A Rising Tide (Ends of the Earth #2)

Chapter 1

Waves crest against the hull of the ship, the foamed tips tapping against the windowsill like fingers. There’s nothing but a sheet of glass separating me from my home, yet we might as well be worlds apart.

I shift on the small cot and reach for the window, but the rhodium cuff yanks my arm back. Gritting my teeth, I press forward, the metal digging into my skin, and the icy chill of the glass radiates against the pad of my fingers—yet not close enough to touch.

An ache spreads across my chest, and as I drop my arm, the chain rattles against the wall. I’ve had my power back for little more than a day, and here it is, already stifled.

I turn toward Kressa. “Prisoner?”

She paces to the other side of the captain’s quarters and stops in front of a map strung to the wall. She lifts a finger and traces a red dotted line running across the continent—the Earth Court territories Caelus conquered. “My brother is an heir to the throne, and you tried to assassinate him.”

“But I didn’t.”

She scoffs, her balance steady despite the rocking of the ship. “If it were him, and not me glamoured as him, you would have slit his throat. He would be dead right now.”

“It doesn’t matter what could have been.

And let’s not forget I risked my life helping you find him.

” I bare my teeth and shake my head. “It’s as if you’ve forgotten everything I’ve done for you.

I could have killed you in the first trial, when the kraken knocked you out, or let you die in the second, after the selkie nearly gutted you.

I could have let you die in the third, when the arrow pierced your heart.

” Tears burn my throat, but I swallow them down.

“But I didn’t. I pressed what little I had of my power into you.

Twice. And after all that, I’m your prisoner? ”

Her hands curl into fists at her sides, knuckles blanching, and a full minute passes by without a response. Blinding light pours in through the window and pools on her pressed uniform. It’s a dark forest green, emphasizing the golden strands in her chestnut braid running down her back.

I’m still dressed in Harriet’s stolen clothes, yet Kressa seems as if she’s prepared to step into battle. A future queen.

Seagull chatter mixes with the voices shouting from the deck—the all too familiar sounds that come with being at sea. Noises that once lulled me to sleep.

But here I am, powerless and prisoner once again.

Kressa braces herself against the desk, gripping the edge. “How’d you do it?”

“You know exactly how I did it. Gemma glamoured me, and—”

She pushes herself away from the desk and flips a knife from her pocket, pressing it against the soft skin beneath my chin.

“Not how you entered The Gales,” she snarls, driving the tip of the blade against my skin. “I want to know how the Princess of the Sea went an entire decade without being discovered. How did you con so many people?”

“Con?” I tilt my chin as a warm bead of blood drips down my throat. “I was cursed when I refused the marriage. Terra took away my power, bound me to the land, and made sure my face was wiped from everyone’s memory. Even Thea didn’t know who I was.”

Her grip loosens, and she drops the blade. “Why? Why would she do that?”

Caelus’s final words haunt my memory. About how my mother wasn’t the true ruler of the sea—that she made a bargain with Terra. I swallow and grind my teeth. “It doesn’t matter why.”

She stiffens and strides back to the desk, slamming her hands against the wooden top. Quills roll off the surface and disappear beneath a bookshelf. A pile of parchment—maps, coordinates, correspondence—follows suit, swaying to the floor like falling snow.

As I look up, our gazes lock. Her eyes, once a molten honey brown, have hardened over. Unrecognizable.

“You started a war,” she snaps. “You came to our peaceful ceremony with an army at your back and tried to assassinate my brother. Because of you, Caelus swooped in and annihilated my entire kingdom—forced us into hiding. You’re a war criminal, Briar.”

“Then why’d you free me in the first place? Give me the ship?” I grit my teeth. “After everything we’ve been through, the night we shared, you—”

“My father gave me one task.” She steps closer. Heat radiates from her skin in waves. It grows, billowing as she stops a foot away from the bed. “I bring back the Princess of the Sea, and I’ll become queen.”

Her list. Why she spent the last decade as a bounty hunter, searching the world. For me.

I shake my head. “Let me go, and I’ll return to Delterran. I’ll rally my forces and we can fight together, I promise.”

“You’re too dangerous. I saw what you did in Sarenia—how easy it was for you to forfeit lives. And it’s been too long with your power stored too tightly. You’re out of control. Dangerous even to your own people.”

I swallow. “You’re wrong.”

“The only thing I was wrong about was letting myself get close to you.”

A pit opens in my stomach. It’s as if someone has reached into my core and gutted me—clawed through me. I lean back against the wall and search the recesses of mind for the connection that once tethered me to her.

But the rhodium is too thick. I find nothing.

Her chest expands on a rough inhale, and as she blows it out, power dances beneath her palms. Firelight glows from under her skin like embers through a log. Her Fire Court power. She rolls out her shoulders, and the fire dwindles away—smothered.

Control I don’t have.

I’d rather her scream or throw a blast of fire at the window beside me. Anything—any sort of outburst to show that this pain hurts her just as much as me. But she presses her lips into a thin line and turns toward the door.

She reaches for the door handle, but pauses and lowers her head. “If you can promise me something, I’ll bring you to Thea.”

My breath catches, and I lean as far forward as the shackles allow. “Anything.”

If I can get to Thea, we can pull together a plan to escape once we dock. Some sort of distraction where we can slip away unnoticed.

She glances over her shoulder. “When we get to Ignata, you don’t mutter a word about my fire power. Do you understand?”

My brows pull together. “Your father doesn’t know?”

“Do you understand?”

Gnawing on my lip, I turn over her words in my mind. Even if she swore everyone to secrecy on this ship, there were others who saw her wield fire—members of the Sky Court. It’s only a matter of time before word circulates that the future Queen of the Earth harbors fire.

Curiosity gets the best of me. “How is it even possible? The Fire Court has been gone for half a century.”

She slams her fist against the door. “Damnit, Calisdana. Do you understand?”

There’s the reaction I want. Not the cold-blooded, emotionless bounty hunter that attempted my life a handful of times. But despite the anger, this isn’t the woman who promised she’d find me anywhere, dismantle the stars for me. She’s long gone.

The thought tears a hole through my chest.

I sink against the wooden headboard. “I understand.”

“Thank you.”

It’s a promise I can make for now—if anything, just to see Thea and make sure she’s okay. But it’s information I tuck into my pocket for later.

She swings the door open, and humid, salty sea air blows into the cabin. I breathe it in, letting the brine coat my lungs and fill the crevices that have been empty for a decade. I sigh, but there’s something lacking from it—a sweetness I’ve only experienced from the deck of The Twelfth Night.

I have to find a way to escape with Thea so we can find our ship and the rest of the crew.

Footsteps cross the threshold, and Elias enters, followed by Gemma.

My breath catches in my throat. “You’re alive.”

Red rims her swollen eyes, and she manages a nod. Last I saw her, she was cradling the body of her lifeless sister—crimson blood soaking the front of her shirt.

“We escaped under the mountain after you brought the wave down,” she says, her throat scratchy. “It nearly took our ship with it, but the crew kept it from capsizing.”

A swallow makes its way down my throat as I force myself not to look at Kressa. I nearly burned myself out, unable to release the hold I had on the tsunami. Any bigger and it could have drowned them all.

I had no control.

Elias comes to the headboard, his brown eyes harboring an eerie knowing that skates down my spine. But the rhodium cuffs offer a blanket of protection. With them tight around my wrist, he can’t read my thoughts—my plan to escape.

He slides a key into the padlock chaining me to the wall. “Thea has been asking where you are.”

I narrow my eyes on Kressa, letting poison burrow into my glare. “I’ll let her know I’ve been chained to the wall by the person I’m bonded to.”

There’s no use dancing around the subject. Elias knew the moment he saw me, and Gemma was the first to tell me the truth. Kressa and I—two of the same soul. Fated. Unable to kill each other.

Kressa crosses her arms and leans against the doorway, unbothered.

Gemma said denying the bond would cause excruciating pain, so either Kressa can withstand more than I thought, or she found a way to avoid it completely.

The chain connecting my wrists together falls into my lap, and Elias wraps his hand around my bicep. “Let’s go.”

I shift off the cot, and the moment my bare feet meet the wooden planks, my vision swims. The wound at my shoulder stings, and I wince as fresh blood seeps into the gauze. My bones and muscles ache from the near burn out, but I grimace and force myself upright.

Gemma weaves an arm around my waist and steadies me. “Are you sure you can walk?”

Swallowing, I lean a fraction of my weight against her and nod. They lead me toward the door—my footsteps heavy, and Kressa gives me a wide berth as she disappears out the door and onto the deck.

We clear the threshold, and I raise my hand, shading my eyes against the midday sun reflecting off the waves.

I scan the deck, memorizing the gaps in the rail, the height of the mast. How far and how fast we’d have to run if we made a break for it.

The crew bustles around, dressed in the same green as Kressa’s uniform, but it’s half the size of a normal crew.

It wouldn’t be hard to evade them, or take them down with us.

We weave around the main mast and descend a flight of stairs into the belly of the ship. A damp chill invades the air, and the sunlight fades behind us. Hammocks swing from bolts in the ceiling—a handful of them occupied. Kressa has a crew working at all hours, then.

There’s a weighted silence to Gemma and Elias as we snake through the corridors toward the holding cells. It’s expected, I suppose, from someone who just lost a sister and another who spent a decade in solitary confinement.

Or they loathe me as fiercely as Kressa does.

We come to a set of double doors, and shouts come from the other side, followed by the clanging of metal pans. We push through, and the smell of bread and roasted meats twines with a thick cloud of sweat. Curious eyes follow our path to the rear where a single, windowless door waits.

Elias slides a key out of his pocket and fits it into the lock. He opens the door, and the hinges groan, rust clinging to their edges.

I step into the dark, narrow hallway lined with metal cells on either side.

The brig.

“Briar?”

“Thea?” My eyes struggle to adjust to the dark, but I’d know that voice anywhere. “Thea, where are you?”

My vision adjusts, and a smile cuts through the dark, followed by eyes as blue as the sea. Thea darts toward the bars closest to me—the beads at the ends of her braids tapping together—and wraps her shackled hands around the rungs.

A throaty sob escapes me, and I throw myself at her, threading my fingers through hers. “I thought I lost you.”

“You could never lose me. To the ends of the earth, remember?”

Tears roll down my cheeks as I study her chest—where the arrow pierced her just above the heart. I watched the blood drain from her body on the deck of that ship, moments before Caelus nearly ended her life.

“I asked one of the healers work on her,” Gemma whispers from the doorway.

I swallow. “Thank you.”

Elias unlocks the cell beside hers. “I assume you’d rather stay here than return to Kressa’s cabin?”

I nod, unable to pull my attention from Thea. As if taking my eyes off her would make her forget me again—turn her back into a courtesan.

Gemma lays a hand on my shoulder and tilts her chin toward the open cell. “I wish we didn’t have to keep you in here, but Kressa insists.”

Sidestepping away from Thea, I enter the open cell, and Elias locks the door behind me.

“We’ll bring you two some dinner as soon as it’s ready,” he says, “and tomorrow we’ll arrive at Ignata.”

Ignata. Where Kressa will hand me over to her father. Where I’ll likely be executed.

Gemma reaches through the bars and gives my uninjured arm a reassuring squeeze, then she and Elias leave through the brig’s door.

Silence fills the space, and Thea sidles up to the bars separating our cells. “So, what’s the plan, captain?”

My lips curl at the edges, and she offers me a smile in return. I scan the space, but the rest of the cells are empty, and even if there were other prisoners, the footsteps from the upper deck would drown out our whispers.

I lean against the metal rungs. “Without our power, we don’t stand a chance at escaping the ship.

Kressa has the crew working at all hours, and we’d be spotted immediately.

” Not to mention Elias’s ability to read minds.

I might stand a chance blocking him out after practicing with Kressa, but Thea won’t.

She gnaws on her lip and slides to the floor, pressing her temple against the bars. I join her, pulling my legs to my chest.

“And even if we made it onto one of the rowboats, we wouldn’t make it very far.” She lifts her hands, bound by rhodium. “They’d catch us.”

The ship rocks with the waves, and I’d do just about anything for a porthole. A glimpse at the sea. “Then we’ll have to escape when we get to Ignata.”

She blows out a long breath. “Think you could swipe one of those keys off Elias?”

I huff. “What kind of question is that?”

We share a lopsided smile, and I maintain a facade of confidence while my chest tightens. It’s a good plan, but not foolproof.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I say. “When we disembark, you cause a distraction and I’ll lift the key from Elias. I’ll pocket it and wait until we’re somewhere safe to unlock our cuffs.”

“Then I’ll transport us back to this ship,” she says. “And we’ll go find the rest of the crew.”

“And The Twelfth Night.”

Our eyes meet through the corroded metal bars. On the other side of this hull, I have no idea what’s happening in Delterran—if there’s even a city to return to.

But I’m a queen, and the sea needs me.