Chapter 20 Zoric
TWENTY
ZORIC
The morning passes in organized chaos.
Aviora restructures our dive schedule based on her revisions—extending bottom times, adjusting depths, flagging wrecks I’d written off as stripped.
She knows things about salvage that I never learned.
Reading currents. Identifying promising debris.
Calculating where cargo shifts during storms versus where it gets picked clean by scavengers.
The others drift in and out as duties allow.
Brek stations himself at her elbow, asking questions with the enthusiasm of someone who’s found a new obsession.
Margit adds decades of coastal knowledge, correcting details about specific wrecks I’d charted from distance rather than direct experience.
Even Ven contributes, his practical mind finding equipment solutions I hadn’t considered.
Only Henek stays apart. He watches from the far side of the hall, his silence more hostile than words. I keep track of him without looking directly—old habit, the instinct that’s kept me alive through mutinies and betrayals.
Late morning, Thorne pulls me aside.
“We have a problem.” Her voice is low, pitched not to carry. “The diving equipment. Half of it was in the lower storage.”
My stomach drops. “The flooded section.”
“Lines rotted through. Gear scattered. We don’t have enough functional equipment for more than three divers.” She pauses. “Maybe four if we’re creative.”
Three divers instead of five. That cuts our salvage capacity nearly in half. A few days becomes six at minimum. We don’t have six days.
“What about repairs?”
“Possible. But we’d need someone who knows line work, rigging, the technical side of diving equipment.” Her eyes cut toward the table where Aviora is still bent over the charts. “Someone like her.”
I find Aviora in the corridor outside the Great Hall, taking a moment away from the maps and the planning and the hostile stares. She’s leaning against the cold stone wall, her eyes closed, exhaustion written in every line of her body.
“Problem.” I keep my voice low.
Her eyes open. “Equipment?”
“Thorne told you?”
“I heard her mention lower storage.” Aviora straightens, pushing off the wall. “Show me.”
We descend to the third level—the edge of the flooding, where water laps against stone in the darkness below.
The storage room is half-submerged, its contents scattered by the surge that claimed the lower levels.
Diving lines coiled in rotting piles. Gear rusted and scattered.
The careful organization of years destroyed in a single night.
Aviora wades in without hesitation, the water reaching her thighs as she examines what’s left. Her hands move with practiced efficiency, sorting salvageable from destroyed.
“Most of the lines are gone. But these—” She holds up a coil that looks ruined to my eyes.
“The core is still good. The outer layer’s rotted, but I can strip it down, splice in new sections.
” She drops the coil, reaches for another piece of equipment.
“The metal fittings are fine. Just need cleaning. It’s the lines that matter. ”
“How long?”
“Give me the rest of today.” She meets my gaze through the dim light. “I’ll have enough working equipment for five divers by morning.”
I should go back upstairs. Should continue planning, coordinating, preparing for the operation that starts in hours. Instead, I stay. Work alongside her in the cold water, following her directions, learning things about diving equipment I never knew despite years of coastal work.
We don’t talk much. Don’t need to. The work creates its own rhythm—her hands moving, mine following, the quiet splash of water and creak of damaged rope filling the silence.
When we finally emerge, soaked and shivering in the late afternoon light, I recognize what’s shifted between us.
“You’re good at this.” I don’t mean just the equipment work. I mean all of it—the planning, the leadership, the way she takes command without demanding it.
“Finn was a good teacher.” She wrings water from her hair, her fingers deft despite the cold. “He used to say salvage was just problem-solving with a time limit. Find the treasure.” Her mouth curves.
“What happened wasn’t bad calculations.”
“No.” She looks at me directly. “It was a storm, and a bad route, and a choice I made because I was too impatient to wait for safer weather.” Her voice stays level now—not the raw confession it would have been days ago. “I’ve stopped running from it. Doesn’t mean I’ve stopped carrying it.”
“You don’t have to carry it alone.”
The words scrape out of me. She goes still, her hands frozen in her hair, her eyes searching my face.
“Zoric.” My name, soft and uncertain in a way I haven’t heard from her.
“I meant what I said last night.” I close the distance between us. Two steps. Her chin lifts as I approach, but she doesn’t retreat. “Whatever happens with Gyla, whatever happens with the salvage—you’re not alone in this. Not anymore.”
“That’s dangerous talk.”
“It’s the truth.”
Her hands drop from her hair. Settle against my chest, fitting into grooves I didn’t know existed.
“I don’t know how to do this.” The words barely audible. “Trust. Stay. Build instead of running.”
“Neither do I.” My hands settle on her waist. Draw her closer. “But I want to learn. With you.”
She rises on her toes. Her mouth meets mine—soft at first, questioning. I answer by pulling her flush against me, deepening the kiss into heat that burns through the cold and the exhaustion and the impossible odds waiting for us.
This isn’t the collision on the beach. Isn’t the comfort of last night, two wounded people holding each other against the dark. This is deliberate. Chosen. Her tongue slides against mine and I forget the charts, the debt, the hostile stares of my own people.
Her. This.
“CAPTAIN!”
We break apart. Thorne’s voice echoes down the corridor—urgent, the tone that means trouble.
Aviora’s breath comes fast, her lips swollen, her pupils blown dark. My hands are still gripping her waist, reluctant to release her despite the interruption.
We climb back to the Great Hall. Thorne meets us at the entrance, her expression grim.
“The dive equipment’s handled,” Aviora says before Thorne can speak. “We’ll have enough.”
“Good. Because we’ve got bigger problems.” Thorne gestures toward the harbor. “One of Gyla’s ships just launched a longboat. Eight mercenaries heading for shore.”
My jaw tightens. “She’s not supposed to make contact until the deadline.”
“Maybe she got impatient. Or maybe—” Thorne’s eyes cut to Aviora. “She’s sending a message.”
I look at the woman beside me. The woman who’s reorganized my salvage operation, repaired my equipment, and kissed me in the flooded depths of my ruined fortress.
“Then we receive it.” I reach for the cutlass across my back. “Side-by-side.”
The mercenaries don’t attack.
They deliver a crate to the harbor quay—polished wood, brass fittings, the kind of craftsmanship that costs more than most sailors earn in a year. Then they row away without a word, their silence more threatening than violence.
Inside the crate: a dress. Silk and velvet in deep blue, sized for a woman of Aviora’s build. A note in elegant script: For our meeting. I do appreciate when my investments present well.
Aviora’s face goes carefully blank as she reads it
“She’s playing games.” Anger roughens my voice. “Trying to remind you that she thinks she owns you.”
“She doesn’t think she owns me.” Aviora sets the note down. Her hands are steady, but I can see the tension in her shoulders. “She knows I owe her. While she probably has thousands in gold on her boats.”
I pull her close. Not passion this time—protection. My arms wrap around her, and she leans into me with an exhaustion that goes beyond physical tiredness.
“In the morning, we dive.” My voice rumbles against her hair. “We find enough treasure to make Gyla Murker choke on her silk dresses and brass-fitted crates. And then we figure out what comes next.”
“What comes next,” she echoes. “I’ve never been very good at thinking that far ahead.”
“That’s why you have me.”
Her laugh is muffled against my chest. “Tactical observation?”
“Strategic planning.” I press my lips to the top of her head. “Get some sleep. We start at dawn.”
Night falls. The keep settles into uneasy quiet.
I stand on the wall walk, looking out at the Wrecktide. The water is calm—too calm, the surface smooth as black glass beneath the stars. Gyla’s ships ride at anchor in the harbor, their lanterns casting reflections that dance like ghost lights.
The wrongness I’ve been sensing for days hasn’t faded. If anything, it’s grown stronger.
I’ve watched these waters for years. Learned their rhythms. The way currents shift with the tide, the way temperature changes signal depth variations, the subtle signs that warn of danger or promise safety.
The waves against the cliffs sound muted, dampened. The seabirds that normally scream through the darkness are silent.
We destroyed Oreth. Scattered his curse. But the gold that created him came from somewhere. The ancient treasury predated his rise. And whatever was old enough to create that curse might be old enough to notice its destruction.
The Wrecktide feels different now. Watching. Waiting.
The thought surfaces from somewhere deep—instinct or paranoia, I can’t tell which.
Behind me, a door opens. Soft footsteps cross the stone.
“You should be sleeping.” Aviora’s voice is quiet in the darkness.
“So should you.”
She moves to stand beside me, close enough that our shoulders brush. Her gaze follows mine to the water.
“It feels wrong.” Not a question. She senses it too.
“The curse is gone.”
“Yes.” She pauses. “But I don’t think we’re alone out there.”
We stand in the starlight, watching waters that have claimed more lives than any reef or storm alone could explain.
A few days. Fifty-five thousand gold. And the growing certainty that destroying Oreth was only the beginning.