POV: Beth
I wake to the sound of Kaine swearing.
Not his usual casual curses, but low and tight, like something is gripping his throat. Boots thud overhead. The air feels wrong even before I reach the deck—thicker, colder, as if the sun itself is holding its breath.
When I step outside, everyone is staring the same way.
Toward the horizon.
“What’s happening?” I ask, pulling my coat closer.
Riva doesn’t look at me. Her knuckles are white on the rail. “We’re not alone.”
I follow their gaze. At first I see nothing but sea and sky. Then I spot it—a dark smudge where the water meets the clouds. Small at first, then growing as my eyes adjust. Not one hull. Many.
“They’re still far,” I say, trying to steady my voice.
Kaine spits over the side. “Far now. Not for long.”
Alaric stands at the helm, hands locked on the wheel, face carved in stone. No jokes. No lazy posture. He looks like a man staring at an old grave.
“Silas?” I ask quietly.
His jaw flexes. “Fleet of that size? No other bastard would dare.”
My stomach twists. The dark cluster of ships grows clearer—teeth rising out of the water. Their sails are darker, stained, moving strangely with the wind. Between them, the waves look… wrong. Churned without reason.
“What’s that?” I murmur.
Kaine steps up beside me, voice low. “That is the Harvester’s Shadow.”
I shiver. “What does that mean?”
He points. “Look there. Between the ships. The swell under the surface.”
I squint. For a moment, all I see is water. Then I catch it—an enormous, darker shape moving beneath the waves, long and coiling, like a mountain trying to remember how to breathe.
The sea bulges and falls in slow pulses around it.
“Is that… a rock?” I whisper.
“No rock moves like that,” Riva mutters.
The stories from the tavern come back to me—Kraken dragged a ship under, Kraken ate forty men, Kraken’s tentacles like towers. My throat becomes dry as sand.
“That’s Kraken?” My voice cracks.
Kaine nods once. “Or its shadow. Either way, bad omen.”
The crew stirs with restless fear. Even the most violent of them go quieter, as if loud words might draw the beast closer.
“Why does he have it?” I ask. “Why does Silas command… that?”
Kaine laughs without humor. “Command? You don’t command the deep. You bargain with it. Or you become meal.”
I look at Alaric. “You said you saw Kraken once.”
His eyes stay on the horizon. “I did.”
“What happened?”
He doesn’t answer.
Kaine takes pity on my hunger for answers. He leans closer, voice rough. “There were three kings of the sea once, girl. You know that part. Ships bent to their flags, storms shifted for them. Alaric, Silas, and one more whose name no one speaks now.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because he crossed into the deep and didn’t come back,” Kaine says simply. “Silas went to look for him. Some say he found a corpse. Some say he found a throne. Others say he found Kraken instead.”
“And he lived?”
“He returned,” Kaine corrects. “Not the same man. Eyes wrong. Laugh wrong. And behind his fleet, the sea moved like something huge was following. From that day, people called him Harvester. Ships vanished where he sailed. Men swore they felt eyes under water, watching.”
I hug myself tighter. The distant shape rolls under the surface, then disappears. Only a slick, unnatural calm remains where it passed.
“Why Harvester?” I ask.
“Because he doesn’t just kill,” Riva says grimly. “He collects. Crews. Secrets. Debts. If Kraken spares you, Silas chains you.”
The hair on my arms stands on end. “And he has your throne now.”
Alaric finally speaks, voice flat. “He kept a sea that wasn’t his. That’s all.”
Kaine snorts. “He kept it well enough. People forget kings that vanish, Captain.”
Alaric’s mouth tightens. “I didn’t vanish. I was caged.”
“Difference is thin when waves stop whispering your name,” Kaine replies.
I look at Alaric, at the way his shoulders square as he faces that distant fleet. There’s no visible fear there, but something grim simmers beneath his skin—fury, maybe. Or shame.
“Will he come for us?” I ask.
“Not yet,” Alaric says. “His fleet is angling away. He has other prey in mind.”
“Then why does it feel like the sea is watching us?” I whisper.
No one answers.
The wind shifts, carrying faint echoes—drums or just my imagination? My mark burns under my wrist wrap, a strange heat pulsing with the rhythm of the waves.
Kaine notices me rub my wrist. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lie. “Just… cold.”
He studies me for a heartbeat too long, then looks away. “Stay that way. Curiosity is how Kraken finds you.”
I linger at the rail long after the others drift away to work. The Harvester’s fleet becomes smaller dots on the horizon, then shadows, then nothing. Yet dread remains, curling in my gut like smoke.
If Silas rules with Kraken at his back, what does that make me? The daughter of some nameless pirate who left nothing but a cursed mark? A girl playing at strength on a deck full of wolves?
Or something else the sea hasn’t named yet.
Riva joins me again, arms folded. “You stare any harder, you’ll drag them back by will alone.”
“I just…” I hesitate. “I keep thinking about the stories. About souls dragged under. About bargains.”
Riva grunts. “Stories are kinder than truth.”
“What’s the truth then?”
She tilts her head toward Alaric. “Ask your captain. He’s the one who walked away after seeing it.”
“I tried earlier,” I admit. “He threatened to throw me overboard.”
Riva’s lips twitch. “Then he remembers clearly.”
“Do you know what happened?”
She shakes her head. “I joined him after. I only know there was a night, and a storm, and a ship that never surfaced. If he survived Kraken once, it means two things.”
“What?”
“One, he’s lucky,” she says. “Two, the deep doesn’t consider its business with him finished.”
A chill skates down my spine.
Later, during my assigned watch, I stand at the bow alone. The stars prick the sky, cold and distant. The sea is dark ink, hiding everything it holds. I grip the rail and listen to it breathe.
Somewhere out there, Silas and his monster move through the deep like a knife through flesh. Somewhere, Rowan sits in a cell waiting to die. Somewhere, Adrian plots.
And here, on this stolen ship, I stand between three storms—a prince, a pirate king, and the beast that loves them both as prey.
I touch my hidden wrist, feeling the mark pulse faintly.
“Saltblood,” I whisper to myself. “What are you meant for?”
The sea answers with a low, distant rumble—thunder, or something older.
I don’t know if it’s warning me away from Silas.
Or calling me closer.
Behind the ship, our wake glows faint in moonlight, a fragile scar on endless water, already fading, already swallowed by the hungry dark.