Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,50

the leader meant accepting responsibility for things she could not always control.

“I have been asking myself that same thing.” Caledonia swept her gaze across the whole crowd. Answering as though the question had come from all of them. “I will not always be right.” She gave the statement room to travel, to be heard before she continued. “I cannot promise you that we will win. I can’t promise you we won’t lose again. I can’t promise we will survive this fight.” She paused again, taking a deep breath. “The only thing I can promise is that I will never stop fighting to stop Lir, to change this world and give those who survive us something better than what we have!”

Caledonia’s voice was a roar and her command crew took up the cry, raising their voices and slamming their feet against the deck.

“We can do this, but we have to act now!” she shouted. “Are you with me?”

All at once, the rest of the crowd took up the call, raising their voices and stomping their feet. It was so much more than the urgent song of war that vibrated in the air on the dawn of battle; this was the steady pulse of the ocean current, the constant coiling and uncoiling of the wind; this was the cut of a blade, the sting of sweat, the grinding pain of a throat screamed raw.

It was a song of survival.

“Prepare your ships!” Caledonia cried.

In moments the fleet was mobilized, their noses aimed for the Net with the Luminous Wake running out in front like a banner. At her starboard side was the Blade, Sledge and Pine in command.

“Captain,” Harwell called as Caledonia entered the bridge. “Gloriana reports that there are signs of a recent battle, but as far as she can see, the only ships still at the Net belong to Tassos. She’s holding position until we arrive.”

“I guess we know where Lir sailed after Cloudbreak,” Pisces muttered.

“He doesn’t like to fail,” Caledonia confirmed, following Pisces’s line of thought. “But seems like Tassos outsmarted him.”

“Not something anyone saw coming, I promise you,” Oran added.

Leaving Nettle at the helm, Caledonia moved onto the command deck, where she could keep the horizon in view while the wind whipped at her cheeks. Her ankle ached only dimly now and she walked without any sign of a limp. Behind the Luminous Wake the fleet spread out like the wings of great bird. Even leaving one crew stationed at the Gem to wait for more survivors, they were eighteen ships strong. Eight ships flanked either side of the Luminous and the Blade, each one with Caledonia’s sigil emblazoned on its hull in stark white paint. Together, they churned up the sea, boldly leaving a slashing trail in the surface of the ocean as they passed between the smaller islands of the Bone Mouth.

A whistle from on high signaled the first sighting of the Net. In the seconds that followed, Caledonia saw them: a line of small shapes pressed against the horizon like smudges of paint.

The ships grew larger as they drew closer, their hulls sheering out of the ocean. Before them, the water was littered with evidence of a recent battle, jagged leaves of metal clawing out of the sea with edges still smoking.

An involuntary shiver rushed down her spine at the sight. These ships had haunted her thoughts all her life and now she was approaching them, not under cover of night, but in the full light of day. Not with the intent to slip past them, but to engage them. Even now, it went against every instinct she’d ever honed, and her mother’s voice whispered in the back of her mind, Run.

“I can’t tell if I’m nervous,” Pisces said quietly at Caledonia’s side, “or if I only think I should be nervous.”

“They’re just ships,” Caledonia answered, doing everything she could to sound sure of herself, but she knew exactly what Pisces meant. They’d spent their lives equating these ships with captivity, with Aric’s biting grip. Coming here intentionally was like sailing into a nightmare.

“If you believed that, we’d have come here long ago.” Pisces’s voice turned wry as she called her sister’s bluff.

Inside the bridge, the crew had grown steely and quiet. Every terrible story they’d ever heard about failed attempts to breach the Net present in their minds as they drew approached.

Caledonia took a minute to study the impassive structure, calming her own mind with a practical task. The ships were uniformly large, their forward-facing