“I’ll get you close enough to spit on that barge if you want,” Nettle said, never shifting her eyes from the searoad ahead. She’d grown an entire foot and every part of her body had stretched thin but for her cheeks, which were as round as the scrolling scars upon them.

“Shouting distance will do,” Pisces responded with a smile.

“Ready for gold, Captain,” Harwell announced.

“Good. Engines to full!”

Caledonia’s eyes landed on the furious orange of the baleflowers ahead. Above, two purple flares unfurled spidery petals, signaling to whoever was near that the barge was under attack. They would have a few precious moments to prepare before Caledonia and her flagships were within range. All she had to do was be faster than the rest of Decker’s fleet.

Pisces leaned in close and whispered, “Lir won’t like us taking down his brothers.”

Anger pooled in Caledonia’s gut, leaving her mind with a cool kind of clarity as the seas rushed by. “If Lir didn’t want us coming after his brothers,” she said, savoring the dark edge of her rage, “he should have left ours alone.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Natalie C. Parker is the author of the Beware the Wild duology, the Seafire trilogy, and the editor of Three Sides of a Heart. She earned her BA in English literature from the University of Southern Mississippi and her MA in gender studies from the University of Cincinnati. She grew up in a Navy family finding home in coastal cities from Virginia to Japan. Now, she lives surprisingly far from any ocean on the Kansas prairie where she runs Madcap Retreats with her wife. She tweets @nataliecparker.

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