Page 70 of The Sea Witch (Salt & Sorcery #1)

She placed her hands on the manacles and, closing her eyes, whispered words. With a snap, the manacles fell away from his

wrists. She did the same to the shackles, which had burned through the leather of his boots.

As she did this, Ben explained, “Some adornments they gave me when they threw me in the brig. Unlike yours, theirs were charged

with magic.”

“I’ll flay them and make a coat from their skin.”

As they kept charging through the forest, Ben explained, “The navy has no plans to stop with using the creatures merely against

pirates. They’ll make the beasts their weapons in a global war. No ship, no country, will be safe. Not until the entire world

is crushed beneath Britain’s bootheel.”

“By the tides.” She stopped in her tracks and scowled. “I don’t know what we’re seeking.”

“The carving knife might lead us there,” he suggested.

She placed her hand on the blade, which she’d tucked into her belt. “I don’t feel anything. But perhaps my magic can lead

us to it.”

She closed her eyes, and her brow creased. A moment later, she opened her eyes, and growled in frustration.

“I tore off my enchanted chains,” he said. “Bent iron bars, and ripped a hole in the Jupiter ’s hull. My magic... it’s getting stronger. Use it.”

“Without the thing connecting us, I don’t know if it’s possible.”

“We’ll bind ourselves to each other once more.”

Voice firm, she said, “Before, we were robbed of choice. It happened, whether we wanted it or not.”

“Do you want it?” he pressed.

“I do,” she answered at once.

His hand cupped her cheek and she leaned into his touch.

“And I choose this as well,” he murmured. “I choose you. I’ll do so over and over again.”

Her eyes shone. “There aren’t texts showing how to create a bond without dreamwalking. I can only go where my heart tells

me.”

“I’ll go with you,” he answered.

She nodded once, then closed her eyes. He remained mute as silent words formed on her lips. As she spoke noiselessly, the

space encircling them dimmed. It was as though the sun set quickly, shading the area surrounding them, first into afternoon,

then dusk, and then full darkness.

The darkness grew blacker and more profound than any night. No light could be seen. Nothing was visible. Impossible to know

what was where, his sense of direction set askew in this all-embracing shadow. He couldn’t even tell which way was up.

“Now,” Alys said, her voice coming from everywhere and nowhere, “find me.”

Ben immediately reached out into the space directly in front of him. That was where she’d been, not moments ago.

His hand encountered nothingness.

He took a tentative step forward, and another, his hands outstretched, and yet all he felt was emptiness. The boundaries of

the corporal world were gone. This dark void she had created with her magic didn’t adhere to natural laws. It existed out

of time and place. Even the sounds of fighting had disappeared and a limitless silence encircled him.

“Where are you?”

There was no answer.

Using logic and his skills as a navigator weren’t possible, not here. Not when it came to following the call of her soul to his.

Drawing in a deep breath, he settled himself. He recalled the moment he first saw her at the top of the stairs at the tavern

in St. Gertrude. The flash of her hair, the weapons she wore, and the fierce determination blazing in her eyes. How he’d chased

her as though following a comet blazing across the sky, leading him to Alys Tanner.

Slowly, he began to walk. He didn’t think, didn’t try to use rationality. This was about what his heart demanded.

His steps lengthened and grew more confident. He didn’t fear running into anything, or falling into an abyss. He feared nothing,

not with her burning invisibly, bathing him with unseen heat. Without her sun, his world was barren and colorless.

Nothing stood between them.

All at once, his arms wrapped around her. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled, catching the scent of sea and sweat

and sweetness that was all Alys.

The threads of her unfurled inside him. She was there again. The faint gleam of her essence grew more vivid, rising higher

within him. His spirit shone into hers. They illuminated all the darkest corners of each other, glimmering brighter and brighter.

She was everywhere in him, as he was in her.

The world filled with light again. The darkness disappeared. They were once again in the forest on the island.

She drew in a breath. “Welcome home, Sailing Master.”

“Safe harbor, Captain.”

It happened quickly, two vines twining together. They rested their foreheads against each other. More radiance swirled around

them, filling his veins with magic.

“I sense it out there.” Her eyes glittered with energy. “The fail-safe’s in this forest.”

They ran deeper into the woods. Thick-trunked trees with twisting roots made the going slow. As they attempted to hurry, the sounds of combat grew fainter, yet did not disappear. They could still hear the wind conjured by Stasia, and pops of gunfire.

They continued, with Alys leading them as she followed the call of magic.

She drew up short when they reached a gap in the trees and bracken. Standing in the middle of the clearing was an unadorned

small stone hut. It had four walls and a pitched roof made of rushes, a single window, and only an open space for the doorway.

Plants climbed up the rocky walls on thick woody vines. There was no smoke coming from the miniscule brick chimney.

“This is it,” Alys whispered. “We’ll find what we’re searching for here. So our magic says.”

Cautiously, Ben and Alys approached the hut, weapons drawn. Every snapped twig beneath his boot made Ben sharply glance around

in case they’d alerted some sentry, mortal or otherwise, of their presence. Yet nothing moved. Not even a startled bird took

to the sky.

He stepped through the doorway first. Alys peered around him as they both examined the interior of the cottage. The floor

was bare dirt, and once, long ago, someone had placed leaves and soft grasses on a section of it to make up a rudimentary

bed, and the remains of a very old fire stained the brick-lined hearth. A piece of metal was bolted to the back of the hearth.

There was a single battered cooking pot and a dented mug.

The only other object in the hut was a strongbox. It was made of metal that had darkened with the passage of time, with leather

strapping and a thick steel lock.

If the fail-safe was going to be anywhere, surely it rested within the strongbox.

He approached the metal box, then went down on one knee. Taking a breath, he attempted to open it.

“Locked,” he announced. He used the butt of his cutlass to slam against the latch, but it remained fastened.

Alys made a swirling gesture with her hands. “I’ll summon the cunning of a rat to open it.”

Golden light surrounded her fingers before shooting toward the strongbox. But the light ricocheted off the lock. They both

crouched as it flew toward them, and then out the window.

“Well, hell,” Alys muttered. “Another safeguard against magic.”

She pulled the golden carving knife from a pouch. Yet when she inserted its point into the lock, nothing happened.

He cursed. “It would be too fortuitous to suppose a key was nearby.”

She kicked through the bedding and lifted up the cooking pot, before running her fingers in the spaces between the stones

in the walls. For good measure, they both searched the hut from the roof to the floor.

“Nothing, of course.” Alys’s jaw clenched. “The longer we’re on this quest, the more I’m both respecting and hating Little

George.”

“I never supposed him capable of such guile,” Ben admitted.

She knelt in front of the strongbox and pulled two daggers from her boot. Both of the knives she inserted into the lock. Frowning

in concentration, she worked the two thin blades carefully.

“Like the lock on the church in Domingo,” he said. “One of the skills you acquired as a pirate?”

“Norham, actually.” She continued to focus on picking the lock. “When I was a child, my parents used to punish me and Ellen

by locking our poppets into a chest.”

“And you freed the poppets.”

She froze, and her eyes went wide. “Did you feel that?”

“Rumbling.” He widened his stance. “An earthquake.”

“Not uncommon in these parts. I’d heard what happened to Port Royal.”

The shaking stopped, and Alys bent back to her task. But then the ground shook with even more force. The stones in the hut rattled with the strength of it.

Ben grabbed Alys’s hand and hauled her out of the hut. The last place they wanted to be in an earthquake was inside a stone

cottage of dubious stability.

The shaking continued, the stones jolting with more force. Yet the ground beneath Ben and Alys’s feet was stable and unmoving.

Ben said, “What—”

The air filled with the sounds of stone rasping against stone. The hut verged on collapsing. And then the whole cottage shifted

and groaned and lurched upright, the stones rearranging themselves.

Into the form of a giant human.

It stood about twelve feet tall, with wide shoulders and massive hands, and its face was made up of the smaller stones and

bricks that had once been part of the hut. Large round pebbles were its eyes, and when it opened its mouth, it revealed rough

teeth made of stone shards, which it gnashed at Ben and Alys.

“Jesus God,” Ben exclaimed.

Ben and Alys dove in opposite directions as the creature swiped with its huge stone hands. It made a rumble of anger when

Ben and Alys barely managed to avoid its next strike.

Ben rolled to standing. He struck at the giant’s forearm with his cutlass, but the metal only bounced off the stone. When

Ben thrust at the stone creature’s leg, sparks flew as his blade glanced away.

Alys hurled a fiery spell at the giant. This, too, was deflected by the creature’s rocky body.

“Fuck,” she snarled from the other side of the clearing. “Nothing works against this thing.”

“It has a weakness,” he called back. “Everything does. Look closely. There must be something we can use against it.”

They circled around the giant, evading its swinging arms and blows from its gargantuan stone hands. If one of its palms connected with their skulls, the bones would be pulverized into dust.

Alys gave a yelp.

Ben rushed to her side, yet she wasn’t hurt. She pointed to a piece of metal on the back of its neck.

“That was part of the hearth,” she said. “And look.”

“There’s a slot in it.”

“Just the right size to fit this.” She pulled out the gilded carving knife again. “The key.”

He nodded. “I’ll provide distraction.”

Ben took up a position in front of the stone creature. He grabbed a rock and threw it at the giant’s chest. The beast lunged

for him, and Ben danced away. Again and again, he did this, narrowly missing the giant’s stone hand breaking his bones.

Alys eased up behind the colossus.

Ben shouted at the giant, waving his arms and throwing more rocks at the beast. At the same time, Alys took a running leap.

She landed midway up the giant’s back. The creature tried to shake her off, but she clung to the stones that comprised its

body, even as her own body whipped this way and that. Ben attempted to keep the giant distracted with more yells and thrown

rocks, yet it was too busy attempting to fling her off.

Gritting her teeth, digging her hands and feet into the gaps between the stones, Alys climbed up the creature’s back. Until

she was at the back of its neck.

She raised the carving knife high. Then she plunged it into the metal slot.

All at once, the giant stood straight and stilled. Its arms hung at its sides. And then the stones in the center of its chest

shifted and opened.

A vial filled with shimmering blue liquid fell out. Before it could hit the ground, Ben dove and caught it. He sprinted away, putting distance between himself and the creature.

Alys leapt from the giant just as the stones of its body broke apart. Rocks fell and tumbled in every direction.

There was nothing left of the creature, or the hut. The strongbox remained, and as Ben watched, the lid popped open.

Slowly, he and Alys approached the strongbox. They peered inside.

A scrap of paper lay within. Alys picked it up so they both could read it. On it was written, The storm will set them free.

The paper went up in flames, and she waited until it burnt into ashes before scattering them in the dirt.

Ben held up the vial. Its contents shone sparking blue light onto their faces.

“Here’s our prize,” she said.