Tides of Torment (Immortal Realms Book 2)
Tides of Torment: Chapter 24

Every part of Sereia’s body hurt, the exhaustion from overextending her abilities taking its toll. Dropping down to the deck beside Travion, Sereia leaned back against the rail and shut her eyes. The image of Svenik screaming in the water while two sharks tore him apart flashed through her mind. Gasping, her eyes shot open. How long would it take for that sight to fade from vivid memory? How long for the many corpses of Sahille’s beach, or the charred corpse of Zaitsev’s first mate?

Sereia rubbed at her forehead, then brushed hair back from her face. The knowledge that she was in this for the long haul settled over her. She would not be able to rest until they caught the true monster responsible for this. Whatever happened, she needed to see this through.

Someone had to pay for this hell.

“I’m sorry for your crew, Trav,” Sereia said softly. She took his hand, offering a light squeeze.

Travion shifted his hand so their fingers could thread together, hands palm to palm. He didn’t say anything, just nodded. There was a turbulent look brewing in his eyes, and Sereia could only guess how much pain and anger was swirling around inside him over this. “They know we’re coming for them,” he ground out. “Those sharks were sent deliberately to stop us.”

She nodded.

“I can’t let them have Midniva as well.” His hand tightened on hers.

Sereia leaned in to press a kiss to his damp shoulder. “And we won’t.” She pulled back a little, only so she could study his face. “We will stop them, Travion. Do you know how I know?” His eyes shifted to look at her. “Because neither you nor I are going to cease until we do.”

He leaned in then to press a firm kiss to her lips. “No, we will not.”

Sereia offered him a tender smile, then stood, dropping his hand. “Rest, you’ve just survived a nightmare. I am going to see to my crew and the lodging of the remainder of yours.”

Sereia stepped away before he could respond, and found Adrik and Chailai looking over the sodden members of their own ship and those from Speedwell.

“How many survived?” she asked softly.

Chailai and Adrik shifted around her, so that they could speak quietly amongst themselves. “Only twelve, Captain,” Adrik informed her.

Sereia cursed. “Not even half.” She looked around them, seeing the harrowed looks on the naval officers’ faces. “Shift our crew around, make sure we have space for all of them to bunk down below for the remainder of the trip home.”

Adrik nodded. “Will do.”

Sereia looked at Chailai. “How bad are the injuries?”

“Not terrible, but hypothermia will be the worst case right now.”

“Okay, let’s get everyone moved below deck as soon as possible.” Sereia turned to the crew, a deep need to console them in some manner surfacing.

She moved to kneel beside Brenid, a younger crewmember who had been close friends with Svenik. He was busy wrapping a bandage around the arm of a Speedwell crew member, but there was deep turmoil in his eyes. “Brenid, may I ask a favor of you?”

He looked up, eyes full of held-back tears. “Of course, Captain.” His voice broke a little.

“Will you go down and help Cook prepare a nice hot stew for everyone? I’ll finish this.”

Relief shone in his dark brown eyes, and he nodded quickly. “Thanks,” he whispered before he stood and left.

Sereia turned to the officer before her and took up where Brenid had left off. Carefully, she wound the strip of sail fabric around his arm, then tied it off tightly to secure it in place. “Is that the only place you’re harmed?”

“Yes, thank you.” His fingers rubbed lightly over the bandage. Though he wasn’t gravely injured, there was a woundedness to his eyes that spoke of the damage done to his mind and soul.

Would any of them ever be able to sleep again?

Sereia stood and walked over to the next man, but he had already been cared for and was wrapped up in a spare blanket. Yannik approached her then, distracting her from her surveillance of the ship’s new inhabitants.

“Captain?”

“Yes?”

“The crew and I . . . we want to know if there’s going to be a sendoff for Dannae, Hakai, and Svenik?”

Sereia sighed, fingers working at her forehead once more. “There isn’t time to do it properly.” For that, they would need to circle back to where they had lost them. But that shouldn’t mean they would be left behind entirely. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Come.”

Together, they walked to the bow of the ship. Sereia brought two fingers to her lips and whistled sharply. When all eyes were on her, she began to speak.

“When those who live and work beside us at sea are lost, it is customary to say a true farewell. But we are needed back in Midniva, and there isn’t time to stop and do things properly.” Even now, Captain Darragh was using his abilities to help push The Saorsa more quickly through the water. Once she and Travion had had a chance to rest a little, their abilities would also join his efforts. “But those who have been lost should not be forgotten, and we will say farewell.”

Sereia wrapped her fingers around the chain of her pendant, pulling harshly so that it snapped. As she extended her hand over the railing, the pendant slipped down to dangle from her fingertips, the carved selkie spinning in the air before her. Sereia relaxed her fingers and let her offering drop into the water below.

“For Dannae, Hakai, and Svenik.”

Following her lead, officers and pirates alike stepped up to the railing and dropped a token into the water below, murmuring the names of those closest to them that had been lost.

Boran, who stood at the helm looking down at all of them, began to sing a sad, mournful Tribonik song of remembrance.

Sereia stepped back, allowing room for everyone to come and pay their respects. She watched Travion step up to the railing, extending his hand and letting a gold coin slip from his palm.

Boran’s song continued until the last person had said their goodbyes, and then he let it fade off into the air. As silence fell over them, leaving just the lapping of the waves against the helm, Sereia prayed silently to the gods of before. Let no one else die.

Once everyone had been fed and warmed, Adrik and Finn had forced both Sereia and Travion to retire for the night. Darragh assured them he had more than enough energy to keep pushing the ship faster toward Midniva, and promised once he was tired, he would wake them.

However, despite the exhaustion weighing over her body like a heavy blanket, Sereia was unable to sleep. She simply laid there, body aching, soul pained, and stared into the darkness of her quarters.

Travion lay beside her, his arm curled around her, tucking her into his side. His fingers splayed over her hip, pressing lightly into her flesh with just enough tension to tell her that he, too, couldn’t get the day’s events off his mind.

The sorrow within them was heavy, but Sereia rested comfortably in the crook of his arm with her head on his shoulder. Even in the worst of times, Sereia realized, there was no place she would rather be than in Travion’s arms. There was solace here, provided in a way nothing else could. It felt so entirely right and natural.

So natural that it was beginning to make her life on the sea seem hollow. She had been fine for over a century, spending her days exploring the waters and collapsing into her berth at night. It hadn’t seemed empty before. Not when she’d visited every country attached to their ocean and the ones beyond.

She’d gone so far as to sail through the veil and drink her way through the vast halls of the ashmanik warriors of Torksvala. They were a fierce people who prided themselves on both exploration and battle skills. To die in battle was an honor and what all of them sought. And their ruling family was the fiercest of all: twin brothers set to burn the world down if so provoked.

It was all she had ever wanted. Experience. Life. Keeping her eye on the ocean before her and letting the wind tangle her hair with the scent of salt water all around her.

But it wasn’t enough. Not anymore.

Sereia opened her lips to say as much but found her words stuck in her throat.

Coward.

Travion stirred, his eyes opening and catching her stare. Instead of mocking her, his gaze softened, and his arm pulled her closer. His free hand lifted, and he brushed his fingers tenderly through her wayward tresses. “Sereia . . .” His voice caught, and for a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to go on. “I love you.”

Her eyes widened as her heart stuttered to a stop in her chest before restarting into a wild gallop. She had to have heard him wrong. He hadn’t even said those words when he proposed. “What?” Sereia whispered, needing to know that she had heard him right.

Travion’s hand left her hair and drifted down to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing tenderly across her full bottom lip. “I almost died again . . . The likelihood I’ll come out of this battle is beginning to look pretty grim. I don’t want to breathe my last breath without having told you how I feel. How I’ve always felt.” He leaned in to press a soft kiss to the tip of her nose. “You’ve had my heart since that first moment when you antagonized me on the dance floor at your mother’s ball. There has never been another, and I know there never will be.”

Her heart tripped along so quickly that Sereia thought perhaps it would burst from her chest and fly around the room. Instead, her own hand traveled up to the side of his neck. Beneath her touch, she felt how his pulse hammered away. Was he nervous?

“Oh, Travion . . . why have you never said so before?”

“The first time I tried to make you mine, you fled from me. In fact, you couldn’t get far enough fast enough . . .” He chuckled, but it was a cold, bitter sound, and in it, she could hear how her foolish, younger self had hurt him with her actions. A wound he had carried with him all this time and yet never made her pay for. “I couldn’t risk saying it and you fleeing from me again, perhaps never to return.”

“Until now.”

He nodded. “Until now.”

Her heart was stricken. Knowing that he’d held himself back because he didn’t want to risk chasing her off. Had, in fact, accepted a partial life with her entirely on her terms.

Sereia felt strangely close to tears. Something she was not used to.

Instead of letting them fall, she leaned in to press a heated kiss to his lips, letting all her feelings spill into it. He growled softly, his fingers burying into the hair at the back of her neck and angling her head back so that he could kiss her more deeply.

Except this wasn’t what she had meant to do, not where she wanted to take them. Not yet. So she pulled back to press her forehead against his. Their warm breath mingled, the moment intimate and important. Life altering.

“I love you too, Travion. I loved you even then. It’s why I had to flee in such a manner, because if I had resisted for even a second, I would have let you sweep me off my feet and keep me there in Midniva.” Her fingers pressed into the back of his neck, needing to reassure herself again, despite it all, that he was here and secure in her arms. “But I carried you with me everywhere I went. It’s why I keep coming back. Because I love you too much to stay away.”

They were kissing once more, Travion’s tongue parting her lips so that it could ravage her mouth, leaving her shaking and pressing into him. He turned onto his side, and her leg moved up over his hip, pulling him in more tightly against her. Rocking her heated core against his hardening member, Sereia felt a thrill run through her at Travion’s responding moan of pleasure.

Their kissing became more heated, taking on a frantic quality. She wasn’t sure who began taking off who’s clothes first, but soon she was out of her top and Travion was out of his slacks, his mouth on her breast ringing cries of pleasure from her while one hand clutched tightly in his hair, and the other wrapped around his length to stroke him.

“Travion,” she moaned. She wanted him. Needed him. “Travion—” But there was something sounding in the room, a thumping noise like the call of a drum. Something that was pulling her from the spell Travion had woven around her.

He, too, had stilled, his lips coming off her breast, and his head lifted so he could stare back at her in a mix of frustration and confusion.

“The bowl,” they said at the same time.

Grappling for his slacks, Travion stepped into them, tugging them back up as he crossed her quarters and stopped to stoop over the stone bowl attached to her desk.

“I am here.”

“Uncle! You’re a hard being to track down.” Kian sounded strained.

Sereia reached for her top, pulled it back over her head, and thrust her arms through the holes at its sides so that she was covered by the time she reached Travion’s side.

“The Speedwell has sunk, so my mirror bowl lies at the bottom of the sea.”

Kian was silent for a beat before responding. “Sunk? Are you okay?”

“He’s alive and injury free, miraculously. But we both lost crew members in the attack,” Sereia supplied.

The second prince of Lucem looked harried, his brows pinched, and his vibrant blue eyes stared back through them. “I am so sorry to hear that. I’m afraid I haven’t any better news. Mointeach has also suffered an attack.”

Travion stiffened. “How bad is it?”

“The spider crabs came out of the ocean in the night. Larger than anything I’ve ever seen. The watchmen caught them coming and were able to sound the alarm, but there was nothing to be done for those that lived right along the coastline.” Kian’s eyes were grief-stricken. “The navy besieged them from the water, but they were naught but annoyances against their shells. Uncle Draven and his harpies kept the creatures at bay long enough for your army and his wolves to evacuate the town. But they weren’t able to destroy them. I’m sorry, uncle, but Mointeach is gone.”

Travion turned and kicked the chair near him, sending it crashing into the wall. Several items from the shelf above shattered on the floor.

“I’ve failed you.”

“No, you’ve done what you could under the circumstances. I am only sorry I’ve left this on your shoulders.”

Travion’s face was pained, brows pinched and lips pursed tight. Sereia slipped her hand into his, hoping to offer some form of comfort. “What is your status now?” she asked Kian.

“Anyone that wasn’t able to travel to landlocked areas of Midniva has been brought into the castle. Between Eden and I, we’ve woven a barricade of her vines covered in my gold alloy between the castle and the cliffs. It should keep anything from reaching the castle or heading into the capital. For the moment, we’re safe. Ruan arrived on the hour, and he and Uncle Draven are convening with the army and the navy. Nothing else has attacked since Mointeach, and we seem to be holding our own now, but I’m not certain how long we’ll be able to keep it up if something larger should come from the sea.”

Travion’s hand tightened on Sereia’s, the tension in his body visible. He was nearly vibrating with his need to be there in Midniva, with his family and his people. She knew it didn’t sit well with him to be so far away from the battle and danger.

“And what of your father and mother?” Travion asked.

“For the moment, they remain behind, in case this is nothing but a distraction and another attack comes to Lucem. But they are prepared to come here at the first sign of need.”

Travion nodded. “You’ve done well, nephew. Continue to hold firm, rely on your brother and your uncle, and I will push us to be back before there is any more cause for alarm.”

“Travel swiftly but safely.” Kian then disappeared from the bowl.

Sereia sighed and moved to slip her arms around him. “I am so sorry about Mointeach.”

Travion bowed his head to bury his face in her hair. He didn’t say anything, but Sereia could feel the pain inside him through the tenseness of his body and the swift beating of his heart against her ear. Instead of saying anything else, she simply held him, trying to give whatever comfort she could offer.