Chapter 38 Zoric
THIRTY-EIGHT
ZORIC
The evening finds her on the cliff.
I know where she’ll be before I start looking. Have learned her patterns over the past month—the way she moves through the keep, the places she retreats when she needs to think. The cliff is her favorite.
She stands at the edge, her back to me, her attention fixed on the sunset painting the water gold.
The wind catches her hair—she’s left it loose today, dark waves streaming behind her like a banner.
She looks like something from an old story.
A woman at the edge of the world, deciding whether to step off.
I cross the distance between us. She doesn’t turn, but I see her shoulders relax—recognition without looking. She knows the sound of my footsteps the way I know hers.
“Beautiful evening.” I stop beside her, close enough that our arms brush.
“Mmm.” She doesn’t elaborate. Her eyes stay fixed on the horizon.
I let the quiet stretch. Have learned, over these weeks, that sometimes she needs space to find her words. That pushing doesn’t help. That patience—the hardest thing I’ve ever had to practice—is what she needs most.
“I keep thinking about leaving.” Her voice is barely audible over the wind. “Not wanting to leave. Just... thinking about it. Playing out scenarios in my head. Where I’d go. What I’d do. How I’d survive.”
“And?”
“And I can’t come up with anything.” A breath of laughter, self-deprecating. “Every scenario I construct—every ship I picture boarding, every coast I picture reaching—they all feel empty. Wrong.”
I stay quiet. Let her work through it.
“It’s terrifying.” She finally turns to face me.
Her eyes are bright—not with tears, but with something more complex.
Fear and hope and determination woven into something I can’t quite name.
“Wanting to stay. Choosing to stay. I’ve never done that before.
Not since Finn. Not since I learned that putting down roots just means giving the world more ways to hurt you. ”
“And now?”
“Now I’m doing it anyway.” She steps closer, presses her palm against my chest. “Because you’re here. Because what we’ve built is worth the risk. Because—” Her voice catches. “Because I’m tired of being too scared to want things.”
I cover her hand with mine. Draw her closer until we’re standing chest to chest, her face tilted up to mine.
“You’re thinking about staying.” Not a question.
“I’m thinking about staying.” A smile, small but real. “That’s scarier than leaving, Zoric. I don’t know how to do this. Don’t know how to build something instead of running from it.”
“Neither do I.” I frame her face with my hands, hold her gaze.
“I spent years convinced I didn’t deserve anything good.
That the best I could hope for was dying in a way that mattered, serving penance for sins that would never be forgiven.
” My fingers trace her jaw. “Then you washed up on my shore, and I started wanting things again. Started believing I might deserve them.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m willing to learn.” I draw her closer, our breath mingling. “If you are.”
She kisses me.
When she pulls back, her eyes are shining.
“Teach me.” The words tremble against my lips. “Teach me how to stay.”
I kiss her again. Deeper this time, pouring everything I am into the contact—the pirate who became a guardian, the monster who learned to protect, the man who never expected to love again and found something stronger than he knew how to name.
“I’ll teach you,” I murmur against her mouth. “And you’ll teach me. That’s what we do.”
“Is it?”
“It is now.”
The sunset fades around us, painting the sky in shades of rose and gold.
The Wrecktide glitters below—safe water, the kind that sailors trust instead of fear.
Somewhere in the keep, I can hear voices—Brek laughing at something Margit said, Thorne giving orders, the sounds of a community learning to live instead of just survive.
This is what we’ve built. This is what we’re choosing.
Not because fate demanded it. Because we decided it mattered. Because we looked at everything we’d lost and everything we’d done and decided that maybe, despite all of it, we deserved something good.
“Come on.” Aviora takes my hand, threads her fingers through mine. “It’s getting cold.”
“Back to the keep?”
“Back home.”
The word lands in my chest. Home. I haven’t called anywhere that since the Saltblood Reaches burned. Haven’t let myself believe I deserved a place that felt like belonging.
Now I have one. Now we both do.
The knock comes an hour later.
We’re in my quarters—our quarters, I suppose, though neither of us has officially acknowledged the change.
Aviora is sprawled across the bed, reviewing salvage reports by candlelight, her bare feet hooked with mine.
I’m cleaning my cutlass, the repetitive motion soothing, the blade gleaming in the flickering light.
Domestic. That’s what this is. The kind of ordinary evening I never expected to have.
The knock shatters it.
“Captain?” Brek’s voice, muffled through the door. “There’s someone here from the Coastal Trading Guild. Says it’s urgent.”
Aviora looks up from her reports. Her eyebrow arches in silent question.
“They said a few days.” I set down the cutlass, reach for my shirt.
“Apparently they couldn’t wait.” She’s already moving—swinging her legs off the bed, reaching for her boots, transforming from the woman who was wrapped in my sheets to the professional who negotiated circles around Harwin this afternoon.
The transformation takes seconds. I’ll never get tired of watching it.
We descend to the Great Hall together. The Guild representative is young—younger than I expected, a woman with sharp eyes and sharper posture. She stands at the center of the hall like she owns it, and something in her expression suggests she’s not here to renegotiate terms.
“Captain Druger. Miss Larsa.” She inclines her head—respectful, but not deferential. “The Guild has received news that couldn’t wait for our scheduled meeting.”
“What kind of news?” Aviora moves to my side, her shoulder brushing mine. A united front.
“The kind that changes everything.” The representative produces a rolled document from her satchel. “A few days ago, the Silver Fortune was officially declared a heritage site by the Northern Kingdoms. All salvage operations in the deep channel have been suspended pending archaeological survey.”
“Archaeological survey.” I take the document, scan its contents. “They’re treating it as a historical treasure rather than recovered cargo.”
“The Northern Kingdoms have been searching for their lost tribute for thirty years. Now that it’s recoverable, they want it back—but they want it documented properly.
Catalogued. Preserved.” The representative’s sharp eyes move between us.
“They’re offering contracts for the work.
Substantial contracts. The Guild thought you might be interested. ”
“Interested in a government contract.” Aviora’s voice is carefully neutral. “To document the treasure we nearly died retrieving.”
“Interested in legitimacy.” The representative’s smile is thin but genuine.
“The Guild sees potential in your operation, Miss Larsa. Captain Druger. The kind of potential that could transform Dreadhaven from a remote salvage outpost into a major trading hub. But that transformation requires connections. Contracts. The kind of official recognition that comes from working with Northern Kingdoms authorities.”
I look at Aviora. She looks back.
A month ago, she was running from debts and curses and the ghost of a lover she couldn’t save. A month ago, I was serving penance on a coast that hated me, waiting for a death I thought I deserved.
Now we’re being offered legitimacy. Government contracts. The chance to build something that will outlast us both.
“We’ll need to review the terms.” Aviora’s professional mask is firmly in place, but I can see the excitement underneath—the same fierce light she gets when she’s planning a complicated salvage run. “The deep channel is dangerous territory. Our expertise comes at a premium.”
“The Guild anticipated that.” The representative produces another document. “Here are our preliminary offers. We believe you’ll find them... competitive.”
The negotiations that follow take hours. By the time the representative departs—satisfied, or at least willing to present our counter-offers to her superiors—the candles have burned low and the moon has risen high.
Aviora collapses onto the Great Hall’s largest chair, her boots propped on the table, her expression a mixture of exhaustion and triumph.
“Government contracts.” She shakes her head slowly. “Finn would have laughed himself sick.”
“Finn would have been proud.” I cross to her, lift her legs, settle onto the chair beneath her, rest her feet in my lap. “You turned his legacy into something legitimate. Something that’s going to last.”
“We turned it into something.” She sits up, reaches for me, pulls me into a kiss that tastes like victory and possibility. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”
“Yes, you could have.” I trace the line of her jaw. “You’re the most capable person I’ve ever met. You would have found a way.”
“Maybe.” She leans into me, her temple against my cheek. “But I’m glad I didn’t have to.”
We stay like that for a long moment—breathing the same air, the future stretching out before us like an uncharted sea.
There will be challenges. There are certain to be.
Government officials who want to control what we’ve built.
Competitors who want to claim what we’ve earned.
The ordinary dangers of a life spent on the water, where storms and reefs and simple bad luck can end everything in an instant.
But we’ll face them. Whatever comes, we’ll face it the way we’ve faced everything else.
Because we decided to. Because we chose it.
“Come to bed.” Aviora’s voice is soft, warm. “It’s going to be complicated. We should rest while we can.”
I let her pull me to my feet. Let her lead me through the keep’s corridors, past the guards on night watch, past the windows that look out over water that’s finally safe to sail. Let her draw me into our quarters, our bed, the life we’re building one day at a time.
The last thing I see before sleep takes me is her face on the pillow beside mine—relaxed, peaceful, carrying none of the shadows that haunted her when she first washed up on my shore. She’s found something worth staying for. So have I.
At this moment, there’s only us: her warmth against my side, her breath soft in the darkness, the quiet miracle of two scarred souls who found each other in the wreckage and decided to build something new.
The curse is broken.
The hunger is dead.
And in its place, something better has risen.
Not redemption—that’s a destination neither of us believes in anymore. But direction. Purpose. The choice to keep moving forward, to keep building, to keep choosing each other every day until choosing becomes habit and habit becomes home.