Chapter 33
Will left Arbuckle Emporium with the knowledge he needed, in addition to six A-shaped lapel pin relics taken off the guards’ bodies, and a bag full of other relics pilfered from the shop’s display cases. He’d left the seven corpses there to rot, thinking they matched the shop’s grim decor.
Breaking into the Coil in broad daylight seemed unwise, so he returned to the inn he and Lockwood had tucked away in yesterday and packed up all the recovered relics to be shipped to Duaric in Vaelstead.
Will would pick them up the next time they were in town, if Duaric didn’t disperse them throughout the city first.
The only ones he kept were four of the A-shaped stealth pins—one for him, Sebastian, Edmund, and Lockwood—just in case.
Lockwood had never returned to the Maelstrom. Was he in the Coil, as well? Had he been recognized at the auction he attended last night? Arrested trying to follow a tip? This was precisely why he’d sent Mouse after the others; it was maddening to not know what had gone wrong.
Will stepped outside to swipe a newspaper from a stand and read through the headlines. The paper and the radio in his room all reported the same news on repeat:
There was a photo of Graven being shepherded into an armored vehicle on one page, though only a hint of his beard and wide shoulder was visible.
He’d been picked up at one of the three locations Will and Lockwood had reported, which made Will wonder if they’d just gotten lucky, or if Graven had known and planted himself there.
It was almost certainly the latter, a realization that stabbed at Will’s stomach.
But why would Graven let himself get caught? To get closer to the Skystone in the Coil’s evidence lockers? To lure them into a false sense of security?
On the opposite page, there was a picture of Amaya.
Will knew right away it wasn’t a recent picture—surely it wasn’t.
The Amaya staring back at him in black and white looked nothing like the fierce, determined woman he knew.
Her hair was styled into perfect curls, her cupcake dress perfectly spread across a velvet sofa.
Her smile was demure, with no hint of mischief or flirtation, and she held a little dog in her lap with big eyes and floppy ears.
Had she ever told him about her dog?
Will deflated at the thought, wondering what else he didn’t know about her. The girl in this photo wasn’t his Amaya.
But she wasn’t really his at all, was she? Now that Graven was incarcerated, would she still come back like she’d promised?
She had to. There was still a Skyvault to open, still a century-old inventor to find. Still an industry to fix and raids to end for good.
But what if Amaya didn’t want to leave her plush life? Her dog? Her father? Her lieutenant? What if she decided to sit back and let her father’s resources take care of it instead?
The thought seared his chest, his entire body heating to the point he had to put the newspaper down lest it burst into flames.
Will spent the remaining daylight hours scouring the city for Lockwood, using one of the stealth pins to give him more freedom of movement. He didn’t find him—didn’t find much of anything.
So when night fell, Will traveled through the city unseen into the southern wilderness, toward the small mountain range where the Coil nested.
The plan was simple: get Edmund and Sebastian out and snatch the Skystone from the evidence locker.
After a day of contemplation, Will had decided Graven’s motivation for getting caught must be retrieving the Skystone himself.
So if they snatched it first, he’d be sufficiently thwarted—which was good, because a confrontation with Graven wasn’t something Will could risk tonight.
Edmund and Sebastian were the top priority.
Will wasn’t losing anyone else today.
After they returned to the Maelstrom, they’d work on figuring out how to get Amaya back. Even if Graven escaped, they could still get to the Skyvault first.
During his trek, Will caught sight of a slick black automobile snaking through the uneven terrain and hitched a ride. Apart from the initial sound of Will’s weight hitting the roof of the car, a stunt made easier with Hellsgate, he didn’t make a sound—and the driver didn’t have a clue.
It was the only car on the road for a long stretch of time, and Will expected to hop off once it inevitably turned toward civilization, but to his surprise, it kept climbing. So he sat tight, increasingly curious about his unwitting chauffeur’s identity.
Perhaps they were a warden, or a guard reporting for duty? There wasn’t anything up these mountains but the prison. But then, why the fancy car?
The car wound through the desolate mountains, expertly navigating the labyrinth of stone until the Coil became visible. It wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but Will knew better than to judge an iceberg by its tip.
Stone walls surrounded the Coil on all sides, carved directly into the face of the mountain.
There was a small administrative structure off to the side, also carved from stone, but the main attraction was the spiraling pit itself.
The uncovered opening exposed the prisoners to rain, snow, and the blazing summer sun—if the sun even reached the bottom.
Will knew from speaking with other pirates unfortunate enough to have spent time here that the cells were built into the mountains, the spiraling shape a testament to both the prison’s name and the madness many of its inhabitants succumbed to.
Some said that when the prison was at capacity, newcomers were led to the bottom of the spiral and forced to dig out their own cells. Others claimed the most dangerous inhabitants were force-fed mind-numbing sedatives.
Personally, Will thought the exposure to the elements, combined with eternal isolation, was torment enough. Though, considering Graven was in here, he hoped the sedative part was true.
Hidden turrets littered the vicinity, ready to shoot down escaping prisoners or unauthorized personnel, and guards swarmed the establishment like ants, armed to the teeth.
The black car rolled to a stop in front of the building, and the mysterious driver stepped out.
He was tall and well-dressed in an expensive suit, not a uniform, yet he strode to the guards in front like he owned the place—albeit with a cane and a pronounced limp.
He flashed some sort of identification while Will slipped off the car and crept closer.
“Lieutenant Westbrook,” the driver said by way of announcing himself.
Will’s lip curled. Westbrook? Amaya’s Westbrook?
One of the guards examined his identification. “What brings you here so late, Lieutenant?”
“I need to speak with the warden about the two pirates I brought in yesterday.”
Two pirates. Bas and Ed. Will’s pulse quickened, fearing he might have arrived just in time.
“You’ll have to wait,” another guard said. “Warden’s in an interrogation. You should’ve come during office hours.”
Victor let out a low chuckle. “I was on a date. Just got engaged, as a matter of fact. Finally sealed the deal with Amaya Sinclair.”
His words hit Will like a cannon blast, and the resulting hoots and wolf whistles made him want to slaughter them all where they stood.
Amaya, engaged? How had that happened so quickly?
“She’s a pretty one,” the younger guard said, a smirk in his voice. “Always wears the low-cut dresses, doesn’t she?”
“That’s her. Should’ve seen the one she wore tonight.”
“Hm. Powerful daddy, too.”
Will was going to kill them, starting with Westbrook. He would kill all of them for talking about her—for thinking about her. Westbrook already deserved death for imprisoning his men in this foul place. Stealing Amaya was the final twist of the knife.
He gritted his teeth, ready to show every last one of them what happened to those who fucked with William Lexington and his crew, his
girl . . .
“Powerful, indeed,” Victor said. “High-maintenance, though. I’ve been her father’s errand boy for months.”
“Certainly paid off,” one of the guards said, grinning.
“Indeed. She was awfully broken up about the pirates that helped her escape Graven, though. So, here I am.”
“Ah. Early wedding present?”
“Something like that.”
Will’s grip on Hellsgate slackened, Victor’s words bouncing around in his skull and fracturing his rage.
Westbrook wasn’t here to torment Edmund and Sebastian—he was here to free them. Because of Amaya.
It wasn’t difficult to infer what had happened. Amaya kept her promise, and she’d used the only leverage she had to do it: her hand.
Will employed all his self-control to not rampage through the prison while Victor waited for the warden.
Once he finally showed up to grant an audience, Westbrook’s argument came down to cashing in a personal favor, name-dropping the Sinclairs, an under-the-table transfer of coin, and a mutual agreement that, with the proper paperwork accounted for, no one would miss two petty pirates, one of whom was barely alive, when they had the most-wanted Sky Lord of all time in the prison depths.
When Victor and the warden went below to retrieve Ed and Bas, Will activated one of the invisibility pins and snuck in behind them, his footsteps light. The first few laps of the spiral were offices, sleeping quarters for the guards, and interrogation rooms, each one carved from stone.
With Sebastian and Edmund’s freedom guaranteed, Will’s second task was surprisingly easy.
It didn’t take long to locate the evidence locker, pick the lock with one of Edmund’s relics, and sneak inside.
There were two armed guards inside who saw the door open, but Hellsgate made quick work of them before they could raise an alarm.
After stacking the bodies in an unseen corner, Will used Hellsgate to slice through the hinges on the individual lockboxes until he found Edmund and Sebastian’s relics—Whiplash, Lightword, and Barricade.
He didn’t know exactly what the Skystone conductor looked like, but Amaya had described it as a small wooden sphere. When he found something matching the description, he slid out the pin and opened it, revealing the Skystone suspended inside a multifaceted crystal.
Will couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face.
It felt good to be the one who was a step ahead.
By the time Will returned to the surface, Westbrook and the warden were leaving with Sebastian and Edmund.
They must have been near the bottom of the spiral .
. . and they were in bad shape. Sebastian appeared to have a black eye and a broken nose, undoubtedly from picking a fight with the guards, while Edmund could barely walk.
He leaned on Sebastian for support, the moonlight glinting off his broken glasses.
The warden handed parole paperwork to each of them and unlocked their shackles.
“You owe my fiancée your lives,” Victor announced. “You are hereby banished from the city of Sorrento. If you are seen within its walls after daybreak, or caught practicing piracy, mercy will not be extended again. Oh, and if you ever deign to speak to Miss Sinclair again—”
“Dead,” Sebastian finished for him. He sounded weak, tired. “Got it. Prick.”
It was unceremonious and shockingly anticlimactic. One minute they were behind bars, and the next, they weren’t.
Will didn’t have to lift a finger—all thanks to Amaya. She’d saved them in a way only she could. And while he was furious at the cost, the only feeling Will could summon toward her was admiration.
Westbrook was a different story, but Will couldn’t kill him now and risk Edmund and Sebastian’s fragile freedom.
Victor stalked away, returning to the building after closing the gate behind the two pirates. Will slipped through the crack at the last second, in time to see Sebastian adjust Edmund on his shoulder.
“All right,” the first mate said. “Come on.”
Will kept to the shadows with the invisibility relic activated, following after his broken, battered crewmates.
Sebastian’s body shuddered under Edmund’s weight, or, more likely, the biting cold.
Will could tell his best friend was exhausted and in pain from an assortment of injuries both hidden and visible, but Edmund was lucky to be alive.
One of the Ed’s ears had been blown off, and a hole in his clothes indicated a bullet had gone through his shoulder.
Whether he’d been formally treated, Will couldn’t tell, but he doubted any treatment had been thorough.
The wrap around Edmund’s head was torn from Sebastian’s shredded shirt, and Will imagined the artificer’s shoulder was wrapped similarly.
The mountain created a wind tunnel that whipped their hair, turning noses and ears red. When Edmund’s footsteps slowed even more, Sebastian shook him gently.
“Ed? We gotta keep moving.”
“It’s freezing,” Edmund said. “We’ll die out here. Or I’ll die.”
“Nobody’s going to die.”
“Do you know where we’re going?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe we should—”
“We can’t ask for directions. We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Edmund gritted out. “I was saying that if you give me a second, I may be able to get a reading from the stars.”
Despite their current situation, Will felt his mouth tug in a smile at the familiar sound of their bickering. Whatever they’d faced in the Coil, it hadn’t broken their spirits. But Edmund needed proper medical attention, and he needed it soon.
Will let them get about a half mile away from the Coil before he made himself known. He deactivated the invisibility relic by tapping the pin, fading into view behind them.
“Bas.” His voice penetrated the silence, carried on the wind like a ghost. “Need a hand?”
Both men froze, spinning around to see Will. Sebastian nearly dropped Edmund while the artificer sputtered in disbelief.
“C-captain?” he asked, glasses slipping down his nose as he squinted.
“Aye. Here, Bas, hand him over.”
Will stepped forward, shifting Edmund onto his own shoulder to give the first mate some relief. Sebastian groaned, rolling his shoulder back.
The tension noticeably dispersed, Will’s presence somehow signaling everything was under control. But meeting their eyes for the first time sent waves of guilt and regret through him. They never should have gone through this.
“Will,” Sebastian said. “Were you behind the release?”
“No. Amaya.”
“Damn. Did that asshole say fiancée?”
“That’s what I heard.”
But Will would not be entertaining the topic. His body ached with exhaustion, and he was sure theirs did, too. He tore off his gloves and handed them to Edmund to help him keep warm.
“I’ve got your relics, and the Skystone. I’ll fill you in on the way back to the ship.”