Elena Mar's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Elena Mar dragged herself out of the surf and knew she would die if she did not get dry. She was a princess of Corona, but the sea did not care. It had swallowed her ship, her crew, and everything but the torn gown clinging to her legs and the gold pendant her mother gave her. She pressed the pendant hard against her chest. Then she looked up the beach for anything that might keep her alive until morning. The sun was already sliding low. Cold crawled up from her wet skin into her bones. She needed shelter, and she needed it before dark. Somewhere out past the water was a ship that could carry her home, and she meant to live long enough to signal one. But a dead woman signaled nothing. First she had to survive the night. She stumbled toward the tree line on shaking legs. That was when she smelled smoke. Behind a hump of black rock, a fire burned in a ring of stones. Driftwood crackled at its center. Beside it stood a crude shelter of sticks and leaves, low and lopsided but real. Someone had built this. Someone was alive on an island that appeared on no map she knew. "Stop there." A man leaned against a tree at the edge of the firelight. He held one hand pressed to his side, where dark cloth showed through his torn shirt. A sword hung at his belt. His dark hair was stiff with salt, and a scar cut down one cheek. He watched her the way a hurt animal watches. "I'm not going to hurt you," Elena said. Her teeth clicked together. "I came off a ship. It sank." "Everyone here came off a ship," the man said. He did not move to help her. "Please. I only need the fire. One night." He studied her torn gown, then the pendant, then her face. "Blackwater," he said, as if the name cost him something. "Alexander Blackwater. That shelter holds one dry body. I built it." Elena stepped closer to the flames anyway. The heat touched her hands and she nearly wept from it. "Then we share it," she said. "Or you can watch me freeze and bury me in the morning. Your choice." Blackwater almost smiled. It did not reach his eyes. He shifted his weight, and his breath caught around the wound in his side. He was worse off than he wanted her to know. "Sit by the fire," he said. "Don't touch my things." Elena sank down onto the warm sand. Steam rose off her ruined skirt. For the first time since the water took her, she was not going to die tonight. But the man across the fire kept one hand on his sword and one hand on his ribs. He needed something from this island, and he was running out of days to get it. Elena watched him watch her, and understood that surviving the sea had only bought her a harder problem.