Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,119

and her exquisite vengeance to make her an effective leader. It was too hard to believe she was anything more than someone who’d done terrible things in pursuit of something better. She needed room to find her way back to the person she wanted to be, not the person she’d needed to become. And she couldn’t do that under the eyes of people who only knew the story of Caledonia Styx. The Gem had been a part of her story from the beginning, so it had felt like a natural choice. Already her chest felt lighter.

“I need some time to—” Caledonia paused. Pine had called them demons and that had felt familiar to her. All the terrible decisions she’d made were still with her. They snarled in her dreams, made messy nests in her heart, and slipped into her thoughts when she least expected it. They were always there, and she was beginning to think maybe they always would be. She shook her head. “I need time to heal. And I need to give everyone else time, too. They can’t heal if I’m always there to keep the fight alive. I’m surrounded by ghosts and I’m beginning to think maybe I am one, too.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Cala, and I want you to take your time.” As always, Pisces was gentle and firm, guiding Caledonia toward smoother emotional waters. “There are ghosts everywhere these days.”

“I just want them to go away.” It was petulant and Caledonia knew it, but it was how she felt. Pisces laughed and Caledonia sighed hard. “Only you would find that funny.”

“You don’t banish ghosts, you turn them into warships, or whatever you need them to be.” Pisces fixed Caledonia with a pointed look, conjuring the ship Caledonia’s mother had named and they had rebuilt. “After that you have to let them go.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” Caledonia admitted.

The thought of letting go sat uncomfortably. She’d spent so much of her life holding on, clinging to everything she had and fighting to keep it. Even her anger. She clung to her anger because it kept her alive. She clung to her hurt because it kept her resistant. She clung to her ghosts, she realized, because they were her family.

Pisces stepped in front of Caledonia, stopping them both in their tracks. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she cocked her head to the side as if Caledonia were a question in need of answering. Then she reached forward, and her fingers closed around the hilt of the black blade tucked snugly into Caledonia’s waistband. She tugged and the blade pulled free.

“I think I know where to start,” Pisces said.

Caledonia’s eyes fell immediately to the push dagger. It sat in Pisces’s palm, no longer than the length of her hand, its worn wooden handle narrow enough to fit between two fingers, allowing the dagger to protrude like a third, deadly one. She didn’t need it anymore, but it had become a part of her. Against her will at first and then because she’d grown used to the sensation of it at her hip, like a bullet lodged into the trunk of a tree.

Together, they unlaced their boots and waded into the surf. Waves pushed and pulled at their legs as they moved out beyond the break. The water was warm and welcoming, the sand soft beneath their toes, and before them the islands of the Bone Mouth tumbled across the horizon like scattered stones.

Pisces held the dagger out for Caledonia to take. She closed cold fingers over the blade and held it to her chest. For so long, the dagger had been a strange kind of comfort. It had connected her to her past and her future. Now it was only a relic. It had nothing more to give her, so why was letting go of it so hard?

She looked to Pisces, unable to speak. It was as if the ocean were filling her up, swelling inside her and roaring in the back of her throat. She was crying. And her fingers trembled.

Pisces nodded. “It’s time, Cala.”

With a scream that had been building in her chest for turns, Caledonia threw the dagger into the sky. It soared long and far before it fell against the sea and vanished beneath the waves.

It felt good. And terrible. And absolutely right.

“What comes next, Pi?” Caledonia asked.

And with a smile, her friend answered, “Whatever it is, we get to choose.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

At the beginning of this trilogy, I was writing a vicious and joyful response to Mad Max: Fury Road. That movie was an answer to a question I’d been nurturing for a very long time. As a young reader, I adored fantastical stories with epic quests and the highest of stakes, but I struggled to feel like I had a place in those stories. Mad Max: Fury Road changed that. It was an invitation not only to join the adventure, but to demand a role in it. While this story may have started as a love letter to that movie, it became one to the reader I was as a young adult, and I am grateful to all the people who helped me write it.

My wife, Tessa Gratton, deserves first and last thanks for always asking the one question that unlocks crucial pieces of the story. Even if I don’t like the question at the time.

Throughout this entire trilogy, my father has answered every nautical question I threw at him, frequently with so much more detail than I could possibly include here. I’m still sorry I couldn’t work in that detail about the captain’s chair being ziplined from one ship to another!

To Lydia Ash, Dot Hutchison, Adib Khorram, Amanda Sellet, and La Prima Tazza, I am thankful for weekly meetups and lunches. (Fingers crossed we get to do that ever again.) And I will never have enough thanks for the friends who listened to me attempt to excavate parts of this story with semi-wild ravings: Becca Coffindaffer, Zoraida Córdova, Julie Murphy, and Sierra Simone.

My editor, Chris Hernandez, who helped raise the stakes and close this trilogy in the best way possible. To all the unsung heroes at Razorbill and PYR who work behind the scenes to design, copyedit, proof, produce, and sell my work, thank you.

This trilogy wouldn’t exist at all without team Alloy. Lanie Davis, who has helped me identify who I am as an author, and Josh Bank, who is a lot nicer than he wants you to think, I couldn’t do this without you both.

My agent, Lara Perkins, for being a mentor, friend, and steady hand in rough seas.

To all of the booksellers, librarians, and teachers who have championed this series, especially the team at the Raven Book Store.

And to my readers, for sailing with Caledonia and her crew from the very beginning. Thank you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Natalie C. Parker is the author of the Beware the Wild duology, the Seafire trilogy, and the editor of Three Sides of a Heart. She earned her BA in English literature from the University of Southern Mississippi and her MA in gender studies from the University of Cincinnati. She grew up in a navy family finding home in coastal cities from Virginia to Japan. Now she lives surprisingly far from any ocean on the Kansas prairie where she runs Madcap Retreats with her wife. She tweets @nataliecparker.

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