A Clash of Steel (A Sea of Echoes #2)

Prologue

Seventeen Years Ago

The day Tristan Thorne lost everything, the sun shone like an unyielding torch held to his body.

He’d stopped feeling the burn and cracks in his skin days ago. Or weeks? He’d lost track. It was about the same time he’d last had the strength to fight back—they’d needed three men to drag him to his knees then.

Today, only one man was necessary. A man they called “Creed.” A last name, maybe. Tristan never cared one way or the other.

Creed was the reason Tristan slept in small bursts.

Creed fed him live crabs and laughed when they pinched the insides of his mouth.

Creed stepped out of the room when his drunken crewmates took turns violating Tristan until his screams and pleas turned into silent resolve.

Soon. Soon, it would finally be over. He would finally be with the others. Tristan would cross into the Valley and be with his wife again. With his mother, father, siblings, friends—everyone in the village they’d taken over the long weeks—all the familiar faces no one ever saw again.

Surely, they were dead.

Surely, they didn’t suffer further once the torture—their fun—was complete.

Surely, Jasmien was at peace, and soon, he would hold her again.

Those were Tristan’s thoughts as the pirate dragged him up a hot, sandy dune. He would die on the two miles of white sand or in the turquoise sea. He would die somewhere beautiful. Somewhere he loved.

What met him, instead, was smoke, soot, and rot.

The green sails of the Gallagher Fleet ships appeared first. Then the sea with its strange, murky color—this wasn’t how he remembered it.

The shoreline was so dark that Tristan didn’t realize he was already seeing it.

The beach, those sparkling white sands, were blackened by soot.

Where had all the wood come from? Were those… ?

Gods.

Those were the remains of ships—scattered, splintered, and charred.

“What happened here?” Tristan asked, his throat ravaged from screaming.

“You’ve not seen my favorite part yet,” Creed said, a dark laugh in his tone. He dragged Tristan farther up the dune, revealing the rest.

Plank boards in various states of wear and tear had been erected in the sand. Sticking up like husks of dried grass in the winter.

The wind carried the sounds of lapping water and what he’d thought were bird cries, only there were no birds.

Creed paused to breathe it all in, his clutch on Tristan’s arm a vice. “Cap’n likes to make sure everyone understands who he is before they come threatening to take what’s his. Give ‘em a chance to turn around, so to speak. A kindness.”

Acidic bile climbed up Tristan’s throat.

Bodies.

Those were people nailed to those boards. The cries were the screams of the dying. Pleading calls for mercy. Men, women, children—all the missing faces he’d long believed dead.

A sound that was part laugh, part sob jumped from Tristan’s chest. To think he’d envied them. The earlier victims hadn’t had to witness their entire lives tossed into the streets and burned. They hadn’t been forced to endure the continuous rape or tortured out of sheer boredom.

And, gods, Jasmien was down there. His beautiful, raven-haired wife. How long had it been since she’d been ripped screaming from his arms?

Creed dragged Tristan closer.

Those closest to the shore had begun to rot, and their lower extremities were gone.

Likely eaten when the tide came in at night.

The sun cooked away the rest. There was no telling how long they would have suffered.

And they would have suffered—hands nailed above their heads and bodies left to dangle in the open sun.

Jasmien was in the back, alongside the others who had disappeared with her.

Her long hair gave her away, even though it was wind-tangled and dusted with sand.

The rest of her was unrecognizable. Her face was bloated, while her slim figure was emaciated from hunger.

Someone had cut away her eyelids, and her eyes were sunbleached.

Hot tears blurred Tristan’s vision. “Jas,” he cried, then shouted, “Jas!”

Her jaw bobbed as if to respond.

Only an air-thinned moan broke free.

Tristan’s back struck wood.

Creed yanked Tristan’s cuffed wrists above his head, his sour breath hitting Tristan like a punch.

Tristan’s heart lurched toward his throat—this was how he would die. Baking in the sun, watching every day and night inch by until the gods saw fit to take him, with his wife right there—a level of torture he wasn’t sure he could stand.

The wood behind Tristan groaned, then cracked near the base. The plank disappeared from his back, and he fell with it. The air burst from his lungs and burned past his throat.

Creed stumbled and cursed. “Fuck,” he growled, kicking sand with a scuffed boot.

Tristan rolled off the plank and onto his forearms. A boot kicked him in the ribs. Hot pain splintered through him, and his breath caught behind clenched teeth. His lungs screamed for air, but he didn’t dare inhale—he wasn’t ready for the additional pain of expanding his ribs.

“What’m I going to do with you?” Creed scanned the broken plankboard. “Hav’ta rebury this thing,” he muttered. “Fuck.”

If Tristan was going to fight, now was the time—this was his last chance.

If only he had the strength.

If only he cared.

What was left?

The village was in shambles.

Everyone he knew and loved was here.

A distinct, foreign hum rose above that of the ocean and human suffering.

Voices.

Creed stilled and stared down the beach, fisting the hammer hooked to his hip. “What’s that?”

The answer came with the roar of hundreds. A battle cry to make the gods themselves wince. Men and women ran down the beach, swords raised to the sky.

Tristan’s heartbeat slammed and choked.

The gods had heard his pleas.

It was over.

Freedom ran across his sands.

Hope.

Creed’s jaw fell, and he descended on Tristan with a giant nail while clawing the hammer from his belt. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he spat.

Tristan yanked and wriggled against his captor.

He was saved. He had a reason to fight again.

He just didn’t have the strength.

Creed spread open Tristan’s left hand atop the plank. The nail’s tip dug into the center of his palm.

“No!” Tristan yelled.

The nail went through his hand, shattering bone, and the daylight turned solid white. The scream scraping past his throat came after, underpinned by the approaching curses and shouts.

Creed put his mouth to Tristan’s ear. “Stay, maggot. I’ll deal with you after.”

He stood, smirking, then jerked—

Creed froze as if stunned. Blood sprayed across Tristan. Only when Creed’s body twisted, falling in slow motion, did Tristan notice the large feather-tipped bolt through his eye.

The body fell atop Tristan, a death rattle escaping his lungs.

Creed hadn’t looked heavy, but now that his dead weight lay across Tristan’s broken, pained chest, he struggled to get a full breath.

His right hand was still cuffed near his left—not that he had any energy left to move the body off.

He could barely stay conscious with the amount of pain coursing through him.

But he did stay conscious. In the distance, the fleet of pirates struck his village with a clash of steel, a sound as powerful as thunder.

To one side, the ocean lapped as it always did. To the other, grit and chaos. A battle to the death.

Nearby, Jasmien’s head bobbed, and her moans turned desperate.

“We’re saved,” he said through his tears. “Hold on, love.”

He didn’t know if she could hear him. He could barely hear himself.

Still, he persisted. “There’s so much left for us.

Places I promised to take you and seas I swore we’d sail.

Remember that island I told you about? The water’s so clear you can see the colors of every fish swimming at the bottom.

We’ll sail there as soon as you’re strong enough.

We’ll make it our home, and we’ll raise all our children to be as strong as you are.

Because you’re strong, Jas. You’ve made it this far.

Just a little while longer, and then I’ll make all your dreams come true. ”

Jasmien’s mouth shaped words that never came, and her lidless, blind eyes stared without seeing.

“You’re stronger than any storm,” he said, throat tight. “Fiercer than any wave.”

Tristan’s eyelids drooped, heavy. So heavy.

Stay with me, Jas, please.

In the darkness behind his lids, he vaguely registered he’d never said the words aloud, and wherever he was going, that was all right because the pain was distant.

He roused to murmurs and the crunch of boots on sand. The wind smelled like smoke, and when he opened his eyes, it was to black clouds coming from the village.

A dark-skinned man bent over Tristan, large in the middle, broad in the shoulders. “Thought you were dead, mate.”

Tristan opened his parched mouth, but he could only think the words: My wife.

“Let’s get this—” The man yanked the nail out of Tristan’s hand, and a scream shot from him. “—out of you,” the man finished with a grunt. He then tossed the dead pirate off Tristan and spat on the body. “Don’t worry. They’re all dead now. Nothing to worry about.”

“Loto!” another man called from nearby. Tall, bearded, bald.

“Coming, Captain.” He scanned Tristan and shook his head. “You’re just a boy, aren’t you? Shame. You’ve got years ahead to live with this.”

A feeling that had nothing to do with pain stirred in his chest. He was a man of seven and ten, and he wished he had the strength to follow after the man who was already leaving him behind. Tell him—

Nothing. It didn’t matter. Jasmien mattered. And somewhere on this beach, maybe his parents and siblings were still alive, too. They survived, all of them. Despite the horrors of these recent weeks, they surv—

“Kill them.”

Tristan turned toward the woman’s voice, heart in his throat. She was young and striking with long black hair and cold black eyes.

The witch stood in front of Jasmien, staring, a knife clutched in her hand.

Jasmien’s jaw bobbed, and air wheezed from her chest.

Everywhere on the beach, men and women began slicing necks open. The man from before—the bald, bearded one—took the life of Tristan’s father and then moved on to his mother.

Tristan choked on a sob and rolled to his side. He had to get up, he had to stand, he had to stop this. Gods, his brothers and sisters were here somewhere…and—

Jasmien.

“Jas,” he rasped, reaching, reaching, reaching.

“It’ll be over soon,” the woman said to his wife.

Jasmien turned her head, and she smiled—smiled—at him.

Something shifted in the air—a ripple, a crack in the heat-haze above the sands.

Wings.

A hallucination. A shadow gliding across the blackened dunes. Then it landed—hard—on the plank that held Jasmien. The wood groaned beneath its weight.

A beast. All angles and ash. Wings flared like torn war banners catching the wind. Feet like hook scythes.

Its eyes—gods, its eyes—black voids that found him. Saw him.

And for a breathless second, time bowed.

The woman glanced up at the beast as if she’d expected it all along. She gave the beast a respectful nod before turning her full attention back to Jasmien.

The woman’s blade sliced Jasmien’s throat, and the beast didn’t flinch. Only tilted its head and watched.

Then it screamed. A soundless quake Tristan felt in his bones.

Blood pulsed from Jasmien’s wound, coating her chest, and her head bobbed one final time before hanging.

Dead.

They were all dead.

Tristan Thorne died with them all that day.

What rose from the blood-soaked sand wore his name—but was someone else entirely.