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My boots sank into the sand, my tired muscles burning as I tried to move over it. I’d spent my whole life looking at the sea from afar. Through my window in Fort Linum, a ship on the water’s surface was nothing but a dot from the end of an artist’s brush, but if I stared long enough, they distinguished themselves. And it was always easiest to tell when it was Nemea’s ships that floated into the harbor.
The red, eel-stitched flag, flapping in the wind as if it were undulating through the sea. The dark sails, the same color as King Nemea’s bitter wine. Theodore reached my side; our bond calmed. He saw what I did, and it morphed his countenance back into that of a king. His chin lowered. His gaze grew hard. “There he is.”
There was not a hint of surprise in his voice. He’d been prepared, he’d known Nemea’s men would come. So had I, but I found myself staring, slack-jawed, with terror wriggling through me as if it were that Godsdamned eel.
Nemea had come to take back what was his.