CHAPTER ELEVEN
The schooner sliced through water that faded from warm turquoise to cold slate as they left the harbor's protection. Thalia stood at the bow, her fingers curled around the weathered railing, its grain rough against her palms.
Behind her, Verdant Port diminished with each passing moment, the city's familiar silhouette dissolving into the morning mist like a dream upon waking.
She had left everything there—her mother, Mari, the note for Kaine that even now might be clutched in his hands, his face contorting with anger or concern or both.
The thought of it formed a hollow space beneath her ribs, but she pushed the feeling away. Her path lay ahead, into waters where continental ships rarely ventured and rarely returned.
Salt spray misted her face as the bow cut through a swell, the droplets cool against her skin.
The ocean's breath filled her lungs—briny, alive, ancient.
It was different from the sheltered waters of Verdant Port's harbor, wilder somehow, as though even the sea itself changed character once it passed beyond the mainland's reach.
Ashe moved to stand beside her. The Northern woman's piercing eyes never stopped scanning the horizon, her posture alert despite the early hour and the previous day's exertions.
"We're really doing this," Ashe said, her voice barely audible above the rush of water against the hull and the creak of rigging overhead.
Thalia nodded, unable to find words adequate to the moment.
They were sailing deliberately into the heart of enemy territory on a mission that their superiors had deemed worth the likely sacrifice of their lives.
The absurdity of it struck her suddenly—how could anyone calculate such an equation?
How many Frostforge graduates equaled the value of intelligence on a fortress-whale?
At the stern, Roran hunched over the chart table, his wild curls restrained in a leather tie that still failed to contain their rebellious nature.
His fingers traced lines on parchment that fluttered in the breeze, weighted at the corners with small pieces of glacenite to prevent them from being claimed by the wind.
The tense set of his shoulders spoke of concentration, of responsibility.
His gaze flicked continuously between the charts, the compass, and the invisible path he charted through increasingly hostile waters.
"Three degrees east," he muttered, adjusting the tiller with one hand while the other remained raised slightly, palm facing the mainsail where wind of his creation filled the canvas. The effort showed in the fine lines around his eyes, in the slight tremor of his extended fingers.
The sun climbed higher, its light diffused through a veil of sea mist that thickened as they sailed farther from the mainland coast. What had begun as clear visibility gradually transformed into a world of soft edges and muted sound.
The horizon disappeared, replaced by a gradient of gray that made it impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began.
Thalia tilted her head back, trying to glimpse the sun through the haze. Only a pale smudge of brightness marked its position now, like a lantern viewed through frosted glass. The mist beaded in her hair, on her eyelashes, clung to the wool of her cloak until the fabric grew heavy with moisture.
"We're blind out here," she murmured, more to herself than to Ashe.
Ashe nodded, her expression grave. "And deaf. Sound travels strangely in fog this thick. A Warden ship could be fifty yards away, and we might not hear it until it's on top of us."
As if summoned by her words, the mist closed in further, reducing their world to the confines of the schooner and perhaps twenty yards of ocean in any direction.
The lanterns Roran had lit cast golden spheres that diffused into the white haze, creating an eerie, enclosed space that seemed to follow them as they moved.
Time became difficult to measure without the sun's arc to track.
The quality of light remained constant—a flat, colorless illumination that made shadows weak and direction uncertain.
Thalia found her gaze drawn repeatedly to the compass in its brass housing near the helm, the only reliable indicator that they continued to move in a consistent direction rather than in circles.
After what might have been hours, Ashe climbed to the stern deck where Roran maintained his vigil, bending to examine the charts spread before him. Her brow furrowed as she traced their plotted course with one finger.
"These maps," she said, loud enough for Thalia to hear from her position at the bow. "How reliable are they, really? Frostforge's cartographers have never ventured this far into Warden waters."
Roran's lips quirked in a half-smile that didn't reach his eyes. "To be honest, I stopped following Frostforge's charts about an hour ago." He tapped his temple with one finger. "I'm navigating by what's up here now."
Ashe's eyebrows rose. "Your memory of waters you haven't seen since you were four years old? That's not particularly reassuring."
“I was also out here two summers ago,” Roran said. “Tracking Warden movements. Greenspire, I told you about that, remember?”
Thalia nodded; she did remember. "But it's still just a memory you're relying on."
"Not just memory," Roran corrected, his voice taking on the edge it always did when discussing his connection to his Warden heritage. "Instinct. The currents, the way the wind wants to move, the salt content in the water—it all speaks to me. It's hard to explain."
"Try," Ashe said flatly.
Roran sighed, running a hand through his hair and dislodging the leather tie completely.
His long curls sprang free, framing his face like a storm cloud.
"It's like... there's a map etched into my blood.
I can feel when we're approaching land before I see it.
I can sense the channels between islands, the places where currents run deep.
" He looked away, his expression troubled as if the admission had cost him.
"It's getting stronger the farther we sail. "
Thalia watched the exchange with a curious mixture of concern and fascination.
She had always known Roran's connection to his Warden heritage went beyond the storm magic that flowed through his veins, but she had never heard him articulate it so clearly before.
The admission seemed to cost him, as though speaking the connection aloud made it more real, more threatening to the identity he had constructed for himself.
Ashe, for her part, narrowed her eyes but didn’t comment further.
She had known about Roran’s ability for storm magic for a long time; she’d kept the secret out of loyalty to Thalia, but she had long been more suspicious of Roran, less able to accept this side of him that mirrored the enemy.
Her distrust had once been more overt, manifesting in outward hostility.
Now, it simmered beneath the surface, contained.
Ashe had seen Roran fight on behalf of Frostforge enough times to logically know that he was an ally, but Thalia knew that Ashe’s hesitation wasn’t about logic—it was instinct.
Bloodlines weren’t easily ignored, and Roran’s heritage carried the weight of the enemy’s legacy.
The schooner slid through water that had changed again, becoming darker, deeper.
No longer the vibrant blue-green of the continental shelf, this was the true deep sea, a profound midnight color that suggested unfathomable depths below their keel.
The surface was glassy, unnaturally still except for the ripples created by their passage.
No fish broke the surface, no seabirds called overhead.
The absence of life created a silence that pressed against Thalia's ears like physical pressure.
"Where are the patrol ships?" she asked, breaking the strange quiet. "The Wardens control these waters. There should be... something."
Roran nodded, his gaze troubled as he scanned the empty sea. "There should be. Unless..." He trailed off, his expression distant, as though listening to something beyond Thalia's perception.
"Unless what?" Ashe prompted.
"Unless they've all been called somewhere else," Roran finished, his voice low. "Gathered for some purpose important enough to leave these waters unguarded."
The implication hung in the air between them, unspoken but understood. What could be significant enough to draw away the Wardens' naval forces, to leave their territorial waters vulnerable to intrusion? Nothing good, certainly.
A shadow loomed ahead, resolving slowly from the mist into a more substantial form.
Land—the first island they had encountered since leaving the mainland behind.
It grew more distinct as they approached, revealing steep cliffs rising from the water on its western face, tapering to a gentler slope on the eastern side where a small bay curved inward.
The mist clung to its peaks like reluctant ghosts, unwilling to relinquish their hold on the rocky terrain.
"I'm going up," Thalia announced, already moving toward the mainmast. The wood was slick with moisture beneath her hands and feet as she climbed, but the familiar motions came easily after countless drills at Frostforge.
The crow's nest swayed gently as she settled into it, the movement more pronounced at this height than it had been on deck.
She raised her spyglass, adjusting the brass rings until the shoreline came into sharp focus. What she saw made her breath catch in her throat. Docks extended from the eastern bay, but no vessels were moored there, no figures moved along what was left of the walkways.