Control is a lie minds tell
to keep us from shattering
~Nina Jacobs
The sound of the anchor crashing into the water was brash in the thick silence. The waters around Dornwich seemed darker. More still. The waves were subtle as if the ocean herself had abandoned the shores of the now haunted town.
I had never spent much time in the surrounding waters. It was too populated. Too loud. But the way it looked that day was not how I remembered it.
I could see the buildings from the water where the Weaver was anchored off the coast. They looked… dead. In any other instance, I would have been overjoyed to see a large town like Dornwich losing its vivacity, but things had changed.
The boat was lowered into the water with a splash, drawing my eyes from the shore to the group of men manning the ropes.
There was a chill in the air that had nothing to do with the weather and it sent a shiver creeping down the length of my spine.
I was wearing one of Vidar’s shirts and a pair of cotton britches that drew tight at my waist with a belt that held my bone knife sheathed against my hip.
I didn’t feel a need to conceal my hair beneath a leather hat, so I braided it tightly down my back and tied it off with a leather cord.
Whatever awaited in Dornwich, I doubted my gender would change anything.
Part of me was screaming not to go ashore at all, but those days, I didn’t know which voices to trust and which to dismiss. I barely knew which ones were mine.
I scrubbed that thought from my mind, despite that it was clawing for purchase trying to dissuade me.
Vidar moved up beside me, leaving his captain’s coat behind for a smaller, more mobile leather jacket.
He had a pistol tucked into his baldric and his bronze cutlass, Lady Mary, strapped to his hip.
“We all feel it,” he muttered. “These waters are not what they used to be.”
“Do you know where Addison is?” I asked.
“Aye. She lives in the center of town near the church,” he pointed toward a steeple that stretched just a little bit higher than the other buildings.
“It’s quiet.”
“A bit too quiet for my liking, but the men have been through plenty to know not to let their guard down.”
My incessant dreams flashed behind my lids again, reminding me of the horrors that haunted me every night. Horrors where Vidar was torn apart trying to protect me.
I spun toward him, catching his gaze. “You should stay,” I said.
His nose wrinkled like I’d said something appalling. “Stay?”
“If the town is overrun, a couple of humans with pistols and blades will not make a difference.”
“We don’t know what’s going on. Pirates could have taken the port.
Disease could have, for all we know. If it’s neither of those things, the xhoth want us all dead, not just humans.
And if sirens have taken Dornwich, they have no love for you either.
” He flicked the loose neckline of my shirt, reminding me of the many scars that littered my chest and throat, most from my own kind.
“On the off chance that Dornwich is still under human control, you will need me.”
I took a long, deep breath of the air and smelled brine, rot, and mud on the breeze. No smoke from fireplaces. No cattle. No ale.
“Dornwich is not under human control,” I said. “Trust me.”
“You can sense that, can you?”
“Please.” I took his hand, stroking the leather over the two wooden fingers.
He sighed ruggedly, shaking his head. “I will row to shore. Once there, we will decide which of us is more fit to venture into town, if we decide to separate at all.”
Vidar’s gaze said everything. He was as unyielding in that argument as he was in every other part of his life. I conceded with a reluctant nod as Mullins, James, and David stepped up to climb into the boat with us.
Once we all settled in and the boat began to drift toward the shores, I felt like a fool.
A fool for seeking out my own destruction.
A fool for rowing towards danger. A fool for caring about too many people.
Vidar. Meridan. Even Mullins, Gus, and the rest of the crew had chiseled their way into my hardened, rotting heart because I’d let my guard down.
And we were going places where people did not survive.
We were dangling ourselves in front of death and risk like bait.
I glanced up at Vidar. He was facing me as Mullins and James rowed hard toward the eerie docks.
He was a master at hiding his worries behind hardened, ferocious features, but the way his thumb stroked one of the rings on his hand was a quirk I’d come to recognize.
He was nervous. Deep down, he questioned his every decision.
He was responsible for a crew that had come to trust him and every choice he made affected every person on his ship.
I was beginning to feel that burden myself after months of sailing with them all.
I questioned whether my search for answers and freedom was just a selfish quest that would destroy everything around me one day soon.
Had I found people to call my own only to lead them into the stomach of a hellish beast?
The docks came into view and immediately, my heart was drumming with worry. There were no other boats. No other ships.
No… there were none that had not been damaged too severely to sail. The debris of fishing boats sat submerged partway in the shallows. Sails were shorn. Ropes were cut. I glanced at Vidar, hoping he was understanding what we were heading towards.
“I think you were right, love,” he said to me, a new air of stern awareness sharpening the features of his face.
“Think everyone left?” David asked.
“Looks like it,” Mullins said.
“Don’t dock here,” Vidar said. “Go down to the beach. We’ll hide the boat in the brush.”
“We’re hiding? You ok cap’n?” Mullins whispered.
“I’m being cautious,” he said.
When we reached the beach, we all hopped out of the boat and dragged it up the shore, hiding it in a cluster of overgrowth.
The smell of decay and filth was stronger there.
I adjusted my belt so my knife was well within reach and peered down the beach toward the docks again, gauging the distance we had to go.
“Mullins and David, stay with the boat,” Vidar ordered. “James, you come with us. You know the way to Addison’s smithy better than anyone.”
Everyone nodded in agreement and the three of us set off down the beach toward the docks. It wasn’t a very long walk, but it certainly felt like it was taking a long time. Perhaps because one of the many voices in my head was pleading for me to turn around.
When we turned onto the wooden path leading to the front of town, the foul stench of death hit me like the end of a whip straight to my sinuses.
“Fuck me,” James said under his breath, pressing a hand to his nose.
I focused on the road ahead, taking in every detail as quickly as I could, tensing at the icy chill burrowing beneath my skin like a worm.
No, it was too much to ignore. I halted, raising both arms on either side of me to stop Vidar and James in their tracks.
They glanced at me first and then followed my stare toward town where the road was empty.
Dead. No civilians. No carriages. I narrowed my eyes, waiting and listening, when the rhythmic sound of soft hooves ventured into range.
I didn’t expect to see a great monster, but when one starved goat trudged across the muddy path, a cut rope still hanging around its thin neck, all of my fears and worries coiled together like a serpent baring its teeth to chase me away.
It wasn’t right. None of it was right.
“It’s not,” I muttered.
“Not what?” Vidar whispered back.
“Under human control.”
I grabbed both men and pulled them back the way we came, finding a thick cluster of brush to step behind. My heart was racing with reservations knowing that the entire town had been figuratively gutted.
“Dahlia,” Vidar pressed.
“There’s no one here. No one that can help us, that is. Nazario and Aeris said this place was unsafe and they were right. Bringing sirens ashore in chains seems to have finally consumed this port town.”
“My sister—” James began.
“If she was smart, she would have run.”
“What if she couldn’t?”
I thought about it for a moment, trying to weigh the options.
All I knew was that I wouldn’t let Vidar into Dornwich when it was likely filled with vengeful, bloodthirsty sirens.
I also didn’t want to give James a reason to hate me by not even attempting to find his sister.
Besides, whether she was his sister or not, we did need her skills.
We needed weapons. More than we already had.
“I will find her,” I volunteered. “Without the two of you.”
Vidar shook his head. “No—”
“Please. Don’t argue. Not about this.”
“You don’t even know for certain that this place is overrun.”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll need our help.”
“I need your trust. I need you to trust that I can do this on my own and better if you’re not there.
” I stepped in, cupping my hands on his cheeks.
“I’m begging you. I will find Addison, but no siren, Kroan or otherwise, will show either of you mercy and I don’t know how many stalk the streets of this place. ”
“They could have killed everyone and left,” James suggested.
“Then this will be easy. But if they didn’t? Please. Let me do this.”
Vidar held my gaze, his jaw pulsing under my palms, but when he realized I would not yield, he reluctantly gave in.
I knew it destroyed him to agree to my terms, to let me walk into danger alone, but I couldn’t accept it any other way.
All I could see was a mob of sirens tearing him to bits and it made me sick.
“You’re not going alone,” he said.
“You can’t—”
“We’ll send for Meridan. The two of you go together or we all leave right now.”
He would not have it any other way. Of that, I was certain, so I nodded.