Shadow and Tide - first chapter by harpercollinschildrens

First published in the United Kingdom by Harper Fire, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, in 2025

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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isbn 978–0–00–0866476–3

export tpb isbn 978–0–00–0866475–6 pb isbn 978–0–00–0864261–7

Rachel Greenlaw asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

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HAPTER 1 C

every night , i twist the sheets between my fists. I watch the light as it shivers across the ceiling, the moon and stars chased by clouds across the sky. I fight to stay awake, staring until my eyes burn. But it still comes for me anyway.

The nightmare.

At first, I believe we will escape. That the mist draped over us will cloak him and keep him safe. Phantom dances on the waves and, beyond, the isle of Rosevear. A shimmering outline in the distance. I break into a run across the old quay on Penscalo, sure I will beat them this time, that the men at my back won’t steal him from me. I reach out, my fingertips just brushing his green wool jacket, his pale blue eyes locked with mine.

Then it happens.

I watch, my boots glued to the ground, a gasp lost in the roar of the drowning sea for the moment my father falls.

The moment I fail to catch him.

The roar intensifies, pulsing, keening in my head, and I sink to my knees on that old granite quay, the pain a knife in my chest. I claw for him, the distance between us growing, but I can’t move. I’m trapped.

And when I look round, I see Seth. The son of Captain Renshaw. My betrayer, my enemy. His mouth widens into a taunting grin, his brown curls swept back from his forehead, a crow of laughter on his tongue as my father dies. Fury erupts in my chest, wild and untameable, ferocious.

I leap for him, nails like claws, a monster in human form just as they all feared, and I cannot control the siren inside me, the feral creature wanting vengeance, wanting his beating, bloody heart, wanting them all to suffer as I suffer.

And then I scream.

My eyes fly open, scanning the near dark, my chest rising and falling. I bolt up, scrambling from the bed, fists raised, ready for them, my entire being throbbing with pain and rage, ready to fight, ready for blood.

That’s when I realise.

The truth slamming into me, again and again.

My father’s not coming back. He’s not dying at my feet. There are no men with rifles and blades, no Seth or Renshaw. There is no blood. And that terrible roar, the deafening howl of the sea dressed in pain, isn’t coming from the ocean at all.

That deafening roar . . . is me.

I wipe my hands down my face, pulse crashing in my

ears as I remind myself where I am. Who I am. Not a monster. Just a girl on my island, in my bedroom, in the cottage I grew up in on Rosevear. I take a deep, soothing breath, frowning then as something bitter sweeps down my throat . . . Smoke? And not just a gentle whirl in the air from the embers lingering in the hearth or the extinguished candles. This is cloying and insistent.

Stumbling to the window, I rake back the curtains and fumble with the latch, panicking as I cough and cough, needing fresh air. But there’s something barring it. I narrow my eyes, not believing what I’m seeing at first. A plank of wood attached to the window from the outside. Then I hear it.

The screaming.

I shake my head, clearing the fog of sleep, and move from the window as a cloud shifts, the moon’s light brimming and full drenching the room in silver. Foreboding shivers down my spine.

All I see is smoke.

‘No.’ I throw an arm over my mouth. All at once I’m wide awake, scanning the darkness, finding that the light is not just coming from the full moon. It’s also coming from the other cottages.

I scramble round the edges of the bed, coughing again as the smoke fills my lungs, my hands flying to the drawer next to my bed where I keep my mother’s notebook, the map and letter tucked inside. I hurriedly slip them in my nightshirt pocket, striding for the bedroom door, and thrust it open—

I gasp, stumbling back in shock. The front room is ablaze. A wall of heat forces me to take another step back, sweat prickling over my skin, heart thumping too fast and too hard against my ribs. Kai warned us in the last meet, only a couple of days ago when Bryn and Pearl came to collect his things. He posted lookouts along our shores; he sent Terry and Lish to Port Trenn for information. He knew they were coming for us.

The watch.

Only a month after I intervened, saving Bryn and my father from the gallows, the other prisoners escaping the noose too, the watch are here. To punish us. To make us suffer, as Captain Spencer Leggan promised.

More terrified cries cut through the sound of crackling flames, and I whimper, knowing others are trapped as I am. Trapped in their cottages with no way to escape.

I rush back into the bedroom, grab a scarf to tie round my face, pull my jacket over my nightshirt in case I’ll need to shove anything burning out of my way. Finally, I lace up my boots, whispering feverish thanks to any god listening that I left them in my bedroom when I changed for bed. Then I turn back to the doorway, back to the front room and kitchen both alive with ravenous flames, and step over the threshold.

‘Mira!’ a shrill voice howls. ‘Mira! I can’t get through, I can’t get through— ’

‘I’m here!’ I shout, hacking instantly. My eyes sting, water filling them, turning them to slits. I barrel through the licking flames, heat and thick smoke for the door,

finding it smouldering and scorched. There are two chairs piled in front of it already crumbling to ash and fire. Like someone placed them there.

Like someone wanted me to die in this cottage.

I wedge my jacket sleeves round my palms, pull the chairs away, the scent of burning fabric mingling with the smell of wood. I hear muffled sobbing, then a heavy thud as the door bursts open, drenching me in cold air.

Agnes is on the other side in her nightshirt and jacket, as I am, her red hair a tangled thicket round her pale, tear-stained face. ‘Mira, thank goodness . . . ’ she hiccups, pulling me towards her. We stumble away, arms round each other as I hack up all the smoke from my aching lungs.

‘What happened? Is the watch here?’ I say, voice grating with gravel.

‘They were.’

It takes me a moment to wipe the sting from my eyes, to push my hair out of my face and really look around. And, when I do, I almost fall to my knees, the horror of what I’m seeing hollowing me out. Fires rage in the cottages surrounding us, smoke billowing in grey, smothering sheets. People, stumbling and wailing, call for fathers, mothers, sons, daughters . . . The watch have come in the night, have prowled through our village and torched our homes while we slept.

I claw at Agnes’s arm, a strangled cry rising inside me. Rosevear is burning.