Chapter 40 The Cost #2
I cursed under my breath. Saints help me, I had married a woman who could look down the throat of a legend and make jokes about efficiency.
“Val!” I shouted.
She was already halfway down the starboard gun line, checking flints and powder as the crew frantically loaded. She snapped her head up.
“What?”
“There’s a weak point—under the jaw, left side. You see that glowing scar?”
Val squinted, braced against the roll of the deck. For a heartbeat, the fury in her eyes was something almost holy.
“Oh, I see it,” she said. “Ugly bastard.”
“That’s where we aim,” I said. “Every shot, every spear, every bloody kitchen knife if you have to.”
Val grinned, savage and bright. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
The Leviathan roared. The sound was so loud my bones vibrated. The Wraith shook, lines snapping, a mast groaning dangerously. The creature moved closer, sliding through the water with terrifying grace. At this angle, its golden eye had a slit through it and was weeping fluid from it. Blackbeard.
I didn’t know if the damned cat was alive, but I would feed it all the treats it wanted for slowing the leviathan down.
“Oscar!” I shouted. “Keep us moving or we’re dead!”
“Trying!” he yelled back from the helm, jaw clenched. Inu stood beside him, steady as a shadow, one hand on his shoulder and the other on the hilt of her sword.
The ship surged forward, fighting the unnatural currents whipped up by the Leviathan’s movement.
Rose grabbed my sleeve. “I have to get closer.”
“You’re not going near that thing.”
“I have to. The shell says the binding won’t crack unless it hears the full song. If I stay back here, it will only hear… echoes.”
“You can sing from right here quite beautifully, thanks,” I snapped.
She gave me a look. “Bash.”
I hated that I understood. Hated that she was right. Hated that my love for her meant letting her stand at the edge of oblivion with a cursed shell in her hands.
“You’re not going alone,” I said. “If you’re at the rail, I’m with you.”
“Obviously.” She flashed me a quick, wild smile that hurt to look at.
Morwenna stepped closer. “Careful, girl. The more you give it, the more it will take. The line between calling and becoming is thinner than you think.”
“I’ll worry about that after we’re not all dead,” Rose said. “Dilly, can you get below and help with the pumps?”
Dilly swallowed hard. “But—”
“You are no use to me if you’re drowning,” Rose said, gentler than her words. “Go.”
We all understood the command. It was from the lips of a captain, but also a friend. Dilly would have stayed on deck and recorded every small detail. Rose couldn’t put everyone she loved below deck, but Dilly, she could try to save.
Understanding, Dilly nodded, eyes shining, and scrambled for the hatch.
The deck pitched, sharp and sudden. A wave crashed over the bow, nearly knocking us from our feet. I grabbed Rose, pulling her against me as seawater tore at our legs.
“Kit! Get below!” Val roared somewhere to port. “Now, you idiot!”
I’d never heard that sort of fear in Val’s voice. She laughed in death’s face and drank with danger, but the wildness in her eyes wasn’t that of a hardened sailor. That fear was born of something deeper, something ancient.
It was love.
I caught a glimpse of the boy near the midships hatch, pale and wide-eyed, clutching the ragged coat we’d scrounged for him since pulling him out of Newgate. He hesitated at the shouted order—eyes flicking from the dark gap below to the raging sea.
“Go!” I barked.
He bolted for the hatch.
Another impact rocked us. I heard the sickening crack of wood—deeper this time. Not just hull damage. Something structural.
“Water’s rising fast!” a voice screamed from below. “We can’t hold her much longer!”
We didn’t have time.
“Bash,” Rose said urgently. “We’re running out of ships.”
“Then let’s make this count.”
We staggered toward the starboard rail. The Leviathan’s massive head slid alongside us, that golden eye rolling to fix on the glowing shell in Rose’s hand. For a heartbeat, everything narrowed to that gaze—the ancient hunger in it, the terrible, alien intelligence.
“Ready the starboard battery!” Val yelled. “On my mark!”
“On your mark!” echoed the crew, voices shaking but holding.
Rose stepped up to the rail. I wrapped an arm around her waist from behind, bracing us both.
“Don’t fall,” I muttered.
“Don’t let go,” she shot back.
She lifted the shell again. Sebastian Jr. clung stubbornly, tiny claws dug in like he, too, refused to let her face this alone.
“Okay,” she whispered to it. “One more secret.”
The shell thrummed—and then, as if some unseen barrier shattered, the sound poured out.
It wasn’t just noise. It was a song, the way the sea is a drink of water—too big for the body, too old for the ears.
Notes that weren’t notes at all but memories: a city of light beneath the waves, hands raised in prayer or defiance, the shadow of something vast passing overhead, the taste of fear when people realize they have angered something too big to name.
Rose’s voice joined it.
This time, the words weren’t foreign. They were Atlantean, yes, but she shaped them with a human mouth, a human grief. The melody rose and fell like the swell of the ocean, calling, commanding, promising an end to chains.
The Leviathan stilled.
The great golden eye dilated, then narrowed again. The bioluminescent scars along its body flared, particularly the jagged patch under its jaw.
“Val!” I shouted hoarsely. “Now!”
“Fire!” Val screamed.
The starboard cannons roared as one. Smoke and flame belched from their mouths, recoil shuddering through the deck. The shots tore across the water in a deadly arc, slamming into the Leviathan’s side.
It bellowed, the sound shaking the teeth in my skull.
Most of the cannonballs bounced off its armored hide or sank uselessly into its flesh—but several struck the glowing scar. The brilliant patch of bioluminescence flickered violently.
Rose gasped, nearly collapsing. I tightened my grip.
“Again!” Val yelled. “Reload! Aim for the scar!”
The crew scrambled, hands moving with the frantic efficiency of people who knew their lives depended on every heartbeat.
The Leviathan recovered faster than I liked. It swept its massive head toward us, jaws yawning open. Rows upon rows of teeth glistened in the dark, serrated and long enough to use as spears.
“Down!” I shouted.
A torrent of water blasted from its maw, a shockwave of pressure and spray that hit the Wraith like a wall. The deck tilted. Men and women went tumbling. The rail we clung to splintered.
My grip slipped. Rose’s feet went out from under her.
For a split second, I knew we were going over the side.
A hand clamped on Rose’s arm from the other side, wrenching her back.
Inu.
She had her sword sheathed, both hands locked around Rose’s wrist, heels digging into the deck, muscles straining.
“I told you,” Inu grunted, “we would test that later.”
“Good timing,” Rose wheezed.
The Leviathan reared again, closer this time. Its head loomed directly above us, that scar gleaming like an invitation.
But its focus had shifted. The golden eye rolled not to the shell, not to Rose, but to Oscar at the helm.
For a heartbeat, everything slowed.
The creature’s gaze fixed on my quartermaster and friend, on the way he fought the wheel with gritted teeth, on the way he refused to let the Wraith be dragged sideways into its waiting jaws. He was everything he was never born to be. A relentless fighter and a damn good pirate.
I knew the moment I met him that he was meant for more than London society, and I couldn’t bring myself to regret asking him to join me on the Wraith.
But now, now as the Leviathan surged for him, I regretted nothing more in my life.
And then it struck.
The massive head lunged toward the quarterdeck, teeth gaping.
“Oscar!” Rose screamed.
I moved before I thought, shoving Rose toward Inu and sprinting across the slick deck. The world narrowed to a man who was more my brother, to the impossibly huge shadow racing for him.
A blur of motion cut across my path. Morwenna flung her arms wide, chanting something vicious and sharp. Water rose up in a sudden wall between Oscar and the oncoming maw—not enough to stop it, but enough to make it hesitate, to slow it by a fraction.
In battles like this, a fraction is everything.
Inu was faster.
She wrenched Rose away from the rail, shoving her back toward me so hard that Rose stumbled into my chest. Then she ran—not for safety, not for cover, but straight for the Leviathan’s head as it crashed through Morwenna’s barrier.
“Inu!” Oscar shouted, horror cracking his voice.
She leapt onto the remnants of the quarterdeck rail, using the momentum of the ship’s tilt to launch herself forward. For a heartbeat, she was suspended in the air, dark hair streaming behind her, eyes fixed on the Leviathan with a focus sharp enough to cut.
Her sword flashed as she swung it down, carving a deep line across the glowing scar beneath its jaw. The creature howled, jerking to the side.
It wasn’t enough to kill it.
But it was enough to enrage it.
The Leviathan snapped its head sideways. Its massive jaw clipped the rail. Wood exploded into splinters. Inu lost her footing.
Her body was flung backward toward the open mouth. For one suspended moment, she and Oscar locked eyes. So much passed between them in that heartbeat that I felt like an intruder just witnessing it—love, apology, defiance.
Then the Leviathan’s jaws closed around her.
“No!” Oscar’s scream ripped through the storm, raw and broken.
The creature didn’t swallow her whole; she was too small a thing for it to bother with, just a shard of pain lodged in its tooth. Blood—hers, its, the world’s—spilled into the sea.
The scar under its jaw burned brighter.
Rose made a sound I’d never heard from her before, some terrible mix of grief and fury.