Chapters (51)
- Title Page
- Copyright Notice
- Dedication
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- Also by Adrienne Young
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Newsletter Sign-up
If there were any gemstones to be found here, I had no clue where they would be. And I couldn’t feel them. When I made it almost halfway around the skerry, I peered into the distance only to find more of the same. I followed the tide, coming up for air when my lungs twisted in my chest, then sinking back down. Instantly I felt it again, that familiar hush, like the sound of my mother’s voice humming as I fell into sleep. I let myself sink to the bottom, the pressure of the depth pushing against my skin as I inspected the rim of rock encircling the island.
It opened to a wide cavern that dropped off into deeper waters. The color bled to black, where the shadows seemed to shift and curl. Above it, the wall of rock crept up in harsh, jagged ridges.
A trail of cold water skimmed past, and I reached out, feeling it. The thin slip of a wayward current. Soft, but there nonetheless. My brow pulled, watching the water around me, and something moved in the corner of my eye, making me still.
Over the lip of the rock’s edge, a wisp of dark red hair flashed in the moonbeam casting through the water. The air burned in my chest as I turned, spinning in the current so that I could look around me. Frantic. Because for a moment, I could have sworn she was there. Like a thread of smoke thinning into the air.
Isolde.
I found the rock beneath my feet and pushed off, my hair waving away from my face as I swam back toward the surface. The underwater cliff jutted straight up, and when I made it to the ledge, I reached out to catch the corner of the rock. The outcropping opened into a cavity, but there was nothing inside but darkness. No gem song. No glow of distant light.
If Holland was telling the truth, Isolde had found a refuge on this rock. Away from the shining streets of Bastian and out from under the eye of her mother. Maybe this was the place she’d dreamed of the day she would leave them both behind. Of sun-soaked days on the deck of a ship, and nights in its hull. Maybe she’d dreamed of me.
My pulse hammered in my ears, the last of my breath threatening to flicker out. The heat burned in my face despite the cold, and I pressed my lips together, watching the light skip on the surface above. She was here, somehow. My mother’s ghost was bled into these waters. But even in Tempest Snare, where she’d found her end, I hadn’t felt this.