Chapter 33 The Witch
Chapter thirty-three
The Witch
Bash
Angra do Heroísmo sits atop a volatile convergence of tectonic shelves and deep-sea fissures.
Preliminary surveys suggest that the bay’s uncanny calm is not meteorological but biological—an unseen force beneath the shelf that regulates current flow.
Whether this organism is singular or a colony remains a matter of debate.
— The Mysterious Deep: A Comprehensive Understanding
It was hard not to stare at my wife. I constantly found myself watching her doing mundane tasks or interacting with the crew. She was a study in growth and what happens when someone finds themselves. No longer did she listen to phantom ghosts telling her what she wasn’t.
Seas help the man or woman who tried to tell her she was anything less than she was now.
Even now, as she shouted orders to prepare for port, she moved with an effortless ease. No longer clumsy on her own feet, but sure of every step.
“Sir?” a small voice said. “I mean, Captain?”
A week and a half of travel, and I had yet to get used to the presence of Kit on my ship.
Even though I had been a boy when I joined a crew with Billy, it was something else to be on this end of it.
Sometimes I found myself lying awake at night worrying about whether or not it would be better for him to leave him at a safe port, to pay someone for his care.
Then I would remember exactly what I was seeing now.
A boy with meat on his bones and color in his skin. His shaggy hair was freshly cut by Emille, and his smile was far more frequent these days. Even if I found a home for him that I trusted, I doubted I could convince Val to let him go. The two were as thick as thieves.
Once, Val told me she never cared about anything enough to fight for it since joining my crew. I suspected that was no longer true.
“Kit,” I answered.
The boy’s answering smile at the use of his name tugged at something long buried in me. A name had power. To hear your own name when it was long forgotten did something to a person.
“I wanted to say something, and Val said I shouldn’t, but I think I have to, Sir–I mean Captain,” he said.
“Val is usually right, though I would thank you not to tell her I said so,” I answered.
The wind blew a hard gust, and the chill air set in around us, but Kit merely kept on smiling, hands in his pocket as he fidgeted with his feet.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” he said. “You didn’t have to take me from Newgate, and you definitely didn’t need to let me on your ship, but you did.”
I swallowed, trying to block out the warmth that pulled in me at the sincerity in his words. It was a rarity. A blessing and a curse that children endured–always being too sincere, too honest–until it was beaten out of them by adults and the cruelty of the world.
That despite his terrible start at life, he could still bear that level of sincerity, which was, at its core, vulnerability.
“Someday you might not thank me for it,” I said. “We are criminals, Kit. If the navy ever caught us, we would hang, and you’d be lucky if that was your fate too, rather than go back to Newgate.”
I could practically hear Rose chastising me on how terrible I was at talking to children, but Kit deserved honesty so that if given the choice, he could make one he could live with.
He nodded, smile disappearing to make way for a firm set of the jaw that could only mean resolve.
“All the same, Sir–Captain,” he said, steel in his voice. “Being on the Wraith is the happiest I’ve ever been. I have everything I could want, and I get to see things people only dream about. If the price of that is hanging, then I’d still choose it.”
Aye, just like a boy I once knew.
It’d been a while since I heard Billy’s voice, but I should have known he’d show himself in the face of this moment.
I knelt down before Kit and held out my hook between us.
“Sometimes the price of this life is pieces of ourselves. Sometimes we give more than we get, but when the sea is in your blood, and the wind is what carries you, it’s all worth it.”
My voice was thick with the kind of sincerity I only ever reserved for my wife. Kit nodded and straightened his shoulders.
“I understand, Captain,” he said. “I’ll make you proud, just you wait.”
If I were a stronger man, I would have told him he already did. Choosing to smile when life had only ever shown him cruelty was something that inspired me more than pink skies and calm seas.
So instead I stood and used my good hand to ruffle his hair.
“Go find Oscar and see if he has a job for you, and make sure to listen to Val when we make port, no wandering off.”
“Yes, Captain!” he said, running off to the front of the ship to where Oscar was gathering rigging.
I stared after him for a while, watching the way Oscar played with him and taught him how to tie a knot. Arms wrapped around my waist, and Rose rested her head against my back. I let out a long breath, drawing strength from her.
“Billy would be so proud of you,” she said.
I fought back the feeling threatening to drown me. I wasn’t ready to feel it. Not when we were about to make port and hopefully find answers. I missed Billy in a way that I never thought myself capable of. He was everywhere. No part of this ship that he didn’t touch.
“He’s a good kid,” I said.
Rose squeezed me once.
“And you, Sebastian Flynn, are a good person,” she said.
I turned, pulling her into me as she laughed and tried to escape.
“Well, now you’ve gone too far.” I joked.
She let me catch her easily, and with her in my arms, I could almost believe those words.
“Don’t you two have a cabin or something to do that shit in?” Val called across the way.
Unfortunately, as the port of Angra do Heroísmo was quickly taking shape before us, there was not enough time to do the things I would have liked to do for my wife just then.
“Are you ready?” Rose asked, raising her chin up.
“The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can get that mark off your wrist,” I said.
In answer, Rose pulled back her jacket and held out the serpent mark between us.
“Sometimes it burns or itches,” she confessed. “The closer we get, the more frequent it is.”
“That’s because a North Sea vow wants to be fulfilled,” Dilly said, coming up behind us carrying a satchel that appeared half her weight. “The mark will encourage you to fulfil it in any way possible.”
“Why do you think he chose that vow?” Rose asked.
“Probably because of all the vows of the deep, that one has the highest rate of fulfilment. It’s why I don’t think he was trying to trick you. He genuinely wants whatever that conch shell does.” Dilly said.
“Which is why it’s probably a mistake to give it to him,” Bash said.
Dilly nodded. “Hence why he made her make the vow. Now you have to choose between giving him something you shouldn’t or her dying.”
Rose frowned, tucking her wrist back into her sleeve.
“Maybe there is a third option,” she said. “But first things first, we need to know what it is and how to get it.”
Dilly stared out at the bustling port town. “I doubt the pages pulled from the journal are out there, but someone has to know.”
I hoped she was right, but either way, this was a shot in the dark. Either way, we were going to retrieve that shell by any means necessary because failure meant Rose dying, and that was not a fate I was willing to endure.
Angra announced itself long before we saw the curve of her bay.
The wind carried the scent first—wet stone, citrus groves crushed under the sun, and that volcanic tang the Azores wear like a second skin.
It was cleaner than the ports I was used to.
No rotting fish, no sour ale, no unwashed sinners crowding the docks.
Just salt, heat, and the slow, steady breath of an island that had weathered centuries of storms and dared the sea to try again.
When the fog thinned, I caught my first glimpse of her.
The fortress walls rose out of the cliffside like the spine of some great beast, S?o Jo?o Baptista on one end, S?o Sebasti?o on the other, watching the harbor with all the suspicion of old kings.
Between them lay the town—whitewashed houses stacked along the hillside, red-tiled roofs bright as spilled wine, church towers spearing the sky.
Pretty. Too pretty. Places that looked like that always hid something sharp.
We rounded toward the inner harbor, sails snapping as Val barked for a controlled bleed of speed.
The Sea Wraith obeyed like she always did—temperamental, but loyal to a firm hand.
Waves slapped our hull in lazy rolls; the bay here was calmer than the open ocean, almost deceitfully so, as if it wanted us close before deciding whether to keep us.
I stood at the rail, arms crossed, watching the shoreline come into focus.
Locals clustered at the quay—men in linen shirts rolled to the elbow, women whose skirts snapped in the wind, a handful of merchants clutching ledgers like they were sacred texts.
A priest lingered near the steps of the pier chapel, giving our black-sailed vessel the kind of blessing that wasn’t a blessing at all.
Couldn’t blame him.
Pirates weren’t exactly welcome guests in a place that prided itself on order.
Still, Angra had always been a crossroads—Portuguese ships, Spanish traders, whalers, smugglers. Gold and spices westbound, secrets eastbound. If you wanted to disappear, you could. If you wanted to be found, well… there were worse places for it.
The Wraith came to a stop with the ease of a life spent knowing exactly who she was. I gave the order to drop the ladder and ignored the nervous energy humming through me.
“You have one day,” I said to Dilly. “We don’t linger.”
“Oh?” Dilly hummed. “One day to track down someone who knows something about this journal and an ancient artifact guarded by a terrifying sea monster? What could be easier?”
I bit back the smile. She was rarely mouthing back, but sometimes that red hair of hers showed its temper.