something dark flickered in Kaden’s expression, turning his already severe features to stone. “You might be surprised by what some are willing to trade for power. ”

I shivered again, though not from the cold. Everything about this place felt . . . wrong. The clouds swirled too close to the sea. The thunder rumbled too fiercely. The waves that collided with the side of our boat seemed to cling to the hull, trying to claim us for their own.

As we drew closer to the rock jutting out from the mist, I realized it was less of a rock and more of an island. Another bolt of lightning slashed through the clouds, illuminating what looked like a tower and hundreds of spiky, broken things bobbing in the water.

At first, I could not tell what they were —trees ravaged by lightning, perhaps. More lightning streaked through the sky, and I saw what was unmistakably a mast sticking out of the water.

We were approaching a ship graveyard. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of them — all in various stages of decay. Masts jutted over the waves at odd angles. Some had been snapped in two. Rotten hulls bobbed restlessly along the shoreline, some of which had clearly been impaled on rocks.

Where had all these ships come from?

Kaden had said that the danger of having their souls trapped here deterred most from venturing to the in-between. What had these men sought, then, that they’d be willing to risk eternal imprisonment?

I didn’t have long to dwell on those questions or the horror of the wreckage before me. The oppressive mist had begun to clear.

A huge black fortress jutted toward the sky, built from the same dark rock as the island on which it stood.

The first several feet of stone were slick with lichen, and the entire fortress looked as though it were being slowly reclaimed by the sea.

The rubble of one half-collapsed tower mixed with the rocks sliding down the cliffside, the rest of the structure spearing into the clouds.

Kaden slowed as we approached the rotten husks of ships that surrounded the place, his entire body stiff and alert.

Everything about this island seemed to repel the living, and I wondered how on earth we were going to manage to claim Mankara’s text for our own if the men who’d sailed these ships had all failed.

I busied myself with checking my weapons as Kaden guided us to shore.

As soon as we bumped against land, I clambered out and helped drag the dinghy up the short rocky slope that led to a break in the lower wall.

Thick metal bars spanned the opening in the rock, but one stroke from Kaden, and they stretched and bent with a mighty groan to create a gap wide enough for us to walk through.

Kaden didn’t say a word as he went inside, and I automatically drew two daggers. The smell of rotten fish wafted from the narrow passageway, but it was the prospect of walking into that unnatural darkness that made me hesitate.

We were entering the enemy’s lair, and we had no idea what might be waiting for us inside.

As if he sensed my trepidation, Kaden summoned a ball of faelight, which illuminated the rough stone walls of the tunnel. The uneven bricks were fuzzy with mold, and the foot of murky water that filled the passageway told me this part of the fortress often flooded.

Slowly, I followed, my unease mounting with every step we took into the Watchman’s stronghold. It unnerved me that we hadn’t already been accosted, but perhaps our arrival had gone unnoticed.

The only sound besides our sloshing footsteps was the trickle of water in the distance. The standing water rose higher the farther we waded, the entire place reeking of dead marine life.

The tunnel came to an abrupt T, and Kaden turned down another passageway as though he knew exactly where he was going.

I followed at a careful distance, lamenting my waterlogged boots.

I could already feel blisters beginning to form, and I winced at the thought of my open wounds coming into contact with this filthy water.

I paused to pass a dagger to my other hand so I could hike up my sagging socks, but then I heard a loud splash that hadn’t come from Kaden.

I froze, still half bent in the water, as my heart pounded in my throat. I sensed something just behind me but didn’t dare turn around.

Carefully moving my dagger back to my free hand, I reached out with my senses. I could feel . . . something , though it wasn’t any sort of magic I’d ever felt before.

Realizing I’d fallen behind, Kaden stopped and turned. He took one look at my frozen, wide-eyed expression and drew the sword from his back.

His gaze swept the tunnel behind me, his preternaturally good vision spearing through the shadows. I could tell from his face that he didn’t see anything, but perhaps he too sensed the presence of something other .

Several heartbeats passed with only the steady drip of water and the crash of distant waves to break the silence.

Slowly, I rose into a standing position, a dagger in each hand. Kaden turned and continued wading through the tunnel, though I could tell from the set of his broad shoulders that he hadn’t dropped his guard.

After a moment, I felt my body relax. The splash I’d heard had probably been an ordinary fish or some other sea creature.

But then Kaden’s faelight flickered, and my heart gave a jolt of unease. A cascade of fetid water sent me stumbling back as something dark and scaly leapt from its depths.