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PROLOGUE

THE SEA

This would be a hungry storm.

It would eat up the coasts, swallow the sand, and probably chew up a boat or two.

So Haera had heard from some of her fellow Each-uisge, ones who’d actually ventured beyond the surface of the ocean to places she was forbidden to go.

Here, down in the depths, she could only watch the storms begin.

Still, the sight never failed to thrill her.

As Haera observed from a distance, the herd’s Sire led his eleven Stormhorses toward the North Sea’s surface.

Calder’s front legs were muscular, his hooves lined with shell edges.

At his back half beat his mighty marine tail, which would change to a horse’s hindquarters when he ascended from the water.

His fearsome horse’s head pointed skyward.

Between his shoulders, ocean currents began to swirl, resolving into a shape.

The shape of wings.

Before Haera’s eager eyes, Calder’s wings grew into a wider span than his fellows’, marking him as the Sire of the herd.

The wings were a magnificent sight.

Though they began as water, when he and the other Stormhorses took to the skies, they would harden into muscle, feather, and bone.

The feathers, Haera had heard, were as sharp as hoof-shells.

In spite of this, her father had always said the process wasn’t painful.

Not that it would matter.

Haera would take the pain a thousand times over if it resulted in a pair of wings lifting her into the sky, carrying her over the roiling sea until she and the other Stormhorses unleashed thunder, lightning, and wind over all that lay below.

Those wings would keep her steady in gale-force winds that whipped the waves to madness.

When Haera finally became a Stormhorse, her wings would be the most powerful of all.

Fierce longing surged through her.

Today, she’d do more than watch from below.

Carefully, darting in and out of kelp and rock formations, Haera followed the Stormhorses as they made their way toward the surface.

The Great Mare willing, they wouldn’t look behind them and see a female about to trespass above the waves, seeking the forbidden air.

Her father had taken her up once as a secret treat, and in spite of his injunctions otherwise, she’d sought it several times since then.

The last Stormhorse disappeared above the water.

Haera waited as long as she could bear it, pumped her tail, and propelled herself to the surface.

Her head broke through the water just in time to see the final three Stormhorses transforming their marine tails into hind legs and hooves.

Their mighty wings, fully formed, beat the air; around and above them, clouds began to swirl, menacing and dark.

Calder reached the clouds first and disappeared into them with one final flap of his wings.

The moment he did, lightning flickered from within the cloud.

Haera held back an eager groan.

What must it be like up there?

Her father, Alban, had said clouds were damp and cold.

Did they also feel soft against your hide?

And what was it like to feel the wind, to balance yourself on air currents?

What did freedom feel like?

Within moments, the Stormhorses disappeared completely into the clouds, heading toward the islands to the south.

More lightning flashed and leapt from cloud to cloud: the Stormhorses speaking to one another without words in the language and fellowship only they knew.

Haera could learn that language.

She knew she could.

In the meantime, she’d seen what she’d come to see, and she’d better return before she was caught at the surface.

The consequences for that would be…

significant.

She sank below the surface and swam back the way she’d come.

Silver fish scattered before her, tempting and plump, but she wasn’t hungry.

As she went deeper, standing rocks rose to meet her; anemones and barnacles dotted their familiar surfaces.

At the bottom, a stingray slowly swam just above the seabed, its flaps stirring up the sand.

Home again. Back to the dark waters where nothing exciting happened other than orca hunts or the occasional pursuit of a selkie foolish enough to venture out alone.

“Where were you?”

Haera whirled, and bubbles swooshed around her.

Her brother lurked by a great stone behind her, his red eyes gleaming.

Her front hooves instinctively pawed forward as if to strike him.

Seeing this, Asgall only laughed.

Had he seen her surface?

If he had, he wouldn’t hesitate to report it.

Nothing would please him more than his own sister’s disgrace.

“I saw a promising school of fish,” she said.

“But it wasn’t worth telling the herd about.”

“Especially now that the Stormhorses are gone,” Asgall agreed.

“They’d want to partake of a feast, wouldn’t they?”

When it came to Asgall, going on the defensive was a bad idea.

Over the turns, Haera had learned to attack instead.

“You know all about what Stormhorses want and don’t want,” she said.

“That’s funny, isn’t it, since you’re not one?”

Ah, yes.

There were his teeth: sharp and pearl pale, bared at her.

“You’re one to talk.” Asgall’s tail propelled him forward.

His skin and scales were so dark that, even with Haera’s sharp vision, it was difficult to see him.

Her own skin and scales, a very pale blue, made her a more visible target.

“ My dream was within reach,” Asgall growled.

“It still might be. Yours? No.” He tossed his head contemptuously, as if Haera’s ambitions deserved to be shaken away.

“There’s never been a female Stormhorse and never will be.”

Haera ignored that.

He hadn’t observed her trespass, although he clearly suspected it.

If he knew for sure, he’d rub her nose in it before tattling.

She said, “What do you mean, your dream ‘still might be’ within reach? You failed your trial, so-called hope of our family, and you’ll never be a Stormhorse. There are no second chances. Be glad our father wasn’t alive to see it.”

Any defeat for her vicious brother was a victory for Haera.

Their mother, Beathag, had taken no such pleasure in it, and her disappointment had torn at Haera.

Literally. She’d worn the scars from her mother’s hooves for many tides.

“And who’s our hope now? You, Hiiii ra?”

Haera had no idea why it should be so irritating when her brother elongated her name.

Probably because nearly everything he did was as irritating as an oyster’s sandy insides.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t be. Am I not as swift as you? As cunning?” She swished her tail threateningly.

“Am I not the braver hunter? The Sire’s rewarded me often enou?—”

Asgall snapped out with his teeth, but Haera was prepared for that.

She darted out of the way and swiped at him with her tail, catching him at his ribs.

He grunted. As a foal, she’d assumed these battles were only play; the first time he’d broken her skin, she’d learned better.

Now she took it seriously.

Her brother would earn none of her blood.

He retreated with a snarl.

“You’re not as good as you think. Not nearly as good. And what makes you so proud of yourself is what shames our mother the most.”

The words struck home.

Asgall was right: Beathag had never forgiven Haera for being better at hunting, fighting, everything Asgall was supposed to excel in.

Sometimes it seemed she loathed Haera for it even more than Asgall did.

Her two offspring were her two greatest disappointments, but at least Asgall wasn’t a showy one.

Now that Haera was grown, it was easy to avoid her mother, and she did so at every opportunity.

It was also better to ignore Asgall now that he no longer wished to attack her, and generally the right thing to do after he grew tiresome.

He was wrong, anyway.

Haera didn’t give a damn about being the hope of her family.

The depths knew her mother and brother wouldn’t appreciate it.

Haera would be her own hope.

With her father’s death, she had lost her only protector, and now she protected herself.

And why not? Wasn’t she gifted?

Couldn’t she swim as fast as any male, catch as many fish, maneuver as nimbly around the reefs of the North Sea?

Hadn’t she been the one to deliver a fatal attack during an orca hunt, feeding the herd on blubber and muscle for days?

The Sire had allowed her to eat one of the orca’s eyes: a great honor.

It wasn’t enough.

Asgall swam away with a disgusted snort.

Haera barely noticed him.

Her ambitions were more interesting than his petulance.

Nearly anything was.

How ironic that through his failure, Asgall had achieved what Haera could only gain with unprecedented success.

By herd law, only Stormhorses could sire offspring.

Because Asgall hadn’t passed his test, he was forbidden to mate or reproduce.

Haera wasn’t nearly so lucky.

Once she reached her hundredth turn around the sun—nearly 150,000 tides—she’d reach the maximum age before she had to become a brood mare.

Then her life would become an endless cycle of mating with the first Stormhorse to claim her in heat, being pregnant, and giving birth…

unless she was killed in the mating frenzy, of course.

Out of respect for her father who should have been Sire, and Haera’s skill as a hunter and warrior, Calder had granted her request to delay that horror well past the time she’d become fertile.

She had eight turns left to go.

It seemed like a lot, but they’d swim by in a flash.

Haera had grown and was approaching her full strength.

She needed to act soon.

She would be a Stormhorse, swift and powerful.

She would be respected; even Asgall would show deference.

She’d see the ocean, her home, from the distance of the clouds.

She just had to eat the right person first.