The high tide was just a breath away. Melda screamed as it rushed forward from both directions, trapping them—
With a final groan from Vesper, the pearl shrunk in a flash and propelled into her waiting palm.
She closed her hand—and the sea stopped dead, suspended in midair, lapping against an invisible wall.
* * *
Vesper had held the pearl high until they reached the docks. When she dropped her hand, high tide had rushed forward, swallowing the land bridge, blanketing it completely, as if it had never existed.
Then, safely in the harbor, she sunk to her knees and sobbed.
Captain Forecastle was groaning.
Melda pulled something from her pocket. Her arenahora. Only a shred of sand remained.
They had gotten the pearl. Now, they just needed to get home in time to use it.
There was something else in Melda’s pocket. The telecorp’s coin. She gently approached Vesper, who handed over the scale, her expression never changing.
“If it amplifies power,” Melda said quietly. “It might amplify the coin enough to bring us home.”
Tor thanked the universe for Grimelda Alexander. His mind was shattered into pieces he still hadn’t been able to gather together.
But his family, Estrelle—they needed them.
He couldn’t fall apart. Not yet.
They all stacked their palms in a tower over the coin and scale, Captain Forecastle’s feeling very cold. Vesper held their ship in her other hand.
And then, they spirited away.
21
The Boiling Sea
Tor could feel the ground beneath his feet before the rest of his body joined him. He was a shadow, then a ghost, then full and real, the weight of him slamming into place in one swift movement that left him breathless.
He opened his eyes and nearly fell to his knees.
They were in his living room, in his family’s hut, built into the base of a tree. One with purple leaves, for leadership.
Melda and Engle turned to him, and he rushed to embrace them. Their last journey had started in this very room, after Tor had discovered the curse on his wrist. And now, it was where their second journey had ended.
He swallowed, taking a step back, watching as Vesper and Captain Forecastle looked around, confused.
No—it wasn’t over yet. “I’ll send help,” Tor promised Captain Forecastle, leading him to a chair.
The pirate looked too pale, too much blood coating his clothes. Still, he managed a smile and said, “Make the sea boil.”
Tor turned to Melda, Engle, and Vesper. “Come on.”
He led them out the front door, into the village. Its streets were empty, just like his house. He wondered if his mother had managed to evacuate everyone in time.
Melda clutched the arenahora in her hand, watching as the final pebbles of sand fell through.
Then, the glass shattered.
“Tor!” she yelled, and he knew what it meant.
Their time was up.
The Calavera were thawing.
They reached the beach, and Tor saw his mother at the head of a small crowd gathered at the shore. He recognized them all. His neighbors, the other members of the council. His father.
All there, holding weapons. Ready to protect their home, even though they were outmatched ten to one. Even though Tor had never seen any of them fight a day in their lives.
“Mom!” he yelled and saw Chieftess Luna’s back stiffen.
She turned slowly. Her bottom lip was trembling, tears gathered in her eyes. “Tor?” she whispered.
He rushed forward and threw his arms around her. “We have it, we’re here,” he said, just as something whipped right past his head and exploded against a palm tree.
A cannonball.
“One of them has thawed completely! The rest aren’t far behind,” Engle said.
“Quick, we need a healer,” Tor said, finding Mrs. Herida in the crowd. He quickly explained Captain Forecastle’s injury, and she rushed toward his hut.
Vesper had the pearl clutched in one hand and the scale in the other. She didn’t look at Tor or anyone else. Her eyes were angry and locked on a single Calavera ship—one that held hundreds of people with hair just like hers.
Her people.
She stepped into the same water that had washed her to shore just days before, bloodied and a breath from death.
And she slipped beneath them.
Fast as a rocket, she shot through the sea, then surfaced in a breathtaking wave, the water lifting her up in a glorious spiral beneath her feet. She was right in front of the head Calavera ship.
“He’s there, the captain,” Engle said quietly. “And the spectral.”
With a flick of her hand, she sent a wave right over the ship that held the trapped Swordscales, and Tor watched from afar as they used it as a bridge back into the ocean, toward their home. With her other palm, she used the power of the pearl to make a wall of water, blocking the Calavera, who had started to shoot their weapons at the Swordscales as they fled.
After years of swimming in Sapphire Sea, Tor knew the bone boat was right below her. Vesper’s people could use its portal to go back to their home, unharmed. When the final silver head was beneath the water, Vesper brought both of her arms high above her head—
And unleashed.
She sent giant waves crashing against each Calavera ship, forcing them together, their wood groaning and shattering as they rammed into each other. With the pearl clutched tightly in her fist, she split through two ships with slices of sea that she had honed to cut as sharply as blades. Screams pierced the air as the Calavera fell into the water, their ships falling to pieces around them.
The Calavera captain yelled orders, and the shark at the helm of his vessel broke free, then made a path for Vesper. It was five times her size, a monstrous beast that could devour her hole without a single chomp of its teeth.
But she controlled the sea. And, with a flick of her wrist, the shark turned, then launched toward its captain instead. The mammoth creature flew out of the water, mouth opened wide to devour him.
He fell back, but the shark caught his hand—ripping it clean off before disappearing underwater.
The
