CHAPTER FOUR
The Royal Vanguard. They were supposed to receive me during the sacrifice. And Jun said they’d return for me. Did all those people die because of me? Guilt wracked against my bones, the contents of my stomach threatening to surge upward.
“The wind is with us!” Zahara commanded from the wheel, an order for Jun to cut the rope that secured us to the wooden dock.
Calvin slid past and unfurled the mainsail.
I staggered around, desperate to help, but was only in the way.
There must have been something I could do to assist, but as I tripped across the ship taking off across the violent ocean, they left me alone to my thoughts.
Choppy waves crashed into us with ferocious hits, the storm nearing in devastation. It reminded me that awe and danger often traveled hand-in-hand, forming together as one, and I didn’t want to get caught in it.
The ocean distanced us from Iredale’s shores, and I watched the inhabitants in the shallow sea tremble in fear while we escaped.
Guilt ripped into my body even further—my very soul—at the sight.
At beings needing help and us leaving them behind to run away.
The second Oricaan eased itself back into the fissure of the land, disappearing into the void opening. A breath escaped me.
“How did you know the Oricaan can’t enter water?” Zahara asked from the helm, jarring me from my thoughts.
“I didn’t know. It just felt right. Like my instincts took over,” I replied shakily. “What are they?”
Shock inundated me. The cheery shores turned blood-soaked within minutes, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all my fault.
The path to the Royal Vanguard I was supposed to take during my sacrifice was interrupted somehow.
And if the Oricaan creatures meant the Royal Vanguard followed, I wanted to know exactly what they viciously hunted, even if it meant I was their motive.
Zahara hesitated for a bit as if thinking of how to answer.
“For centuries, The Bounds remained apart. Not just by layers, but by gods, by values, and by politics,” she recited, her gaze looking over the raging ocean. “The Oceanwrought Bound started interfering. That peace we had? Barely holding together now.”
“Interfering how?” I asked, the guilt making room for shame of my own Bound bringing such destruction. But how?
“The sacrifices,” Calvin answered as he reached my side.
His tone became stone—solid, sure, and rigid.
“The Ocean Mother offered the Terraguard Bound merfolk power. It’s strong, and we believe the Royal Vanguard built the Oricaan to take more.
We aren’t sure why, but the Ocean Mother has been giving the Terraguard Bound your kind for centuries. ”
A goddess sworn and worshipped by thousands to protect just offers her own kind. Offered me. For my powers. The whiplash in emotions gurgled my stomach, my head aching at the information.
“How am I supposed to help?” I sought answers deeper than the vague ones the crew seemed to hold back in order to protect me. I wasn’t frail or weak… at least I didn’t feel it. My fingertips traced the shimmering scales clinging to my skin like silk threaded into flesh.
"We’ve been searching for something," Zahara continued, her tone edged with frustration.
"Well, pieces of it. A trident." Her fingers laced around a delicate feather-blue fabric that frayed slightly along the edges. “It’s in four pieces, one of which we’ve collected already—the Terraguard section from this Bound, but we still need three more sections.”
Zahara jumped from the raised platform and opened the door of the captain quarters, dragging a locked chest from the dark room.
It scraped roughly along the wood, passing Jun and Calvin.
Their eyes trailed it as if what remained locked inside would save us all.
The metal lock crashed to the floor, and Zahara slowly lifted the chest’s lid.
Her hand pulled a rigid object wrapped in tawny, burlap cloth from the chest, and my breathing hitched. The bones beneath my skin hummed, my body itching to step closer as Zahara unwrapped the sharp Terraguard Bound trident fragment.
The sun’s light reflected off its surface and into my eyes, but tearing my gaze from the jaggedly broken trident piece felt as if it’d kill me.
“This one was buried deep beneath the shallowest canyon on Rescine Isle. Enchanted by this Bound’s late Eternal Seat with tornadoes to protect it,” Zahara explained, extending the fragment to me.
Oh, gods. I wanted to touch it.
“You ever run from a tornado and realize your legs aren’t built for that?” Calvin asked from beside the chest with Jun.
Zahara huffed, a lilt of her lips curling along the edges and gestured us toward a round table on the main deck, lowering the piece back into the chest and securing the lock. She pulled a rolled parchment from the inside of her vest pocket.
Each step away from the chest ached my body—my bones—as if the trident warned me not to put distance between.
Zahara flattened the parchment along the table.
Four main sections divided the map, one for each of the layered Bounds, the Terraguard map the largest. Red ink marred its surface.
Circles on islands, places crossed out, and Rescine Isle blackened out with void-like ink, the name of the land formation left off to its side.
Jun and Calvin joined.
“The Eternal Seats, rulers from each of the Bounds many centuries ago,” Jun said as he leaned over and pointed to the center of the map, “siphoned their magic into a piece of the trident right before their synchronized deaths. They hid them in their own divided kingdoms, so that no one from other Bounds could bring them back together.”
“We don’t have Eternal Seats anymore amongst the Bounds,” Zahara cut in to add.
“Yeah, one pissed off a Thirstling,” Calvin added, and my heart nearly stopped. My mind clawed against the skull at the word. “When one died, their magic killed them all. A giant, catastrophic eruption that took ages supposedly to settle without their rulers.”
“Magic?” Was that really the only thing I got out of all of that? I knew magic existed, even as it flowed dormant in my own merfolk blood.
“Yes, each of the Eternal Seats, the rulers of each Bound at the time, carried magic beyond comprehension. So do most of their people if they chose before their deaths to offer it,” Zahara responded carefully.
“Do you all have magic?”
“The Terraguard Eternal Seat gifted many with magic before his death—magic that's been passed down through generations of life. Calvin and I hold no powers. Jun is a healer,” Zahara responded.
“Except the power of my good looks,” Calvin quipped, earning a sideways glance from Jun.
“And what exactly is the trident supposed to do?” I shuddered through my skin.
“It’s enough to awaken a titan,” Jun responded, words clipped and finite. “Enough to stop the Terraguard Bound from harvesting the merfolk sacrificed by the Oceanwrought.”
I froze. Harvesting. They wanted our blood for further bloodshed.
Zahara’s hand cupped my shoulder, an embrace meant to soothe my reeling mind.
“Tell me,” I breathed. I wanted the truth. All of it.
So Zahara continued. “For centuries, the Ocean Mother has willingly sacrificed merfolk, like you. The Royal Vanguard on our Bound harvest their magic every day and use it to control the Oricaan that you saw today.”
“It’s brutal,” Jun added, a hint of despair in his wavering, deep voice.
“Why?” I quavered, the words barely above a whisper.
“That, we aren’t so sure on,” Calvin responded sadly.
“The trident is our last chance to stop it all, to bring peace back between our realms,” Zahara spoke with quiet assurance. “I’ve worked my entire life trying to do it by myself,” she paused on the words, as if unable to continue the rest, “but I can’t do it alone.”
“Four Bounds, only three trident pieces left to recover—Shadeborne Bound, Oceanwrought Bound, and Aetherkin Bound—before we can forge them and get the titan’s help needed to end the sacrifices in your Bound and the Oricaan destroying ours,” Calvin simplified.
The ship shook on impact, a male covered in onyx armor perching atop the railing.
He raised upright slowly, feathery wings stretched over his head, the same inferno color as the wavy hair that blew across his shoulders in the wind.
His chest rose and fell in rapid succession.
His cheeks flustered a rosy hue against his tanned skin.
The waning sunlight caught on the scars flaring like embers from his hairline to sharp jaw. His lips curled into a wicked smirk. Emerald eyes caught between defeat and fury glued on me, the smile faltering in the slightest before catching his composure.
But I saw the slip.
“Thought I’d drop in before the real fun begins.”