Wicked Gods: Book One by Veronica Perez

Author:Veronica Perez [Perez, Veronica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2025-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

A smooth tongue hides a barbed heart. Seek truth not in honeyed words, but in the silence that follows.

—Verse 10, the Book of Hush

Ican't breathe.

The journey back to the Nightingale is nothing but a blurry haze composed of garbled voices and sporadic jostling. Someone rows the longboat. Waves slap the wooden hull beneath me, jerking us all back and forth in an unsettling tempo, but I could not fathom the will to care—or even be afraid—if I tried.

Though my fingers grip the bench, I am far away, as if floating to another realm, and Rhyland’s words keep echoing through my head.

“...when put together they create a potent potion.… A potion that suppresses powerful magick.”

I’m aware of the tense looks the pirate lord keeps throwing me, just barely. The weight of them lingers on the edges of my subconscious, but again I simply can’t care. Let him see me fall apart. Let him know how his claims have pried the heart from me. My màma…lied? Bound my magick, yet watched me struggle, offered words of encouragement knowing she was the reason my powers would not come. That the others labeled me as different. A weakling. Unworthy of notice. Forced to the shadows, away from the other young Nymphs. Mocked. Ridiculed.

And why, why, why? Why would she do it? Brand me as more other than I already am from them?

My breath is ragged when I find Rhyland’s voice dangerously close to my ear.

“Nymph, we’ve reached the ship.” He pushes the hood of the wedding cloak back, the one thing that shielded my windstorm of emotions from the rest of the crew sitting in the small boat, pretending not to notice our whispering. Looking anywhere but at us.

It's tempting to pull it back on, but instead I work to swallow against my shock and grief. To grapple for an inkling of composure. Rowan is on that ship, waiting for me. For a solution. And likely an explanation for what in the four realms has happened while I was away.

Salt spray stings my eyes as I move to grip the side of the longboat, and glimpse the oars digging deep into the churning waves. The closer we draw to the Nightingale, the more legend solidifies into breathtaking reality. I haven't yet seen the ship from this angle. Her hull, the blackest obsidian, seems to absorb the early morning rays of the sun, casting an inky sheen across the water. She's massive, dwarfing our little craft by a factor of ten. Her three masts, impossibly tall and thick, pierce the misty, robin egg sky, each crowned with a monstrous sail, rolled tight against the harsh winds that rip along the coast.

With a growing sense of dread, I crane my neck to take in the details I've overlooked during my time aboard her. The rigging, a complex web of tarred hemp, creaks and groans in the wind like the mournful song of a siren. Ropes as thick as a man's thigh snake from the yards, each manned by the silhouette of a crewman.

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