Chapter 41 On Deals and Devils #2
The crew–what was left of it- moved quietly.
Even Dilly’s usual brightness was muted; her red curls were tucked under a scarf, her eyes rimmed pink from nights without sleep.
Kit stood near the rail, hunched into himself.
He didn’t look up when I approached, just kept staring at the water like he expected Val’s laughter to rise from it.
Staring down at it, maybe I did too.
She was always larger than life, infallible. Yet she was somehow gone. It was an impossibility I couldn’t wrap my head around.
My chest tightened.
Bash had been right. We couldn’t fix this. We could only finish it.
The harbor came closer. Lanterns swayed on the docks, their light trembling in the rain. Shadows moved there—men, silhouettes, waiting.
And then I saw him.
Captain Edmonds stood near the end of the pier beneath a hooded cloak, the rain sliding off him as if even the weather knew better than to cling. The dock itself looked cleaner around him, as if his presence had scraped it of decay.
Usually, Edmonds looked like a man viewing the world through glass—calm, clinical, faintly amused by everyone else’s panic. Tonight, there was something wrong with him.
Restlessness sat in his posture, sharp as a pulled thread. His fingers flexed once beneath the edge of his cloak. His gaze snapped over the ship with impatience that did not belong to him.
I felt Bash stiffen beside me.
The gangplank dropped with a hollow thud.
Bash went first, as always—shoulders squared, eyes dark, the kind of stillness that warned a man he could be killed without drama. Dilly followed, then Emille with his bag, then Kit, then the crew.
I didn’t know why Kit thought he was invited, but I wasn’t prepared to argue with him now.
“Watch Kit,” I said to Dilly.
She nodded, and I knew she would keep him safe because neither of us would let anything happen to him after Val died for him. He was ours to protect.
I stepped down last, the conch hidden beneath my cloak.
And Morwenna stepped behind me.
She moved like the tide itself. Her gown clung to her thin body, dark hair plastered to her skull, her face carved into stoicism so severe it nearly looked like pride.
Edmonds watched her approach without surprise.
It was the first thing that told me he’d known she would be here.
“Mother,” he said, and the word wasn’t a greeting. It was an assessment.
Morwenna stopped three paces from him.
“Arthur,” she replied.
He made a soft sound—almost a laugh, but too thin to be real. “I wondered where you’d gone. When I arrived at your house and found it empty, I thought… yes. Of course.”
His gaze slid over her. “You didn’t help her out of kindness.”
Morwenna’s mouth tightened. “No.”
“I assumed you were plotting,” Edmonds continued, as if discussing the weather. “You always are. I assume you intended to corner me. Force me to tell you where father hid it.”
Morwenna’s throat bobbed. She didn’t deny it. That he knew how much she needed her skin and he still kept it from her was all I needed to know about his character.
Edmonds stepped closer, rain dripping from his hood. “You wanted your seal-skin.”
The air went colder.
Bash’s hand brushed mine—silent warning.
Morwenna’s eyes shimmered, but she didn’t cry. Not yet. She held herself like a woman who had survived by refusing softness.
Edmonds looked at her for a long moment, then reached into his cloak.
His hand emerged holding something slick and pale—a bundle of hide that made my stomach twist. The seal-skin looked almost silver in the rain, mottled and smooth, the kind of thing that should have been alive.
Morwenna’s breath broke. It was the first sound of her grief.
Edmonds watched it with detached interest, then lifted the skin and tossed it toward her like a coat.
“You don’t need leverage anymore,” he said. “Not now. Not when I’m about to collect what I came for.”
Morwenna caught it with shaking hands.
And then she cried.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just tears sliding down her face as she stared at the skin like it was both salvation and a corpse. Her fingers clutched it with desperation that made her knuckles pale. She pressed it to her chest, and the sound that came out of her was so raw it didn’t feel human.
I found my anger… faltering.
Because in that moment, she wasn’t a witch or a bargain-maker or a woman who had delivered us to monsters.
She was a woman holding the last piece of herself.
Morwenna swallowed hard and looked up at Edmonds.
“I tried,” she whispered. “I tried to keep you from becoming him.”
Edmonds’s jaw clenched.
“You couldn’t,” he said flatly. “And you didn’t truly want to. You stayed. You watched. You let him teach me how to hunger.”
Morwenna flinched as he struck her.
“You finally have what you’ve ever wanted,” Edmonds said, voice sharpening with impatience again. “So take it. Leave. Go north. Go to whatever shore will tolerate you. I don’t care.”
Morwenna’s shoulders shook. She clutched the skin tighter, then turned.
For a moment, I expected her to say something—a curse, a plea, a prophecy.
She didn’t.
She walked away down the dock into the rain, the seal-skin held to her chest like a child. Her dark hair hung like seaweed. Her back was straight, but her grief followed her in visible waves.
Edmonds didn’t watch her go.
He turned to me instead.
“Rose,” he said, and my name sounded like he’d dissected it and found it useful. “Hand it over.”
My hand tightened around the conch beneath my cloak.
Bash shifted closer. Dilly’s fingers flexed at her side. Emille’s face was pale, eyes darting between Edmonds and the shell he couldn’t see.
Oscar was behind us somewhere on the gangplank. I could feel him even before I heard him—quiet, coiled.
That was a side effect of what the conch had done to me. I seemed to simply know things. The fact that Edmond’s was here was all the proof I needed.
Edmonds stepped forward, rain slicking his lashes.
“I confess,” he said, and there was something like honesty in it, “I hoped you could do it. But I never truly believed it was possible. Obviously, I believed there was a reasonable chance as specified in our bargain–but, well, the reality of it is something else.”
The words landed wrong.
Not gratitude. Not awe. Possession.
A man looking at a tool that had exceeded expectations.
My anger flared hot enough to cut through grief.
“You hoped,” I repeated. “While people died.”
His mouth twitched. “Yes.”
“Val is dead,” I hissed. “Inu is dead. My brother—” My voice cracked. I clenched my teeth until it steadied. “My brother is hollow because you couldn’t keep your obsession from swallowing everything.”
Edmonds regarded me, unbothered. “And yet you began this.”
The rain seemed to go quieter.
“You bartered for their lives,” he said. “Your husband. Your brother. You made a deal with the North Sea. You chose to take what it offered and ignore what it demanded. Don’t stand on moral high ground now, Rose Bailey. You are not built for it.”
The words hit like a fist.
Because they were true.
I had sat in a worn-down tavern with my heart in my throat and offered anything to keep Bash and Oscar alive. I had called Edmonds a devil and then shaken his hand.
My throat tightened until I could barely breathe.
Bash’s hand found mine, steadying, but guilt had teeth, and it sank them in deep.
Edmonds leaned in slightly, eyes intent now—impatient. “The conch.”
My wrist burned.
The serpent mark beneath my sleeve stirred like it was waking, like it recognized the shape of the end.
I swallowed blood and salt as I reached into my cloak and pulled out the abyssal conch. I held it out to my devil.
Edmonds’s gaze locked onto it like it was a heartbeat.
His hand came up fast—almost greedy. He took it from me with reverence that was so sharp it looked like hunger. His fingers traced its curve. He lifted it slightly, as if expecting it to glow for him. As if expecting the sea itself to applaud.
And then—something happened.
My wrist went cold.
The glittering serpent mark didn’t vanish. It receded—as if the magic sank beneath my skin, leaving behind a smear of black ink, faint but permanent. Not gone. Not forgiven. Only… quieted.
Across from me, Edmonds inhaled sharply, his own wrist visible where the cuff of his glove shifted. The matching serpent on his skin dimmed too, glitter fading into black.
A bargain fulfilled.
Not forgotten.
Edmonds stared at his wrist a moment, then back at me. “It recognizes completion,” he said softly. “Binding.”
I couldn’t stop myself. “Your promise,” I said. “The North Sea will hold you to it.”
His gaze flicked to Bash, then Oscar, then back to me. “Yes.”
Bash’s shoulders went taut.
Edmonds’s mouth curved in something almost amused again, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I will not seek to imprison or kill them. As agreed.”
I waited, heart hammering.
Edmonds looked at Bash. “If he wishes it, I will help him get revenge on Lord Smith.”
Silence sharpened.
Bash’s face didn’t change, but I felt the shift in him like a tide turning.
Edmonds tilted his head. “A man who built his life on respectability while leaving you and your mother to rot and her to die. A man who would rather see you dead than exposed. I could ruin him for you with a few sentences.”
My stomach dropped. All of this just to arrive at this singular moment. The moment when I learned what obsession and vengeance cost me.
Bash’s jaw clenched, the muscle jumping. He stared at Edmonds with a quiet so heavy it could have drowned a man. Then he looked at me.
And in his eyes I saw everything he’d ever wanted: to burn Lord Smith down to ash; to make him choke on the truth; to watch him lose all the power he’d stolen by pretending Bash didn’t exist.
I saw it.
And then I saw something else, too.
Billy’s voice. Val’s laugh. Inu’s rare smile. The Wraith’s deck is beneath our feet. Oscar’s devastation. My own wrist was stained with the reminder of what obsession cost.
Bash exhaled.