The Tide Reversed One kiss could free him—or drown them all. #3
“You,” he said. “The warmth of you. Your name. The wanting. All of it.”
Maren’s pulse beat once, hard.
The lighthouse lantern above them sputtered.
Blue fire flared through the dead lens, spilling down the stairwell like drowned moonlight.
All four men looked at her then.
Not as a rescuer.
Not as a stranger.
As a choice.
As a danger.
As a woman standing between them and the sea that had stripped them bare.
Maren took another step back and felt the cold stone wall meet her spine.
“No one kisses anyone,” she said.
Finn’s smile returned, faint and fragile. “A tragedy, truly.”
Callum did not smile. “You should have left us in the tide.”
Maren hated him a little for saying it.
She hated more that some bruised, frightened part of her wondered if he was right.
Before she could answer, something scraped against the outer wall.
Long.
Slow.
Wet.
The men went still.
Maren turned toward the window.
Dawn had begun to stain the storm clouds bruised purple. The worst of the rain had thinned, leaving the world raw and dripping. Beyond the glass, the cliff dropped into a sea still glowing faintly green.
At first, she saw only waves.
Then shadows moved beneath them.
Four shapes circled the rocks below the lighthouse.
Seal-shaped.
Too large.
Too smooth.
Too empty.
Maren pressed one hand to the cold glass.
The nearest shadow rolled beneath the surface.
For one heartbeat, she saw what clung around it like stolen flesh.
A sealskin.
Not worn by a seal.
Worn by something that had no face.
Behind her, Callum made a sound like a blade leaving its sheath.
Finn whispered a curse.
Ronan rose to his knees.
Elias closed his eyes. “She has found us.”
The sea below the cliff swelled upward, green fire blooming in its throat.
Then a voice rose from the tide, soft as foam sliding over bone.
“Give back the princes, keeper, or we will take your island bone by bone.”
The Kiss That Would Ruin Them
By the second day, the lighthouse no longer sounded like stone.
It sounded alive.
It creaked in the night with a deep-bellied ache.
It shuddered when the sea struck the cliff.
It sighed salt through cracks Maren had sealed three winters ago and whispered in the stairwell when no one stood there.
Rain dripped from the iron railings though the roof above remained whole.
Door hinges crusted white with salt. The pantry latch froze shut beneath a rime of brine, and when Maren broke it open with the flat of her knife, seawater poured from the keyhole.
The beacon burned again, but not white.
Blue.
Underwater blue.
It filled the lantern room with a cold, drowned glow that made every shadow look submerged.
At night, when Maren climbed to check the lens, she could see the four seal-shaped things circling below the cliff, patient as knives.
They never came close enough for the light to reveal them fully.
They drifted just beyond the rocks, smooth and dark and too large, their stolen skins gleaming whenever lightning cracked open the sky.
The storm did not leave.
Neither did the men.
Maren woke on the morning of the third day to the taste of brine in her mouth and the sensation of someone watching her sleep.
Her eyes opened.
Ronan crouched across the room near the hearth, one shoulder bare where his blanket had slipped. He did not look away.
Maren lay still for a moment, caught between irritation and the strange, breathless awareness he always pulled from her.
There was nothing soft about him. Even weakened, Ronan Mael looked built for battle—broad shoulders, scarred torso, dark hair falling around a face too severe for comfort.
His black eyes should have frightened her.
They did frighten her.
But not only with fear.
“What?” she asked, voice rough from sleep.
He tilted his head slightly.
The firelight moved over him, amber against the old white scars carved along his ribs and chest. Ritual markings, Elias had called them. Vows cut into flesh. Bindings made before battle. Punishments taken willingly. Maren had not asked which were which.
“You dream loudly,” Ronan said.
She pushed herself up on one elbow. The blanket fell from her shoulder, and cold air bit through the thin linen of her nightdress. “That is not a real thing.”
“It is.”
Across the room, Finn groaned from beneath a pile of quilts. “It is. You threaten the ocean in your sleep, keeper. Very stirring. Terrible manners.”
Maren threw a rolled sock at him.
He caught it without opening his eyes.
Callum, who had been sitting with his back against the door as if his body could keep the sea out by stubbornness alone, glanced toward her. His face was pale beneath the weathered bronze of his skin, eyes fever-bright silver in the blue lighthouse glow.
“You were crying,” he said.
Maren went still.
The room quieted around those three words.
Even Finn opened his eyes.
“I was not,” Maren said.
No one argued. Somehow that was worse.
She shoved the blanket aside and stood, gathering dignity from the floor along with her boots. “If all of you have enough strength to comment on my sleeping habits, you have enough strength to eat.”
Finn smiled faintly. “I knew captivity would include breakfast eventually.”
“You are not captive.”
“Door says otherwise.”
Maren looked toward the main door.
Salt crust sealed the edges where wood met stone. Thick white ridges climbed the frame in veins, glittering damply in the low light. She had hacked at them twice the day before. Both times the crust had grown back while her back was turned.
The lighthouse was keeping them in.
Or keeping something else out.
Maren did not know which possibility was worse.
She crossed to the hearth, ignoring the way Callum’s gaze followed the limp she had failed to hide.
Her knee still ached from the cliff. Her palms were raw from the rope, wrapped in strips of linen that had already browned with dried blood and salt.
Every part of her hurt, but pain was useful.
Pain reminded her she had a body, a duty, a list of practical problems that did not include the dangerous warmth she felt whenever one of the princes said her name.
She stirred porridge in the iron pot until steam rose thick and bland.
Wet wool hung from lines across the room, the princes’ borrowed clothes drying slowly near the fire.
She had found old trousers and shirts in the storeroom—her father’s, mostly, and one box of things left behind by assistant keepers who had not lasted a full winter on Blackwake.
Nothing fit properly. Callum’s shirt strained across his shoulders.
Finn’s sleeves swallowed his hands. Ronan had torn one seam without noticing.
Elias had rolled his cuffs neatly and looked almost civilized except for the fever burning in his green eyes.
They were weakening.
That was the part Maren could not ignore.
On the first night, they had been half-drowned but powerful in the way storms were powerful—damaged, dangerous, still full of force.
Now their magic leaked from them in small betrayals.
When Callum slept, frost formed beneath his fingertips.
When Finn laughed, seawater gathered in the corners of his mouth like he was drowning all over again.
Ronan’s scars glowed faintly after sunset, opening and closing like gills.
Elias sometimes forgot to breathe until Maren touched his shoulder, and then he would inhale sharply, as if returning from somewhere far below.
And every time Maren touched them, the sea-glass pendant at her throat heated.
Not pleasantly.
Like a warning.
She filled bowls and passed them around.
Callum took his with a curt nod. Ronan accepted his silently, fingers brushing hers for one charged second too long.
Elias thanked her softly, his gaze dropping to her bandaged palms. Finn leaned back against the wall and gave her an exhausted smile that still managed to be indecent.
“Feed me,” he said.
Maren stared at him. “You have two hands.”
“Barely. One of them is offended by being alive.”
Callum muttered something in a language Maren did not know.
Finn’s smile widened. “He says I should be drowned properly next time.”
“I said nothing of the kind,” Callum said.
“You thought it loudly.”
Maren shoved the bowl into Finn’s hands. “Eat before I agree with him.”
His fingers closed around the bowl, then around hers.
Not tightly. Not even deliberately, perhaps.
But the pendant flared hot against her skin.
Maren sucked in a breath.
Callum’s head snapped up. Ronan’s eyes went blacker, if that were possible. Elias set down his bowl.
Finn released her at once.
His face had changed.
The flirtation remained like a painted mask, but something strained beneath it. Want, yes. Maren was not innocent enough to mistake the shape of that. But also hunger. Pain. A kind of dread.
“Apologies,” he said lightly. “The curse has poor taste and worse timing.”
Maren stepped back, hand closing around the pendant. It pulsed beneath her fingers, warm as blood.
“Does it happen every time?” she asked.
“When one of us touches you?” Elias said. “So far, yes.”
“Why?”
“Because the curse recognizes the keeper.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“I know.”
His gentleness made her want to slap something. Perhaps him. Perhaps the lighthouse. Perhaps the sea.
She turned away and began scrubbing the pot even though it did not need scrubbing.
Behind her, the room shifted. Blankets rustled. Fire cracked. Rain struck the glass in relentless sheets.
Then Callum said, “Kiss me.”
The pot slipped from Maren’s hands and clanged into the basin.
“No,” Ronan said.
It was the first time Maren had heard Ronan’s voice sharpen.
Callum pushed himself upright. He swayed, caught himself against the wall, and ignored the fact that standing clearly cost him. “I am the eldest.”
Finn gave a humorless laugh. “Ah, yes. The sacred right of eldest sons to martyr themselves before breakfast.”
Callum’s jaw tightened. “If one of us must go back, it should be me.”
“Why?” Maren demanded.