The Ever King: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Ever Seas Book 1)

The door pounded into my back. A huff of annoyance followed. “If you’ve gone and bled out on me, I’ll be damn put out.”

A woman’s voice. I lifted my head from the cold floorboards. Somewhere during my tears, I must’ve fallen asleep exactly where Bloodsinger left me. My damp hair had dried in crusty waves. The back of my skull felt as though a molten knife dug deep, scrambling my brains about.

The corner of the door jabbed my hip again. I hurried out of the way, facing the entrance, ready to kick or claw until I could get my hands on a weapon.

The woman who’d sneered at me near the helm tripped over the lip after the door opened too quickly.

“Damn you,” she grumbled.

Once her stance was righted, she adjusted a black leather hat over a single braid in her stormy hair. A strange color, like the silver of mist with dark wisps of thunderclouds woven throughout. Her skin was smooth brown with a splatter of darker freckles over her nose and a pink scar across the center of her throat. One silver hoop pierced an ear. More than one sea fae only had one hoop or spike through one ear. In the case of this woman, she didn’t have a choice.

Her second ear was rolled inward, as though it had never formed.

She narrowed her earthy eyes, dark, but flecked with gold and green, like a forest after rain. “Did you not see the bed? Or are earth fae just that stupid?”

“Think your words will wound me?”

“No, I was asking.” She pointed to the cot. “Did you not see the damn bed?”

I paused. Strange, but she seemed to speak in earnest. Like I was nothing but an empty-headed fae for not accepting the generosity of a stiff cot in my captor’s bedchamber. For a fleeting moment her logic and straightforward tongue reminded me of Mira.

I pressed a hand to my heart, missing her. Missing them all.

“By the seas,” the woman said, gawking with a bit of horror when my chin trembled. “Don’t tell me you’re going to cry over not taking the cot. There’s always tonight.”

I clenched my fists, using the bite of my fingernails in the meat of my palm to dull the anguish of not knowing. “I was thinking you . . . you remind me of my friend. She was taken away during the fighting, but I still don’t know if she’s alive.”

The woman arched a brow, perhaps stunned at the honesty instead of a snide remark.

What was the point in tossing insults back and forth? She was the one armed. I didn’t want to risk one of the knives on her belt flying at me before I got my hands on one.

When the stun subsided, the woman shrugged, and kicked the door closed at her back. She strode across the space, humming, and wrenched open two doors in the wall, revealing a built-in wardrobe. The space was stuffed with mostly black with a few crimson scarves and one green coat trimmed in silver.

The woman ignored the clothes and returned with a clay basin and wooden ewer.

“You’re going to wash.” She set the basin down with a nod. As if her word was final and there’d be no arguing.

“Hard to do so without a drop of water.”

“Ah, you do have brains.” She smiled. A true smile of amusement. It was more unnerving than a sneer.

I did not want to witness humanity, not a shred of decency, among the sea folk. I wanted to see them for what I’d made them in my mind—cold, cruel, and monstrous.

The woman turned back to the wardrobe and removed a plain, dark top with sleeves that billowed more than I was accustomed, and reached inside a satchel over her shoulder, tossing a bundle of deep purple fabric onto the tabletop.

“That’s mine, and I’ll expect you to care for it.” The woman’s mouth pinched. “Don’t like trading my things. I knew the second I saw you I’d be the one tending to your every bleeding whim, seeing how no one else here has breasts.”

I arched a brow. “We’re the only women?”

“Not many women in the Ever set sail. Certainly not with the king.” She paused, a slow grin on her mouth. “Except me.”

I considered asking more, then stomped any curiosity down, buried under heavy layers of disdain and mistrust.

“Get washed,” she went on. “Get dressed. You’ll start to stink locked up in here.”

“Then don’t keep me locked in here.”

“Oh, you’ll see the ship.” She scoffed. “I’ve been assigned to show you about as we go.”

I swallowed through a scratch. “And where exactly are we going?”

“We’ll be making our way back to the royal city,” she said. “Wallow in here the entire time and you’ll start talking to the walls. Small quarters, with nothing but sea around you, starts to play tricks on the mind if you don’t keep busy.”

I’d take her word for it. My fingers trembled as I worked the numerous buttons on the masquerade gown. “Keep me from the king and I’ll be your loyal shadow.”

She snorted and shook her head like I was an utter fool. “Hard to do when it’s his ship, earth fae. Now wash, and maybe I’ll take you to the king, so you can thank him for allowing you to live this long.”

A bit of defiance bled to the surface. I thought of Jonas, of Alek, I even thought of tales I’d heard of my mother’s sharp tongue against enemies.

I added my own step to the distance between us. “You must not have heard correctly. I will not be going to the king.”

“You will.”

A booming voice made both me and the woman startle.

“Tait.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve told you not to be slinking up on me like that.”

The man was more than a little intimidating. Broad and strong; muscles on his shoulders, his chest, and the bulge of veins on his forearms hinted he’d swung more than a few iron blades.

His hair was tied off his neck, and like Bloodsinger, he kept the front out of his eyes with a black scarf. Two silver hoops pierced his ears, and gold rings lined his fingers. A black ink tattoo of a skull and crossed daggers over his chest was visible through the laces of his shirt, but it was the soft glow of red in his eyes that sent a chill down my spine. Harsher than the king’s, more flames against a night sky, and the flecks of red were twisted with a rage that marked the man as one never to be with alone.

He crossed the room, hateful eyes pinned to me. “Get dressed. You’ll be meeting Sewell today. King’s giving you galley duties.”

I didn’t know what galley duties meant, nor who this Sewell was, but anger and bitterness from the night rampaged through my body.

“I must refuse your king.” My voice trembled, slight enough I wasn’t certain he noticed, but I did. It would be impossible to hide fear. In truth, no one on this ship would believe it if I tried. But strength did not mean there was no fear. I could stand tall, I could defy my enemies, and I could still be afraid.

“You’ll dress yourself, or I’ll do it for you. I won’t be soft.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “And I’ll let the crew watch. They’d be glad to gawk at this particular piece of plunder. That is what you are, Princess. Plunder. Treasure. Goods we split amongst ourselves. The choice is yours. I know my cousin well—”

“Bloodsinger is—”

“My king and my blood,” he told me. “I assure you, if you insult him, he will insult you in turn by granting our desires. Who knows, you might find the crew chambers more . . . diverting than the king’s.”

Acid burned my stomach. “You’re all wretched.”

“Yes, we are.” He didn’t even attempt to argue the point, and pulled out an odd device that ticked like one of the large bell towers with clock faces back home. I’d never seen such a miniature clock before. Outside city walls, my folk used the sun and instinct to tell the time of day. One more quick glance, and Tait closed his tiny clock. “You have half a chime.”

“A chime? What the hells is a chime? A toll? A clock toll?”

He shrugged. “A chime is a chime.”

I looked to the woman. She held up the skirt as though she’d missed the venom in Tait’s voice.

“Fine.” I blew out a long breath. “Go, and I will dress.”

Seemingly satisfied, Tait dipped his head and abandoned the room.

Once he was gone, the woman chuckled. “Don’t think Tait was lying to frighten you. It’s our law aboard the king’s ship. Whatever we acquire while sailing is split amongst the crew. Only the king himself may take precedence in a claim.” Near the clay basin, she laid out a linen cloth from the wardrobe. “You have no control here, so why do you keep spouting off those harsh words?”

“Tell me this,” I said. “Would you move swiftly when you know only your own death awaits at the end? Bloodsinger told me I am to suffer. I have no desire to run toward it.”

She considered my words for a pause, then dipped her chin, a pensive expression to her countenance. “I suppose you have a point.”

Ridiculous, but there was a moment where I’d hoped she might negate my claim that her king planned to torture me.

Hells, it was time to release the girlish fantasy that I meant anything other than a foe to the Ever King. The look in his eyes when I’d read to him through the bars of his cell, the vulnerability I thought I saw, never existed. He was nothing but a monster in the tides.

“I cannot wash without water,” I said again.

The woman waved the words away and placed her hand in the clay bowl. Eyes closed, she began to sing.

A soft, melancholy song with words I did not understand. “Vatn till mín, safna saman.”

My mouth parted when beneath her hand a trickle of water spilled into the basin, as if the clay were shedding a wash of tears. Three times she sang her song, until the water reached the rim of the bowl.

The woman lifted her gaze and shook the droplets off her fingers. “Satisfied now?”

“That . . . you . . . can you all call upon water?”

“If you’re a Tidecaller.” She bowed at the waist. “That is what I am, Celine Tidecaller. Had a stronger voice once, for other things.” Unbidden, her fingertips touched the pink scar across her throat.

Bloodsinger, Tidecaller. “Your names, are they hints to your magic or something?”

“Again, you’ve proven you do have brains.” She lounged over the cot. “We don’t do family names in the Ever. We are named by the talents of our voices. Most sea folk blessed with a bit of magic have some gift of their voice, some ability it can do. I’ve honed mine to travel through water, so I earned the name Tidecaller.”

“So that vial you spoke to yesterday . . .”

“An announcement to the royal house that we were returning from the Chasm.” She gestured to the window. “A journey through the Chasm after so long will be made known across the kingdom. I’d expect a great crowd when we return.”

Cold danced down my spine. Not only did I face the vengeance of the Ever King, no mistake, I would be the interest of the whole of his kingdom.

“Water’s getting cold,” she said and pointed to the basin.

If sea fae were not horrid, I might think Celine caused the water to be a bit more comfortable on purpose.

The masquerade gown clung to my skin in crusty layers, and not that I cared if my scent offended the Ever Ship—frankly, a great many aboard reeked like rotted breath and dried sweat—but nerves left my underarms heady with mildew.

With Celine’s watch on the cliffs, I stripped from the gown, a moan slid free once the damp weight of the skirt was gone.

“Soap.” Celine crossed the room and rummaged through her pouch. She tossed a felt purse at me. Inside were pearls of fragrant soap—lavender, honey, and dewy moss.

I returned a clipped thanks. The part of me longing to find some light to cling to within this storm wanted to create Celine Tidecaller out to be kind. She wasn’t. She was acting on orders from a tyrant king. She’d probably killed some of my people.

Still, she might be the only one I’d met so far who spoke without a guard up. If anyone could give me information, or a glimpse of how I might find a way out of here, it was her. “Tidecaller, Bloodsinger. What other names sail this vessel?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“That’s why I asked.”

She snorted, then frowned as if she hadn’t meant to be amused. The woman had a slyness to her features. Like she might always be ready to share a salacious secret, but under the mistrust was something almost playful.

“The first mate, you already met. Tait is called Heartwalker. Larsson, the second mate, has no sea voice, but we call him Bonekeeper. You’ll want to get a glance at the chain around his neck. Don’t mistake a lack of magic as weakness. I assure you, he kills well enough.”

Acid churned in my stomach. “What does Tait’s voice do?”

“Ask him. Tait is the son of Lord Harald, brother of King Thorvald. Harald was killed in the great war.” She sneered. “If you think Erik Bloodsinger is the only one with a vengeance against your people, you’re wrong. Now quit speaking and dress. You’re clean enough.”

Seemed Celine’s patience had run its course. I stroked my hair with water to smooth the rogue pieces, then dressed in the clothes she’d offered. The top was thin and left little to the imagination on the shape of my breasts. The skirt was ruffled and hugged my waist too snugly. I let out a seam or two and used one of Bloodsinger’s scarves as a makeshift belt.

Celine inspected me from brow to foot and offered a curt nod. “Good enough. I suppose we ought to get you to your post.”