Prologue

PROLOGUE

My first dive was followed by my first drink of rye.

The sea was filled with the sound of gemstones as I swam after my mother’s silhouette, toward the puddle of light rippling on the surface of the water.

My legs burned, kicking against the weight of the dredging belt, but Isolde had insisted I wear it even on my first descent to the reefs. I grimaced, my heart racing in my aching chest, and I surfaced beneath a light-filled sky.

The first thing I saw when my eyes focused was my father peering over the portside of the Lark, leaning onto the rail with his elbows. He was wearing one of his rare smiles. One that made his blue eyes flash like the strike of flint.

My mother dragged me through the water, lifting me up to catch the lowest rung of the ladder, and I climbed, trembling with cold. Saint was waiting at the top, sweeping me into his arms as soon as I came over the side. Then he was carrying me across the deck, seawater dripping from my hands and my hair.

We ducked into the helmsman’s quarters and Saint pulled the quilt from his bed, wrapping me in the smell of spiced mullein. My mother was coming through the door a moment later, and I watched as my father filled one of his emerald-green glasses with rye.

He set it down in the center of his desk and I picked it up, turning the glass so the sunlight fractured and glittered in its facets.

Saint waited, one side of his mustache lifted on a grin as I brought the glass to my lips and took the rye in one swallow. The burn bloomed in my throat, racing down to my stomach, and I hissed, trying to breathe through it.

My mother looked at me then, with something in her eyes I’d never seen before. A reverence. As if something marvelous and at the same time harrowing had just happened. She blinked, pulling me between her and Saint, and I burrowed in, their warmth instantly making me feel like a child again.

But I wasn’t on the Lark anymore.