Chapter 37 #2
The first splash was music to my ears.
Riven rose to meet them.
The first man to hit the water was a beta I didn't recognize—some deck hand, nobody important.
Riven's claws found his throat before he'd even registered the cold of the ocean, tearing through flesh and cartilage with a wet, satisfying sound.
Blood bloomed in the water, dark and warm, and the man's eyes went wide with confused terror for just a moment before the light left them entirely.
More splashes. More bodies hitting the water.
I kept singing, my voice never wavering, drawing them out one by one while Riven worked below.
He was efficient but not rushed—each kill precise, each death earned.
A beta who hit the water thrashing was grabbed by the ankle and dragged down, down, down until the pressure made his eyes bulge and his lungs collapse.
An alpha who tried to fight found his arms removed at the shoulders before Riven opened his belly and let the sea do the rest.
Then Brennan appeared at the railing.
The old beta's weathered face was slack with enchantment, but even through the magic, I could see the permanent disapproval etched into his features.
The man who had grunted orders at Lily, who had assigned her the worst tasks, who had looked at her like she was something scraped off the bottom of his boot.
He stepped off the railing and plummeted into the dark water.
Riven caught him before he could sink, claws hooking into his shoulders, holding him suspended just below the surface. The enchantment shattered on impact with the cold, and Brennan's eyes cleared—cleared and filled with pure, animal terror as he realized what had him.
"There was a girl on this ship," Riven said, his voice a low growl that vibrated through the water. "Quiet. Worked hard. Kept her head down."
Brennan thrashed, trying to break free, but Riven's grip was iron. Water flooded the man's mouth when he tried to scream.
"You made her scrub decks until her hands bled," Riven continued, almost conversational. "Gave her the jobs no one else wanted. Looked at her like she was worthless." His claws dug deeper, drawing ribbons of blood that swirled away into the darkness. "She wasn't worthless. She was ours."
He pulled Brennan deeper, letting the pressure build, letting the old man feel his lungs compress, his ears rupture, his eyes strain against their sockets. Brennan's mouth opened in a silent scream, bubbles streaming upward like escaping souls.
Riven held him there, watching, until the thrashing stopped. Then he let go, and Brennan's body drifted down into the abyss, just another piece of debris sinking toward the bottom of the world.
I kept singing. More sailors came. More sailors died.
Decker was next.
I'd been waiting for him. The lean man with the scarred lip, the one who had made tormenting Lily into a personal hobby. The fish guts by her hammock. The deliberately missed meals. The whispers of ‘cursed’ and ‘bad luck’ that had followed her like a shadow.
He climbed onto the railing with the same sneer he probably wore when he kicked over her water cup, and he stepped off with the same casual cruelty he'd shown in every interaction with her.
I stopped singing.
Let him wake up. Let him understand.
Just after he jumped, I stopped singing and Decker’s eyes widened with understanding before he even hit the cold water. He saw me first—silver hair floating around my face like a halo, sharp teeth bared in something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Hello, Decker," I said, my voice carrying that melodic quality that made humans shiver even when I wasn't using power. "Do you remember a girl named Lily?"
He tried to swim, tried to flee, but Riven was already there, circling behind him, crimson tail cutting through the water like a blade. Trapped between two predators, Decker's cruel confidence crumbled into something small and pathetic.
"Please," he gasped, water sloshing into his mouth. "Please, I don't—I didn't—"
"Didn't what?" Riven's voice was silk wrapped around a razor. "Didn't dump fish guts by her bed so she'd wake up choking on the stench? Didn't forget to tell her about meal times so she'd go hungry? Didn't tell everyone she was cursed because she was on the ship?"
Decker's face went white. "She—she told you—"
"She told us everything." I swam closer, close enough to see the individual hairs of his pathetic beard, close enough to smell the fear-sweat mixing with seawater on his skin.
"Every petty cruelty. Every small torment.
She has nightmares about you, did you know that?
Wakes up shaking because she can still hear you calling her worthless. "
"I'm sorry!" The words came out in a high, desperate whine. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—please, I'll do anything—"
"Yes," Riven said, and his claws sank into Decker's shoulders, punching through muscle and scraping against bone. Decker screamed, water flooding his mouth, cutting the sound short. "You will."
He dragged Decker down slowly, letting him feel every inch of descent, letting the pressure build gradually.
I followed, watching, savoring. Decker's eyes bulged.
His eardrums burst, sending twin streams of blood spiraling through the water.
His lungs compressed, and I could see the exact moment he realized he was going to die—the moment hope left his eyes and pure, animal panic took its place.
Riven didn't give him the mercy of a quick death. He held him there, suspended in the crushing dark, and he waited. Waited while Decker's body convulsed. Waited while his mouth gaped open in soundless screams. Waited while the life drained out of him one agonizing second at a time.
When it was finally over, when Decker was nothing but cooling meat drifting toward the bottom, Riven looked at me with savage satisfaction burning in his golden eyes.
"The captain," he said.
I smiled and rose back toward the surface to continue my song.
The captain was the last one left. He stood at the railing, swaying slightly, his cold eyes glazed with enchantment.
An older man, weathered by decades at sea, with the kind of calculating expression that never quite went away even under magical influence.
He'd run his ship like a kingdom and himself like a king—distant, indifferent, unconcerned with the suffering of those beneath him.
He hadn't personally tormented Lily, but he'd allowed it.
He'd seen it and done nothing. He'd created the conditions that let men like Cort and Decker flourish, and he'd never once intervened.
Complicity was its own kind of cruelty.
He stepped off the railing with the same measured calm he'd probably maintained through storms and squalls and everything else the sea had thrown at him. He hit the water without flailing, without panic, sinking with an almost dignified resignation.
I stopped singing and dove to meet him.
The enchantment broke, but the captain didn't scream. He just looked at us—two sirens circling him in the dark water, silver and crimson, teeth and claws—with those cold, calculating eyes. Assessing. Evaluating. Even now, facing his own death, he was trying to figure out the angles.
"The girl," he said, and his voice was steady despite the water filling his lungs. "The quiet one who disappeared. You're here for her."
"We're here because of her," I corrected. "Because you let your crew treat her like garbage. Because you looked the other way while they made her life miserable."
"She was nobody," the captain said, and there was no apology in his voice, no regret. Just a statement of fact. "Just another pair of hands. They come and go."
Riven made a sound low in his throat—a growl that vibrated through the water and made the captain's composure finally crack, just a little.
"She was everything," Riven snarled. "And you treated her like nothing. You let them hurt her because you didn't care enough to stop it."
"So now you die," I added, swimming closer until I could see my reflection in his fading eyes. "Not because you were the worst of them—that honor belonged to others. But because you could have stopped it and you chose not to. Because your indifference made everything else possible."
The captain opened his mouth, perhaps to argue, perhaps to plead, perhaps simply to breathe. It didn't matter. Riven's claws found his throat, tearing through the soft tissue with brutal efficiency, and the captain's last breath escaped in a cloud of bubbles and blood.
We watched him sink, his cold eyes finally empty, his calculating mind finally still.
Down and down, into the crushing dark, where he would lie forever alongside the crew he'd failed to lead.
When it was done, when the last body had disappeared into the depths, we floated in the quiet darkness and surveyed our work.
The Windchaser drifted above us, empty now, a ghost ship with no one left to sail her.
The water around us was tinged with the copper scent of blood, and somewhere below, the fish were already beginning to gather.
"Hungry?" Riven asked. I considered it. The bodies were fresh, the meat still warm. It had been a while since either of us had fed properly—we'd been doing most of our hunting far from the cave system lately, making sure Lily didn't have to see or smell or think about what we ate.
She knew, of course. Six months of living with us, of being one of us—she'd figured it out long ago.
She never said anything directly, but she'd started finding reasons to be elsewhere when we returned from long hunts.
Started conveniently needing to visit Thane's garden or explore some distant cave whenever the hunger in our eyes grew too obvious to ignore.
She accepted what we were. She just didn't want to watch. Didn't want to participate. We loved her enough to make that easy for her.