CHAPTER 28

HATRED

“I don’t know what the ’byss you’re worried about.”

Ulfr Sigursson lowered his spyglass and leaned forward over the railing, peering into the waters below. The wind at their back was brisk, the seas crested with whitecaps, pushing them onward. Black Banshee cut through the waters like an arrow from a master’s bow, straight and smooth toward a beautiful horizon.

“Let’s hope you don’t find out,” Mia replied.

They were two turns into the Sea of Sorrows, and the Ladies of Storms and Oceans hadn’t raised their heads since they set off from Amai. Black Banshee had put out into the blue with an appropriate level of fanfare—many of Mia’s “subjects” had gathered to see her off on her maiden voyage, and most of the city’s residents had turned out to catch a glimpse of the girl who’d slain Einar Valdyr and claimed his throne.

All manner of colorful rumor had taken root in the six turns she’d locked herself away in the Hall of Scoundrels, and prowling about Amai’s taverna at night, Eclipse had heard a dozen different tales about how Mia had killed the pirate king. She’d used dark magiks, they said. She’d challenged him to single combat and torn his heart from his ribs with her bare hands. Ripped out his throat with her teeth during a grand feast and eaten his liver raw.* In Mia’s favorite version of the tale, she’d seduced Valdyr and cut off his manhood—which she now apparently wore around her neck for good luck.

Mia had avoided all the fanfare, however, slipping aboard the Banshee beneath her cloak of shadows. Eyeing off the captains and crew of other ships who’d turned out to her farewell, she’d counted at least twenty who’d have cheerfully clipped their own grandmothers’ throats to take a poke at her. It seemed a far more sensible option to simply appear on the deck to the whispered awe of the crowd, tricorn pulled low over her eyes, standing at the prow and looking grim as they set out to sea.

Nevernight was falling on their second turn of sailing, the two remaining suns slipping farther toward their truedark rest. Saan was close to completing its descent entirely, its red glow setting the horizon ablaze. Saii still burned above them—scarlet and azure light collided in the heavens, burning through to pale violet, breathtaking and beautiful. Mia could feel truedark clawing closer. Black light burning in her chest and in the boy standing beside her.

Tric stood his vigil, always within arm’s reach. Standing guard outside her cabin door while she slept. Watching her back in the moments it was turned. Even after their quarrel, he was never more than a word away. But the truth was, they’d shared precious few words since they’d almost …

almost.

Mia didn’t know how to fix it. Didn’t know what to say to make it right. In her darker moments, it infuriated her to no end that she even had to. She had her own problems to deal with, high enough to touch the fucking sky. But in her softer breaths, she could feel the sorrow in him, burning like that dark flame within, and she couldn’t help but feel it, too. She knew how unfair this all was. How deeply he felt for her.

What she didn’t know was what he’d do, now he knew she’d never be his.

Love often rusted into hate when watered with scorn.

Can I truly trust him anymore?

Can I trust him near Ashlinn?

“There’s no sign of storm clouds,” Sigursson reported, once more scanning the horizon. “Smooth sailing from here to Ashkah, I’d stake my ship on it.”

“It’s not your ship yet, Ulfr,” Mia said. “And I’m assuring you, she’s in for strife. Make sure Iacopo and Reddog have their eyes peeled when they’re up top. Tell Justus to keep those galley fires unlit. Cold meals only until we make shore. The Ladies are coming for us, make no mistake. And they’re bringing the Abyss with them.”

The Vaanian looked his captain up and down, a soft scowl on his handsome brow. “If I might ask, my queen, what exactly did you do to irk them so?”

“THAT’S NOT YOUR CONCERN,” Tric growled. “GETTING US TO LAST HOPE IS.”

“Don’t be telling me my concerns, boy,” Sigursson said.

“DON’T BE CALLING ME BOY, MORTAL,” Tric replied.

Sigursson looked Tric in his eyes. His mouth pressed thin. His shoulders square. The Vaanian was the first mate of one of the most vicious bands to sail the Four Seas—a pack of murderers and brutes who spread terror wherever they went. Now she knew them a little better, Mia could sense what a pack of ruthless bastards Valdyr had crewed his ship with. The kindest among them had probably still raped his way across all Four Seas. The worst of them likely tortured and killed children for sport.

But though the Banshee and her crew seemed birthed from the Abyss itself, Tric had actually been there. The Dweymeri boy was taller than the Vaanian man, pale and hard, one hand forever at the hilt of his gravebone blade. Eyes reflecting the Night he’d seen firsthand. As they squared up, Tric didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch.

If Sigursson had hoped to intimidate him, he ended up sorely disappointed.

Turning to Mia, the Vaanian finally bowed low. “My queen.”

And turning on his heel, he set about his work.

Mia watched the man retreat, eyes narrowed. She’d been keeping close tabs on him over the last two turns, and she knew Sigursson had no fondness for her. Knew the razor she danced along keeping him at heel. And still, she couldn’t help but admire him.

Bastards and brutes they might be, but Banshee’s crew knew their ship, and more importantly, they knew Mia would soon be off it. They were afraid of her, aye—she kept Eclipse in plain view at her side along with Tric to foster that fear. But they actually liked Sigursson. He was intense. Intelligent. Not a braggart or a buffoon. A lesser man might’ve lost himself in foolish pride when his captain was killed. But Ulfr knew there was little to gain by opposing Mia, and everything to lose. And so he’d swallowed that pride, biding his time and dreaming of the throne awaiting him when all this was done.

“He’ll make a fine king when he returns to Amai,” Mia mused.

IF HE RETURNS TO AMAI,” Tric replied.

Mia turned to the boy, a soft chill in her belly.

“You know what’s coming, don’t you?”

Tric nodded, his eyes on the burning horizon. “THESE O, SO PLEASANT WINDS SERVE ONLY TO DRIVE US DEEPER INTO THE OCEAN. FARTHER AWAY FROM THE SAFETY OF LAND. THE LADIES ARE GATHERING THEIR STRENGTH. I CAN FEEL IT.”

Mia felt her shadow shiver, the shape of a wolf stretched out dark on the timbers before her. “… I FEEL IT, TOO, MIA. THEY ARE COMING FOR US…”

Mia looked toward the edge of the world, wind blowing her hair across her eyes.

“DO YOU BELIEVE YET?” Tric asked. “WHAT YOU ARE? WHAT YOU MUST BECOME?”

Mia licked her lips. Tasted salt.

Truth was, she could feel it, too. Sure as she could feel the dark inside her, swelling as those suns sank ever lower. Sure as she could see the new blush in Tric’s skin, feel the new strength inside herself. At the time, the tale he’d told beneath Godsgrave had seemed madness. Fantasy. Talk of slaughtered gods and fractured souls. But the malice she could sense in the sky about her, the waters below, the memory of those flames reaching out across the furs toward her, the dreams that plagued her sleep … all of it was becoming harder and harder to deny.

There was something grand at work here. She knew it now. Something bigger than any of them. Fire, Storm, Sea. Light and Dark. All of it. Mia could sense it, like a weight growing on her back. Like a shadow rising to meet her.

THE ONLY WEAPON IN THIS WAR IS FAITH.”

She’d set aside her faith years ago. Stopped praying to Aa the turn she realized that all the devotion in the world wouldn’t bring her familia back. Even in service of the Dark Mother, even in the belly of the Quiet Mountain, she’d not truly held any belief for the divinities—not for divinities who might actually care, at least. Who knew who she was, who thought she mattered, who were more than empty words and hollow names.

And now? Moons and crowns and mothers and fathers and all of it?

Do I truly believe?

Mia shook her head, pushing thoughts of gods and goddesses away. Whatever Tric and Eclipse might feel, whatever awareness might be budding in her own chest, truth was she had more earthly concerns for now.

Mercurio needed her.

He was in danger because of her. He’d been a father when the world took her own away. When she’d prayed for Aa to help her, it had been Mercurio who saved her. But more than the debt she owed him, the simple fact was that she loved the grumpy old bastard. She missed the smell of his cigarillos. His gallows humor and foul mouth. Those pale blue eyes that seemed born to scowl, seeing right through her bullshit and into her heart.

Scaeva had claimed to have made her all she was. But in truth, if Mia owed anyone for the person she’d become, the things about herself she actually liked, it was Mercurio. And so she stared at the ocean between them. The hundreds of miles of blue above and below, soon to turn black with fury. At this point, it didn’t matter what she believed in. Gods and goddesses. Fathers and daughters. What matter, this talk of divinities and destinies? What she might be or what she could become?

All that mattered was what she’d do.

What she’d always done.

Fight. With everything she had.

And so she leaned over the railing. Spat into the sea.

“Come for me, then, bitches.”


The storm met them four turns out.

Mia had been in her cabin when she first heard the cries from the crow’s nest, tossing in a fitful sleep and trying to turn her dreams as Bladesinger had said. She had the same two every nevernight—Aa and Niah wearing the faces of her parents, surrounded by their Four Daughters, arguing with each other beneath that endless sky. That scene would fade, and she’d wake to find Scaeva standing over her, knife in hand.

“Forgive me, child.”

And then she’d actually wake. Sweating and breathless. But this nevernight, before she’d felt his knife descend, a call had cut through her dreams, dragging her upward and into her cabin’s stubborn gloom. She’d rubbed the sleep from her eyes and frowned, thinking perhaps she’d imagined it. Until she heard the call again, the sound of bells—an alarm ringing across the Banshee’s deck.

She’d found Tric standing vigil outside her cabin as always. Together, they headed topside and found Sigursson on the aft. Black clouds had gathered at the edges of the ocean and were riding toward them like frothing horses, dragging a curtain across the sunslit skies behind. Sigursson had his spyglass up, lips parted as he watched the dark close in, faster than any storm had a right to. As he turned to Mia, she thought she caught a glimpse of worry in the piercing green of his eyes.

“Storm coming?” she asked.

“Aye,” he nodded.

“Bad?”

He looked back to the black horizon. Up to the sky above.

“… Aye.”

Her first mate had marched across the deck, barking orders with a voice like iron. Mia had watched her crew set to it, moving like mekwerk, only one or two baleful glances shot her way. The wind was in their faces now, pushing them away from Ashkah, the Banshee tacking back and forth across the gale and crawling toward their destination. She could hear curses and songs, the swell and crash of the rising seas against their hull, the wind wailing as the sky grew steadily darker. Lightning licked the distant horizon, blinding shears of pristine white against the veil of deepening black, the waters below them slowly deepening from azure to leaden gray as whitecap fangs gnawed at Banshee’s hull.

And with a clap of thunder, hard enough to shake Mia’s bones, the rain began.

It was bitter cold. Sharp as daggers on her skin. She pulled Valdyr’s greatcoat tighter about her shoulders, the shirt beneath soaking through. The wind slapped at her tricorn, whipped her hair about her face. Her dark eyes were fixed on the eastern horizon, willing her ship onward. Eclipse was in her shadow, eating her rising fear at the power gathering about them. A ragged cry went up from the crow’s nest above.

“’Byss and blood, look at that!”

Mia peered up to the lookout—saw he was pointing to the water beneath them. At first, she saw nothing save the gnashing swell, the ocean’s jaws. But then, under that rolling steel-gray, she caught sight of them. Shadows. Long and serpentine. Cutting swift just below the waterline, swarming about the Banshee’s belly. Black eyes and razor teeth and skin the color of old bones.

“WHITEDRAKES,” Tric said.

“Black Mother,” Mia whispered.

Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. The biggest were thirty, perhaps forty feet in length. Each one a machine of muscle and sinew with a mouthful of swords. None were big enough to hurt the Banshee, of course, but Mia knew whitedrakes were rogue hunters who never moved in packs. And the sight of dozens of the bastards teeming in the water all about them was enough to send a slight vibration through every man on the deck. Mia could feel it, sure as she could feel the rain now falling on her skin, the wind in her dripping hair. A sliver of fear, piercing their sailor’s hearts. If the speed of the storm wasn’t enough, this was a sure sign that all about this journey wasn’t as it seemed. That they were all now part of something decidedly … unnatural.

Mia peered down into the swell. Across the water to the storm clouds rushing at them headlong. Every foe she’d faced on this road, every enemy, she’d met with a blade in her hand or a phial of poison in her palm. She’d killed men. Women. Senators and cardinals and gladiatii and Blades. Folk as different as truedark was from truelight. But each of them, all of them, had one trait in common.

They were mortal. Flesh and blood and bone.

How in the Goddess’s name am I supposed to fight this?

“I SHOULD GO,” Tric said.

“Go?” Mia felt a stab of fear in her chest, despite Eclipse. “Where?”

The boy looked at her sidelong. Even with the pain between them, the blood and years, she could see a wry amusement gleaming in those midnight eyes.

“FORWARD.” He motioned to the bow. “TO PRAY.”

“O,” she smiled. “Aye. I understand. Will that help?”

WE DWEYMERI HAVE A SAYING. PRAY TO THE GODDESS, BUT ROW FOR SHORE.”

Meaning we can’t rely on her at all.”

“MEANING WE ARE STILL A LONG WAY FROM TRUEDARK. AND THE MOTHER’S POWER HERE IS SLIGHT. BUT THEY ARE HER DAUGHTERS.” Tric shrugged as a peal of thunder cracked the skies. “PRAYING CAN’T HURT.”

“All right,” she nodded. “Just be careful not to fall over the side, aye?”

He smiled, sweet and sad.

“I’LL NOT LEAVE YOU,” he said. “NO MATTER WHAT. NEVER FORGET I LOVE YOU, MIA. AND GODDESS WILLING, I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER.”

He turned and trudged down the stairs, his shirt plastered to his skin, the lines of muscle etched in black velvet and leather. Mia’s chest hurt as she watched him make his way down the bow and plant himself like some ancient tree, black hands raised to the sky, head thrown back. Thunder rolled and lightning flashed, the rain coming down in freezing sprays, like arrows of ice shot at Banshee’s black heart. Her sails were stretched and straining, her hull groaning, her shrouds and lines humming in the growing gale. The waves were building in height—not the terrifying towers of water Mia had seen aboard the Maid, but she knew they were on the way. There was no sign of land on the eastern horizon. They were still turns away from Ashkah. Turns of a war she didn’t know how to fight. A war she couldn’t wield a blade in.

Helpless.

Useless.

One of the wulfguard looked at Mia and made the warding sign against evil.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have called them bitches, Eclipse,” she whispered.

“… NO FEAR…,” came the reply from her shadow. “… I AM WITH YOU…”

Mia dragged her sodden hair from her face, shook her head. “I wish…”

“… I KNOW…,” the shadowwolf sighed. “… STRANGE AS IT SOUNDS, I MISS HIM, TOO…”

“Do you think he’s all right? Wherever he is?”

The daemon turned her not-eyes to the horizon.

“… I THINK YOU SHOULD SAVE YOUR WORRY FOR US, MIA…”

Mia looked to the black gathering above. Listening to her ship creak and groan and sigh. The song of the lines and sails and the men above and below, a tiny splinter adrift on a hungry sea, surrounded by fangs of water and bone.

She ran her hands over the black railing, whispered to the ship around her.

“Hold tight, girl.”


Lightning, splitting the skies in two.

Rain like spears hurled from heaven’s heart.

Thunder shaking her spine, like the footsteps of hungry giants.

Absolute

fucking

chaos.

They were a full turn into the storm, and the fury was like nothing Mia had ever seen. If she’d been impressed by the tempest that had hit the Bloody Maid in the Sea of Swords, the sheer power on display now left her near blind and dumb. The clouds hung so black and heavy, she felt she could reach up and touch them. The thunder was so loud, it was a physical sensation on her skin. The waves were like cliffs, towering, glowering faces of water, filled with whitedrakes. Taller than trees, dropping down into valleys so deep and dark they could almost be mistaken for the Abyss itself.

Each drive upward was akin to climbing a mountain, each drop was a moment of awful weightlessness, followed by a barreling rush into a bone-breaking impact in the trough below. They’d already lost four sailors in the storm—ripped from the masts by the clawing wind or dragged by the waves into the deep. Their cries were only whispers in the tempest howl, and the mouths waiting from them in the water silenced them quickly. The black roiled above them, ragged claws of lightning ripping at the sky. And there seemed no end in sight.

Mia had retired to her cabin—she’d stayed up top as long as she was able, but with no skill at sailing and nothing else to contribute, she seemed only to be in the way up above. Tric seemed immovable on the bow, but the waves crashing over the Banshee’s deck would surely wash Mia to her doom if they caught her. And so she found herself sitting in her hammock, tossed and rolled, listening to the timbers about her groan and creak and wondering just how much more her ship could take.

The shadows around her moved like living things. Eclipse prowled along the walls, a dark shape cut against the glow of the arkemical lanterns. Mia didn’t dare smoke, didn’t want to risk even a spark—with the Ladies of Storms and Oceans so enraged, who knew what the Lady of Fire would do if given opportunity. So instead, she focused on the gloom around her. The dark above and within her.

She could still feel the heat of the two suns, the cursed power of Aa beating faint upon her skin. But here below the thick black storm clouds sent by his daughter, it was almost as dark as night. The Everseeing’s light was smothered. His malice waned. She was hidden almost completely from his sight. And Mia could feel power swelling inside her because of it. Not as fearsome as the power she’d wielded during truedark when she tore the Philosopher’s Stone to rubble, no. But power nonetheless.

And so, she resolved to test it. To see how far it truly reached now she was hidden from Aa’s eyes, and use the only weapon she could truly say was hers in this war. Her gravebone blade hung in its scabbard from a hook on the wall. The black rippled. With a gesture, she had the shadows carry it across the cabin to her waiting hand. She narrowed her eyes in concentration, and gentle as a lover, tendrils of living darkness took hold of her hammock and held it still, despite the bedlam all around her. She took hold of her own shadow, stretched it out along the floor and

                  Stepped

                              across the cabin

                                                        into it, then

                                                                          into Eclipse

                                    and back to

           her hammock, all in the space of a few heartbeats. Flickering about the room like an apparition in some old fireside tale. Her breath came quicker, amazement budding in her chest and a dark joy curling her lips. These were gifts she’d used before: Stepping from shadow to shadow, or using the black as an extension of her own hands. But it had never been as effortless as this, the strength in the shadows never so potent. And yet it was becoming plain for her to see. In their attempts to kill her—in hiding their father’s light—the Ladies of Storms and Oceans were also making Mia …

Stronger.

Still, Mia doubted her newfound power would give much comfort to her ship or crew, nor prove much worth against the tempest raging above. The Banshee crashed into another trough, her timbers shuddering in agony. Lightning flickered through the portholes—a new flash every handful of heartbeats—bringing a stuttering sunslight to Mia’s cabin. Thunder shook the cradle of heaven again, louder than she’d ever heard, and she couldn’t help but wince. She wondered if her ship would hold, if her crew could bear it, how much farther they had until they were—

Bells.

Screams.

She lifted her eyes to the decks above, wondering what was happening. A thunderous impact landed on Banshee’s port side, like a hammerblow from the hands of Aa himself. The ship slewed sideways, and Mia would’ve been flung across the room, save for the shadows cradling her in their arms. The dark kept her steady as the hull groaned, as the cries rose, as the ship listed hard and Mia finally realized …

Something hit us.

“Eclipse, with me.”

“… ALWAYS…”

With a glance, she bid the shadows fling the cabin door open and Mia

                                                        Stepped

                                          down the

                  corridor and up

the ladder to the quarterdeck as the Banshee rocked sideways again. She heard more cries over the thunder, the crack of splintering wood, curses by Aa and all four of his daughters. She squinted through the blinding downpour, the soup-thick gloom, saw vague shapes moving on the deck below. Banshee rocked sideways again, a massive wave crashing over her bow and threatening to push them under as a barrage of lightning tore the clouds and lit the scene before Mia’s wondering eyes.

“Black Mother…,” she breathed.

Tentacles. As long as a wagon train. Black above and ghostly white beneath, all suckers and scars and jagged hooks. Six of them were rising up on either side of the deck and wrapping Banshee in their awful embrace. Mia watched one massive limb clear a boom on the foremast with a single swipe, half a dozen sailors sent screaming to the deck and from there to the waters below.

“Leviathan!” came the roar.

She looked to the aft, saw Sigursson at the wheel, bellowing to his crew.

“Cut him loose, he’ll drag us under!” he bellowed.

A few of the braver salts drew their blades and started hacking at the beast, desperate and terrified. The men were mere gnats against the creature’s skin. But with Eclipse riding her shadow, Mia had no pause for fear,

                                                            Stepping

                                     across the deck

                  in an instant

and bringing her longblade down in a scything, two-handed arc. The tentacle she struck was as broad as a barrel, tough as salted leather. But her gravebone sword sliced through it as if it were butter, severing it clean in two. Black blood sprayed, thick and salty, and Mia felt a shudder run through the Banshee’s length. The other tentacles went berserk, smashing, flailing, squeezing, splintering the railing and snapping the foremast off at the root with a deafening craaaack. The sailors howled as they fell, down into the thrashing waters and the mouths of the waiting whitedrakes. Lines snapped and shrouds toppled, a tangle of sails and mast crashing across the deck, Banshee listing hard to port as her crew’s cries rose above the storm.

A massive wave crashed across their flank as Mia Stepped

                                                  again

                                    up to the

                          foredeck, where

                  Tric was hacking away with his own gravebone blades, the leviathan’s limbs writhing about him. The strength in him was astonishing, the power of the dark Goddess in him truly unleashed for the first time, and it took Mia’s breath away to see him, drenched in black blood and falling rain, muscle etched in pale stone. He spun on the spot, water spraying, saltlocks streaming behind him as he brought his blades down again, again, severing another tentacle and sending it over the side with a savage kick. Tons of seawater rushed across the decks, and only the grip of Mia’s shadows kept her from being swept over the side with three more of her crew, but Tric seemed immovable as a mountain. She split another tentacle in two as it rose up to grab her, rain and blood soaking her to the skin as she pressed her back against his.

“I really shouldn’t have called them bitches!” she roared.

“PERHAPS NOT!”

Banshee can’t take much more of this! So much for your prayers!”

“ROW FOR SHORE, MIA!”

“Help me, then!”

“ALWAYS!”

Side by side. Back to back. The pair fought together, like in younger turns when they trained in the Hall of Songs. They were older now, harder, sadder, years and miles and the very walls of life and death between them. But still, they whirled and swayed like partners in some black and bloody waltz, and Mia was put in mind of the first time they danced together, years ago in Godsgrave. Swept up and cradled in his arms, spun and dipped and swayed as the music swelled and the world beyond became nothing. Their blades moved as one as they fought their way across the deck, hewing and slashing and spinning between the rain. The waters crashed down upon them and she leaned against him, the ship listed harder, and he pressed back against her. A pendulum in perfect balance, swinging back and forth in one shining, razored arc.

A tentacle came scything down from above, but Eclipse coalesced twenty feet across the ship, and, grabbing Tric’s hand, Mia

                  Stepped

                                the pair

                                            of them

                                                into the shadowwolf as twenty tons of muscle and bone hooks crashed into the deck where they’d stood a moment before. Tric’s eyes were alight with the frenzy of it all, and he stood tall at her back in the chaos, wild and strong and unconquered, even by the hands of death herself. The thunder was a pounding drum, and the storm about them an endless song. Blood and rain beading on his cheeks as he looked over his shoulder and smiled just for her. And a part of Mia could have lived in that moment forever.

Sigursson had come down from the aft, hacking with his own sword, surrounded by a cadre of wulfguard. Mia’s blade was quick as the lightning, Tric’s swords like cleavers in an abattoir, cutting a swath across the deck and leaving it drenched in black, quickly washed away by the rain and waves. White light and thunder, the bellow of the waters and the fury of the tempest, the power of two goddesses pressing down upon them and still, still, it wasn’t enough. And as Mia’s sword split a sixth tentacle in two, as blood fell harder than the rain, the leviathan shuddered, and bucked, and finally released its grip on Banshee’s tortured flanks.

Another wave hit their starboard, almost sending them over. But the helmsmen bent their backs, muscles straining, Banshee’s spine twisted almost to breaking, and the ship managed to hold on, slowly righting herself. The oceans still thrashed, the tempest still rolled, the skies were still black as night. Mia and Tric stood back-to-back, blades dripping black on the main deck. Sigursson was gathered with a half-dozen salts, their black wolf pelts drenched, glaring at their captain and queen.

“This is no mortal storm!” one shouted.

“I told you, she’s fucking cursed!” another cried.

“She’s brought the fury of the Daughters down on us!”

Mia knew sailors were a superstitious bunch. Knew she stood in peril now, within and without. After four turns of punishment, of whitedrakes and leviathans and waves tall as mountains, her crew’s nerve was all but gone. But she knew Einar Valdyr was a captain and king who ruled through fear, and Mia Corvere had learned the color of fear when she was but ten years old.

“I thought you lot were supposed to be the hardest crew on all Four Seas!” she spat. “And here you are, wailing like babes off the tit!”

“She’ll be the death of us, Sigursson!” a tall salt yelled.

“Put her over the side,” came the shout. “The goddesses will let us go!”

Tric squared up, his blades glittering as the lightning flashed and the Banshee shook. Mia looked her first mate in the eye, saw the malice and mutiny boiling there.

“Take hold of your jewels, Ulfr!” Mia glanced meaningfully at her greatcoat of faces. “Goddesses they might be, but Maw knows, you’ve far more to fear from me!”

The darkness flared around her, each man’s shadow clawing and twisting along the deck. A wolf who wasn’t a wolf rose up behind Sigursson, hackles raised, black teeth bared in a snarl. The Hearthless boy beside her tightened his grip on his bloody blades. The dark about Mia seethed. Lightning split the skies, catching the spray and rain and seeming to set the air about her aglow.

“Get back to your posts, you gutless bastards!” she demanded, raising her sword. “Or I’ll feed you to those fucking drakes myself!”

The storm seemed to still for a moment. The thunder held its breath. Mia looked into Sigursson’s eyes, saw that he was afraid. Of her. Of them. Of all of it.

The only question was, who did he fear more?

And then, something hit them. A colossal something. An impossible something. Rising up from beneath them, soundless and vast. Mia felt a thunderous impact. Heard the roar of the tempest and splitting timbers, the cries of the crew as they were sent flying. Banshee was lifted clean out of the water, and Mia only kept her feet because of the shadows holding her in place. Massive black tentacles rose up from the water, crashed about them in a deadly, crushing vise grip.

Another leviathan.

This one so big it almost beggared belief. Arms crusted in barnacles, long as years. Pale serrated hooks bigger than Mia was. A monster from the tallest tales, woken by the Lady of Oceans. Pressed by her hatred and rising up from the depths with only one intent: to drag Mia back down into the lightless black with it.

The beast’s limbs crashed down on the deck, snapping the booms off the mainmast like twigs. Sails shredded as if they were damp parchment, wood cracking as if it were wafer-thin. Banshee groaned, stretched to breaking. Mia spun toward the beast, her shadows flaring. Tric turned also, black eyes gleaming, rain falling about them like knives.

Ulfr Sigursson dragged himself up from the deck, dripping seawater.

“Wulfguard!” he bellowed.

Mia’s first mate raised his sword as lightning cracked the clouds.

“Kill this fucking bitch!”