Sea of Mists (Knight Protector: Black Wyvern #3) by Rachel Ford

Author:Rachel Ford [Ford, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Lesbian, Fantasy
Goodreads: 61111474
Published: 2023-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Valia gave the order to sail, as far and as fast away from the entanglement as they could. The beast, Cadfael learned, was a kraken. The same mythical creature for which the ship was named.

Except, they clearly weren’t mythical.

The mist swallowed them up quickly enough, both ship and monster. But the sounds of chaos followed. Screams. Cannon fire. Breaking wood and shredding metal.

Cadfael’s own fear threatened to push away any other sensations, yet a few broke through. The crew’s fear.

The voice that had reached him before, warned him. Go. Go while you can.

The beast. He could still hear its heartbeat, but now he felt something else. Pain. He could sense its suffering as the sound of cannon fire boomed across the water. It had been hit, and the hits hurt.

The wyvern didn’t know quite what to do with that information. It had spared them, so perhaps it was a friend. Or perhaps it had seen that armored warship that could withstand flame and cannonballs, and decided it would be the more pressing threat. Perhaps it meant to finish them off as soon as it had finished with the Reaver.

Great, bellowing roars joined the cacophony. Deep and guttural, reverberating through the water, through the ship itself. The creature, the kraken, shouting – in pain? In anger?

Cadfael couldn’t tell. Again, fear surged in him, and everything else began to dim by comparison.

Then, abruptly, the noise ended. Stillness, a seeming absolute silence, settled on the water.

But that wasn’t true, not really. The cannons had ceased their booming, the kraken had ended its bellowing. Yet men went on screaming, their voices little more than whispers as far away as they were now. The ships went on groaning – their own under sail and taking on water from the impact, and far, far away, the Reaver.

He didn’t know what condition it might be in, but it hadn’t sunk. So maybe it could follow them still. Maybe they’d killed the kraken, and meant to pursue him yet.

Cadfael closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate, to listen for that heartbeat. He found it.

Dum-da. Dum-da. Dum-da.

Not as loud, slipping farther and farther away. But not dead, and not chasing them.

He didn’t know if he should be glad that the kraken lived or not, but somehow, he was. He felt an immeasurable gratitude toward the creature that might have killed them but chose not to. He felt sympathy, too.

Like them, Kutarian and his men had bested the kraken. They’d sent it slinking off to the depths, the way they’d sent them slinking off.

Foolish, perhaps, and misguided. Yet he couldn’t shake it.

The drumbeat grew fainter and fainter, and so too did the sounds of Kutarian’s ship and men, until he couldn’t hear them at all. Not the voice that had warned them, and not the cries of the dying or the moans of the vessel.

The kraken hadn’t sunk the Reaver, but it had done the next best thing – it had stopped its pursuit.

Valia took full advantage of that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.