Chapter Six
Calista
The wind came at us sideways, salted and sharp as we descended the cliffside.
Frostcrag’s scouts moved in perfect rhythm below.
They laid out the oars, coiled the ropes, and placed every boot where it belonged.
Along the shore, three longboats waited with their wolf-head prows lifted as if ready to bite the Moonglass Sea.
“Board the middle craft,” barked one of Frostcrag’s males. He was tall and lanky with a scar across his jaw and voice like gravel. “The bride rides in the center for safety.”
I stepped forward when Dorian motioned me on.
Further up the cliff Suri stood with Aunt Mara, hands clasped. I didn’t raise a hand in farewell. If I did, I’d have to turn, and if I turned, something inside me might come loose.
Now was not the time for that.
At the waterline, icy spray kissed my cheeks.
“I will meet you in Frostcrag,” said Dorian, turning toward the vessel to our right. “Behave—”
“I know,” I gritted out.
My Alpha dipped his head in farewell, and a Frostcrag guard offered a gloved hand to steady me onto the plank.
I ignored it and crossed alone onto the middle craft.
The dark timber bounced once beneath my boots and held.
As I crossed, the weight of a heavy gaze seared into my back, but I refused to look.
The middle craft’s benches had been wrapped in dark furs, and a lantern hung low to cut glare from the waves.
The priestess took the forward thwart, pale veil stark against the iron sea.
Two Frostcrag elites flanked the center, leaving a spot for me in the middle, and the captain settled to my right.
And at the bow, as though the boat had been built around him, stood the king.
His cloak was thrown back from his shoulders, and the wolf mask cut the horizon neatly in two. My gaze settled on the pelt he wore over his shoulders. Had it belonged to some enemy he’d killed? Whether it was a trophy, a warning, or simply a Frostcrag custom I had yet to understand.
“Sit, bride.” He gave the order without turning, his voice carrying the length of the craft like something caught on the wind.
Every nerve in my body rankled at the order. I didn’t sit. “I’ll stand until we clear the breakers.” I braced my boots and the iron ring at my hip against the gunwale, the unyielding rim of the boat’s side.
The captain’s mouth twitched. The priestess tilted her head in my direction, assessing. I didn’t particularly care whether she approved of me or not. I hadn’t asked for her approval. Or Selraya’s.
“Row,” the king ordered.
Oars bit into the water. The cove opened around us, and we slipped through its teeth of rock into the long dark swell beyond. Behind us, Hollowcrest shrank to a rim of frost and ironstone.
Once we cleared the breakers, I sat. The furs were blessedly warm from the bodies that had used them before me. I had never spent much time around full-blooded Wolvryn besides Aunt Mara, and goddess, the heat they gave off. Enough to warm our whole cottage on the worst winter night.
The priestess’s gaze found my hands. “Remove your blades, child. For the crossing. It is tradition.”
“My blades stay with me.”
“It is tradition,” she repeated, iron tucked inside silk.
I laid one hand over the crossed sheaths at my lower back and kept them there. “If this boat strikes rock and we go into the sea, I would rather not meet the Moonglass unarmed. Surely tradition can survive sheathed steel.”
The priestess looked toward the king. He inclined his head by the smallest fraction.
“Very well,” she said at last, turning her face forward. “The moon commands the Wolvryn. But only the king commands the moon.”
“And per tradition, we must respect both,” I murmured.
“Do you?” The king’s voice softened a shade that was not soft. “Respect is usually quieter than I’ve seen so far.”
“I’ve been told my quiet reads loud.”
The hint of a chuckle, or had I imagined it? “True...” It sounded like he tasted the word and liked it.
The oars settled into rhythm after that. In, pull, feather. The king never sat. He stood at the bow like a statue that breathed.
As we passed the outer reef, a swell lifted us high enough that I could see the other two boats pacing us, banners cracking stiffly in the wind. I hoped Dorian fared well on the crossing.
The captain tapped his slate without turning. “We should reach the fortress before moonrise tomorrow if the weather holds, Frost King.”
“It will,” he replied.
I tried not to watch him, but I failed.
My eyes kept finding the line of his shoulders, the hard shift of muscle beneath fur and leather, the sheer unnatural stillness of him. He did not move like an ordinary male. He moved like something more dangerous. Something used to being obeyed.
Minutes passed and the slap of oars became almost trancelike. My lids began to droop, heavy from exhaustion.
A set of cross-waves shouldered the hull, and the boat took a strange step sideways.
The bench lurched, and my hands shot out for purchase.
And found nothing but air. The king caught the iron ring at my hip with two fingers through the rope’s loop and controlled my fall without ever laying a hand on me.
He steadied me then let go in the same breath, so fast the priestess’s veil barely had time to flutter.
I barely suppressed the sharp exhale.
“Mind your feet,” he muttered. “Where we are headed, the ground moves.”
I caged my breath back inside my ribs. “And where I’m from, we learn to stand anyway.”
“Good girl.” The word should not have done what it did inside my chest.
He turned away again.
The hours that followed slipped by like seals through dark water. Marsten gave orders quietly, and Frostcrag obeyed.
The king’s head angled toward the charred line of coast in the distance. “Tarrik and his raiders were here.”
I leaned slightly forward, ears perking up at mention of the raiders.
“He’s getting bold, my king,” Marsten muttered.
“Too bold.”
“It’s time for food,” the priestess announced, cutting through whatever more they meant to say.
A wrapped parcel appeared in my lap. Unwrapping it, I found smoked fish, hard bread, and a wedge of sharp cheese.
My stomach grumbled reminding me I hadn’t eaten all day.
The packed meal was more than I’d typically consume in an entire day in Hollowcrest.
As the sky burned down to dusk, Lunaris curved on our right like a black knife.
The boats rode the long breath between swells, oars feathering soft, and lanterns hooded to slits.
Wind pressed salt into my lips. The Alpha King still stood at the prow of the middle craft, a pillar in fur and iron, his imposing frame nearly blocking the horizon.
I sat on the bench to his left, my shoulders stiff and entire body aching after hours of little movement.
“We round the cape in twenty,” Marsten murmured, checking the slate. “And nightfall will come along with it.”
The king nodded sharply before his gaze flickered in my direction. Only for a heartbeat. He’d been casting cautious glances in my direction for hours, his eyes finding me the way a needle turns to the north.
I told myself I wasn’t watching him. Suri would have called me a liar.
A steady calm surrounded us. Or maybe after nearly a full day on this boat, I’d finally learned its rhythm.
The priestess sat to my right, her eyes closed and hands folded in prayer or meditation.
I barely masked the expression of disgust. As Hollowcrests, we’d never been particularly religious, forgoing the typical weekly visits to the temple.
Why pray to a goddess who’d forsaken us?
As I pondered the great mystery that was Selraya, the sea suddenly changed.
My entire body felt it. It wasn’t the size of the swell, not at first. It was the sound.
The oars’ rhythm was swallowed by a low, thrumming note that didn’t come from the wind or the waves.
The lantern at the bow piped once, thin flame bending as if something huge drew breath beneath us.
My heart climbed up my throat, hackles raising.
“Hold,” the captain warned warily. Oars were lifted, dripping silver beneath the moonlight.
From the dark to starboard, the water rose.
Not a crest. A hump that grew and kept growing, skin like slate polished to a mirror and veined with threads of cold fire.
A fin or a blade, or maybe it was both, cut the surface.
It was taller than a mast on the far boats and crowned in barbs the size of short spears.
By the moon, what in the frosted realms was that?
My fingers itched for my blades, but I’d promised the priestess to keep them sheathed.
“Gloamthresher!”
Every Frostcrag back went rigid.