Beneath the Veil of Tides

CHAPTER ONE

Death would have been a mercy—an ending to the agony erupting across my body as I crashed into the jagged stone.

Salt and the pull of some ancient memory lathered my tongue, overwhelming my already whirling senses.

If I were facing my demise, I pleaded desperately for Aetheron to cleave my life’s cord hastily.

My name is Caelyn. And I am the sacrifice. The words replayed in my head on repeat. The only occupants of my mind.

I begged for my body to succumb to the pain, but the benevolence of an ending only taunted me, dangling its reprieve above my spinning head and laughing when I couldn’t reach.

Skin ripped from the vertebrae along my spine as the furious currents dragged me along the next razor-sharp stone protruding from the ocean floor; however, I couldn’t get my body to stop, no matter how frantically my arms flailed.

The water betrayed me, muffling the bellow that tore from my blazing throat.

Instead, bubbles surged to the surface, bursting one by one.

Was I that easy for the Ocean Mother to throw away?

I churned the gnashing maelstrom in frantic, useless strokes trying to propel myself upward—anything for a quick sip of air—but to no avail.

So close. I was so, so close to the surface, but the battered remains of my kaleidoscopic tail seared pain throughout at every jerk.

A trail of azure, iridescent blood streamed behind me, and the nausea hit like the falling of a massive boulder.

For the first time I could recall in my empty mind, my lungs filled with water that stung like salt ground into an open wound.

I couldn’t remember if my gills had ever failed me before. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t navigate the depths like I once might have. It should have been familiar—I knew it in some way—and for some reason, it wasn’t.

The sea, once my cradle, had turned against me.

My prayers to the ocean goddess fell on deaf ears as I begged for respite or even a second above the waves. Fear awakened a familiar spite, but a violent surge wrenched my tattered body sideways, the rocky ocean floor tearing further into my abdomen.

Vision blurred, dark clouds hazing the edges like an inky parchment, but through it, movement caught my attention. My head snapped, a biting spasm splitting through my neck at the movement.

Gods—what is that?

Memory flooded into my hollowed-out mind: the beast’s face and lanky body, the nightmarish stories, the flaxen skin stretched thin over craggy bone.

The Tide Reaper, a drowned, bony sailor, warped by the deep-sea magic of the Ocean Mother herself, speared through the water toward me for one reason only: to harvest my soul. And I was about to become a gift for its master.

My chest constricted from fear and lack of air as I wildly reached for any purchase above the torment. If tears could be distinguished from the ocean, mine would have surely lifted the sea level.

Not like this. Not like this. Someone. Anyone.

A brittle, unnatural grin split the dead male’s cracked lips, stretched far too wide, as if frozen mid-laugh as some cruel joke.

Its eyes sunk into an ashy gray complexion, its nearly fleshless arms reaching for me.

Pale skin hung in tatters across its ivory bones, chunks of meat gouged out in assumed combat.

The creature speared at me too fast, its pinching, deformed, crustacean-like hands cinched painfully around my arms. It tore through the fabric of my thin, lace top. Exposed. I was too exposed.

I thrashed against its grip, anything to get away from the reaper, but it held firm and relished in my panic.

It twisted its head at an ungodly angle and pinned my arm to its hard chest. Bone dug into my flesh. I tried to shriek as I yanked away, but it came out as a trembling breath, broken into bubbles that drifted upward. Voiceless.

If surviving was my goal, I needed to get out of the depths. A merfolk out of the water seemed insane, but to hell with those standards. I just wanted to live.

Cutting me from my thoughts, the Tide Reaper snapped my wrist back, shattering bone beneath the skin.

My skeleton skewered through flesh, jaggedly snapping into pieces beneath the skin.

Searing pain erupted through my arm, and the water shuddered around my bellow, as if the water itself splintered from the sound.

All I saw was ravenous vengeance.

The creature’s body shook with a soundless laugh, an evil mocking as my head spun viciously. I refused to allow the beast to belittle me, some innate feeling inside my cloudy mind screaming to remove the savage Tide Reaper from existence.

The sailor leaned in, its smile widening at my anguish.

And I shoved the fingers of my unbroken wrist into its eye sockets, a gross squish bringing bile to my throat.

The beast released me, pushing back just enough for me to whip my maimed, exhausted tail up and slash the sharp fin straight through the bones of the dead sailor’s torso.

When the Tide Reaper sank to its master’s depths, it would return in two pieces, empty handed.

Adrenaline coursed through my blood, and I used it to keep the overwhelming panic and agony at bay, battling against the current toward shore where more creatures couldn’t hurt me. At least, I thought they couldn’t.

Shadows grew across the depths, eyesight blurring with each propel of my tail. My face crashed into a slick, solid surface, my fingers frantically skimming until they latched on, and I sank my torn nails into its crevices.

Hysterics bubbled within, escaping my mouth as I realized what it was: the hull of a ship. Safety in that moment just meant above the waves.

I clawed with every remaining ounce of strength I could muster, and when my head finally broke through the water’s surface, the air that filled my lungs was fire, blazing and alive.

Everything ached and burned, as if I were a living torch.

Except, even as I compared the feeling to fire, I couldn’t picture it.

Oh, gods. My wrist. I winced at the sight of my hand that cracked at the slightest movement.

My chest spasmed relentlessly as my lungs struggled to adjust to air, and for what I believed to be the first time in my life, I looked out at the world above the waves.

It felt odd, though, settling into me like something I’d always known.

As the ship neared the dock, a mosaic of islands unfolded before me—lush, scattered, and stretching toward the horizon like stepping stones across the ocean.

Even in the midst of brewing storms, people wandered the harbor in search of vendors, seeking to spend their coins as if no fear or uncertainties haunted them.

I envied it, long enough to wish I could swap lives with the villagers at the pier.

How many of them would enjoy hanging from the side of a moving ship after being nearly killed?

Clarity bloomed around me, the world more vivid than ever, as if I’d only just opened my eyes for the first time. I’d seen the land before—it felt natural in the breeze—but the grogginess in my mind wouldn’t lift. Wouldn’t bring back my memories.

Calmness hugged the islands, far more at ease than the rapids that threatened to pull me back under as I hung from the ship’s hull. Smiles plastered across the land-dweller’s faces along the harbor, and although I clung desperately to the side of the raging ship, even I breathed easier.

“The world out of the depths is spoken as chaos and pure destruction,” I murmured scratchily in confusion, the memory so ingrained in my mind that it didn’t disappear like all the others. As if it were planted there on purpose.

But as I looked beyond at the serenity of the harbor and shops, I did not see that. In fact, only peace overwhelmed me.

Water whipped my face as the vessel rocked against the waves, hair uncomfortably clinging to the skin along my shoulders and biceps, making it difficult to maneuver.

A chilled breeze caressed my tail, right before thousands of tingling needles pricked the flesh.

It shifted, the muscles moving on their own accord.

“What the—”

I peeked down hesitantly and nearly plunged back into the waves.

Legs transformed in place of the battered, scaly appendage.

I could hardly believe it. I could hardly believe anything that happened since I woke up thrown to the ocean with no recollection of my prior life.

But I didn’t have time to settle into the shock. I needed to climb.

I lifted a leg and dug my new, unfamiliar toes into a divot in the wood, pushing upward, one uncoordinated, clumsy step at a time.

The nails at the toe beds tore back as they shoved further into the cracks, but I knew pain and embraced it as if it were a natural occurrence.

One hand gripped the ship, the mutilated one reaching out to help but jerked away every time it tried to assist. My elbow instead became a crutch as I threw my aching arm over the hull of the rocking ship and used it for purchase.

That part of my carved-out memory blared warnings of the lurking creatures beneath the waves waiting to pounce, urging me to scale the ship and escape by any means possible.

But my fingers barely moved to my will, nerves pinching and searing where the reaper snapped my wrist. Uncertainty cradled my brain, seeping into every crevice and taking hold like an unwanted poison leeching through my blood. Tossed into the sea to die.

No gates of Aetheron. No gates of Aetheron, I begged repeatedly.

The god of death accepted no discrimination in his work, but as I neared the railing of the ship, I feared the deity searched for me, waiting in the shadows to purge the soul from my body.

Hope accompanied danger, so I forced it deep into a compartment in my mind.