Chapter 26 Aviora
TWENTY-SIX
AVIORA
Her words hang in the air. Henek’s jaw works, but he doesn’t respond. Around the table, the others exchange glances—fear and resignation and a grim resolve.
“We can’t win.” Margit’s voice is quiet. Practical. The assessment of someone who’s lived through too many bad odds to believe in miracles. “Not against those numbers. Not in our condition.”
“But we can make it expensive.” She looks at me—really looks, for the first time since I washed up on this shore. “The Fortune’s real. If we can get Gyla’s ships over the wreck...”
“We need to convince her to commit the full fleet.” His voice is steadier now, the tactical mind overriding whatever moral objections he might have. “One ship over the Fortune won’t be enough. We need all of them in position when the hunger wakes.”
“So we give her what she wants.” The words taste like ash in my mouth. “I go to her flagship. Play the hostage. Lead them to the Fortune myself.”
“No.” The word is instant. Absolute.
“Zoric—”
“I said no.” He rises, pulling me up with him, his grip on my hand almost painful. “You’re not offering yourself as bait. Not for this. Not for anything.”
“Then how do we get her to commit? She’s cautious.
Suspicious. She won’t send her entire fleet into unknown waters based on our word alone.
” I step closer to him, lowering my voice so only he can hear.
“She’ll send one ship. Maybe two. And when they don’t come back, she’ll burn Dreadhaven and leave.
We need her greedy enough to commit everything at once. ”
“There has to be another way.”
“Show me another way, and I’ll take it. But we don’t have time for perfect solutions. We have twenty-four hours and five wounded fighters and a merchant queen who wants me in chains more than she wants treasure.”
His jaw works. I watch the struggle play across his features—the tactical mind warring with a deeper need, one that has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the space I’ve carved out in his chest over the past week.
“We do this as a pair.” The words come out rough. “You go to her flagship, I go with you. She wants collateral; she gets both of us.”
“That’s—”
“Non-negotiable.” His hand slides to my hip, pulls me against him. In front of everyone, without hesitation. “You don’t sacrifice yourself for me. I don’t sacrifice myself for you. We live or we die, but we do it as one. That’s the deal.”
I should argue. Should point out that risking both of us is a worse strategy than risking one. Should remind him that he has people depending on him, a coast to protect, responsibilities that don’t disappear because he’s found someone worth dying for.
Instead, I rise on my toes and kiss him.
It’s brief. Hungry. A claim as much as a comfort. When I pull back, his pupils are blown dark and his breathing has changed.
“As one,” I agree. “But if this goes wrong—”
“It won’t.”
“If it does.” I press my palm against his chest, feel his heart beating too fast beneath my touch. “Promise me you’ll get them out. Thorne, Brek, the others. Promise me you won’t let my debt burn everyone else.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then his hand covers mine, pressing it harder against his heart.
“I promise.”
The night passes too quickly.
I spend it in Zoric’s quarters, wrapped in blankets that still carry his scent, listening to the sounds of Dreadhaven preparing for a battle it can’t win. Outside, his people are shoring up defenses, stockpiling weapons, doing everything they can to look like a fortress ready to fight.
It’s theater. All of it. A performance designed to make Gyla believe we’re willing to try anything—including leading her to treasure that doesn’t exist.
Except the treasure does exist. And what waits beside it is worse than anything her mercenaries can imagine.
The fire in the small brazier has burned low, casting the room in shadows that dance across the blackstone walls. Salt crystals gleam on the stone—tears of the keep, Zoric called them once. The walls weeping for everyone they’ve lost over the centuries. Right now, they seem particularly bright.
Zoric stands at the window, silhouetted against the pre-dawn gray.
The muscles in his back are taut with tension I can see even from across the room.
He hasn’t slept. Neither have I. The hours have passed in quiet conversation and quieter touches, neither of us willing to waste what might be our last night on rest.
His hands rest on the stone sill, the same hands that have held me, fought for me, pulled me back from the edge of oblivion in the Fortune’s depths. Scarred knuckles and callused palms that somehow know exactly how to be gentle.
“You’re thinking too loud.” His voice carries a rough edge born of fear, not fatigue.
“I’m thinking about Finn.”
He turns. In the dim light, his features are hard to read—the heavy brow, the strong jaw, the chipped tusk that speaks to violence I’ve only glimpsed. But I can feel his attention sharpen, the way it does when I mention the name of my dead lover.
“The curse showed me things in the Fortune’s hold. Promised me things.” I pull the blanket tighter, though this chill comes from inside me, not the air. “It knew exactly what I wanted. Knew how to use my guilt against me.”
“The guilt about living when he didn’t.”
“The guilt about everything.” I stare at my hands, scarred and calloused from years of work and running.
“He died because I made bad choices. Because I pushed when I should have waited. Because I wanted things badly enough to ignore warnings that should have stopped me.” A breath.
“And now I’m about to make the same kind of choice again. ”
Zoric crosses to me. His footsteps are nearly silent despite his size—a predator’s grace that he wears as naturally as his scars. He sits on the bed beside me, the mattress dipping under him, his warmth a counterpoint to the chill that’s settled in my bones.
“You’re not Finn.”
“No. I’m the one who got him killed.” The words scrape out, raw and honest in a way I’ve rarely allowed myself to be. “And now I might get everyone else killed too. Your people. You.”
His hand tips my chin up until I’m looking at him. His eyes hold something I’m still learning to name. “My people chose to stay. And I chose you. We’re not victims of your bad decisions, Aviora. We’re making our own.”
“That doesn’t make it easier.”
“No.” He presses his lips to my temple, gentle in a way that contradicts everything about his size and his scars. “But it makes it shared. You’re not carrying this alone anymore.”
I lean into him. Let myself feel the solid warmth of his body, the steady beat of his heart against my cheek. For years, I’ve run from everyone who got too close. For years, I’ve convinced myself that alone was safer, that caring was weakness, that the only way to live was to never stop moving.
This orc, this broken pirate captain with his guilt and his walls and his raw, terrifying tenderness—he makes me want to stop running. Makes me want to stay, even if staying might kill me.
“When this is over,” I press closer, my arms wrapping around him, “if we make it. I want to try.”
“Try what?”
“Staying.” The word feels foreign in my mouth. Dangerous. “Building instead of fleeing. With you.”
His arms tighten around me. For a long moment, he doesn’t speak—just holds on, his breath warm against my hair, his heart beating steady beneath my ear.
This is different from the beach.
On the beach, we were animals. Adrenaline-drunk, death-fresh, clawing at each other with a hunger that left no room for tenderness. This is something else. Something slower. Something that terrifies me more than any curse ever could.
I undress her carefully.
The borrowed clothes come away piece by piece—shirt buttons, belt buckle, the laces of trousers that were never meant for her frame.
Beneath them, her skin is pale in the lantern light, marked with the history of her life.
Scars I haven’t seen before. A rope burn circling her left wrist. A knife slash across her ribs, healed but still visible.
The calluses on her palms from years of working lines and handling blades.
I learn each one.
My fingers trace the rope burn first. “This one?”
“Debt collector in Saltmere. Years ago.” Her voice is breathy, her eyes half-closed. “He thought tying me to his boat would make me cooperative.”
“Did it?”
“I burned his boat.”
I kiss the scar. Move lower. Find the knife slash.
“This?”
“Boarding action gone wrong. Finn’s idea—we tried to take a merchant ship that turned out to be a naval vessel in disguise.” A shaky laugh. “I was seventeen. Should have died.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I didn’t.”
I kiss that scar too. Then the next one. Then the next. Mapping her body with lips and fingers, learning the story written in her skin. She trembles under my attention—not from cold, not from fear. From the intimacy of being known.
Her hands find my shirt. Start working the buttons with fingers that shake.
“Your turn.” Barely a whisper. “Let me see.”
I let her undress me.
The scars are worse on my body—decades of piracy have left their marks.
The cutlass slash across my chest from the mutiny that nearly ended me.
The burn on my shoulder from a fire aboard the Black Tide.
The countless small marks from fights I barely remember, wounds that healed wrong, violence layered on violence until my skin is more scar than smooth.
She traces each one the way I traced hers. Her fingers are gentle, her touch reverent, and something cracks open in my chest that I didn’t know was sealed.
“You’re beautiful.” Her voice carries wonder. “All of it. Every mark.”
“I’m a ruin.”
“So am I.” She rises on her toes, presses her lips to the burn on my shoulder. “Ruins can be rebuilt.”
I can’t wait anymore.
I lift her—she’s light in my arms, lighter than she should be, all lean muscle and sharp angles. Her legs wrap around my waist as I carry her to the bed.
I lower Aviora onto the mattress. She pulls me down with her, her hands urgent now, her mouth finding mine in a kiss that tastes like salt and wanting.
“Mine.” The word escapes her, breathed against my throat as I settle between her thighs. “You’re mine.”
The possessiveness in her voice does something to me. Unlocks something primal, something I’ve kept caged for years of solitude and penance.
“Yours.” I growl the word against her skin. “And you’re mine.”
When I enter her, she arches off the bed with a cry she only barely muffles. Her hands claw at my back, leaving marks to match my scars. Her legs tighten around me, drawing me deeper, and I lose myself in the heat of her.
This isn’t the frantic coupling on the beach. This is slower. Deliberate. Each movement a declaration, each breath a promise. I watch her face as pleasure builds—the way her lips part, the way her eyes flutter closed, the way her whole body trembles when I find the rhythm she needs.
“Zoric.” My name, broken on her lips. “Zoric, I—”
“I know.” I kiss her. Deep and claiming. “I know.”
Release takes us both—not violent this time but overwhelming, a wave that crests and breaks and leaves us shattered in its wake. I bury my face in her neck, breathing her in, feeling her pulse race against my lips.
This. This is what I’ve been fighting for. This is what I’ve been running from. This woman, this feeling, this terrifying certainty that I would burn the whole coast to keep her safe.
We lie tangled in the sheets, her head on my chest, my arm wrapped around her. Outside, the fleet sleeps.
“Zoric?” Her voice is drowsy, sated.
“Mmm?”
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then, softly: “I choose you.”
Three words. Simple. Devastating.
I hold her tighter and don’t let go.