Something about Frank’s taunting voice grated on Jon’s every nerve, but as the anger threatened to burst out of him, he clenched his jaw and glared at the man with a spear pointed at Jàden’s throat, calculating how fast he could have the bastard on his back.

  Recognition burned in the leader’s eyes. “Humans go back. You do not belong here.”

  This guy was starting to piss him off too. Jon glanced around the deck to make sure his men were still alive. Blue-painted warriors with long spears pinned nearly everyone, including the crew. Only Naréa still walked free. With hands behind her back, she sized up the damage to her vessel and the women under her command.

  “Horses loose on my ship and three of my crew dead.” Naréa stopped in front of Jon, a murderous rage in the taut lines of her face. “You owe me three strong men, Captain.”

  “Not a chance, Naréa.” He’d throw the woman off her own ship before he’d give any of his men into her service. “Tell these fuckers to back off before I start breaking arms.”

  And their skulls. Except his sword was buried in some bastard’s chest, and his knives were in a midship wall.

  Naréa snorted. “Since your men don’t know how to keep their pants on, this is where you get off.”

  Jon tightened his jaw. “It’s the middle of the ocean—”

  “You leave, or you die.” Naréa stalked off, shouting something in a language he didn’t understand. The bird shifters disappeared into a large flock, circling high into the storm.

  Jàden rolled to her side and grabbed the gun, dousing the firemark and stuffing it into her waistband, probably before anyone could take it from her.

  But Jon wasn’t finished with Naréa. He rolled to his feet and grabbed his sword out of the dead soldier’s chest. He sure as hell was going to pick a fight with her now. “Naréa!”

  The crew spread across the deck, weapons in their hands, blocking him from the hevkor. “You promised me a village. There’s nothing here.”

  “You’re at the boundary, Captain, as requested.”

  As the Darius entered the wall of water, Jàden reached across the rail. Small droplets slid along her skin and rose toward the sky. “This is Hàlon technology.”

  A loud rhuum blasted through the air, reverberating through the mountainous spire. The same sound he’d heard when Frank’s people attacked.

  Jon didn’t understand much of what Jàden saw in those Guardian structures, but he sure as shit knew how to deal with the people in his world.

  “Land, Naréa, or we’ll see who swims first.”

  Jàden grabbed his wrist and lowered her voice. “We’re here.”

  The muscles along his arm tightened as he followed her gaze to the prow. The ship surged and fell with each crashing wave, snow beating down across the deck. As they slid out of the barrier, choppy swells smoothed out to a glassy surface. Storm clouds lowered, icy flakes melting to a cool drizzle.

  Thick fog clung to the sea’s eerily calm surface. The icy chill warmed to sticky, humid air, sails flapping once before they stilled. Wine-colored canvas rippled, bleeding across each surface until each showed a green orb with trailing arms over a field of black.

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  Jàden squeezed his arm, dread in her voice. “Jon.”

  “I see it.” They didn’t need any more magic digging through their lives.

  He sheathed his sword, his instincts screaming a warning he couldn’t ignore, as deep water on one side of the ship became a shallow reef on the other. Giant trees grew along the shore, dozens of roots twisting into the shallows.

  He didn’t know these woods, but at least it was dry land and would get his team the fuck off this ship. It would be a cold walk in the sea, but he no longer cared. “Load up!”

  Shoving between Naréa’s crew, Jon retrieved his daggers from the wall and slammed them into their sheaths. They’d had their asses kicked today, but Jon wouldn’t let that happen again. Every one of his men was lucky to be alive, himself included.

  “Grab one of those weapons, Jàden. I think it’s time we all trained again.” As cadets, he and his team learned how to fight against anything from a fork to a longsword but never a metal weapon that could burn a hole in a man’s skull. The next time Frank’s soldiers found them, Jon would not have his ass handed to him.

  She furrowed her brow, scanning the sky once more. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  His men retrieved their gear from below deck as the Darius slowed, but Jon touched the small of Jàden’s back as she secured her horse’s bridle, lowering his mouth to her ear. “That’s an order.”

  Her shoulders stiffened.

  It was hard to keep the biting edge out of his tone as he saddled her horse, yanking the girth hard enough that Agnar tried to bite him.

  “You know your world. I know mine.” She pointed toward the dead soldiers as Naréa’s crew pulled each one to the edge of the deck and tossed them overboard. “They all have tracking beacons, and so do their weapons.”

  She grabbed Agnar’s bridle, anger in the way she tightened her shoulders, and both leapt into the sea.

  Jon clenched his jaw so tight the pain throbbed into his neck. The damn stubborn woman wasn’t listening. He needed one of those weapons to understand how to fight such an opponent. But as he crouched next to a dead soldier, her soft magic wove deeper meaning into his senses. A hunter tracking a bird, able to see its path without line of sight.

  They couldn’t take the risk.

  Taking another count of his men to make sure they were all present and ready, he gestured after Jàden. Naréa obviously didn’t plan to stop.

  So Jon shouted orders to his men to get their horses into the water. “Let’s move.”

  It would be a long walk in the cold surf, but at least the tides were low. They’d sustained no injuries, but the heavy silence meant his men were all probably as angry as he was. A few hours more and they would have had to swim—or kill Naréa.

  When he was the last one left on deck, Jon turned toward the hevkor, meeting the hardness in her eyes. She’d gotten them across the sea, and her crew helped keep them alive when Frank’s men attacked. But he still wanted to strangle the woman. He sure as shit hoped they’d never cross paths again.

  Without a parting word, he slapped the backside of his horse. The black leapt into the sea, and Jon jumped in after.

  Icy water slammed into his senses, chills running straight up his spine as he broke the surface. He swam toward his horse and grabbed the reins, the two angling for the shore until soft dirt brushed against the bottom of his boots.

  The stallion found his footing and snorted his displeasure, ears pricked toward the thinning mist along the shore.

  “I know, buddy,” he muttered, clapping his companion on the shoulder.

  The spectral silence broke every few seconds with a low, moaning creak of Naréa’s ship as it turned once more toward deeper waters, the strange black-and-green sails the last to disappear into the fog.

  He couldn’t feel his body anymore as the water dropped to his chest and finally his waist.

  A long wharf jutted into the placid sea. Its empty, wooden planks stretched to a cluster of small wooden shacks, strings of threaded shells hanging off the eaves. In the faint breeze, they clattered a hollow, mournful sound.

  Jàden held tight to Agnar’s bridle as she waited for him beneath a web of twisted roots, her eyes on the sky. Her shoulders hunched again as if hiding something from him. “Frank will send more soldiers.”

  The water dropped to his ankles, and his horse pushed his nose into the water, yanking a clump of sea grass out of the sand.

  “Then we keep fighting.” Jon pulled her forehead against his. Even through his chilled skin, her warmth heated his insides. He sighed and closed his eyes. “We don’t stop until Frank’s dead, got it?”

  His men already on dry sand and settling the horses, he only had a few moments of privacy left with Jàden, and she had him so twisted up right now he couldn’t think straight.

  One question burned his insides. “Why didn’t you take Frank’s offer?”