Chapter 37

T he light of dawn announced our time to go. Its soft pink sunbeams brought a cold sweat across my brow and a tightness in my chest. The sailors loaded the last stores onto our ships in wooden crates and barrels. Finally, with a dry throat and restless feet, I commanded the rowers to lower their oars and we exited the harbor.

A few hundred warships, with their oarsmen in sync, followed suit. The beating of drums, keeping time for the rowers below decks, echoed like a heartbeat across the still, crystalline water. The rhythm of my men quivered the wooden decking. Their grunts and groans were a ragged melody of the coming war.

The breeze picked up as we gained speed, licking away the sweat that rolled down the nape of my neck. We exited the safety of the harbor. The frequency of swells increased, rocking the aft deck with voracious anticipation of the looming battle to come.

Leaning against the railing, I watched Aryx from across the bow of his commanding ship. He paced sternly, barking orders with sweat-glistened palms. The golden locks of his hair rustled in the salty air. It was breathtaking to watch this seasoned general command his men, to hold his confident strides, even amid self-doubt.

Catching my gaze, his jaw tightened. The soldiers and ships and oarsmen faded away, leaving only the wire of electricity between us. I sucked in a breath. The hold his eyes had over me was all-consuming. Standing before me, his mental shield was transparent as the wing of a dragonfly. His lips softened with the drawn out seconds that ticked by.

The guilt of my decision ignited once more, and in this secret moment we shared, I knew I'd done something unforgivable.

He's different when you're around.

Just words. A string of syllables forming a sentence with little to no meaning. Now, watching Aryx watch me as we sailed toward a blood-drenched future, they were everything. I could take the pain, the anger, even the rage with a head held high. I was immune to the lashings and the cruelty.

But this?

This feeling warming my iced-over heart. This feeling of lightness in an ever-growing solitary darkness. This, I couldn't handle.

Breaking the current rushing between us, I dropped my eyes to the deck.

Isolation, emptiness, coldness. Those were easy. I'd grown to thrive in the presence of sadness. It was an old friend. Its near companion- self-loathing, I welcomed with open arms.

But something new tore its way in, shredding me from the inside out. What was it that pulled me to the man I'd grown to care for? To the man who broke away the barriers and filled me with warmth? This feeling pushed its way up, rising in the back of my throat, refusing to be ignored any longer.

It over-passed everything else. Every scratch of the others that took property in my mind. In its presence, even my demons were silent.

All I could think, all I could breathe, all I could be was reflected in the golden eyes of my once-enemy, twice-ally, now stranger.

I was terrified to call it what it was, to acknowledge it by name, because if I did, I wasn't so sure what may come of me. I turned to face away, still feeling that channel of energy pulsing through me, connecting us in an unmistakable force stronger than nature herself.

My Queen. Rah glanced from his perch in the spars. His whisper pulled me back to reality. Shoving thoughts of Aryx aside, I watched as the falcon took flight, gliding through the air to land on the railing beside me.

We're nearing the Narrows. Things are about to get interesting.

The Narrows marked the entrance of the Raging Seas, dividing the safe, coastal waters from the powerful, ship-eating swells of the far South. Until a few weeks ago, I thought the Narrows were merely legend.

At the bottom of an empty pint, seasoned sailors with drunken voices and bloodshot eyes told tales of the monsters that lurked just beneath the surface. Swinging their glasses around a dusty old tavern, they told tales of scarcely escaping certain death in the form of titanic, tentacled beasts. I'd laugh along at their foolish tales, dismissing their words with skepticism. Frya, swatting them with the tip of her dishrag, brushed aside the stories of old. The fairy tales of monsters far more ancient than the gods. If only she were here to see the uncertainty in my eyes.

Two dark cliffs loomed over our fleet. Maybe their legends were true.

The jagged rocks were barren and lifeless. Salt composites from millennia of violent storms and spray killed all life that once dared to emerge between the cracks of their sediment.

As we sailed in line through the tight passage, the skies above grumbled and darkened. The Narrows knew of our intentions and forbade us to pass. I clung to the railing of the aft deck, holding my breath as the oarsman barked orders at his men and delicately steered us between the piercing structures jutting from beneath the black, murky water.

The ridge lines pressed closer and closer together until it forced our fleet to sail one ship after another, the beam of our hulls just barely squeezing through.

I turned to face the warship behind us, focusing in on Aryx standing rigid on the command deck. He fixed his eyes on me. The white of his knuckles were clenched into fists. He nodded and whispered an order to the grey, leathery oarsman beside him. Only the sound of oars skimming across the surface echoed between the cliff sides as we pushed on.

Just as the golden cat eye painted on our bow crept through the cliffs into the open horizon, a deep rumbling erupted from the water, shaking the halyards and lines from their coils across the mast.

I turned back to Aryx. His eyes burned holes into me from across the length of his ship. Swallowing hard, I said a prayer to my mother and faced the impending attack.

She has awakened. With a frantic flap of his wings, Rah took flight, soaring high above us.

"Who?" I called, my hands trembling against the cool metal railing.

She is called Scylla, the Guardian of the Narrows .