Page 17 of The Ever King

The earth fae had made me a prisoner within my own kingdom, but I was still the king of the sea. It bowed to me.

The serpent figurehead broke into the Chasm’s thrashing currents.

Mutters and a few shouts of surprise rose from the crew as furious water battered the hull. A whirl of foam and sea devoured the sails. I kept my tune, and the ship was tossed swifter, but straighter. Like sailing through a violent storm, the Ever Ship rocked and dipped, but never lost course.

Delighted cries rose from the crew, a glimpse at the mania and depravity we all embraced to survive the seas of our kingdom. Closer and closer came the gleam of the surface, shifting to a dull light behind angry mists and clouds.

“Keep her steady!” I hissed at the crew.

Celine wrapped rough rope around her wrist a second time, keeping the sails taut as we rose toward new seas. Larsson widened his stance at the stempost as he shouted orders at the crew to secure flapping rigs. Tait was a specter, silent and morbid, at my back. Perhaps he had some of the same gruesome thoughts as me—last we saw the earth fae lands, we’d been boys on the losing side of a war.

We’d been prisoners. Wounded. We’d nearly been sent to the gods more than once.

I closed my eyes again and dragged my fingertips through the water as it began to calm the nearer we came to the other side of the wall. One command, and I angered the seas on the surface.

I wanted thick, rolling clouds over the water. I wanted our ship to be a ghost in their world.

My desire was to rush and spill blood, to burn it all. I forced my hand to guide the currents around the ship to ease us upward, hidden in what would seem a natural sea storm. A damn lifetime of revenge hung in the balance. Impatience would not be my downfall.

Fire burned in my chest. I’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to surge through these waters, nearly forgotten the rush, the discomfort.

“Hold tight, you bastards!” Celine roared, laughing wildly when the tumult lessened. She gripped thick ropes of rigging and lifted onto the rail of the ship, leaning into the chaos.

Pressure from the water eased. A ripple of waves drew nearer.

I held my breath until the spray of the sea battered my face in a new way. The ship carved through the surface in a flurry of white-capped waves. Wind whipped against the red sails. The colors of the Ever Kingdom seal—a serpent skull and two crossed blades—flapped madly in the surface storm.

Once the ship settled on the surface again, the deck was silent but for the slap of rain and the hiss of wind.

Then, like the realization struck all at once, the crew roared against the rumble of thunder. They pounded fists into the air, flung curses at the shoreline visible through the storm clouds we brought with us.

I let out a rough breath. We were here. Earth fae walls and rooftops all sprawled out, not a care in their precious little world, ripe for the plucking.

“To the Ever King!” Celine cried, a fist above her head.

The crew followed suit. Tait met my gaze across the main deck. Even in my ruthless cousin’s eyes, his repulsion of me was replaced with a dark thrill for vengeance.

Larsson tipped his chin before beginning a slow, dark song. “A man he’s not, we work we rot, no sleep until it’s through . . .”

I faced the shore, a grin on my mouth as the rest of the crew raised their voices.

“A sailor’s grave is all we crave, we are the Ever King’s crew!”

CHAPTER6

The Serpent

One boot propped on the rail, I leaned onto my elbow over my knee, waiting.

“How long?” I snapped.

Tait removed a watch made of gold and silver with cogs that ticked swifter if danger was near, a tell that our time was running short. “Ten chimes.”

Teeth clenched, I faced the empty sea again. Night had fallen over us where we’d hidden the ship in a deep, empty cove near the Chasm border. Now, a sliver of pale dawn was cresting over the horizon and two of my crew had yet to return from their small reconnaissance of the shore.

They were sly. Patient. It would take time.

Still, the desire to act scorched a hole through my insides. The risk of losing my opportunity to impatience grew closer to a reality with every passing breath.