We’re thrilled to share the cover and preview an excerpt from Red Tempest Brother, the concluding volume to H. M. Long’s The Winter Sea—available July 8th 2025 from Titan Books.
The epic naval fantasy trilogy concludes, as Sam, Mary and Benedict play a deadly game of war and espionage on the high-seas. Perfect for fans of pirate-infested waters, magical bestiaries and battling empires, by authors such as Adrienne Young, L. J. Andrews and Naomi Novik.
In the wake of the events of Black Tide Son, Hart flees into pirate-infested waters to shelter on the island where former rogue James Demery and the Fleetbreaker, Anne Firth, now rule.
Reeling from their discoveries about the truths of the Mereish-Aeadine war, Mary and Sam hover on the precipice of a terrible, world-altering choice—they can stay silent and maintain their good names, or they can speak out, and risk igniting total war across the Winter Sea.
Meanwhile, Benedict captains The Red Tempest, a lawless ship of deserters and corrupted mages in search of an Usti spy with incendiary stolen documents. Benedict is determined to make the truth known, consequences be damned.
As rumours spread of a new Ghistwold sprouting in the Mereish South Isles, May and Sam sail once more into intrigue, espionage and an ocean on the brink of exploding into conflict. They must chart a course toward lasting, final peace, at the heart of the age-old battle for power upon the Winter Seas.
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Red Tempest Brother
Book three of The Winter Sea
Red Tempest Brother
Book three of The Winter Sea
Book three of The Winter Sea
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H. M. Long is a Canadian author who inhabits a ramshackle cabin in Ontario, Canada, with her husband and dog. However, she can often be spotted snooping about museums or wandering the Alps. She is the author of Hall of Smoke, Temple of No God, Barrow of Winter and Pillar of Ash, along with Dark Water Daughter and Black Tide Son.
Chapter 1: The Burning of Port Sen
BENEDICT
Sometime between learning of the Usti spy’s escape from Port Sen and returning to the docks, my temper snapped. I knocked a lantern into a pile of refuse, glass cracking, oil spilling. My crew began to enact similar vandalisms with willful abandon, the invisible threads of my Magni power compelling their minds to vengeance and their hands to destruction.
Naturally, there were attempts to stop us. A musket ball skimmed past my ear, loosed by the port’s converging guards, so I turned my power upon them in a malicious capacity. As I strode out onto the sprawling docks, the guards, then civilians, took up our task with startled, frightened, and ravenous urgency. A little girl hurled rocks through windows, burning hay scattered about her small feet. Fishwives set fires, cart drivers knocked aside the poles of the market stalls and laborers began to dump goods into the South Sea by crate and barrel and upended baskets.
The Port Mistress survived only by her honesty.
“South,” she said when I stood in her door, the streets a riot behind me. “The ship was headed south.”
There was only one dock fit for a vessel as deep and grand as The Red Tempest, and it was to the end of this long, barnacle-crusted arm we strode as the fires spread. My influence followed me like the billows of smoke that drifted across the bay, wrapping about the other ships and prompting men and woman to load cannons, swivel guns and small arms. Then they, as I willed, turned the lot of them upon the shore.
The Red Tempest himself did not participate in the bombardment of Port Sen. We sailed out of the harbor long before the Port Mistress’s mansion toppled from its stilts and the battery at the harbor mouth exploded. I watched the chaos from Tempest’s deck, listening to the thunder of the guns and watching the inhabitants of the port scatter like rats, leaping into the water, fleeing into the hills, and putting themselves out in boats.
The smoke trailed us out of the bay. I felt the sphere of my influence slip from the last of the anchored ships, and my world narrowed once more. The deck beneath my boots. Blood on my hand, though I could not recall how it came to be there. My hot breath raking from my lungs. The taste of sweat and smoke on my lips. The chanting, rolling, rumbling voice of my Stormsinger, summoning the winds to sweep us away and prevent pursuit.
“Benedict.”
I turned, squinting smoke-burned eyes. Charles Grant considered me from a pace away, one restless hand on the hilt of his smallsword. His expression was questioning.
I caught myself—fingers catching a safehold on a crumbling slope.
“No need for that,” I said, gazing back towards the port. Something stirred in me at the scene, a lightness that might have been excitement, or shock, or unease. Perhaps I could have defined the sensation better, had I taken a moment of self-reflection, but I was swiftly learning that reflection was arduous and uncomfortable. Particularly with the stink of smoke and gunpowder in my nostrils.
I pulled my baldric over my head, taking my sword and brace of spent pistols with it, and tossed it to Grant. He caught it with a flat look that failed to disguise his worry—his hand finally leaving his sword—then coughed a protest as I followed the weapons with my soiled coat.
“Am I your fucking valet?” The former highwayman demanded, shaking his blond hair out from beneath the coat.
I ignored him, heading for the companionway.
“Ms Olles,” I called to my first officer, a black-haired woman in her mid-thirties. “What is the nearest port?”
“Aside from the one he just burned,” Charles interjected, following me with my coat draped over his shoulder and my weapons in his arms. His voice was dry but had an undertone I recognized as disapproval.
“To the south,” I clarified coldly.
Olles shot Charles a quelling look. She was a good-natured woman, evidenced by the crinkles beside her eyes and the laugh lines on her cheeks, but she had little patience for interruptions. Or Charles. “I’ll need to see the charts, sir.”
“Fine, I will do it myself,” I said. “Send Faucher to my cabin.”
“Yessir.”
A few more paces and Charles and I were swallowed by the shadows of the first gun deck. We made for the stern, where the grand cabin lay, passing row upon row of nestled guns and sea chests in the close, brine-scented gloom.
In the cabin, Charles dumped my coat and weapons on a chair and moved to the stern windows, where he peered out at the shrinking, smoke-blurred visage of Port Sen.
“There will be repercussions for that,” he commented.
“One enemy among a thousand islands and a hundred lords,” I dismissed, pouring water into a bowl on the central table then beginning to work the blood from around my nails. “Port Sen is irrelevant. Once we find Alamay, I will be the only one with true power in these seas.”
Charles sank down in a chair on the other side of the table. “I am still unclear as to how a stack of unverified documents will satisfy your megalomania.”
“You do not need to know.”
“Ah, now, see,” Charles raised a finger. “That is where you are wrong. Friends share their minds, Ben. I know you have very little experience in these matters, so you will simply have to believe me. Unless I am a prisoner, in which case, perhaps you would consider a villain’s illuminatory ramble?”
I shook pink water from my fingers. “Handkerchief.”
Charles fished one from his pocket and tossed it over. I proceeded to dry my hands, only to slow when I saw the embroidery around the cloth’s edges. “What are these? Nooses?”
“Yes, and there I am, hanging in the corner,” Charles replied, leaning forward to point. “Mary made it for me. Try not to stain it.”
“Mary,” I muttered, disliking the reminder of my brother and his… whatever they defined themselves as nowadays.
A knock came at the door and Jessin Faucher strode in, shadowed by two crewmen who remained in the hall. We were nearly of an age, he marginally shorter than I and dressed in a simple shirt, breeches, stockings and a straight-cut Mereish waistcoat.
He closed the door on the guards without a word and joined Charles and me at the table.
Charles, reclaiming his handkerchief, sighed at its condition and tucked it away again.
“You know these isles,” I said to Faucher. “I need you to determine where Enisca Alamay is most likely to try to sell those documents.”
“So she did escape,” Faucher clarified, leaning back to cross one knee over the other. His Mereish accent was marked but not burdensome, and he spoke Aeadine for my benefit. “I heard a commotion from my quarters, but my… escort… was unforthcoming.”
I nodded. “Kapper saw her aboard a ship leaving the harbor. There was no time to get word to the Tempest to stop her, and since I cannot fucking fly, there was nothing I could do.”
“Ah. And we have no notion of where she went?”
“South.”
“She may not intend to sell them,” Charles pointed out with a weary air. It was not the first time he had waged this battle. “She is more likely intent on some Usti stronghold where she can disappear or find aid. And send the papers home.”
Faucher shrugged. “You know her better than I. I do know the isles, however, yes. And I am glad to share that knowledge in return for greater freedoms.”
“I am not releasing you,” I stated.
“Freedoms,” the Mereish man repeated, emphasizing the suffix. “I have no interest in leaving my ship.”
I held his gaze, a reminder that The Red Tempest was now my ship poised on my tongue. But he knew that well enough, and I would not rise to his prodding.
He would, naturally, attempt to retake the vessel if the opportunity arose. I would have thought less of him otherwise.
“Give me a location to try, and we can discuss these freedoms,” I countered. “Particularly if you can tell me where to hire a Sooth.”
Faucher thought for a time, tilting his head back to stare up at the beams of the ceiling. Then he sat forward and rested his elbows on the table. “I agree with Charles. If I were her, I would make for Usti waters. That means the Sea Hag, the Indry or Krekhafen. We can hire or buy a Sooth in any of them.”
“The Sea Hag,” Charles repeated with a snort. “Did she give herself that title?”
“Actually, yes,” Faucher’s lips turned in a small, dry smile. “Which tells you something of her nature.”
I had heard of the Indry, but neither of the others. I did not, however, admit my ignorance. “Which is the closest?”
“Krekhafen,” Faucher replied. “It is ruled by exiled Usti royals, from a dispossessed line. There are more than a few of them down here, vaguely allied with and casually hostile to one another. All distant relations of the current queen. Krekhafen in particular would both be an easy place for an Usti to blend in, and a very, very good place to sell secrets that might overturn the current crown.”
I raised my chin, a tight smile spreading across my face. “Very good. Is Krekhafen south?”
“In a manner of speaking. One must go south to get there.” Faucher moved to one of the bulkheads, where numerous charts were pegged. His charts, now mine. “This is Port Sen.”
“Was,” Charles corrected.
Faucher cleared his throat and moved his finger across the heavy paper. “This is Krekhafen, here, in the east. In between, here, is this arc of islands. This is under the control of the Mereish Trading Company, and thus the Mereish Navy. I do not recommend catching the attention of either. The events at the Anchorage and the fate of my ship may be known already.”
“That would be an opportunity for your rescue,” Charles pointed out. He considered the other man dubiously, then looked at me. “Are you bewitching him?”
Faucher laughed humorlessly. “As I said before, I have no desire to leave my ship. I, too, wish to find Enisca Alamay and those documents before they land in the wrong hands.”
The conversation continued for some time, including further discussion of charts and courses. The first order of business remained, however, finding a Sooth, so I determined to head for Krekhafen immediately and sent Charles above with the word. Faucher I banished back to his quarters, trailed by his guards, and I was finally left alone.
I remained at the table, where the bloodied bowl of water sloshed. It was more brown than pink now and made my stomach turn.
Or, perhaps, it was not the blood that made me ill. Perhaps it was the memories flickering through the back of my mind, glimpses of burning buildings, of people throwing themselves off the docks. Of a little girl, mindlessly throwing a rock at a window as flaming hay scattered across the cobblestones around her skirts.
Another time, I might have cut that imagining off. But I found that I was drained, and though I maintained my mask of indomitably, my discomfort grew.
In a flash, I saw another little girl. Her face was vague, a mix of the infant I had once seen and the shadow of my mother. My eyes peered out of her small face as she became the girl from Port Sen, in my thrall, throwing stones and unaware of the fire around her, the danger on every side. Then she was elsewhere—tucked into a shadow. Beneath a bed? Behind a door?
I scrubbed water across my face with brusque hands, careless of its filth, and walked away.
Excerpted from Red Tempest Brother © 2024 by H.M. Long
