Another wave crashed over my body, pulling me under, but then strong hands gripped the back of my leathers.
I yelped and turned to face my attacker, but it was only Kaden. In one rough motion, he hauled me out of the wet sand and half dragged, half carried me away from the hungry tide.
Over the rush of waves, I could hear his own gasping breaths. Then we both collapsed in the sand.
Warm, calloused palms gripped the sides of my face, and a pair of worried gray eyes met mine. “Are you all right?” he rasped, sounding both exhausted and alarmed.
I just swallowed and forced myself to nod, closing my eyes to banish the memory of the things I’d felt as we’d hurtled through the water.
Desperation. Despair. Bone-scraping hunger — but not my own.
No. As I’d been drowning in that murky water, I’d felt the sea’s own longing to take me for its own. Its need had seeped into my very bones, overwhelming in its intensity.
It took several minutes for my breathing to even out. When it did, I looked up to take in our surroundings.
We were moored on a miserable, rocky island that looked as though it might very well be the ends of the earth — the in-between, I supposed. The wet black sand was rough beneath my knees and held the same stench of decay as the churning sea.
Following the shoreline with my gaze, I saw nothing but flat land cloaked in an eerie silver mist and —
I blinked.
Angry gray storm clouds swirled overhead, but they were not where the skyshouldhave been. They formed an uneven wave that churned back toward the sea, as though the landscape were folding in on itself.
Without warning, a silver bolt of lightning shot through the sky, striking the sand a mere hundred yards from where we knelt. I felt the tremor ricochet through my entire body, raising the hairs along the backs of my arms.
“What —”
“I told you,” said Kaden. “The in-between is neither here nor there. It obeys its own laws of reality.”
I swallowed. The way those clouds curled back toward the sea, it certainlylookedas though we were caught in some wrinkle in the veil. I followed the folding sky all the way to the horizon, and my stomach bottomed out.
The sea was pouring out over what looked like the very edge of the world.
Drawing my gaze back along the line of disappearing sea, I saw a jagged rock jutting out from the swirling mist.
“We should go,” said Kaden, his voice barely audible over the crash of waves. “Before he realizes we’re here.”
My insides clanged, and I didn’t have to ask who he meant. If what Kaden had told me was true, the Watchman was the only creature who could survive in this wretched place.
“H-how would he know we’re here?” I asked, staring around at the barren landscape. There was nothing but rock and sand and sea.
“He is bound to this place. Bound by the gods. No one knows the full extent of his powers — only that he is trapped here.”
I didn’t bother to hide my shudder. Who wouldeverchoose to spend eternity that way, even with the promise of immortality?
I opened my mouth to ask Kaden how he planned to get off the island but stopped. A small dinghy now bobbed along the shoreline, its wooden hull black and rotten looking.
“All aboard,” said Kaden dryly, pulling the boat onto shore to avoid setting foot in that cursed water again.
Reluctant as I was to be at the mercy of the hungry sea,I was evenlessinclined to wait around for the Watchman to appear. Clambering over the gunwale, I perched on the edge of a moldy, waterlogged bench as Kaden pulled anchor and used an oar to shove us out to sea.
“I won’t be able to use any heavy magic once we’re inside the fortress,” he said. “Too much power will . . . alert him to our presence.”
A harsh breeze whipped across the water, peppering my skin in a briny mist. Kaden rowed us toward the jagged rock, though I could no longer see more than a few feet ahead due to the cold, silvery mist that seemed to engulf us.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and my skin prickled with electricity as another streak of lightning split the dark clouds. It had started to rain.
I peered anxiously up at the sky, and Kaden gave a dark chuckle. “Think we’ll be struck by lightning before we even reach the Watchman’s fortress?”
