Chapter 22 Aviora
TWENTY-TWO
AVIORA
Isit in Zoric’s quarters that night, spreading the salvage across his table.
Ingots and jewelry. A few loose gemstones.
A silver candelabra that somehow survived years underwater without tarnishing.
The sum total of eight dives, four divers, and an entire day of work in waters that fought us every stroke.
“Over twenty-four thousand short.” My voice sounds hollow even to my own ears. “Even if we triple our recovery rate, we won’t make it.”
Zoric stands behind my chair, his hands resting on my shoulders. The pressure of his grip grounds me—an anchor in a world that keeps shifting beneath my feet.
“We knew it was a long shot.”
“A long shot is one in ten. This is...” I don’t have a word for what this is. Impossible. Futile. The kind of odds that kill people who are too stubborn to recognize them.
“We keep diving.” His thumbs work at the knots in my shoulders, finding tension I didn’t know I was carrying. “Every wreck we haven’t hit yet. Every cargo we haven’t searched.”
“And if it’s not enough?”
“Then we figure out an alternative.” He leans down, presses his lips to my hair. “We’ve been improvising since you washed up on my shore. No reason to stop now.”
I reach up, catch his hand. Pull it to my lips and kiss his scarred knuckles. “When did you become an optimist?”
“When a thief with cursed gold convinced me that running wasn’t the only option.” His other hand slides down my arm, wraps around my waist. “Come to bed. We can’t salvage anything if we’re too exhausted to swim.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But lying in the dark with him, feeling his warmth against my back and his arm heavy across my stomach, sleep doesn’t come easy.
The water felt wrong today. Not just cold—watching. Every dive, I caught myself looking over my shoulder, searching the murk for movement that wasn’t there. The whispers I’d heard in Oreth’s realm seemed to echo in the silence, just below the threshold of hearing.
There’s something down there. Something that noticed us.
I push the thought away. Close my eyes. Let the rhythm of Zoric’s breathing lull me toward an uneasy rest.
I’m in the water by the time the sun crests the horizon, my body screaming protest at the cold that hasn’t fully left my bones from yesterday. Zoric dives beside me, and we descend into the gray.
The Seagrave is our target today—the wreck I recalculated during the planning session. She’s deeper than the Maiden’s Rose, sitting on a shelf that drops away into darkness below. The depth Margit warned about. The depth where no one dives without consequences.
We find her exactly where I predicted. Hull broken across a reef, cargo scattered down the slope in a debris field that glitters faintly with the Wrecktide’s unnatural phosphorescence.
I signal Zoric: Split up. Cover more ground.
He hesitates. His grip on my arm tightens, and even through the water, I can read the reluctance in his body language. But time is against us. Thousands in gold don’t wait for caution.
He releases me. Swims toward the stern while I head for the bow.
The captain’s cabin is located forward on most merchant vessels. If the Seagrave was carrying anything valuable that wasn’t official cargo, that’s where it would be. Personal effects. Secret compartments. The kind of hiding spots that customs officials never find and salvagers learn to exploit.
The door is jammed—warped timber wedged against a collapsed beam. I brace my feet against the frame and pull. My lungs burn. My muscles scream. The door shifts an inch, then another, then breaks free with a surge of silt that clouds my vision.
Inside: chaos. The cabin has been tumbled by the ship’s final moments, furniture smashed against walls, personal effects scattered across every surface. But there—in the corner—a desk still bolted to the floor. Drawers intact.
I swim to it. Yank open the first drawer. Papers, ruined by water. The second holds navigational equipment—useless. The third—
A lockbox.
Small, iron, heavy in my hands. The lock is rusted but intact. I don’t have time to pick it down here—my lungs are screaming, my vision starting to blur at the edges. I tuck the box under my arm and push for the surface.
I break into air gasping, coughing, my body shaking with cold and oxygen deprivation. The patrol boat is twenty yards away. I swim for it on arms that feel made of lead.
Zoric surfaces beside me moments later. His hands close on my waist underwater, steadying me when I start to sink.
“Found something.” I manage between gasps.
“So did I.” He holds up a fistful of jewelry—rings, mostly, and what looks like a gold chain thick enough to anchor a ship. “Noble family’s belongings. Must have been fleeing when they went down.”
We swim for the boat. Brek hauls me over the gunwale, his young face creased with concern at my obvious exhaustion.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” I’m not fine—I’m freezing and depleted and my fingers are too numb to work the lockbox properly. But we don’t have time for weakness. “Give me a knife.”
The lock breaks after three tries. The lid creaks open.
Inside: a leather journal, somehow preserved in a waxed pouch. And beneath it—
Gems. A handful of rubies and sapphires, small but high quality. Maybe five hundred gold if we find the right buyer.
But it’s the journal that catches my attention.
The pages are warped but legible—the waxed pouch did its job. I flip through water-damaged entries, scanning for anything useful. Cargo manifests. Port schedules. The mundane details of a merchant captain’s life.
Then a name catches my eye.
Silver Fortune.
I stop. Read more carefully.
...spoke with Captain Merrit of the Silver Fortune before his departure.
The tribute shipment concerns me—ninety-five thousand gold is too much to trust to these waters, even with the navy escort.
He laughed at my caution. Said the deep channel has been safe for generations.
But the old sailors whisper about what sleeps beneath the Wrecktide’s heart.
They say the Fortune’s route passes directly over the ancient feeding grounds. ..
The entry ends there. The next page is too water-damaged to read.
“What is it?” Zoric leans over my shoulder, dripping salt water onto the journal.
“The Silver Fortune.” I trace the words with a trembling finger. “She went down thirty years ago carrying ninety-five thousand gold in tribute. This captain—he knew where she sank.” I flip through more pages, searching. “If I can find coordinates, or even a general heading...”
“The Silver Fortune’s in the deep water.” Margit’s voice is sharp. “Below where any of us can safely dive. The depth alone would kill you, and that’s before you factor in—”
“Factor in what?”
The old woman’s mouth thins. “Stories. The kind sailors tell to scare apprentices. But I’ve seen things in the deep water, girl.
Lights that move against the current. Shapes that don’t match any fish I know.
” She shakes her head. “The Fortune’s been down there thirty years.
If she was recoverable, someone would have claimed her by now. ”
“Maybe no one’s known exactly where to look.” I hold up the journal. “This captain traded with Merrit. He might have recorded the planned route, or the last known position, or—”
“Or you might be chasing a ghost story to avoid facing the truth.” Margit’s tone isn’t cruel—just honest. “We’re not going to make Gyla’s deadline. Not with the wrecks we can safely reach.”
Margit’s assessment stings. I want to argue—want to insist that there’s still hope, that the journal changes everything, that much gold is worth any risk.
But she’s right. Even if I find the Silver Fortune, even if the depth doesn’t kill us, we’d be diving into waters that every sailor in the region considers cursed.
Cursed. Again.
“Let me read the rest.” I tuck the journal into my vest. “Maybe there’s useful information. Maybe not. But I’m not giving up until we’ve exhausted every option.”
The afternoon dives yield another fifteen hundred gold. Our total sits at so little, it’s heartbreaking counting it.
I spend the evening in Zoric’s quarters, poring over the journal while he sits across the table, cleaning salvaged jewelry. Comfortable silence fills the space between us—the kind that doesn’t need words. His presence is enough.
The captain’s handwriting is cramped and difficult to parse in places. Water damage has claimed whole sections. But slowly, a picture emerges.
The Silver Fortune wasn’t just carrying tribute.
She was carrying older gold—treasure that had been collected as “offerings” to whatever lurks in the Wrecktide’s depths.
A tradition dating back centuries, meant to appease the ancient presence that sailors have sensed in these waters for generations.
They feed it, the captain wrote. Every generation, they send a ship loaded with gold into the deep channel, and the sea stays calm for another thirty years. The Fortune was this generation’s sacrifice.
The implications make my stomach turn. Thousands in gold sent to the bottom deliberately. Not a shipwreck—a tribute.
“Zoric.” My voice sounds strange to my own ears. “Look at this.”
He moves to my side, reads over my shoulder. His breath catches on the same passage that stopped mine.
“They sank her on purpose.”
“To feed it.” I flip back to an earlier entry. “The captain mentions ‘ancient feeding grounds.’ The same phrase appears three times. Whatever’s down there, people have known about it for generations. They’ve been appeasing it.”
“Oreth’s curse.” Zoric’s jaw tightens. “The gold that created him—it came from the deep treasury. Someone must have found the tribute. Took what wasn’t meant for them.”
“And woke it up.” The pieces click into place with horrible clarity. “The curse wasn’t random. It was—retaliation. Punishment for stealing from whatever’s being fed down there.”
“Then our destroying Oreth...”
“Might have made things worse.”
We stare at each other. The journal sits between us, its water-damaged pages carrying secrets that suddenly feel much heavier than paper should.
“We can’t tell the others.” My voice sounds distant even to my own ears. “Not yet. They’re already scared.”
“And you?”
“Terrified.” I manage a smile that feels more grimace than humor. “But terror’s never stopped me before.”
He reaches across the table. Takes my hand. His grip is warm, solid, the calluses on his palms rough against my skin.
“We’ll figure it out.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I keep meaning it.” He draws me toward him, around the table’s corner, until I’m standing between his knees. His hands settle on my hips. “Whatever’s down there—we face it. Same as everything else.”
I let him pull me closer. Let myself sink into his warmth, the solid reality of his body against mine. My arms wrap around his neck. My forehead rests against his.
“I found a possible location.” The words barely audible. “The captain noted the Fortune’s planned heading. If I’m reading his charts right, she went down in the deepest part of the Wrecktide. Below the shelf. Below anywhere we’ve ever dived. Just like Margit said.”
“How deep?”
“Deep enough that normal lungs might fail before reaching the bottom.” I pull back to meet his gaze. “But maybe not too deep for an orc who’s spent years learning to swim where he shouldn’t and a human with no good sense.”
He’s silent for a long moment. His thumbs trace circles against my hipbones—a nervous habit I’ve learned to recognize.
“The deep water is different. Even with Oreth gone, there are things down there. The curse remnants. Whatever we’ve been sensing in the shallows.” His grip tightens. “If we dive for the Fortune, we might not come back up.”
“If we don’t dive for the Fortune, Gyla wins. Your people starve. The coastal villages suffer.” I cup his face in my hands, force him to look at me. “We both knew this might kill us. The question is whether we let it kill us on our terms or hers.”
He kisses me. Hard, hungry, his hands fisting in my shirt as if he can anchor us both to this moment through sheer force of will. I kiss him back with equal ferocity. My fingers tangle in his hair. My body presses against his until there’s no space left between us.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“We dive for the Fortune. But tonight—” His hands slide beneath my shirt, finding bare skin. “I want you here. With me. No curses, no deadlines, no ancient horrors.”
“Yes,” I breathe.
The journal lies forgotten on the table as he pulls me toward the bed.
Sleep finds me eventually, tangled in Zoric’s arms, my body sated and warm for the first time in days.
The dream starts simply.
I’m swimming. The water is dark—darker than any dive I’ve ever made, darkness that presses against my skin with physical force. My lungs don’t burn. My body doesn’t tire. I just sink, deeper and deeper, drawn by a presence I can’t see but can feel.
Gold.
It glimmers below me. Not the scattered debris of shipwrecks—this is an accumulation. A pile so vast, it fills my entire field of vision, coins and ingots and jewelry heaped in a mountain that seems to pulse with its own light. The phosphorescence of the Wrecktide, but stronger. Older.
Hungry.
The word surfaces from somewhere deep in my mind. Not a voice—a knowing. The gold is hungry. Has been hungry for thirty years, since the last tribute ship went down. And now...
Now it’s awake.
Shapes move in the darkness beyond the pile. Not drowned—different. Things that were old when orcs first sailed these waters. Things that wait in the deep places and feed on the gold that humans are foolish enough to sacrifice.
One of the shapes turns toward me. I can’t see its face—don’t think it has a face, not in any way I would recognize—but I feel its attention settle on me with crushing force.
You carry our gold.
The coins I stole. The curse I’ve been running from. Even destroyed, even scattered in Oreth’s hoard, they came from this place. From this hunger.
You owe us.
The shape moves closer. The gold-light grows brighter, searing, and in its glow I see—
I wake gasping.
Zoric is already awake, his arms tight around me, his voice a low rumble in my ear.
“Nightmare?”
I press my face into his chest. My heart is racing. My skin feels cold despite the warmth of his body pressed against mine.
“No.” The words shake as they emerge. “A warning.”
He doesn’t ask questions. Just holds me while the dream’s horror slowly fades, replaced by the gray light of another dawn and the knowledge that whatever waits in the deep water knows we’re coming.
And it’s been waiting a very long time.