Chapter 11
ELEVEN
AVIORA
The water is black and cold.
Zoric’s men stand guard on the docks, watching with concern etched into each face.
I slip into it from the harbor platform, feeling the chill cut through my clothes in the first heartbeat. The second heartbeat, it reaches my bones. By the third, I’ve stopped feeling anything except the urgent need to keep moving.
Oreth’s dead army has retreated. I’m sure that’s not a good sign. Maybe he’s rebuilding, calling in the next wave that could easily overwhelm us. But we’re not waiting for that.
Zoric enters the water behind me, his bulk displacing water in a surge that pushes me sideways. I steady myself against the stone wall, find his hand in the darkness, and squeeze once.
He squeezes back. Then we dive.
The underwater passage swallows us immediately—narrow stone walls pressing close, the current fighting our every stroke. I can’t see anything. Can’t hear anything except the rush of blood in my ears and the distant, haunting pulse of the cursed gold somewhere ahead.
Forty-seven coins in the waterproof pouch at my belt. The entire contents of Dreadhaven’s vault, gathered over years of salvage and survival. They burn against my hip even through the leather, their hunger sharper now that we’re in Oreth’s territory.
Come to us.
I push the whispers down and swim harder.
Zoric’s hand finds mine again in the darkness—not for comfort this time, but guidance.
He knows these passages. Mapped them years ago, before the curse took his first mate, before everything went wrong.
His fingers tap against my palm in a rhythm I don’t recognize, and I realize he’s counting.
Keeping track of distance, of time, of how much breath we have left.
My lungs are starting to burn.
The passage twists left, then right, then opens into something larger. I feel the space around me expand, the walls falling away, and for a horrible moment, I’m lost—floating in endless black water with no sense of up or down.
Zoric pulls me toward him. His body becomes my anchor, his grip on my arm the only thing keeping me oriented. We kick upward—or what I hope is upward—and break the surface gasping.
Air. Stale and damp, but air. I gulp it down, feeling my lungs expand, my vision clearing from the edges where darkness was starting to creep in.
“Way station.” Zoric’s voice echoes strangely in the enclosed space. “We’re about a third of the way through.”
I tread water, trying to get my bearings. The chamber is natural—carved by centuries of water erosion, its walls lined with phosphorescent growth that casts everything in dim blue-green light. Rock formations jut from the water at odd angles, offering handholds for those who need to rest.
I need a break. My muscles are screaming, my ankle throbbing where I twisted it during the shipwreck that feels like a lifetime ago. But we don’t have time.
“How much farther?”
“Another hundred yards. Maybe less.” He swims to one of the rock formations, pulls himself up enough to check something I can’t see. “The wards are still active. That’s good.”
“And bad?”
“They’re flickering. The curse is fighting them.” He slides back into the water, moves close to me. In the dim light, his face is all hard planes and shadows, but his eyes—his eyes are worried. “When we reach the hoard chamber, the wards won’t protect us. Oreth’s power is strongest there.”
“I know.” I reach up, touch his face. Feel the roughness of his jaw against my palm. “That’s the point. Draw him out. Make him think he’s won.”
“And then scatter the gold before he can complete the binding.”
“And then scatter the gold.” I let my hand drop. “Simple.”
“Nothing about this is simple.” His hand finds my waist beneath the water, steadying me against the current that’s trying to push us apart. “Aviora—”
“Don’t.” I shake my head. “Whatever you’re about to say—don’t. We don’t have time for last words.”
“These aren’t last words.”
“Then save them for after.” I push closer, pressing my forehead to his. The water is freezing, but where our bodies touch, warmth blooms. “Tell me when we’re standing on dry land. Tell me when Oreth is ash and the curse is broken. Tell me then.”
He’s quiet for a moment. I feel his breath against my lips, feel the tension in his body as he fights whatever he wants to say.
“After,” he says finally. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“You’d better.”
I kiss him. Quick and fierce, a promise more than a goodbye. Then I push away, toward the far side of the chamber, toward the passage that leads deeper into the Wrecktide’s heart.
“Ready?”
“No.” He follows me anyway. “Let’s go.”
The second dive is worse.
The water gets colder as we descend, the current stronger. The passage narrows until I can feel stone brushing my shoulders on both sides, until every stroke is a fight against walls that want to trap me.
And the whispers get louder.
Not just the coins now. Other voices, layered beneath them, rising from the depths ahead. Voices that know my name. Voices that promise rest, peace, an end to running.
Just let go.
I swim harder. Focus on Zoric’s hand in mine, on the ache in my lungs, on anything real and immediate. The whispers are lies. The curse is lies. Everything down here is designed to make me give up, and I refuse.
A shape looms out of the darkness.
I jerk back, my free hand going for my knife, and then I realize—it’s a wreck. The skeletal remains of a ship, wedged into the passage at an angle that speaks to violent currents and violent ends. Its mast has shattered, its hull split open, cargo spilling into the water in rotted heaps.
We have to go through it.
Zoric releases my hand, gestures for me to follow. He enters the wreck first, his massive frame barely fitting through a gap in the splintered timbers. I follow, my smaller body slipping through more easily, and we swim through what used to be someone’s hold. Someone’s life. Someone’s last voyage.
Bones float in the water around us. Human bones, picked clean but preserved by the cold, suspended in the currents like ghosts made physical. I try not to look at them. Try not to think about how many ships the Wrecktide has claimed, how many people have ended their journeys in these passages.
Try not to think about Finn, waiting in the deep, waiting for years—
Stop.
The words feel hollow. The truth is more complicated than that—and right now, with my lungs burning and the whispers rising and the cold eating into my bones, I can’t sort through the complications.
We emerge from the wreck into another open space. This one is different—larger, colder, lit by that ghostly luminescence that marks the curse’s presence. The water here feels wrong. Thick. Heavy. My strokes slow despite my best efforts, the resistance increasing with every inch of progress.
And ahead, in the darkness, something moves.
Zoric pulls me to a halt. His hand finds my face in the water, turns my head, forces me to look at him. In the dim light, I see his expression: warning.
The drowned. They’re here.
I draw my knife. The blade feels small in my hand, insignificant against whatever’s waiting. But it’s something. And right now, something is better than nothing.
We surface slowly, carefully, breaking through into an air pocket so small I can barely fit my head above water. Zoric rises beside me, his breath coming hard, his hand still gripping his blade.
“How many?” I whisper.
“Too many.” His voice is barely audible. “They’re guarding the final passage. Oreth knows we’re coming.”
“The wards—”
“Masked our approach, but they couldn’t hide us completely. The curse knows its own.” He glances down at the pouch at my belt. “And those coins have been calling since we entered the water.”
I touch the pouch. Feel the hungry pulse of the gold inside, the way it strains toward the hoard ahead. The curse knows we’re here because I led it here. Every step of the way, the coins have been singing our position to their master.
“Then we fight through.”
“There are at least a dozen of them. Maybe more.”
“Then we fight through a dozen. Or more.” I meet his gaze. “Unless you have a better idea.”
He doesn’t. I can see him searching for one—running through options, calculating odds, coming up empty. The only path to the hoard runs through Oreth’s guards, and the only way past those guards is violence.
“Stay close.” He shifts his grip on his blade. “When we engage, go for the spines. They fall faster when you sever that.”
“Noted.”
We dive again.