Chapter 1
Darius gripped the rail of the Ostara as it pitched hard, spray lashing across the deck in salty sheets. He swallowed, tasting bile and brine at the back of his throat.
He now knew why seafarers named the Windswept Sea the most treacherous maritime route in all of Estos. He had read the warnings on charts, heard them spoken by sailors in Clard’s harbour taverns with the quiet reverence men reserved for things that could kill them.
It was said that more lives had been lost in this strait than on any battlefield on the mainland, or so the captain shared—almost a bit too eagerly.
The wood beneath Darius’ boots flexed and groaned under the sea’s wrath. Yet, all he could do against each swell and his lurching stomach was stare ahead.
There, somewhere beyond the fog and grey water, lay their destination: Skull Island. Even the name bore a wild edge to it, for much blood had been spilt over the centuries due to this untamed piece of wilderness. To a point where some sailors report the sea takes on a crimson hue at certain hours of the day.
Whether that was true or fiction remained unknown, but Darius had long learned not to dismiss such legends too quickly. He had seen, fought, and befriended many things that would have even the most distinguished bards snorting.
A violent retch pulled his attention to the bow. Jangar. The big man was draped over the gunwale like a wet flag, one thick arm hooked around a mooring post while the other hung limp toward the churning water below. His auburn hair clung to his skull from the spray, and his face—what Darius could see of it between heaves—took on a colour that should not belong on a living person.
“Curse you, tittling,” Jangar croaked between spasms. “Curse the sea. And curse every sky god who thought—” Another retch cut the sentence short. He spat and dragged his sleeve across his mouth before glaring upward at the ceiling of grey cloud. “—piss off, the lot of you!”
“Noted,” Darius said. He might have smiled if his own stomach weren’t staging a quiet mutiny.
He turned his eyes back to the horizon. Still nothing. Just fog, salt, and the sickening rise and fall of a world made entirely of water.
“Should’ve stayed at Istrille. Should’ve stayed in bed. Should’ve—” Another wave slammed the hull, swallowing whatever words Jangar uttered next.
Behind Darius, Lyara stood with her arms folded across her breastplate, feet set wide against the roll of the deck. She hadn’t spoken in over an hour. Her dark braid hung heavy with moisture, swaying with the ship’s motion, but the rest of her somehow remained still and steady.
She was watching and reading the sea and the crew with those sharp eyes in a way she always did when there was a lot of activity swirling around them. It unsettled people who didn’t know her, but Darius had grown to find it reassuring.
A lance of Crimson Guard filled the remaining deck space, their red capes darkened to near-black by the spray. They stood in pairs along the rails, steady and silent, hands resting on pommels while others braced against the rigging.
These were disciplined men who served the Crown loyally. The kind who made a vessel this size feel less exposed and the stretch of hostile water around it seem less infinite. Darius was grateful for their presence, though he would not say so aloud. A king did not confess to needing comfort from his own soldiers.
A king. The title still sat strangely on his tongue, even now.
Alastar had all but shoved him aboard this vessel with a look that could have curdled milk; the old commander’s way of saying he disapproved of yet another dangerous venture.
Darius promised him, not for the first time, that this would be the last occasion he put himself in such a position. A king belonged in his war chamber or in a battle that determined the fate of a realm, not on the deck of a ship crossing contested waters towards an island he had already surrendered—but the meeting required him so.
Alastar understood this. Though it didn’t stop him from saying nothing, which was always somehow worse than an argument. Still, it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, especially when the stakes were this high.
The upcoming council with Jefor and his delegation could reshape everything—alliances formalised, strategy agreed, the Vraqor threat laid on the table between two kingdoms and answered with something more than fear and old grudges. It was the closest thing to genuine forward movement the war had offered in months. Darius held that thought carefully, the way a man carries an object he knows is fragile. There was even a chance Alere would be among the travelling party. He didn’t dwell on it, but he let the possibility sit there.
As he glanced across the slick deck once more, he sensed Alderan’s absence for the first time since the old mage departed to Kladstin for some well-deserved rest. His counsel steadied him through darker crossings than this one, and while every decision aboard the ship felt slightly untethered, he didn’t begrudge the wizard some downtime. He needed it. They all did. But war had no appetite for such respites.
The ship plunged into a trough, and his grip on the rail tightened, whitening his knuckles. Through the fog and spray, he still saw nothing, but they were close. He sensed it.
Without warning, the vessel shunted off-course. Darius staggered sideways, his shoulder slamming into the railing, while a crimson guard near the stern lost his footing and went down hard on the wet planking.
Ropes snapped taut. The ship listed, groaned, and righted itself with a sickening roll that sent loose cargo sliding across the deck. Whatever struck the hull was no wave or debris.
“Arms!” one knight barked, and steel sang.
Darius drew Ralz’s sword and moved to the port side, gripping the gunwale with his free hand. The water below was dark and churned a grey-green colour by the swell.
For several heartbeats, he saw nothing. Then a vast shape stirred beneath the surface—slow and entirely unhurried. The outline of an armoured, studded spine broke the waterline twenty feet from the hull, its bony ridges cutting through the chop with ease.
Forty feet of reptilian mass, maybe more, slid past the vessel with the patience of something that did not view the ship as prey.
“Crocozil,” one of the crew said.
The crimson guards held their positions with swords drawn, shields braced, and eyes fixed on the water. Trained men doing what trained men do. But Darius could see it in their stillness—the shared, unspoken recognition that a blade meant nothing here.
The crocozil completed a single, deliberate circuit of the ship and everyone who stood still and breathless watching it. Its tail carved a wide arc through the swell, its scales catching what little light bled through the fog, and then it descended into the depths of the murky water.
No one moved. No one dared to sheathe their swords despite their futility. Darius watched the place where the beast had gone under, and stayed there for several breaths, half expecting its return.
Hunger would have surely brought it back by now. A territorial strike would have been much faster and more violent. No, what just happened was measured and calm; they were the actions of something seeking a closer look at what had entered its waters and deciding, for now, not to kill it.
He glanced toward the bow, but Jangar hadn’t moved. The big man was still slumped against the gunwale, one hand locked around the mooring post, though the retching had stopped. For a time, at least. His mouth was shut; his eye—the one not hidden beneath the patch—was fixed on the water with the same intensity. Jangar afraid was a loud, profane, entertaining affair. Jangar silent was something else entirely.
Lyara remained standing, arms no longer folded, and watched the lapping waves with a nervous, assessing gaze.
“I’ve heard stories of the monsters that lurk in this water,” she said. “To see one this close…”
Darius nodded with a grim expression.
The Crimson Guard held formation for a long minute before the first sword slid back into its scabbard. Others followed, and soon, the deck settled into its muted chaos. The ship groaned on through the swell, and the fog swallowed the wake behind them, but Darius kept his eyes on the water.
He did not think about the crocozil in any deliberate way. He did not assign it meaning or stew on the encounter for longer than it warranted, but his grip on the rail had changed.
The war council still waited. Jefor, the fragile alliance, the Vraqor threat—all of it sat ahead of them on a shore he couldn’t yet see. The reasons for this voyage had not changed.
He finally sheathed his sword and turned from the sea to find Jangar now slumped on the deck, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before straightening—or, at least, trying to. The ship pitched, and he cursed again under his breath.
“If that overgrown lizard returns,” he announced to no one in particular, “I want it known that I intend to die on land, with a pint of mead, and a woman telling me I’m the best lover she’s had. Not to be shat out of its arse!”
A guard near the mast coughed what might have been a laugh.
“And you—” Jangar jabbed a thick finger in Darius’ direction. “Next time you fancy a voyage to the arse-end of nowhere, take someone who doesn’t have the good sense to say no.”
Darius said nothing. He let Jangar’s voice fill the deck, loud and coarse as it always was. When he gazed out beyond the rail, the fog began to thin.
It happened slowly at first as the grey bled to a paler, brighter colour, and shapes emerged from the veil. A jagged shoreline, then a withered dock, and finally, a modest-sized structure.
The dark mass of the island rose from the water like the spine of something far older and larger than the creature that had just circled their hull. It truly was a sight to behold.
Lanterns eventually seeped through the fog on the western shore, hazy and trembling, but then became sharp and clear enough to count. Four—no, five–arranged in a line that was too deliberate to be anything but a signal.
Darius watched them grow brighter as the vessel closed the distance, and with it came a flutter in his stomach that was no making of the sea.
The Crimson Guard had seen them too, prompting hands to return to pommels and eyes to narrow against the withering spray. Lyara moved to the rail and studied the shore without comment.
Somewhere in that outpost lay a council that promised nothing, but determined the fate of Vlencia and the entire region of Estos. Or it could be a deadly ambush if Jefor had surrounded himself with the wrong voices.
The captain hobbled from behind and spoke in a hushed whisper. “Your Grace, we’re about to dock.”
