Read Chapter 11: The Storm at Sea

The wind had been lying to them all day.

Isabelle felt it now, standing at the bow of Yann’s boat, *La Trinité*, as the sky turned the color of a bruise. The forecast had promised calm. The sea had agreed, lying flat and silver all afternoon. But the air had a taste to it—salt and iron, like a coin left on the tongue—and Yann had known. He’d known, and he’d said no.

“It’s the full moon,” he’d told her at the dock, arms crossed, jaw set. “Whatever your grandmother believed, whatever your mother ran from—I won’t be the man who takes a Marchand woman onto the water tonight.”

She’d kissed him then. Not to persuade him—she told herself—but because he was brave enough to say no to her, and she loved him for it, and she hated herself for what she was about to do anyway.

She’d waited until he went below to check the mooring lines. Then she’d cast off herself.

Now the sky was closing like a fist.

“Isabelle.” His voice came from behind her, rough and low. She didn’t turn. “Turn us back. Now. While we still can.”

“We’re already out.” She said it flatly, watching the horizon fold into itself. “There’s no back.”

He grabbed her arm, spun her to face him. His eyes were wild—not with anger, but with something older. Fear. “You don’t understand what you’ve done. This boat, this tide, this night—my grandfather went out on a night like this. He never came back.”

“Then help me understand.” She held his gaze. “What happened to him?”

Yann’s jaw worked. He looked away, toward the shore of Keravel, already small behind them. “He went out to meet a woman. A Marchand woman. She’d sent him a letter, begging him to take her away from the castle. He loved her. He would have done anything.”

“Who?”

“Your great-aunt.” He swallowed. “Yvonne.”

The name hit her like cold water. “Yvonne faked her death to escape a marriage. She didn’t need to be taken away.”

“She did.” Yann’s voice cracked. “She needed someone to take her *to* something—a place in the sea. She told my grandfather it was the only way to end the curse. She promised she’d survive. She promised him they’d come back together.”

Isabelle felt the locket warm against her chest. “He drowned.”

“His boat was found on the rocks at Devil’s Stirrup. Empty. No body.” Yann’s hand tightened on her arm. “The curse doesn’t just take the women, Isabelle. It takes anyone who helps them try to break it.”

The first wave hit the hull.

It came from nowhere—a wall of black water that lifted *La Trinité* like a toy and slammed it sideways. Isabelle cried out, lost her footing, and Yann caught her against his chest as the deck tilted hard. Rain began to fall, not in drops but in sheets, and the wind arrived a second later with a sound like screaming.

“Below deck!” Yann shouted over the roar. “Now!”

She didn’t argue. She scrambled toward the hatch, but the boat pitched again, and she slammed against the gunwale. Pain flared through her ribs. The locket grew hot—almost burning—against her skin.

A voice rose from the storm. Not Yann’s. Not her own.

It came from the water, from the wind, from the hollow space between one wave and the next. A woman’s voice, ancient and familiar, the same voice she’d heard in the cave vision.

*Come down. It’s easier to let go.*

Isabelle’s hands loosened on the rail.

“No!” Yann’s shout cut through the trance. He was beside her, gripping her wrist, pulling her toward the hatch. “She’s in your head! Don’t listen!”

The boat rolled again. The sea rose up like a hand, and the hand closed over them.

Isabelle had no memory of the water taking her.

One moment she was on the deck, Yann’s hand in hers. The next she was underwater, tumbling blind, salt burning her eyes, the locket a cold weight against her chest. She kicked, fought, broke the surface once—gasped air—and went under again.

Something hard struck her shoulder. Wood. The hull, upside down.

She grabbed for it, found a rope, held on.

The sea was not fighting her anymore. The sea was sighing, settling, as if the storm had been nothing but a temper tantrum—over now, calmed by what it had taken. Isabelle clung to the wreckage and coughed seawater and looked for Yann.

The boat was gone. Broken. She floated on a piece of it, alone.

“Yann!” Her voice was a ragged scrape. “Yann!”

Nothing. Only the slap of water, the hiss of rain fading to mist.

She didn’t know how long she floated. Minutes. Hours. The storm had passed as quickly as it had come, leaving a strange, glassy calm—a sea that seemed to hold its breath. Her legs grew numb. Her fingers cramped around the rope.

Then her foot scraped sand.

Isabelle dragged herself ashore on hands and knees, collapsing on wet, black sand. She lay there for a long moment, breathing, shivering. When she lifted her head, she saw the moon—full, enormous, silver—rising over a desolate island of dark rock and thorny scrub. No light. No house. No sign of any human thing.

And still no Yann.

She pushed herself up. Her legs shook. She took a step, then another, scanning the waterline for his body, for the wreckage, for anything at all.

She saw something glinting in the moonlight, half-buried in the sand where the tide had left it.

A locket.

Isabelle knelt. She picked it up with trembling hands. It was identical to hers—the same tarnished silver, the same spiral engraving, the same worn clasp. She fumbled it open.

Inside, a tiny portrait. A woman with dark hair and knowing eyes.

Yvonne.

Isabelle’s fingers closed around the locket. She looked out at the sea, at the place where Yann had been, and felt the curse settle around her shoulders like a shroud.

The voice in the storm had promised it would be easier to let go.

She was beginning to understand why.