Chapter 28 Zoric
TWENTY-EIGHT
ZORIC
The hold of Gyla’s flagship smells like salt and old cargo.
They’ve given us a cabin—if you can call it that.
A converted storage space, barely large enough for two, with a bolted-down cot and a bucket that serves purposes I’d rather not contemplate.
The door is barred from outside. Guards rotate shifts, their boots scuffing the deck above our heads in steady rhythm.
Captive accommodations. Better than I expected, worse than I’d hoped.
Aviora sits on the cot, her bound wrists resting in her lap, her attention fixed on the ceiling as if she can read our fate in the watermarks staining the wood. We’ve been here for hours. Hours of Gyla’s fleet reorganizing, moving supplies, preparing for a trip to coordinates we provided.
“She’s being careful.” Aviora’s voice is barely above a murmur—pitched low, aware of the guards beyond our door. “More ships than she needs for a salvage operation. More men.”
“She’s cautious, not stupid.” I shift on the floor where I’ve positioned myself, back against the hull, legs stretched before me.
The ropes around my wrists are tight but not cruel—Gyla wants us functional, not damaged.
“A merchant queen doesn’t keep her throne by trusting strangers who offer her treasure. ”
“Then why take the bait at all?”
“Because greed is stronger than caution. She can’t help herself.” I study the pattern of lantern light through the door’s gaps. “Ninety-five thousand gold is more than she’s worth. More than her fleet is worth.”
Aviora’s gaze drops to mine. In the dim light, her features are all sharp angles and shadow—the jaw set with stubborn determination, the eyes carrying depths that six days ago I couldn’t have imagined wanting to explore.
Six days. That’s all it’s been since she washed up on my shore. Six days of siege and survival and something else, something I don’t have a name for but feel in my chest every time she looks at me this way.
“Zoric.” My name, soft and certain. “If this doesn’t work—”
“It will work.”
“If it doesn’t.” She rises from the cot, crosses the narrow space between us, sinks down beside me with her shoulder pressed against mine. “I need you to know—”
I silence her with a kiss.
It’s awkward—our hands are bound, our positions cramped, and any noise might bring guards. But I need to feel her. Need to remind us both that we’re still here, still alive, still fighting.
She melts into me despite the constraints. Her mouth parts warm and willing, and for a moment, the cabin disappears. The guards disappear. Everything disappears except the taste of her and the heat of her body against mine.
When we break apart, her breathing has changed. So has mine.
The ship lurches beneath us. I hear the creak of rigging and the bark of orders through the hull.
The door opens shortly after we’re underway. A few guards enter, followed by Gyla.
“Captain Druger.” Her voice carries practiced warmth that doesn’t reach those calculating eyes. “I trust your accommodations have been acceptable.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“I’m sure you have. Piracy isn’t known for its creature comforts.” She gestures, and one of the guards produces a knife. “I’m going to free your hands. If either of you does anything foolish, my men will shoot Miss Larsa in the stomach. Slow death. Painful. Do we understand each other?”
Aviora’s breath catches beside me. I force my voice steady.
“We understand.”
The ropes fall away. I flex my fingers, feeling blood rush back into my hands, keeping my movements slow and non-threatening. Beside me, Aviora does the same.
“Better.” Gyla produces a rolled chart from her sleeve. “Now. You claimed to know the Fortune’s location. I’d like you to verify our heading.”
She spreads the chart across the cot—Wrecktide waters, marked with the coordinates Aviora calculated from the dead captain’s journal. The heading that leads directly over the ancient hunger’s resting place.
Aviora leans forward, studying the marks with professional attention.
“You’re two degrees off. The Fortune lies closer to the eastern reef—here.
” Her finger traces a line. “The captain’s journal mentioned a landmark.
A rock formation that looks like a broken crown at low tide.
You should be able to see it from the surface. ”
Gyla’s eyes narrow. “Convenient details that can be verified without actually diving.”
“Convenient details that prove we’re telling the truth.” Aviora meets her gaze without flinching. “Send a scout if you don’t believe me. Have them look for the crown rock. If it’s not there, shoot me in the stomach and be done with it.”
The merchant queen is quiet for a long moment.
“Very well.” She rolls the chart back up. “We’ll verify your landmark. If it exists, we proceed with the salvage. If not—” A thin smile. “Well, you understand.”
She leaves. The guards follow. The door bars behind them with finality.
Aviora exhales slowly. “She bought it.”
“The first part.” I keep my voice low—the guards might be listening. “The crown rock will be there. And when she sees it, she’ll commit the full fleet.”
I feel the ship stir before I hear it—the subtle shift of activity on deck, the creak of rigging as sails are adjusted. The fleet is preparing to dive.
Aviora wakes when I move. Her eyes find mine in the gray light, and I see the same grim resolve I’m feeling reflected back at me.
“It’s time.” Not a question.
“It’s time.”
The guards come for us, leading us to the deck where Gyla waits with her diving crews. Twenty men, equipped with weighted lines and salvage nets.
“Miss Larsa.” Gyla’s smile is thin, triumphant. “You’ll guide the first dive. Show my men exactly where the Fortune’s hold lies.”
Aviora nods. Her face is a mask—nothing showing of the woman who whispered promises in the dark. “The depth will be challenging. Your divers should work in pairs, surface every three minutes, and avoid—”
She stops. Her gaze has fixed on something over the rail, down in the water below.
I follow her eyes. And my blood goes cold.
The sea is glowing.
Not the greenish phosphorescence of the Wrecktide’s normal waters. This is different. Brighter. A pulse of light from somewhere deep below, illuminating the darkness in steady rhythm. Like breathing. Like a heartbeat.
Like something waking up.
“What is that?” Gyla’s voice has lost its composure. She’s staring at the water with an expression I recognize—the look of someone who’s just realized they’ve made a terrible mistake.
“Listen to me, Gyla. Call for abandon ship.” Aviora’s voice is flat. Calm. “Get everyone off the boats before they go under.”
The first diver jumps.
He’s over the side, but he isn’t swimming for shore. He’s swimming downward with powerful strokes, ignoring the shouts from his crewmates.
More follow.
Three divers, then five, then ten—abandoning their posts, leaping into water that glows with hungry light. They swim straight down, not surfacing, not slowing. The light pulses faster as they descend, as if excited. As if feeding.
I don’t understand what’s happening. Why are they going toward the wreck? We didn’t feel that pull when we were on the surface. Is there something I missed? Is their greed that strong?
“Stop them!” Aviora screams, all pretense of control abandoned. “Tell them to swim toward the shore! Someone—”
But the men aren’t listening. All across the fleet, sailors are jumping. Deserting their stations, their ships, their lives. The gold must be singing to them. The ancient hunger is feeding.
The first screams start a moment later.
They come from below—from the divers who’ve reached the Fortune’s depth, who’ve found what waits in the darkness. Not gold. Not treasure. Something older. Something that’s been sleeping for years and is very, very hungry.
Shapes rise from the deep.
Not drowned. Not wraiths. These are different—ancient things, skeletal and luminous, guardians that protected the treasure for generations. But they’re not guarding anymore. Their eye sockets burn with the same hungry light as the gold.
The ancient hunger has claimed them. Turned them. Made them servants of its endless want.
“What have you done?” Gyla rounds on us, her face contorted with fury and terror. “What have you—”
The first guardian reaches the surface.
It comes up beneath her flagship like something from a nightmare—skeletal hands grasping the hull, pulling itself upward with inexorable strength. The wood groans. Cracks. Sailors who haven’t jumped scramble for boats, for anything that will take them away from the horror climbing their ship.
I grab Aviora’s arm. “We need to go. Now.”
“Gyla,” Aviora shouts, “come on. We have to get off the ship.”
Gyla spins around and jabs a finger at us. “I hope both of you burn in hell.”
“That’s nice,” Aviora tries to grab the woman, “but hell is exactly where you’re going if you don’t get off this ship now.”
Gyla whips her arm around, backhanding Aviora across the face, sending her sprawling.
I gather her up and run toward the rails, toward a longboat that’s been abandoned in the panic.
We’re over the side before anyone thinks to stop us, dropping into water that’s gone cold and wrong, swimming for a vessel that might be our only chance at escape.
Behind us, Gyla’s flagship starts to sink.
She’s still screaming orders from the deck—orders no one obeys, orders that mean nothing against the ancient horror she awakened by her greed. The last thing I see before we crest the longboat’s rail is her face, contorted with rage, as a guardian’s skeletal hand closes around her ankle.
Then she’s gone. Pulled under. And the hunger feeds.
I help Aviora into the boat, both of us heaving for air. The look of horror haunts her expression.
“Don’t,” I say. “You told her to get her crew off. You tried to get her to leave, but she refused, even seeing what was happening around her.”
Aviora remains quiet as we row for shore.
Behind us, Gyla’s fleet dies. Ships founder as their hulls are breached from below. Sailors drown as their greed for gold calls them deeper than any human can dive. The guardians rise and rise and rise, their numbers impossible, their hunger insatiable.
And through it all, the light pulses from the deep.
Steady. Patient.
Awakening.
We’ve won, but at what cost? So many are dead, the fleet destroyed, her threat ended forever.
But looking back at the horrors emerging from the Wrecktide’s depths, I realize with sickening certainty:
We’ve also unleashed something far worse.