Chapter 12
TWELVE
AVIORA
The wraiths see us immediately—their luminous eyes tracking our approach, their bodies turning with that horrible fluid grace. They’re different down here than they were on the surface. Faster. More coordinated. The curse is stronger in these waters, feeding them power that makes them lethal.
Zoric hits the first one before it can react. His blade arcs through the water in a slow, powerful stroke that takes the creature’s head from its shoulders. The body drifts aside. The next wraith is already closing.
I find my own target—a thing that might have been a sailor once, its clothes rotted to shreds, its face frozen in an expression of endless hunger. My knife finds its spine, and I feel the jolt as whatever animates it loses cohesion. It goes limp. I push it aside and move to the next.
The fight is chaos. Underwater combat strips away everything I know about movement, about timing, about the careful footwork that’s kept me alive through a hundred dockside brawls.
Every stroke is too slow. Every dodge comes a heartbeat late.
The cold saps my strength, and the pressure builds in my lungs, and the whispers keep rising—
Give up. Let go. Join us.
A wraith grabs my ankle.
I twist, slash down, feel my blade bite into the arm holding me.
The grip loosens but doesn’t release—dead fingers tightening on instinct, on hunger, on the curse’s relentless need to claim.
I slash again, and again, and finally the thing lets go.
But I’ve lost my orientation. Lost sight of Zoric. Lost—
A hand closes on my arm. Not cold this time. Warm, even through the water. Zoric pulls me toward him, his body shielding mine as he cuts through the wraiths that have closed around us.
I can’t see how many we’ve killed. Can’t see how many remain. My lungs are screaming, my vision narrowing, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m calculating how much longer I can stay under before I have to surface or die.
Not long. Not nearly long enough.
Zoric points toward a gap in the cavern wall, a passage barely visible in the phosphorescent light. The final stretch. If we can reach it, if we can break through—
We swim. Not fighting now, just fleeing—bodies pressed close, blades clearing a path, the wraiths falling behind as we push through waters they’re too slow to follow. My lungs are bursting. My arms are failing. Every stroke is agony, every second an eternity.
And then—
Air.
We surface in the hoard chamber, gasping, choking, clinging to each other in water that’s chest-deep and cold enough to kill.
Around us, the cursed gold gleams in piles that reach toward the cavern ceiling—coins and ingots and stolen treasures from centuries of ships, all of it glowing with that sickly phosphorescence, all of it pulsing with hunger.
We made it.
We have company.
“Zoric.” The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere, echoing off stone walls, resonating through the water. “My old friend. I wondered if you’d have the courage.”
Oreth rises from the gold.
He’s more terrible here than he was in the harbor.
More real. The chains wrapped around his body are clearly part of him now—gold fused with flesh, coins embedded in skin that’s gone gray-white with death and cold.
Water streams from his form in constant rivulets, pooling around him, never quite draining away.
His eyes blaze with curse-light, and when he smiles, I can see the skull beneath the preserved flesh.
“And you brought the girl.” His attention shifts to me. “How thoughtful.”
I don’t respond. Don’t give him the satisfaction. Instead, I reach for the pouch at my belt, feeling the coins inside respond to the hoard around them—straining, yearning, aching to rejoin their kin.
“The gold won’t save you.” Zoric’s voice is steady. Controlled. The voice of a man who’s been preparing for this moment for years. “We’re here to end this.”
“End it?” Oreth laughs, and the sound fills the chamber with cold. “My old friend, this is just the beginning. The girl is mine now. Her blood will buy me life. And you—” His smile sharpens. “You get to watch.”
The drowned materialize from the water around us.
Dozens of them. More than we fought in the passages, more than the entire army that assaulted Dreadhaven. They rise from the depths in a ring, cutting off any retreat, their luminous bodies pressing close. Zoric’s back finds mine, both of us turning to face threats on every side.
“We’re outnumbered,” I murmur.
“Noticed that.”
“Any brilliant tactical insights?”
“Don’t die.”
“Helpful.”
Oreth is moving closer, chains clinking, that terrible smile fixed on his face. The drowned don’t attack—they’re waiting, holding us in place until their master is ready.
I think about the plan. I have to get close to the hoard. Need to open the pouch and throw the contents as far as I can, mixing Dreadhaven’s gold with the treasure that Oreth has been guarding for centuries.
I need time. And Oreth isn’t giving us time.
Unless...
“Take me.” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
Zoric stiffens against my back. “Aviora—”
“On one condition.” I keep my voice steady, my attention fixed on Oreth. “He goes free. You let him leave, and I don’t fight. I give you what you need.”
Oreth’s smile widens. “Willing sacrifice. Even better.”
“Aviora, no—” Zoric tries to reach for me, but wraith hands hold him back, cold strength he can’t break. His face is anguished, stricken, everything he’s been holding back suddenly visible. “Don’t do this. We can find another way—”
“There is no other way.” I don’t look at him. Can’t look at him, or my resolve will crumble. “This is what I’m for, Zoric. This is why the curse chose me. Months of running, and it was leading me here all along.”
“You’re not a sacrifice—”
“No.” I step forward, toward Oreth, toward the hungry gold that’s been calling me since Saltmere. “I’m a weapon. And it’s time I started acting like one.”
The dead captain studies me with those pale, lightless eyes. Looking for deception. Looking for the trap he must suspect is coming.
“You expect me to believe this,” he says slowly. “That you’d give yourself up for him. For an orc you met two days ago.”
“I’m not giving myself up for him.” I keep walking. Slow. Steady. Each step taking me closer to the hoard, closer to the moment where everything changes. “I’m giving myself up because I’m tired. Because I’ve been running for years and fighting for months and I don’t have anything left.”
“The survival instinct says otherwise.”
“The survival instinct is what’s been killing everyone around me.
” I stop at the edge of the gold pile. The coins at my belt vibrate, straining toward their kin, and I can feel the curse’s attention focusing—the ancient hunger recognizing a compatible vessel.
“Maybe it’s time to stop surviving and start ending things. ”
Oreth is close now. Close enough that I can smell him—rot and salt and something sweeter, like flowers growing from corpses. His chains clink as he reaches toward me, one preserved hand extending to touch my face.
“Kneel,” he commands. “Show me you mean it.”
I kneel. The gold is cold against my legs, its hunger pulsing through my body, the curse’s attention settling on me with crushing force. I feel what it wants—to claim me, to bind me, to make me part of the hoard forever.
I feel exactly how to stop it.
“The coins you carried.” Oreth extends his hand. “Give them to me.”
This is it. The moment.
I reach for the pouch. Feel the leather warm against my palm, the coins inside singing with anticipation.
And I throw them.
Not at him—past him. Into the hoard. Scattering across the piled gold in a spray of metal and hungry yearning.
The curse reacts instantly, energy cascading through the chamber as forty-seven new pieces demand to be part of the whole.
The gold shifts. Slides. Moves with a sound like a thousand coins falling at once.
Oreth screams.
“Zoric!” I’m on my feet, scrambling back from the convulsing gold. “Now! Scatter it!”
He breaks free of the wraiths holding him—their grip weakening as the curse that animates them destabilizes. His blade catches one across the throat, drops it, and then he’s moving, tearing through piles of treasure, kicking coins into the water, spreading the hoard as wide as possible.
The chamber shakes. The gold screams. And Oreth—
Oreth recovers faster than I expected.
His chain catches my ankle, yanks me off my feet. I hit the gold hard enough to blur my vision, and then I’m being dragged toward him, toward that terrible face and that hollow gaze and the hunger that’s frantic for something to claim.
“Clever girl.” His voice is strained, the curse fighting to hold itself intact. “But not clever enough.”
He lifts me by the throat. His grip is ice and iron, his fingers digging into my flesh hard enough to bruise. Up close, his face is a horror—skull visible beneath skin, eyes nothing but cold light, everything stripped away to reveal the monster underneath.
“Your blood will still work.” He pulls me closer. “Willing or not.”
“Then you don’t know much about curses.” I manage the words through the grip on my throat. “Thalira says willing sacrifice has power. Forced taking has consequences.”
“The witch lies.”
“Maybe.” I grin, bloody and defiant. “Guess we’ll find out.”
Zoric’s blade takes Oreth’s arm off at the elbow.
The dead captain drops me, screaming, and I scramble back as the two men who were once brothers finally clash. Zoric’s blade sings through the air in arcs of brutal efficiency. Oreth’s remaining arm and chains lash out in response, the curse feeding him strength despite his wound.
But the curse is failing. I can see it—the gold dissolving at the edges, coins turning to rust and dust. The wraiths are collapsing, their animating force draining away. The chamber is filling with the death throes of something ancient and hungry.
“The chains!” I shout at Zoric. “The gold fused to his skin—that’s his anchor! Destroy that!”
He hears me. Shifts his angle of attack. But Oreth is fast despite his wounds, and the chains are wrapped tight around his torso, protected by arms and movement and the primal instinct of something that doesn’t want to die.
I sprint toward them, slide beneath Oreth’s reaching arm, and drive my blade into his back. Not to kill—just to anchor myself. Then I start cutting.
The chains are part of him, fused to flesh, resistant to steel. But I’m not trying to cut through them cleanly. I’m sawing, hacking, tearing at the joins between gold and meat. The metal burns my hands—cold so intense, it feels like fire—but I don’t stop. Can’t stop.
Zoric keeps Oreth engaged, his blade finding flesh again and again, buying me the seconds I need. The dead captain thrashes, tries to throw me off, but we’re beyond tactics now. Beyond strategy. This is butchery, pure and simple, two people dismantling a monster one piece at a time.
The last chain falls.
So does Oreth.
The curse leaves in a rush—a wave of cold that knocks us both to our knees. The gold finishes dissolving, centuries of accumulated treasure becoming rust and salt and nothing. Oreth’s body collapses into itself, rot accelerating without the magic to sustain it.
In seconds, he’s gone. Just a stain on the cavern floor.
I kneel in the wreckage, gasping, bleeding, alive.
Zoric appears beside me. His hands find my face, turn me toward him, and I see the same stunned relief I’m feeling reflected in his eyes.
“We did it.” My voice is hoarse. “We actually did it.”
“You were insane.” His thumb traces my cheekbone. “That bluff—”
“Wasn’t entirely a bluff.” I turn my hand in his, interlace our fingers. “If it had failed, I would have let him take me. To save you.”
“Why?”
The question hangs between us. Simple. Terrifying. Demanding an answer I’ve been running from since the moment he pulled me out of the sea.
“Because you’re worth it.” The words come out rough, broken. “Even though I barely know you. Even though everything I’ve ever learned says trusting people gets you killed.” I squeeze his hand. “You’re worth the risk.”
He kisses me.
This kiss is slower at first, almost tentative, like he’s asking permission even now.
Then deeper, hungrier, his hands sliding into my hair as I pull him closer.
The terror and violence of the last hour melt away until there’s nothing but his mouth on mine, his body warm against my cold skin, his heartbeat hammering in time with my own.
When we finally break apart, we’re both shaking.
“After,” he says. “You told me to save it for after.”
“I did.”
“This is after.” He presses his forehead to mine. “And what I wanted to say—what I’ve been wanting to say since you washed up on my shore carrying curses and defiance and more courage than anyone I’ve ever met—”
The chamber shakes.
We pull apart, both of us looking around. The cavern is destabilizing—water pouring in from cracks in the walls, the sea reclaiming its territory now that the magic holding it back is gone.
“We need to move.” Zoric pulls me to my feet. “Back the way we came.”
But the way we came is flooded—completely submerged, the passage buried under tons of cold black water.
We’re trapped. In a collapsing cave. With the sea rising around us.
“There.” I look into the water around us. “A current. Feel it?”
He feels it—a tug at our legs, water flowing toward the cavern’s far end. Where there’s current, there’s passage. Maybe.
“It could go anywhere. Open water, into more caves—”
“Or up.” My fingers find his in the dark water. “We follow it. Only way forward.”
His grip tightens around mine. “Whatever happens—”
“Tell me on dry land.” I manage a smile despite everything. “You promised.”
We dive into darkness. And hope the sea is finally done trying to kill us.