Chapter One: The Sea Keeps What It Takes The sea had taken everything from her. The dock stretched out beneath a bruised sky, its planks slick with brine and the hush of the rising tide. Seagulls cried overhead, their echoes sharp against the slow rhythm of the waves slapping against the pilings. Elara stood at the edge of it all, a small figure in a blue dress and salt-stained apron, boots a size too big, the wind tangling her red curls around her face. Her fingers clutched a small satchel pressed tight to her chest. It was all she owned now.
Behind her, the village had already turned its back. Windows shuttered. Doors latched. The whispers had faded with the sound of her brother’s departing cart long before the sea’s scent reached her. Marek hadn’t even stayed to watch her go. Fifteen years her elder and free of their parents’ deaths at last, he’d sold her for a purse of coins and a promise that she’d be “looked after.” That promise now stood before her. Captain Roland Armand.
He was built like the sea itself; broad, heavy, weathered, and unforgiving. His beard was gray and grizzled, his eyes the same deep orange as her own, though his carried no warmth. He leaned slightly as he walked, the sound of his peg leg tapping against the dock marking his approach. A corncob pipe hung from his mouth, smoke curling and twisting through the mist.
When he reached her, he said nothing at first. He simply looked her over, from her dirt-smudged face to her trembling hands, then drew a parchment from his coat. A signature marked it in black ink: Marek Armand. He grunted, rolled the paper, and tucked it away. “Right then,” he said, his voice low, the kind that didn’t need to raise to command a room. “Best not keep the tide waitin’.”
Elara followed him because she had nowhere else to go. The ship loomed ahead, dark and immense, her name scrawled in flaking paint across the hull: Windward Star. The sailors called to one another as they worked the rigging, laughter echoing off the boards. But beneath the harmless name, Elara could feel something else, the hum of danger. Her uncle’s ship was no simple cargo vessel. She didn’t know how she knew that… only that she did.
The gangplank creaked beneath her small boots. She hesitated at the top, glancing back once toward the shore, but the land was already fading into fog. Captain Armand didn’t look back. He took the deck with the authority of a man born to it, every sailor straightening at his approach. “Cargo’s secured,” one called. “All accounted for, sir.” Roland gave a curt nod. “And so’s the last piece,” he said, his eyes flicking toward Elara before he turned his back on her.
A few of the crew lingered, rough men, salt-stained and sunburned, their gazes too curious for her liking. One, leaning against the mast, let his eyes wander a little too long. Roland caught it without turning his head. “I ain’t payin’ you to stand around, sailor!” His voice boomed across the deck like thunder. “Back to work before I use that lazy hide for a sail!”
The crewman jumped and vanished up the rigging. The others followed suit, laughter nervously swallowed.
Then Roland’s eyes returned to her; not with concern, but irritation. “You,” he said. “Don’t just stand there lookin’ lost. Below deck. Galley’s aft and port. You’ll keep outta the way unless told otherwise. Understood?” Elara nodded quickly, clutching her satchel tighter. He gave a grunt that might have been approval, or dismissal, then turned back toward the wheel.
The lower decks swallowed her whole. The air grew heavier, thick with damp wood, pitch, and the faint scent of fish. Lanterns swung from the beams, their light dim and wavering. Every step of her boots echoed like a secret in the dark. She found the galley by accident, a small, cramped room where a pot simmered over a swaying flame and an old man with a missing tooth grumbled to himself.
He didn’t look up, only waved her off with a gruff, “Find a corner and stay outta the cook’s way.” And she did.
She tucked herself beneath the stairs, in a narrow nook between crates that smelled of tar and oranges. Someone had left an old blanket there once, and she pulled it around herself, curling small against the chill. Above, the muffled sound of Roland’s boots crossed the deck, slow and steady, keeping rhythm with the sea. Elara turned her face toward the single round window beside her, the world beyond it endless and gray, and whispered softly to herself, “I’ll remember you, Mama. Papa. I’ll remember.”
Outside, the tide drew the ship from the harbor, and the sea, greedy and eternal, reached up to claim what was now its own. The sea kept what it took. And this time, it had taken her.