Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
Fucked
Rose
A vow sworn to the North Sea is no mere promise—it is a binding. It ends only in completion or in death, and the dead who break it are condemned to wander the waves, restless and unclaimed by any peace.
— The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
When I was young, I never imagined spending my wedding night on a pirate ship staring at an open book that was likely going to be the death of me. I ran my hand over my forearm where the serpent coiled, eating its tail. The lantern light of the cabin caught the edges of gold that bound it.
I hadn’t hesitated.
When Edmonds proposed a North Sea Vow that bound us both, I didn’t question it.
I only knew that it meant Oscar and Bash would be free.
Now that I was back in pants and a loose blouse surrounded by Val, Inu, Dilly, Emille, Oscar, and Bash staring at the damning words, I was beginning to think I’d fucked up.
“Atlantis?” Oscar said, mouth falling open. “Is that a fucking joke?”
Dread pooled in my stomach.
“What were the terms of the vow, Rosamund?” Bash said, voice like a volcano on the verge of eruption.
I thought about making a joke about for better or worse, but the way all six of them were staring at me told me that was probably not my best idea.
I sighed, folding my arms over my chest.
“I have one month to find something called the Abyssal Conch somewhere in the Atlantic. If I return it to him at the end of the month, then he will no longer pursue Oscar or Bash unless Bash wants to be an idiot, in which case he will back his confession of being Sebastian Flynn.”
Dilly ran a hand over her face. “And did you think to ask what the artifact was or why he couldn’t just get himself?”
Rude.
I expected that from my brother and Bash, not her.
“I was under a time constraint, considering Inu was walking into a trap,” I said.
Apparently, that wasn’t a good enough reason from the way they all silently judged me.
The creaking of the ship docked in Corpse Cove was the only reprieve from their quiet condemnation.
“So it’s in Atlantis?” I shrugged my shoulders. “What is so bad about that? We successfully raided the Maravilla from the Glass Sea. It can’t be worse than that.”
Oscar sighed and sank down onto the hammock, throwing his hand over his face, while Inu subtly shook her head in my direction.
“Do you know why no one goes to Atlantis?” Emille asked.
I was beginning to think that everyone here knew something I didn’t.
“It’s really deep?” I asked.
“Fuck.” Val ground out as she went to the liquor cabinet and poured a shot before downing it in one fell swoop.
That was the first time fear wrapped its claws around my neck and clenched the air from my lungs. Val was the type of woman who laughed at impossible odds and gruelling danger. That she was driven to silence and drink did not bode well for my longevity.
“I fucked up, didn’t I?” I asked.
Bash’s hands clenched at his side, and he was even paler than he had been fresh out of Newgate.
“Tell her.” He ordered, meeting my eyes.
Dilly took a long breath, hand pressed to the words of the book Edmonds gave her.
“It’s not just deep, Rose,” she said. “When Atlantis fell, they had one chance to preserve the knowledge they’d thrived with. It’s said that they placed it all inside a single conch shell. Listen too long, and madness will find you, but that is only if you even get to it.”
She swallowed hard, and now I was sure I was fucked.
“Something big with lots of teeth is in the way, isn’t it?” I whispered.
I knew it by the way Dilly’s hand shook. A woman who ran into a storm just to see a Kraken was afraid.
“It’s called the Leviathan,” she said, reaching over and grabbing another all too familiar book.
“Oh god, does this really call for the Bible?” I groaned.
Oscar snorted. “Rose didn’t pay attention in Sunday School.”
Dilly ignored him and flipped open the leather-bound book that my Grandmother used to hold up and tell Oscar and me we were going to hell if we didn’t obey our elders.
“The biblical Leviathan appears in several passages, and together they paint a remarkably consistent picture. In Job, it is a creature of overwhelming strength—armoured, fire-breathing, and entirely beyond human control. The Psalms describe it as multi-headed and ultimately subject only to divine power. Another psalm speaks of it simply existing within the sea as one of God’s creations.
And in Isaiah, it becomes a symbol of chaos that only God can defeat.
Taken together, Scripture portrays Leviathan as ancient, untamable, and accountable to no one but the divine. ”
And just like that, I knew I had a month to live.
“What else?” Bash asked, tension rippling off of him.
“The creature we call ‘Leviathan’ appears explicitly only in Hebrew Scripture, but it has clear parallels in several older and contemporary ancient Near Eastern texts. These myths share the same themes—a primordial sea serpent, a chaos-dragon, or a multi-headed monster defeated or restrained by a chief deity. Plato makes no mention of it when he spoke of the fall of Atlantis.”
“Any chance you are a deity?” Val asked, downing another shot.
“What kind of funeral do you want?” Oscar asked.
“Oscar.” Inu and Bash were chastised as one.
I was fucked, but I also wasn’t a complete idiot.
“I was worried Edmonds was making an elaborate trap and that if I failed in his task, he would just give me an impossible one and hang Oscar and Bash anyway. So part of the agreement and vow was that he believed there was a reasonable chance of my succeeding. He said the words and the vow took so that means something in that book he gave you has a way we live through this.” I said.
“You could have added that earlier.” Bash snapped.
I shrugged. “Well, I didn’t know how bad it all sounded before.”
“And now?” he snapped. “Do you realise how fucking bad it all sounds?”
Emille reached over and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Easy,” the doctor murmured.
My husband took a long steadying breath, and even now I knew I wasn’t sorry. I would rather face a biblical monster than see him hang. Even if I failed, he was in a better place to outrun Edmonds, and so was Oscar. I knew without a doubt, I would do it again.
I also had just enough self-preservation to not say that out loud at the current moment.
“Has anyone ever seen it?” I asked.
“And lived?” Dilly asked. “No.”
Excellent.
“When Edmonds gave me the book, he said everything I needed was in here, but honestly, it’s more of a journal than a book, and there are also entire pages missing, like he didn’t want us to know anything about the author.
I think there is more to this than meets the eye.
” Dilly hummed as she flipped through the pages.
I stepped forward, eyeing the careful cursive inked into yellowed pages, and it felt like maybe it was time to say the other part I’d been avoiding.
Something that made it feel like my skin was crawling every time I remembered.
I didn’t run from my problems anymore, and that meant saying it out loud.
“At the wedding–” I swallowed hard, running my fingers over the well-worn paper of the book. “He told me I was a rarity and that if I wanted to know what I was, all I had to do was read in between the lines.”
“Anything else you’ve been holding back, Rosamund?” Bash said, irritation pouring off of him in droves.
I lifted my eyes to him and smiled sweetly. “Nope, I think that’s about all of it.”
He tilted his head ever so slightly, and a muscle flexed in his jaw. Maybe joking with him was a poor idea at the moment.
“I’ll keep reading,” Dilly said, saving me from Bash’s wrath.
“Whoever wrote this knew more than the average person about Atlantis, but as the book progresses, there is a distinct tone of madness. However, there is a port town, Angra do Heroísmo, that is mentioned many times as well as some strange phenomena there.”
She drifted off, tapping her finger slowly.
“But?” Bash asked.
She lifted her eyes to him and then to me and back to him.
I did not like where this was going.
“It’s outside of her domain, but getting there will bring us closer than anyone wants to be to it. A strong gale, a miscalculation–I don’t know if it’s worth the risk.”
Bash closed his eyes briefly and moved to the shelf, pulling out a map filled with x’s and red lines. Oscar was up in a second, hovering over the map.
“Absolutely not,” he said, looking up at Bash with his mouth open. “You can’t seriously be considering this.”
“Who’s territory?” I asked, dread already giving me the answer.
Bash ignored us all and looked to Dilly.
“Are there any other cities or ports mentioned in it?” he asked.
She frowned, wiping her face with her hand.
“Briefly, but nothing like Angra do Heroísmo. I’m only one-third into the book, though, besides skimming. I need more time to say for sure,” she said.
“Bash, do I need to remind you how bad it was last time?” Emille asked.
Fuck.
“No, you don’t have to fucking remind me,” Bash said, punching his hand into the map.
I jumped at the sound of the impact, red already blossoming over his knuckles. This was bad.
“So we make for the port, and if anything changes in the book, we will change course,” I said, voice dry and less than I wished it was.
Val poured another glass, but this time she handed it to me.
“Do you have a death wish, Princess?” she asked.
I threw back the drink and let it burn everything and anything.
“Turns out I have a living wish, and if we have to risk it, then we have to risk it. If we don’t get answers, I die anyway.” I said.
I lifted my eyes to Bash, who looked like he might need a Kraken to fight at any minute.
“If Ximena wants me dead, she will find I’m a little harder to kill than I was a year ago,” I said.
Oscar swore and began pacing, muttering about how everyone must have lost their godsdamn minds.
He was probably right.
Ximena was a mysterious creature, and her obsession with my husband knew no bounds. Last year, when she merely suspected Bash cared about me, she had tried to kill me. The only reason I lived was that he convinced her he didn’t care at all.
I glanced at the ring on my finger and swallowed.
“She will know,” Dilly said. “The Aloja are notoriously well informed since the port thrives the way it does. You won’t be able to hide the thoughts of the crew. Before you had plausible deniability–now…”
She didn’t need to finish it.
“Guess we'd better make sure no one makes a miscalculation and no strong winds blow us into her,” I said.
“That’s one hell of a gamble,” Oscar said.
I stared at Bash and wished I could take some of the burden from him. He blamed himself for ever using Ximena to begin his ascent to infamy, but how could he have known what would become of it?
“It’ll be fine,” I said.
Maybe saying things out loud made them true. Five sets of eyes staring back at me like I was a dead woman walking said maybe I was a little too optimistic.