The Tide Reversed One kiss could free him—or drown them all. #2
It took twice as long to get him up the cliff. By the time she dragged him through the lighthouse door and laid him beside the first man near the hearth, her hands were shaking too badly to untie the knots. She cut the rope loose with her knife instead.
The first man stirred when she covered Finn with a blanket.
His silver eyes opened again.
“How many?” he demanded.
“Two inside,” Maren said, breathless. “Two still out there.”
He tried to rise.
She planted one hand on his chest and shoved him down.
It should not have worked. He was broader than any man had a right to be, all hard muscle and battle scars, even half-dead. But weakness dragged him back to the floor.
“Stay,” she ordered.
His eyes flashed. “They are mine.”
“They’ll be corpses if I trip over you on the path.”
He stared up at her, fury and fear warring across his face.
Then, with visible effort, he nodded once.
“Callum,” he said.
“What?”
“My name.” His jaw tightened. “Callum Greer.”
“Maren Vale.”
At her name, the dead beacon above them flared.
Blue light pulsed down through the stairwell.
Both men flinched.
Maren did not have time to ask why.
The third man nearly killed her.
Not deliberately. At least she hoped not.
He was trapped farther out, where the rocks sloped into deeper water.
Huge, dark-haired, and motionless, he looked at first like a piece of wreckage.
Then lightning flashed and she saw the old scars crossing his chest and shoulders in pale ritual lines.
His hands were clenched around a black stone as if even unconscious, he meant to break the island apart.
Maren had to wade waist-deep to reach him.
The cold stole the breath from her lungs.
The song beneath the sea grew louder.
Come down, it seemed to hum. Come down, little keeper. Come see what your blood remembers.
Maren clamped her teeth together and grabbed the man’s wrist.
His eyes opened.
Black.
Not brown. Not dark gray. Black from edge to edge, swallowing the stormlight.
Maren stopped breathing.
The man surged upright with a snarl, one hand closing around her throat—not squeezing, not yet, but strong enough to make the warning clear. The water around them rose in a sudden spiral, green fire spinning with it.
Then he saw her.
Really saw her.
His grip loosened.
A sound broke from him. Not a word. A recognition.
Maren felt it pass through her body like thunder under stone.
“You,” he whispered.
“I don’t know you,” she said, though the lie felt strange on her tongue.
His gaze dropped to her throat.
To the pendant there.
A small piece of sea glass, pale as moonlit water, wrapped in old silver wire. Her mother’s. The only thing the sea had given back after taking her.
The man’s face changed.
Grief. Rage. Wonder.
“Maren!” Callum shouted from somewhere above, his voice barely carrying through the storm.
The black-eyed man jerked as if waking from a spell.
Then he collapsed against her.
“Wonderful,” Maren wheezed. “Another heavy one.”
Somehow, she got him to the rope.
Somehow, she got him up.
By the time she reached the fourth man, she was beyond fear. Beyond cold. Beyond anything but the stubborn, furious beat of her own heart.
He was the farthest out, lying on his back in a shallow tide pool, white throat exposed to the rain. His hair was brown, almost bronze when lightning touched it. He looked less battered than the others, but that frightened her more. His stillness was too complete.
Maren slipped on the rocks beside him and landed hard on one hip.
He opened his eyes before she touched him.
Green.
Deep, clear green, not like the cursed fire in the sea, but like glass bottles found buried in sand. Intelligent eyes. Measuring eyes.
“You came for all of us,” he said.
His voice was soft. Calm. Almost surprised.
“Yes,” Maren snapped. “Try not to make me regret it.”
His gaze moved over her face, her wet hair, the blood on her lip, the rope burns on her hands.
Then he looked toward the lighthouse.
“The light went out,” he said.
“I noticed.”
“It was not meant to do that.”
“You know a lot for a naked man in a tide pool.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Elias Thorn.”
“Maren Vale. Can you stand?”
“No.”
At least he was honest.
She looped his arm around her shoulders and hauled him upright. He bit back a sound of pain, his breath hot against her ear despite the cold. For a moment, his fingers brushed the pendant at her throat.
The sea below them screamed.
Not roared.
Screamed.
Elias went rigid.
“Maren,” he said, and there was urgency now beneath the calm. “When we are inside, do not let any of us kiss you.”
She nearly dropped him.
“What?”
“Not your hand. Not your cheek. Not your mouth.” His fingers tightened weakly against her shoulder. “Especially not your mouth.”
“This is a very strange time for boundaries.”
His eyes met hers. “It is the only time for them.”
The water surged up the rocks behind them.
Maren dragged him toward the path.
She did not remember the last climb clearly.
Only pieces. Rope cutting her palms. Elias going limp against her side.
Callum shouting from the doorway though he could barely stand.
Finn’s pale face turned toward the storm, his smile finally gone.
The black-eyed man—Ronan, she would later learn—appearing suddenly at the cliff edge, half-collapsed but reaching down with impossible strength to seize Elias’s wrist and help pull him over the lip of stone.
Then they were inside.
The door slammed shut behind them.
The lighthouse held.
For a while, there was only the storm and the sound of five people breathing.
Maren moved because stopping meant feeling everything.
She stripped wet blankets from the chest, fed the hearth until flames climbed high, dragged mattresses from the sleeping alcove, and found every spare quilt in the tower. She kept her eyes above waist level as much as possible and threw blankets over the men with brisk, practical violence.
Finn noticed.
Of course Finn noticed.
“Shame,” he murmured from beneath a faded blue quilt. “I was beginning to feel objectified.”
Maren shoved a cup of hot water into his hands. “Drink.”
“Bossy.”
“Drowning victims don’t get opinions.”
His smile was slow, exhausted, and wicked at the edges. “Is that what we are?”
Maren looked at the four men sprawled around her hearth.
Callum sat upright by sheer force of will, one arm braced over Finn as though his body could serve as a wall between danger and the others.
His silver eyes tracked every movement Maren made.
Ronan lay near the fire but watched her from beneath lowered lashes, silent and unsettling, as if he were waiting for her to become someone else.
Elias sat with a blanket around his shoulders, gaze moving from the sea-glass pendant to the extinguished lantern above, putting pieces together she did not know existed.
“No,” Maren said quietly. “I don’t think you are.”
The hearth popped.
Blue flame licked suddenly through the orange.
All four men turned toward it.
Maren’s skin prickled.
Callum closed his eyes for half a second. When he opened them again, the command in his stare had cracked enough for grief to show through.
“We are princes of Nhal Mora,” he said. “Exiled heirs of the drowned court.”
Maren laughed once, sharp and humorless.
No one joined her.
Rain hammered the windows. Wet wool steamed beside the fire. The room smelled of salt, copper, smoke, and blood beneath seaweed.
“Selkies,” Elias said gently, as if gentleness could make the impossible easier to swallow. “Our sealskins were taken. Without them, our magic bleeds out. Slowly, at first. Then all at once.”
Maren’s hand went to the pendant at her throat.
Finn watched the movement. “Careful, love. That little piece of glass knows more than you do.”
Callum shot him a warning look.
Maren stepped back. “Do not call me love.”
“Noted.”
“Do not call me keeper either.”
At that, the room went still.
Ronan spoke for the first time since the rocks. His voice was low, rough, and deep enough to vibrate through the floorboards.
“But that is what you are.”
Maren looked at him.
The blue flame in the hearth bent toward her.
“No,” she said. “I keep the lighthouse. That is all.”
Elias’s expression softened in a way she immediately disliked. Pity made him beautiful and dangerous at once.
“The curse brought us here,” he said. “To your island. To your light.”
“I didn’t curse anyone.”
“No,” Callum said. “But your blood may have.”
The words hit harder than the storm.
Maren thought of her father’s locked journals. Her mother singing to the tide in a language Maren had never understood. The way the lighthouse flame had gone blue when she said her name.
Her throat tightened.
“What does that have to do with kissing me?” she asked.
Finn’s smile faded.
Callum looked away.
Ronan’s hands clenched beneath the blanket.
Elias answered, because of course he did. The strategist. The one willing to cut cleanly if cutting was kinder than letting rot spread.
“The curse gives us one path back to what was stolen,” he said. “A willing kiss from the keeper who draws us from the sea.”
Maren stared at him.
Outside, thunder rolled over Blackwake Island like a god turning in its sleep.
“One kiss,” Elias continued. “The first kiss. Whoever receives it regains his sealskin.”
“And the others?” she asked.
Silence.
Her stomach turned cold.
Finn looked into the fire. “Unfortunate footnotes.”
Callum snarled his name.
Finn’s mouth twisted. “What? Shall we pretty it up for her?”
Elias’s voice remained quiet. “The first prince kissed is freed. The sea takes him back. It compels him to return.”
“To abandon the rest of you,” Maren said.
“To forget,” Ronan said.
That single word made the room colder than the storm.
Maren’s gaze moved from one face to the next. Callum, rigid with duty. Finn, smiling like a man bleeding behind his teeth. Ronan, watching her as if she were both wound and weapon. Elias, calm only because someone had to be.
“Forget what?” she asked.
Elias looked at her mouth.
The glance was brief. Controlled. Devastating.