Page 3 of Ballad of Sea and Sky

“You are a princess, Marina,” he had intoned, his voice shaking with amusement that made his black beard quiver. “It is not appropriate for you to learn to fight, nor is it necessary. Your role is to be a mother to your people and the future heirs to this throne.”

“I don’t need a permanent guard,” I told Vitulus, breath coming more raggedly as we climbed the five hundred stone stairs that led from the shore at the base of the cliffs to my family’s stronghold at its peak.

“Do you need to rest a moment, Marina?” Sereia asked, putting a gentle hand on my arm.

“I’m fine,” I snapped, trying to hide how difficult the climb was for me. The last thing I needed was for Vitulus to decide I needed to be carried.

Yet another perk of having wings, I supposed, would be the ease of navigating the island. Many of the homes were built into the cliffs and high on the rocky hills of the Silent Isles, which was a sprawling archipelago encompassing five large inhabited islands and several smaller uninhabited ones. Supposedly, monsters lurked on the smaller isles, but I had never seen one in person, my only knowledge coming from forbidden books.

The winds were stronger in the southern islands of the archipelago, and their small size made them unfit for permanent settlements. Hunters would sometimes stop down there in the summer months, but all would be back in the northern isles by now as autumn bled into winter.

The keep, as I called our palace, was on the largest and northernmost isle, which was also the most temperate, although still blisteringly cold at least half the year. Stairs were the primary mode of navigation, but the sirens had probably flown directly into their homes when they had lived on these islands.

I often wondered—secretly, of course—why people who didn’t fly would be so desperate to maintain control of islands that were so clearly designed for flight. Selkies and sirens had ruled these islands together centuries ago, but the Great Betrayal had divided our peoples. The sirens had been exiled from these shores, and the selkies claimed it as their own.

“These islands were willed to us by the Sea herself,” my tutors had lectured when I was too young to know that asking such questions wasn’t proper. “The Great Betrayal doomed our enemies to forever sail her waters, yet find no safe harbor among them.”

My lungs were burning by the time we reached the top of the steps, Sereia standing close to me in case I needed her support. Vitulus was stone-faced, watching me with a mixture of annoyance and concern.

“I’m going to my rooms,” I announced, trying to hide the wheeze that would betray my struggle. “Sereia, could you please ask the kitchens to send tea?”

“Of course,” she said, frowning at me. She knew that tea was code for one of my episodes, the calming beverage assisting me in getting control of my rebellious organs. But she didn’t reveal this to Vitulus as she left to relay my request to the kitchens. Vitulus walked me all the way back to my rooms, stomping behind me through the stronghold as if he was afraid I might disappear on him again.

“You are too reckless, Marina,” Vitulus said as we reached the wooden doors of my chambers. “You are too important to the future of these islands to go swimming off alone to look at curiosities.”

“Youdid it,“ I pointed out, feeling a strange mixture of shame and rebellion at the lecture the captain was giving me.

“I am not heir to the throne, nor am I weakened by sickness,” he said, lowering his voice so we wouldn’t be overheard.

“I am not weak,” I argued, the reply coming out more breathily than I wished it as I struggled to calm my breathing. “Good night, Captain.”

As soon as the door closed behind me, I sucked in a ragged lungful of air, closing my eyes and visualizing the waves as the sound of them crashing against the cliffs reached me from my windows.

Breathe in, breathe out, I told myself, chanting the words as my mental waves crashed in and out, in and out. Visualization, tea, and rest were the only things that helped when I had an attack, and I cursed myself for a fool.

Regardless of what I’d said to Vitulus, Iwasweaker than the other selkies. And I had so much more to prove.

And to lose.

Chapter 2

“Andyouarenotto leave this palace without an escort!” my father shouted, making me wince as I tried to eat my breakfast. “An armed one! Sereia doesn’t count.”

I was about to make a snarky comment about how one could barely call this stronghold apalace,seeing how it was mostly crumbling stone and wooden doors worn and warped with age, but my lungs were tight, and talking took too much effort.

I shivered, the hall drafty in the autumn breeze that wafted in through the open windows. Another nod to this building’s past as a siren stronghold—power over the wind was a siren gift, not a selkie one. I wondered why my father, and his father and grandfather before him, insisted on occupyingthisparticular fortress instead of building one more suited to us.

“My dear,” my mother said, putting a gentle hand on my father’s arm to calm him. Her skin was a little lighter than mine and my father’s honey-brown tone, as if the pigment had been leached of color by age and worry. Her hair was a much darker blue than mine as well, like the ocean at midnight, and no one was quite sure where my teal waves had come from.

My father softened toward her, his blue eyes gleaming as he took in his mate. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes at the effect my mother had on my father. Theirs was a love most females would kill for, and few were lucky to find.

“Perhaps Marina needs to knowwhyyou are so angry,“ Mother continued, giving me a look that told me not to interrupt and to let her handle this if I valued my autonomy. I focused on my breathing, biting into my toast as my parents engaged in some kind of silent exchange. The tea had helped ease my lungs, the peppermint loosening the tightness, but I still wasn’t feeling completely right.

“Marina,” Father said, clearly trying and failing to soften his tone with me. He cleared his throat, attempting gentleness again. “There was an attack last night on the north shore.”

“What?” I gasped, dropping my toast. “Thisisland’s north shore?”

My father nodded somberly, and my mother pursed her lips. “A siren raiding party,” he continued, “likely seeking weapons and food supplies.”