Chapter 9 Lines
Chapter nine
Lines
Rose
The sap’s effects are brief, yet the guilt it breeds is not. To wield it is to choose terror as a weapon, and terror leaves marks no antidote can cleanse.
— The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
The Bane’s shape set against a setting sun that painted the sky in pinks and reds that echoed like a premonition of what was to be.
“The last one,” Inu said next to me, her movements silent.
“The last one.” I agreed. “Then we bring them home.”
If it were anyone else at my side, I might have called the small sound that broke from her relief, but Inu wasn’t one to celebrate too early. She knew the cost.
Across the deck, Val barked orders to the crew, bringing the Wraith to a standstill. A risk. A weakness.
“I respect the need for secrecy, but I would appreciate knowing what I am handing over to you, Captain,” Emille said, coming up on my other side.
The specimens in his hands were blood red with a glint that felt a little too much like magic.
“You used to be more trusting, Emille.” I frowned, taking one of two jars from him.
“I’ve made mistakes in my life, and I try not to repeat them. It is because I trust you that I am standing here at all,” he countered.
His French accent was stronger beneath the weight of his stress. I knew he spoke the truth. That he feared what I’d become, but also knew who I was. It was a respect I was happy to give back to him now that the Bane was in view.
“According to Dilly, Dragon Tree Sap is a potent hallucinogen. It was attempted to be used by the Navy for winning battles before they ever started, but inevitably, they could not find a way to protect themselves from the effects, and whatever you see in the bloody red makes you never want to look at the Mysterious Deep again.”
“You trust Dilly to make an antidote,” Inu said, sure of the answer.
“I trusted Emille and Dilly to create an antidote, and I believe you have,” I said, turning to the doctor.
“Hard to know when I was only given half the information. I merely knew I was working to stifle the effects of mind toxins.” Emille frowned.
“Dilly thinks that’s enough,” I said.
I regretted how little faith I’d put in Emille. He deserved better than that, but all I could hear over and over in my mind was Bash saying how important it was that as few people as possible knew the plan. I couldn’t risk failure, no matter how much I cared about Emille.
“What sort of hallucinations is it?” he asked.
“The reports say it’s visions of drowned loved ones, monsters rising from below, or their own deaths replayed, though what is written is very brief.
Apparently, the government deemed it a toxin too dangerous to continue testing.
” Dilly said, coming up behind us with a wide smile, pulling at her freckled cheeks.
“The powdered boneweed we harvested from the sea cliffs will steady the mind,” Emile said. “But there is no knowing, as I’ve said many times, how it will interact with the sap without testing it.”
“Yet we only gathered enough for this lovely day,” Dilly said, holding out the tray of blood-red vials.
Inu reached out and uncorked one, red smoke lifting as it made a slight hissing noise that made my stomach turn.
“Is it meant to make that sound?” Inu asked.
Dilly shrugged. “I don’t know. No one’s made an antidote before.”
“And you are willing to put our fate in the hands of a doctor with limited knowledge on the subject and a mysteriologist known for running straight into danger if only to further her own knowledge,” Emile said.
I took a vial from Dilly, uncorked it, and drank it down before I could think better of it. It burned and singed my throat like it was made of coal, or maybe it really was made from a dragon’s flame. I swallowed hard, and when I blew out my breath, red smoke emerged with it.
Emille’s eyes widened, but Dilly flashed her white teeth, nearly bouncing on her feet.
“I love it when it does that.” Dilly squealed. “I’ve documented that, nausea, and a mild headache so far as side effects.”
“Delightful,” I murmured, resisting the urge to rub at the burning in my chest. “I have great faith in both you and Dilly, Emille. I would not have even entertained this if I didn’t.”
Emille took a long breath that raised his broad shoulders with the effort as he took a vial of his own.
“The potential visions–you know what you are asking me to risk?” he asked, holding up the vial.
I did.
If the antidote failed, then he would have to witness his wife and daughter dying all over again. That was a fate I was not willing to risk. I believed in him and Dilly. They hadn’t failed me once, and they wouldn’t now.
“This will work, and then we will get them back and not have to do shit like this anymore,” I said.
Emille tilted his head and drank down the elixir. He squeezed his eyes tight as it worked through him, and when he opened them again, there was a sense of clarity there that spoke of resignation, but not surrender.
Inu took her dose, and when the red smoke emerged from her mouth, she was sharpened steel. This was the last time.
The last time.
“Everyone’s been dosed,” Dilly said, tone solemn. “I guess it’s now or never.”
“Getting cold feet, Shaw?” Val said, coming up behind us.
Dilly bounced on her feet and licked her lips, and I wished she had hidden it, but that wasn’t in her nature. She was honest to a fault.
“There is always a risk in the unknown, and it isn’t called the mysterious deep for nothing.
I trust my research, and I trust Emille’s expertise, but what we are about to do–I calculated the least potent amount so that the effects will be short-term, but I just don’t know that the people on that ship deserve this. ”
I opened my mouth to tell her it was James Allen who started all of this, but she held up her hand to me.
“I know, Rose, but the moment deserves some levity. What we do has consequences,” she said.
“Agreed,” Emille said.
The Bane was quickly approaching, and if we didn’t act, it would be us at the end of a noose. We were vulnerable, locked in place.
“I understand the weight of this, but I have not changed my mind. Five minutes, right? That’s what you estimated at this dose? The tests the Navy ran used more potent doses, and that’s why it was banned? Correct?” I asked, unable to keep the frustration from my voice.
Dilly’s lips pulled down. “Five minutes is not nothing. Imagine watching your family drown or Bash for five minutes. Our hands are still stained, no matter how much damage is mitigated.”
I hated that she was right, and the heavy feeling in my gut had known it was true even before she said it.
“We have to scare them. To make them fear us enough to negotiate.” I said.
Dilly nodded. “Which is why we are doing it, but acknowledging the cost matters.”
“Fair enough,” Val said. “Shall we, then, because the Bane is almost on us and I prefer not to hang today?”
Sure enough, she was closing in; the sea turning white with the disturbance of her entry.
“Koinu?” I asked.
“No sign,” Dilly said. “I put some on Blackbeard’s food just in case. He glared at me the whole time, but seemed to be tolerating it. I have no way of knowing if it affects creatures of the deep.”
So be it.
Hopefully, Koinu was smart enough to know to stay away. History said that he was, but I couldn’t stall on his behalf.
I reached out and gently took the first jar from Emille, who wore a permanent frown at this point. I uncorked it with a too-loud popping sound that was followed by red smoke that singed my nose hairs with its potency. I was the one who ordered this–I would be the one to cast it into the sea.
Before I could tip it over, Dilly took the second jar and sneezed as the smoke reached her. When I raised my eyebrow at her, she merely shrugged her shoulders and wiggled her nose.
“It was my idea. I’m just as responsible,” she said.
And that was just another reason why Cordelia Shaw was one of the best people I knew, even if what we were doing was wrong. I was grateful to have her by my side.
Taking a deep breath, we lowered the blood-red sap into the sea and watched as everything turned to crimson.
“Seas,” Emille whispered.
Seas indeed.
Red.
Not red like wine or rust or spilled blood on a deck.
No.
Red like a wound in the world.
The sea split open beneath the Wraith, blooming outward in great crimson veins.
The color spread fast—too fast—like it had been waiting beneath the surface all along.
The waves stilled in a single breath, falling into an uncanny calm that set my teeth on edge.
The air thickened as a faint, metallic mist seeped upward, brushing against my cheeks with icy fingers.
A hush rolled across the deck—not silence, but the kind of quiet a church holds before a funeral. My pulse hammered so loudly I thought the sap had found its way into my veins.
The Bane reached the outskirts of the bloom—and slowed.
This close now, I could see enough that there was no hiding from the consequences of what I’d done.
I watched them through the rising red mist—shadows at first, then men, armed and shouting…
and then falling eerily still. Their oars hung useless.
Their sails slackened, though the wind still blew.
One sailor lurched backward as if shoved by an unseen hand.
Another pressed both palms to his temples, dropping to his knees.
A third stumbled to the railing and vomited overboard.
A scream tore the air—thin, ragged, breaking. Then another. And another.
The sap was working.
I gripped the rail, staring straight into the reddened water.
It stared back. Ripples spiraled outward, shimmering like wet muscle.
For a heartbeat—a mad, impossible heartbeat—I swore I saw a face beneath the surface.
Someone I cared about. Someone I had lost. Billy’s outline flickered in the dark, distorted by waves, and my vision buckled.
“No,” I whispered, digging my fingernails into the wood. “Not me. Not today.”