Page 12 of The Ever King

“What the hells, Livie? I wanted you to see it, not touch it.” He wiped water from his eyes and swam closer. “You get sucked in there, I’d be going in after you, then I’d get our family’s first mark of shame for being removed from the Rave the same day I was promoted.”

My pulse pounded in my skull. I wasn’t certain I heard much of his rant at all.

“Liv.” Aleksi nudged my ribs. “You all right?”

I licked my lips free of the salty water and smiled. “Yes. I’m glad you showed me. You’re right. How could anyone get through without emerging half dead?”

“Did you sods see that?” Jonas’s slurred voice drew our attention. He pointed the bottle of brän toward the darkening horizon. “Lightning, but it looked like fire.”

Aleksi pulled himself free of the water, then turned and offered a hand for me. “Sounds like lightning to me.”

“No, it was red.”

Mira whooped. “The gods are announcing Crimson Festival!”

Jonas laughed and loudly agreed. On shore, Alek handed me my clothes. “No more thinking he’s coming. He’s not.”

I wrung my damp hair and nodded. “You’ve proved your point.”

“Good, because we have greater worries right now.”

“Like what?”

My cousin looked over his shoulder. “Like how we’re going to get Jonas off his ass before this storm hits.”

Aleksi jabbed a finger toward the sky.

“Better hurry,” Mira called to us.

Mountains of ashy clouds rolled over the sea like a marching army. Aleksi hurried ahead, but a shudder rippled down my spine. The raised scar had grown red and irritated, almost scorched. I wasn’t troubled by my skin, not more than I was troubled by what I’d seen when I touched the Chasm.

An omen was the only explanation. The instant the water of the barrier licked my skin, for a fleeting moment, a golden city had shaped in my mind’s eye. Cheerful bells rang, like a signal or a summons.

As if they were beckoning me to come home.

CHAPTER4

The Serpent

Screams of anguish—of true agony—produced a twisted delight deep in my bones.

The kind that heated the blood, raced the heart, drew me back for more, again and again. No mistake, the sounds seemed to be the only way I could feel that euphoria, the thing folk called joy, anymore.

There was power that came when a village careened into a frenzy at the mere sight of black bone hulls, sharp spikes like the spines on a sea serpent, and bloody sails. The heady taste of panic and fear and pleading had become my purpose.

Tonight went differently, and it was damn aggravating.

Flames danced across the walls of the neatly aligned wood and wattle cottages. Heat burst out the windows, and smoke and ash soaked the alleyways of the dwellings all the way to the hills.

A winding, cobbled road curved around the steepest hillside where the lord of the Rusa township built his manor and all its sharp peaks.

I looked forward to watching it burn.

By now, the melodic tune of screams and terror ought to be shattering the silence of the night. There were a few sobs, a wail or two, but the folk of Rusa, when the black hull of the ship sliced through the sea surface, submitted as though they’d anticipated the attack.

From my position on the deck, I could make out the main square of the village, an open place made of dark polished stone like night trapped in glass. Countless villagers huddled with their pitiful families. Dressed in night clothes, littles sniffled and clung to their mothers. Fathers had chins lifted, no mistake waiting for the knife to the throat when the threat hadn’t even been made yet.

My grip on the rail tightened until each knuckle ached. I didn’t know if I was more irritated that they did what I would’ve commanded before I commanded it, or that each man seemed so resigned, so atpeace, with his fate.