THE SEA IS A FICKLE WITCH.
She is just as likely to bestow a kiss as to steal the breath from your lips. Beautiful and cruel, and every glimmering wrinkle in between. Filling our bellies and our coffers when she is generous. Coolly watching as we don black and add tears to her waters when she is wicked.
Only the tide follows her moods—giving and taking at the same salty rate.
Still, she is more than our witch—she’s our queen.
In all her spells and tantrums, she is one of us. The crown jewel of Havnestad, nuzzled against our shores—for better or worse.
Tonight, dressed in her best party finery, she appears calm, anger buried well below her brilliant surface. Still, there’s a charge in the air as the stars wink with the coming summer solstice and the close of Nik’s sixteenth birthday.
Formally: Crown Prince Asger Niklas Bryniulf ?ldenburg III, first in line to the throne of the sovereign kingdom of Havnestad.
Informally: just Nik.
But “just Nik” isn’t quite right either. He’s not just anything to me. He’s my best friend. My only friend, really.
And now he’s dancing with Malvina across the deck of his father’s grand steamship. That is, if you can call her violent tossing and whirling “dancing.” My stomach lurches as Nik comes within inches of tipping over the rail after she forces an overenthusiastic spin. I wish she’d just give it up.
Malvina, formally Komtesse Malvina Christensen, is a perpetual royal suitor. She and her father have been vying for King Asger’s attention for years, hoping he will make the match. Yet despite Nik’s good-natured patience for her dancing, I have my doubts there will be a royal wedding in their future.
I want to look away from the pink silk blur of Malvina, but Nik’s eyes are begging me to rescue him. Pleading. Silently calling my name across the distance—Evvvvvvieee.
I am the only one who can save him. Every youth in town is here, but no one else can cut in on a girl like Malvina. For the others, there would be consequences—lost invitations to galas, the oldest horse on the weekend hunt, a seat at the table next to one’s senile great-tante instead of the Komtesse. For me, there are none of those things. You can’t fall far in society if you’re not part of it to begin with.
After another aggressive turn, I finally stride onto the makeshift dance floor, ignoring a chorus of smirks as I go—they’ve seen this play before. Malvina will be the victim, I’ll be the villain, and Nik will let it happen. It can be a messy business, being the crown prince’s confidante; enduring small humiliations is only a fraction of the cost. But I won’t apologize for helping him. We all make compromises in friendships, and having Nik’s loyalty when no one else will even look me in the eye is worth every criticism I face.
I tap the girl on one sturdy shoulder, screw my face into exaggerated panic, and point to the eight-layered, blue-sugar-spackled monstrosity she insisted on crafting.
“Oh, angels, Evie! What is it?” Malvina barks.
“The cake’s icing—”
“Fondant,” she corrects, as if I’ve spit on her oma’s grave.
“The fondant—it’s bulging.”
True panic colors her features as her feet refuse to move. Torn between dancing with Nik and rescuing her masterpiece from a bulbous fate, her eyes skip to my face for a moment, incredulous. She fears I’ve purposely stolen her turn. It’s just the sort of thing the girls of Havnestad think I would do—the ones whispering in the shadows about us now. Except in this case, they’re right.
“Do your duty, Malvina. It was lovely dancing with you.” Nik bends into a slight bow, royal manners on display, not a hint of displeasure in his features.
When his eyes cut away, Malvina sneaks a glare my way, her disdain for me as clear as her worry that I’m actually telling the truth. She doesn’t need to say what she’s thinking, and she won’t—not if she ever wants to dance with Nik again. So, when Nik completes his bow, she simply plasters on a trained smile and leaves him with the most perfect curtsy before running off in a rush of golden hair and intent.
Now Nik bows deeply to me as if I’m his newest suitor, his mop of black hair briefly obscuring his coal-dark eyes. “May I have the remainder of this dance, my lady?”
My lips curl into a smile as my legs automatically dip into a polite curtsy. My lady. Despite how good those words feel, they’re enough to earn me the ire of everyone on this boat. To them I am just the royal fisherman’s daughter abusing the prince’s kindness, using him for his station. They won’t believe we’re just friends, as we’ve always been, since we were in diapers. Before I knew what I was and he knew who he was meant to be.
“But of course, Crown Prince Niklas,” I reply.
He meets my eyes, and we both burst out laughing. Formality has never worn well between us—regardless of Nik’s training.
We settle in and begin to waltz across the deck. He has a good foot on me, but he’s practiced at leaning in—whispers are often our most convenient language.
“Took you long enough,” he says, twirling me through the last bars of the song.
“I wanted to see how long you’d stay dry.”
He gasps with false horror in my ear, a smile tingeing it. “You’d send your own best friend swimming with the mermaids on his birthday?”
“I hear they’re beautiful—not a bad present for a teenage boy.”
“They also prefer their presents not breathing.”
My eyes shoot to his. I can feel the slightest tremble in my jaw. Today would’ve been our friend Anna’s birthday too. It still is, though she is no longer here to celebrate it. She was exactly a year younger than Nik. We’d each had our share of close calls in those days, the great and powerful goddess Urda seeming to want us all for herself. But we lost Anna. I glance down, feeling tears hot against my lash line, even after four years’ time. Nik sighs and tugs a curl off my face. He waits until I finally glance up. There’s a soft smile riding his lips, and I know he regrets pulling us from a place of joy to one so fraught. “Well, thank you for saving me, Evie. As always.”
It’s as good a subject change as any, but it’s not enough—and we both know it. I take a deep breath and look over Nik’s shoulder, not trusting myself to say more. I swallow and try to concentrate on the party. Everything here has been borrowed for Nik’s celebration—the ship, the free-flowing hvidt?l, the band, two servants, and a coal man—and it’s beautiful. I focus on the miniature lanterns ringing the deck, the golden thread of my single fancy dress catching their glow.
Suddenly, Malvina hoists herself onto the dessert table, still frantically trying to control the cake’s growing bulge. I expect Nik to laugh, or at least knock out a very royal snort, but instead he’s looking over my shoulder, portside, at the sea. I follow his eyes, and my heart sputters to a stop when I make out a swift schooner, the familiar line of a boy—a man—adjusting the sail.
“Iker . . .” His name falls from my lips in a sigh before I can catch it. I meet Nik’s eyes, a blush crawling up my cheeks. “I didn’t know he was coming.”
“Neither did I.” He shrugs and raises a brow. “But Iker’s not exactly one to confirm an invitation. Missed that day at prince school. The lecture about being on time, too.”
“I believe it’s called ‘fashionably late,’” I say.
“Yes, well, I suppose I wouldn’t know,” Nik says with a laugh.
The little schooner closes in, and I see that it’s only Iker—he hasn’t brought a crew with him from Rigeby Bay, not that I’d expect him to. He’s a weather-worn fisherman trapped in a life designed for silk and caviar. He redirects the mainsail perfectly, his muscles tensing tightly as he aims straight for his cousin’s form.
Nik leans to my ear. “There goes my dancing partner.”
I punch him on the arm. “You don’t know that.”