Chapter 1: The Fierce Islander

The moon’s silver light danced on the sea serpent’s scales as it wove through the black water, leaving crested waves in its wake.

Danna’s grip tightened around the rope securing the ship’s boom, feeling the strain and power of the sea monster as it approached. The calluses on her fingers, earned from years of battle against the monster, dug deep into the worn fibers. Proof that a child made captain would never steer soft. The beast had haunted her island for thirteen years—razing villages, devouring warriors, dragging their dead into the abyss. It had crippled her mother. It had made Danna a leader long before she was ready.

“Cain,” she muttered the name, low and cold, a curse on her tongue. The islanders called him a demon, but Danna knew Cain was no mindless beast. He was one of the DeepMother’s lament-born—creatures crafted from her magic when the humans broke her trust, her breath turned monstrous flesh. His kind were hunters—tormentors by prophecy. They embodied the DeepMother’s untamed, raw magic, born of her first great tears, before sorrow or wrath ever took form.

The color drained from her knuckles as she drew her flintlock pistol, cold iron biting her palm. She stepped onto the gunwale with steady knees. Forty ships bearing the bloodlines of old pirate kings waited on her command as the twenty-one-year-old, last surviving leader of their island. Their sails caught the moonlight, spectral ghosts against the horizon. They trusted her, not only because of her royal family name, but because she had survived and had the will to do what they refused.

She lifted her pistol high. “Red flag!” Her voice cut through the night toward the crow’s nest. “No quarter.”

Her flintlock swung to the right. “Load the guns.”

To the left, she shouted. “Ready the harpoons.”

The chorus of “Aye, Captain!” rang across the decks.

The sea dragon quickened. The waves churned, restless under its wake. Danna caught the gleam of its slitted eye beneath the surface, watching, calculating. She wiped the sea spray from her face. Strands of sable hair plastered to her skin.

“Aim for its head!”

Thirteen years of suffering, starving, and watching her people vanish beneath the tide, dragged down by the demon dragon gnawed at her gut. Her mother’s screams echoed in memory—the moment Cain dragged her down the beach in a thrashing wave of blood and bone. Danna had been eight then, trembling and useless as she watched the island town save her mother from the beast’s yaw. She had screamed alongside her mother as the firebrand blade cauterized her wounds. Now, Danna watched the menace draw nearer to the battle for survival.

“Tonight’ll be the night,” Danna whispered. “Come closer, ye snake.”

The waves rocked the forty ships spread along the island’s coast, and then the waters stilled, as if the DeepMother’s soul held its breath for the favored monster. The silver glow upon Cain’s scales vanished. Danna squinted as her stomach turned to iron. She whipped her head back and yelled, “He’s dived!”

The sea groaned as Cain erupted from the deep, its monstrous form blotting out the stars. Its sleek body with a single spiny sail arched over a nearby ship. Its head, crowned with razor-sharp spines, stole the light from the moon, casting a shadow over Danna’s face. Helpless, she watched the beast slam back into the ocean. The reverberating crack of splintered wood shot through the air. The ship’s hull split in two. Shouts of terror seized her ears.

“Fire the starboard guns,” she cried. Cannon fire lit the night, and the dizzying dance of metal meeting water performed under the star-studded sky, but Cain was faster. The dragon twisted, its body undulating like a tempest, avoiding the cannonballs. The acrid stench of brine and burnt powder clung to the air.

Danna yelled up at the crow’s nest. “Signal the ground archers!”

A flare soared high, bursting into green flames above them. The dragon’s eyes reflected the fire, glowing like molten gold. It reared back to attack, nostrils flaring steam.

The lookout’s yell penetrated the night. The crow’s nest collapsed in a rain of shattered wood. The deafening snap came before the silence. The mast moaned, then toppled, cracking the deck.

The ship lurched, and Danna’s footing failed. She hurtled forward, hands gripping the loosened rigging as it threw her off the gunwale. Her body slammed into the ship’s side, the impact rattling her bones. Below, the sea churned, waiting to devour her whole. A swell knocked her back on board. Saltwater burned her nose as she gagged back blood.

“Unfurl the sails,” she ordered from the top of her burning lungs. She shook the water off her flintlock and hoped that her gunpowder wasn’t wet. A shadow loomed above her. She rolled to her back as Cain dived toward the mizzen deck with his intense stare fixated on her. She was to be his next victim.

“O’er yer dead body,” she muttered and tightened her finger on the trigger. The shot cracked and split the air, the echo swallowed by the waves. The kickback reverberated from hand to shoulder. Burnt gunpowder flew full force into Danna’s face.

The bullet struck a golden eye; Cain threw its head back and released a visceral roar. The ship rocked from the force. The spikes of its horned mane and the long black sail down its back vibrated.

Danna gritted her teeth and forced herself up. Heavy boots slammed against the deluged deck as she charged up the shattered steps to the sterncastle.

“Harpoons!” The guttural command blasted from the depths of her belly.

The harsh grip of blood streaked down her throat.

“Harpoons!” she yelled with every force, sinking to her knees with a giant rock from the ship.

Steel rained from the sky.

Cain twisted mid-dive, crushing another smaller ship in its descent. Its serpentine form evaded the barrage, though some harpoons struck true, embedding into the thick hide. The beast lashed out with a giant, ear-splitting scream and thrashed its massive, spiked tail against the wooden hull of another ship, breaking it and flipping it like a child’s toy.

His direction indicated retreat. Danna grabbed a rope and swung onto the gunwale. The steep rock of the boat let her finger touch the waves as she held on to the rope. The ship rocked back the other way in a violent jerk as she watched the glisten on Cain’s scales disappear in the direction he had come.

Danna rode the rock until it was a gentle sway. Cain was gone. She bit back a curse before spitting blood into the sea below. The sea, born of the DeepMother’s soul, had taken enough from her.

“No more,” Danna muttered in an irreverent prayer to the deceased goddess, though she knew the sea always took what it was owed or simply what it wanted.

The wind carried the cheers of the other ships, but Danna spun around, running to the overlook. This was not a victory. Three ships. Three ships lost.

“Throw the lines,” she ordered, and the crew stopped to hear the command.

“Throw the lines,” she yelled again, and the crews jumped at the order. Ropes snaked into the sea for anyone still living to grab. “Circle for survivors.”

The surviving ships circled six times. Lanterns skimmed the dark waves, revealing nothing but debris. One by one, the signals came back.

Empty.

Danna’s gut twisted. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Good men and women—gone, claimed by Tophet, where the sea kept its trophies and whispered their names into the black.

Her jaw set in determination. “Once more.”

The crew hesitated, a beat of silence passing. Jim, one of her longest-serving men, stepped forward.

“Captain Chadwick.” Jim’s voice, wary. “We’ve given the lost their due, but Cain dragged his pound of flesh to the black depths. Circle again, and all we’re fishing is what’s left of ‘em.”

Danna’s gaze snapped to him. Her throat was raw from salt and battle, but her voice held. “Seven’s a good number for the dead, matey.”

Jim’s gaze flicked to Scotty, who shifted his weight but gave a slow nod.

“Aye, Captain.” The response came in unison. Scotty motioned to the crewman, Ethan, at the helm to go once more.

Danna ran her sleeve over her mouth to wipe the watery blood from her nose and lip, fixing a stare on Jim that left no room for doubt: challenge her again, and he’d answer for it.

She spun on her heels, grabbed the rigging, and stepped onto the gunwale. She scanned the waves. There had to be at least one survivor.

Someone.

Anyone.