Page 191 of Keldori By Daybreak

“On his way.” Dark water sprayed at our side as a swell broke against rocks, sticky with salt and surprisingly warm. “Iseult, how’s the tide look?”

Iseult read from Mom’s newest journal by the light of her Skal leg. She shook her head. “We’re cutting it close. We might have to hide on the island to avoid Caitria while we wait for it to be at its lowest again.”

“How long would that take?”

“Ten hours or so.”

We scraped against barnacle-studded rock, and then dropped into the valley between two swells.

“There’s no time,” Tiernan said through gritted teeth. Arm muscles strained with the effort of rowing us away from another rock.

“The alternative is drowning,” Iseult reminded him.

“I’d rather drown than deal with my sister.”

The boat lurched, and we fell off our benches with the movement. A dark-clad arm reached into the boat, and green fur rippled in the water next to us.

“Una’s got it from here,” Ciarán grunted as he heaved himself out of the ocean and into the floor of the rowboat. “Davyn’s men are doing what they can, but we need to hurry.”

Tiernan gave Iseult a look, and she slammed the notebook shut.

“Fine,” she snapped. “But if we drown, I’m going to be livid.”

Una piloted us through the rocks, pulling us by the remnants of the rope that had secured the rowboat to Davyn’s ship. The crashing of waves overtook the bursting of Caitria’s magick. Cliffs at least a hundred feet high towered overhead, but through the dark of the night and the spray of the ocean, a crevice stained the rock in inky black.

Jonquil yowled in her cage as we rocked and dropped between swells. Rocks appeared so suddenly in the water and spray that I was certain we would’ve been bashed against them without Una’s help navigating.

An embankment exposed by the low tide sat ahead, and the rowboat rose a final time as Una pulled us through the swell. The water smashed against rock, and our boat skidded across barnacles and mollusks.

“Hurry!” Ciarán bellowed, and I turned to see another wave bearing down.

I clambered out of the rowboat, my backpack over my shoulder, as Ciarán grabbed both Fana and Jonquil’s cage.

We slipped and staggered over rocks, and water crashed behind us. Ocean spray licked at my back, and I slipped on kelp, but Orla caught me by my arm.

“You’re almost home, Wren,” she said. “Come on.”

She craned her head up to the Skalterran sky, looking like the Tortoise itself, as she drank in her last glimpse of her home world.

The cave was uncomfortably warm. Humid air clung to my face, skin, and clothes as we climbed the rocks deeper into its maw. It reeked of sulfur and dead kelp. A particularly strong swell surged around our feet, soaking our boots in salty foam before violently receding back into the ocean.

“We’re too late,” Iseult warned, but continued to clamber into the cave when a loud blast of magick echoed over the surf and shoals.

Davyn and his crew would only be able to hold Caitria off for so long.

We crested the cave’s initial incline, but my heart crept into my throat when the floor dropped in a steep slope that disappeared into dark, fetid water.

“It’s a dead end,” Tiernan said, holding a Skal bottle aloft in search of a path around the pool.

“It’s not.” The grim set of Iseult’s frown hinted at the way forward. “Jonquil isn’t going to like this part.”

She’d had the wherewithal to take the rope from the rowboat with us, and she held firm on one end and handed the other to Orla.

“What’s this for?” Orla asked.

“If I tug on it three times, that means it lets out somewhere on the other side, and it’s safe to follow me,” Iseult explained. She unbuckled her metal armor and let it fall to the cave floor, keeping only Lyria’s helm.

“Your armor—” Orla started.